Defined By Your Environment

There's an interesting law that governs most of us that we rarely wrestle with or acknowledge but this law has great control on us all. It's the law that our environments truly govern our outcomes.

It's proven time and time again that you can take any diversity of people, place them in a certain environment, and expect relatively the same results. What does this mean and what can we do about it?

First, we must recognize that our results are based more on the environments that we create than the people we hire. This may sound foolish, but if you give it enough thought you may start to realize it's truth. Second, in order to have the impact we desire we must be willing to change the environment to reach that end.

It is possible and it is good. We need to challenge our environments. We need to challenge our structures. If we don't we will be ruled by our practices and methods and these always go the way of extinction in time.

Environments shape our results... challenge your environments to be the best steward of the mission set before you.

Stewardship in Leadership

Yes, of course, leadership is stewardship. We should all get that idea rather quickly. But have you ever thought of it from the angle of stewardship being on of the greatest gifts ever given to us - therefore making those who are in positions of leadership in a place of great joy and responsibility?

I've observed many leaders over the years in work, home, and other environments miss this completely. The question must be ask... if you're given a position of leadership, why wouldn't you want to run with that well?

Leadership is a responsibility of stewardship and those of us given that opportunity need to take full advantage of the perspective in that role. And may we never forget that all stewardship is temporary - that's why it's called stewardship. We are entrusted for a season to lead something well and to pass it along to the next team/person well.

May we run well with leadership as we recognize that we are entrusted with it only for a season - there is great strength in realizing our time is limited.

Fight It, Fund It

I was listening to a leadership session and heard Andy Stanley's phrase here which really stuck with me.

"Fight It or Fund It"

That's the decision many of us will face on a daily basis. It's really quite interesting in scope of when market innovations will be birthed and influence culture - they are always from younger and more innovative people. This starts with the assumption that we need to be humble to allow others, and especially younger people, to have a say in the future. Here's whats true regardless - what those people are doing is going to happen anyways - it always has and always will!

That's where we have the decision to either fight it or fund it. The concept is simple. Where will you land? Will you be one who is fighting for old methods and systems that are out of date or will you challenge even your own comfort and allow fresh method to be launched? Funding someone else's idea may be your greatest legacy... don't miss the opportunity.

Learning from Experience

There's a common and true belief that we learn from our experiences. For the most part this is a very true and accurate statement. The enemy of this statement is time. In short bursts of time it's easy for us to learn from our experiences both good and bad. It's easy to reflect on what's happened and navigate how to move forward. But as time moves along we forget the decisions that lead us to various ends. This is the old phrase of "those who do now know the past are doomed to repeat it". But how does all of this effect us in our organizations?

The challenge is make the best decisions possible with the best desired outcome in mind while honoring all those involved and effected by our decisions. The challenge might be to properly capture the reasons by the decisions we made so that as time moves along we can and others can learn from the motive and the result.

We are all aware that most of the decisions we make today in business most likely spread their wings of influence in the years that follow. How many of us can remember the motive behind a decision that's now years old? Not many of us.

The goal here is to be intentional, the plan well, and the share wisdom as best possible with those who will come up after us. We have a great opportunity to share and coach others in this area as they are making decisions and mapping a future path for their efforts. May this be a challenge to us all that we alone are not savvy enough to learn from our own experience and that we desperately need external forces to help up learn those valuable lessons.

The Baseline of Excellence

I was working through a strategy plan for an organization and realized something quite simple yet often ignored in organizational culture... what do we measure ourselves on?

The predicament I observed is that we often we default to a scale that looks like this three stage model:

Poor - Status quo - Excellence

Now, I would imagine that most of us would agree that we desire to achieve excellence in our work, projects, programs, leadership, relationships, etc. But we fail to measure off the right index.

Most charters will begin with the baseline of excellence... this is where we hope to reach. But what happens is that as we grow there's a gap in leadership accountability and our baseline shifts from excellence to status quo and all of the sudden all our efforts begin looking great because of our baseline for measurement.

Lesser leadership will gravitate toward presentation of performance based on the status quo. Great leadership will always strive toward measurement on excellence. You can recognize this leadership in vision, challenge, hope, excitement, and engagement.

This is our challenge as leaders... to identify the core of excellence in our field (an ever changing goal) and draw our teams to this end. Much like Kouzes and Posner note in The Leadership Challenge, leaders must challenge the process.

Benchmarking Breakdown

Many organizations have fallen into an unhealthy trap in their view of benchmarking. Just as there are many great resources in business development... there are just as many ways to use them improperly. I've noticed organizations using benchmarking as a technique for their strategy and product development. Benchmarking was never intended to serve that purpose. This is a tool that helps organizations understand their market landscape and to learn other's best practices in certain pieces of their market. But the tool should stop here... this is not a means for determining strategic direction.

But why isn't it a tool for strategic direction? Simple. Strategic direction should strive to be unique, customized to clientele, principle-aligned, and specific to markets in a given time. Benchmarking starts with someone else's strategy and deducts from that point. Great vision is never a deduction. Great vision is always pioneering in method.

Where is benchmarking most useful? I would suggest that the most beneficial means for benchmarking is to explore principle, because principle never changes. But we must strive for what's unique and specific to our market - we'll never get that from someone else. In large part, this is our calling and our responsibility... to bear the image of our Creator in how we create and innovate for the future.

Fresh method and unique vision are both some of the greatest points of blessing given to us. May we never lower leadership to the deduction of benchmarking as a foundational practice. The people we serve deserve far better than that.

Change Without Compromise

I was fortunate to have some time with Brad Powell earlier this week, the pastor of NorthRidge Church in Michigan. I loved hearing his heart and passion for change, truth, and leadership. It was obvious to see the profound depth of perspective he has in leading change and challenging other to do the same.

Brad's theme is "Change Without Compromise" which should be an encouragement to us all. This theme sums up so many great points, especially the division of two things that certainly scare many people... change and compromise. Truth is, we can make epic changes without compromising our beliefs and foundations. Matter of fact, we are commanded to as Image-Bearers of God. Change, creativity, fresh look, innovation - this should be our market and one of our strongest abilities.

It was a great joy getting to talk to Brad about how his church has shifted in demographic and age, how he is almost more comfortable working with younger leaders than older now because of passion he has for their development, about principles that never change and the means to exegete them, and his perspectives on current models of ministry many of us have become familiar with.

There is great hope for us all... for churches and organizations alike. We must seek out change without compromise and we must have the leaders to take us there. This is our calling, this is our duty... to advance our work even further in means that engage the hearts and minds of people. The opportunities are rich...

Check out Brad's book Change your Church for Good - The Art of Sacred Cow Tipping on Amazon

http://changewithoutcompromise.com/