From Burning Platform to Burning Ambition: How Leaders Sustain Change

by: Peter Fuda

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Leaders must shift from the proverbial burning platform to a burning ambition, and get underneath organizational reasons for change to make the journey personal.

There are thousands of books presenting dozens of lists on the attributes of great leaders. If I’m an ordinary human being, how do I actually become one of the great leaders I read about in these books? In other words, what is the pathway to greatness?

Here’s what Dr. Peter Fuda, founder and principal of The Alignment Group, learned: leadership effectiveness is not a matter of intention; it’s a matter of impact.

After five years of intense research, and twelve years of practice, Fuda has come to understand the limitations of the burning platform. Yes, some urgency can help motivate leaders to commence a journey of transformation, but it is not what enables them to sustain their journeys over time. What he found is that aspiration is a far more important motivator; sustainable change requires the fire of a burning ambition.

Download his five provocations to help you shift from burning platform to burning ambition here.

Tags: Burning Ambition, Burning Platform, Change, Peter Fuda

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Cultural Transformation is a Leadership Skill Everyone Can Learn

by: Judith Glaser

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Culture transformation is an advanced leadership skill. The primary way to change a culture is to use your conversational intelligence to create an environment that infuses energy and commitment into relationships, teams and the whole organization. Too often we get stuck in habit patterns of talking about but not creating change.

The more we talk about change, the more we talk about all the problems and challenges that can emerge, resulting in negative mindsets, which trigger fear hormones and threat networks in our brains. No wonder change is so difficult. By the time we are ready to take action, we are frozen in place.

However, you can shift the way you think about change the same way successful leaders do to navigate their own journeys.

> 1st Success Factor: Be the Change for Transforming the Culture

The first skill is to be the change for transforming the culture. Realize that you have the power, influence and ability to see and understand the culture in which you work, and how you can play a role in transforming it into a healthier, more inspiring and thriving culture. Transforming culture can mean a culture that is so powerful it transforms itself, or it can mean that you play a role in activating the culture transformation.

Call to Action: Envision how you can play a catalytic role in transforming your culture. Envision how you can be accountable for co-creating transformation in your culture by the way you show up at work every day. When you put skin in the game, you become the change that transforms the culture.

> 2nd Success Factor: Step out of Your Comfort Zone

The second skill, embrace the opportunity, is the ability to step out of your comfort zone and, rather than allowing fear of the unknown paralyze you, embrace the opportunity with excitement and enthusiasm. Your shift in focus will create positive ripple effects on those you influence. By fully stepping out of your comfort zone into a new opportunity, you are activating your ability to transform yourself and inspire courage in others.

Call to Action: Embracing opportunity both encourages others and inspires courage in yourself. By seeing transformation and change as a way to grow, you influence how you experience the challenge in a positive and less fearful way.

> 3rd Success Factor: Open the Space for Conversations

The third skill, create space for conversations, is the ability to intentionally open up opportunities for feedback-rich conversations one-on-one, within teams, and across the organization. By opening up space for and creating conversational journeys, you establish an environment in which employees have room to learn, grow and be nourished by new ideas and energy.

Call to Action: Creating spaces is a call to action you need to take every day to open the space for more innovative, generative and catalytic conversations to take place in your relationships and teams. This space signals our brain that we can discover and share new ideas we’ve never talked about before.

> 4th Success Factor: Practice Co-creating Conversations

The fourth skill, practice co-creating conversations, is a core to conversational intelligence. In the previous steps, you learned to recognize and release old baggage filled with toxic experiences that negatively undermine and denigrate relationships, and replace them with new meanings that positively uplift and inspire relationships. This empowers a new sense of optimism and effectiveness.

As a leader, you can begin to have co-creating conversations. Co-creating conversations are conversations that have the ability to release the past and open space for the future with others — a psychological state of being that is powerful and transforms us.

Call to Action: Co-creating conversations means opening the space for new energy for co-creation with others. This is a space where you and others are open to think about what you don’t know, what you don’t know you don’t know and to explore possibilities that you never thought about before.

> 5th Success Factor: Shaping Stories 

Finally, the fifth skill is shaping stories. Having moved from a place of understanding to challenging, then stepping out and releasing, and finally opening space for co-creating conversations, you have now mastered the most proactive and intentional skill of shaping the story of your team’s collective success. This is what visionary leaders and organizations do. It’s work you do with others, not on your own in isolation. What you co-create together are shared stories for success that envision and make possible the fulfillment of WE.

Call to Action: Shaping stories is a call to action that allows you to realize how you shape the stories’ impact on how the future unfolds. Reflect every day in a conscious way on how you shape stories so that they are winning, inclusive and appreciative. These conversations have the ability to re-frame your view of the world, give you and others hope for the future and enable you to see the best outcomes for all of us. Both meanings have the power to transform.

How You Label Determines How You See

Empowering your team to work in concert to achieve your organization’s goals and strategies requires flexibility of thought, agility of mind and speed of response. Most of all, it requires you to break out of old conversational habits and negative patterns of communicating and view the impact you can have on your business in totally new ways.

Use conversational intelligence as a way to break from the past and create the future. Rather than thinking about situations as problems, see them as challenges and opportunities, and communicate this point of view in your conversations with others. Until you challenge yourself to change old thinking and conversational habits, you will see little change from yesterday to today.

Once you do, you will find you become a catalyst for change wherever you go, and you will discover new energy appears around you for tackling big challenges and achieving the desired results and targets regardless of their size and difficulty.

>> Read more from Judith.

Tags: Change, Conversational Intelligence, Judith Glaser, cultural transformation

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How to Overcome 3 Common Criticisms When Leading Your Church Through Change

by: Rick Warren

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There is no growth without change. And there is no change without loss. And there is no loss without pain. A church that wants to grow without going through growing pains is like a woman who says, “I want to have a baby but I don’t want to go through labor.” Is the pain worth it? Yes, it’s worth it. People need the Lord and as long as one person doesn’t know Christ we have to keep reaching out.

As your church begins to grow you’re going to face a lot of different criticisms. But there are three really common ones to prepare for:

1. The care issue.

As your church begins to grow, some of the people who have been around the longest will say, “Pastor, you don’t care about me anymore.” What this really translates as is, “You’re not available to me like you used to be when the church was little.” The truth is, they’re right. You aren’t. The solution to that is not that you double up and work harder.

The solution is small groups. You cannot personally care for everybody’s needs or the church will never grow beyond you. You have to teach people to have their pastoral care needs met in their small group. Growth means restructuring and every time you restructure you disappoint people and the older you get the less you like to do that.

2.  The control issue. 

When you grow, some people will begin to say things like, “I don’t feel as involved as I used to feel.” Growth upsets the balance of power between the pioneers and the homesteaders. When the scales tip you can expect criticism.

When the church first starts growing everybody goes, “Isn’t this great? Look at all these young people coming in. They can help pay the bills!” Once you have more newcomers than you have established members the question becomes, whose church is it? The answer is that it isn’t their church and it isn’t your church. It’s God’s church.

You can have some measure of growth and some measure of control, but you can’t have a lot of control and a lot of growth at the same time. You have to choose.

3.  The comfort issue.

You cannot grow without change and change is never comfortable. A lot of people want the church to grow as long as it doesn’t make them uncomfortable. But if the church is going to continue to grow, we must be willing to minister outside our comfort zone. I’ve seen people in our church who would start a ministry, grow it up, turn it over to a newcomer, then start up another new ministry, grow it up, and turn it over to a newcomer. The real issue is selfishness and it takes unselfish people to grow a church.

So when criticism comes as a result of growth, change, and loss, how does a wise Pastor navigate the relationships that exist in the church? Here are three things you need to do that aren’t easy, but they are often necessary.

1.  Be willing to let people leave the church

People are going to leave your church no matter what you do. But when you define the vision, you’re choosing who’s going to leave – those who are supportive of the vision or those who aren’t. You cannot surrender the leadership of your church to manipulators. Jesus invested the maximum time with those who would bear the maximum responsibility.

2.  Continually remind people why you’re making these changes.

Why are we doing all this? There is only one reason – people need the Lord. We’re making these changes to reach one more person for Jesus.

3.  Affirm and appreciate people for the changes they do agree to make.

Be grateful for minor changes. Focus on progress not perfection. Change is hard, and God uses change to grow people. So affirm growing people who have chosen to embrace change for the sake of the kingdom.

Read more from Rick here.

Tags: Change, Leadership Characteristics, Overcoming Criticism, Rick Warren

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Why Changing Strategy Without Changing Culture Changes Nothing

by: Bill Donahue

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I see it almost everywhere I work with leadership teams. Let me tell you what it is and what you should be doing differently. And I will cite two great HBR articles that are helpful. (For more about HBR go here.)

Before I name the mistake, let me describe how it pops up.

You want to move ahead so you brainstorm a bit, read the latest books, review all the models, attend a conference or watch some videos. Then draft the new strategy, delegate responsibilities,  and launch the new plan.

And in six months you are…

• Spinning Your Wheels. Lots of vision and planning is done, and even some keenly designed initiatives, but you seem to be spinning your wheels and getting nowhere. Why?
• Driving on the Wrong Track. You get off to a fast start, launch an initiative, and soon leaders start moving, building teams and creating materials … but there is confusion. Why is this not working? You’re going somewhere — but where?
• Having a Multiple-Vehicle Accident. Your entrepreneurial team starts launching their own version of the vision, building and designing what works for them, running into one another as they fight for people, recognition, platform and resources. Soon there’s a 6-leader pileup.

These leaders had great strategies, good people and ample resources. But they kept failing. What needed to change?

Culture.

When you change your strategy without changing your culture, you change NOTHING! Change is resisted at every bend. Here are ten reasons why.

So why amplify this reality by putting new wine in old wine skins? Or, to stick with our racing metaphor, we strap a formula-one engine to a NASCAR chassis.  It makes a lot of noise and covers a lot of ground – but nothing really changes.

• A university creates online programming to make more content available – but they don’t change delivery methods, relying on a teacher-centered model instead of a learner-centered approach.
• A church wants a new outreach strategy and launches new “missional communities,” but the congregation does not have a missional mindset, and they really don’t understand the people they are trying to reach.
• A business hires phone “consultants” for that “personal touch” to improve customer service. But actually what the customer wants is speedy ordering, distinctive choices and an easy internet-based return policy – they do not need a nice phone conversation.

In the popular Lean Start-Up Movement, entrepreneurs re-think the way we launch a venture (or ministry or educational center, etc.). Listen to Steve Blank on Lean Start-ups:

…it favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development. Although the methodology is just a few years old, its concepts—such as “minimum viable product” and “pivoting”—have quickly taken root in the start-up world, and business schools have already begun adapting their curricula to teach them.

This approach is working because it forces you to actually understand the culture you are trying to reach, and the culture you are creating in your own camp.

It is not enough to change a strategy or talk about innovation. Cultures must change. I spend lots of time helping teams and leaders make progress here. Here are some questions that drive that process.

• What defines us now – who are we really?
• Where do we want to go and why?
• What exits in the new culture we want to create that is absent now?
• What kind of leaders do we need to become to make this transition?
• What environments, tools and processes need to be created (or removed) in order to move toward the future?
• Do we have/can we get the right people?
• What actual steps are required and who is responsible for each one?
• How do we know we are making progress?
• How hard are we willing to work to change our culture?

Leaders are in the culture-making business. Before you take the “big splash” approach again, you might evaluate the culture…inside and out. That means changing how you view potential leaders, the systems you design, the people you recruit or hire, the process (not just the end result) of how you develop strategy, and whether you become learners rather than teachers.

So what’s in your culture?

What will it take for a cultural makeover?

What are your biggest challenges in culture shaping and culture changing?

>> Read more from Bill here.

Tags: Bill Donahue, Change, Culture, Leadership Engine, Organizational Culture

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13 Key Principles to Help You Navigate Change in Your Church

by: Carey Nieuwhof

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You’re probably trying to change something right now.

And — if you’re honest — you’ve already thought about backing off.

Change seems too difficult.

You’ve watched friends get hurt trying to lead similar change.

You’ve heard the voices of opposition get a little louder.

You really don’t want to be afraid to open your inbox every morning.

But what if this is true?

Change is harder than it needs to be because it’s more mysterious than it needs to be.

And it doesn’t need to be quite that mysterious.

Here’s what I believe about change.

Change has dynamics; and the dynamics can be learned.

A couple years ago,  I wrote a book about leading change while facing opposition. I’m passionate about change because I’ve lived through it and can vouch for the fact that change is more than possible.

I’m also passionate because if the church (and other organizations) are going to reach their potential, change isn’t optional, it’s inevitable.

So, if you’re navigating change, here’s a short cheat sheet of 13 key principles that I hope will help you maintain clear thinking amidst the sea of emotions that leading change brings:

1. People aren’t opposed to change nearly as much as they are opposed to change they didn’t think of.

Everybody’s in favour of their ideas, but most organizational change is driven by leadership.

All real change is.

So you just need to realize that most people will come on board.

You just need to give them time until a leader’s idea spreads widely enough to be owned. And by the way, great ideas eventually resonate.

2. Change is hard because people crave what they already like. 

You have never craved a food you hadn’t tried, and change operates on a similar dynamic.

Your people want what they’ve seen because people never crave what they haven’t seen.

That’s why vision is so key – you need to paint a clear enough picture that people begin to crave a future they haven’t lived.

3. Leaders crave change more than most people do because they’re, well, leaders. 

Your passion level is always going to be naturally and appropriately higher than most people’s when it comes to change.

Just know that’s how you’re wired and don’t get discouraged too quickly if your passion for change is higher than others. You’re the leader.

4. Most of the disagreement around change happens at the strategy level. 

Most leaders stop at aligning people around a common mission and vision, but you also need to work hard at aligning people around a common strategy.

It’s one thing to agree that you passionately love God, it’s another to create a cutting edge church that unchurched people flock to.

One depends on vision; the other is a re-engineering around a common strategy. When people are aligned around a common mission, vision and strategy, so much more becomes possible.

5. Usually no more than 10% of the people you lead are opposed to change. 

Okay, maybe it goes to 30% at the high water mark.

But are you really going to sacrifice the majority and the future for the sake of a small group of opposition?

(I spend a good chunk of my latest book dissecting this principle…I promise you, the final analysis is good news for leaders.)

6. Loud does not equal large.

 Just because the opponents of change are loud doesn’t mean they’re a large group.

The most opposed people make the most noise.

Don’t make the mistake most leaders make when they assume large = loud. Almost every time, it doesn’t. (See Principle 5 above.)

7. Most people opposed to change do not have a clearly articulated vision of a preferred future.

They just want to go back to Egypt.

And you can’t build a better future on a vision of the past. Remember that when they tell you about how good things used to be.

8. Fear of opposition derails more leaders than actual opposition. 

You will spend a ton of time living through your fears.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s the determination to lead through your fears.

By the way, this does wonders for your faith.

9. Buy-in happens most fully when people understand why, rather than what or how. 

What and how are inherently divisive.

Someone’s always got a better, cheaper, more expensive, faster, shorter, longer way to do what you’re proposing. So focus on why when you’re communicating.

Why reminds us how why we got into this in the first place. And why motivates.

Always start with why, finish with why and pepper all communication with why.

10. Unimplemented change will always become relief or regret. 

One day, you’ll be so glad you did. Or you’ll wish you had. Remember that.

11. Incremental change brings about incremental results. 

You’ll be tempted to compromise and reduce vision to the lowest common denominator: incremental change.

Just know that incremental change brings incremental results. And incrementalism inspires no one.

12. Transformation happens when the change in question becomes part of the culture. 

You won’t transform an organization until people no longer want to go back to the way it was.

You can change some things in a year and almost everything in 5 years. But transformation happens when people own the changes.

That’s often 5-7 years; only then do most people not want to go back to Egypt.

13. The greatest enemy of your future success is your current success.

Successful organizations create a culture of change because they realize that success tempts you to risk nothing until decline forces you to reexamine everything.

Keep changing.

I hope these 13 principles can keep you focused on a few of the toughest dynamics associated with change.

>> Read more from Carey.

Tags: Carey Nieuwhof, Change, Leading Change

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8 Strategic Changes You Must Consider When Changing Culture

by: VRcurator

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Since the world around us is constantly changing, the inability to change with it can have huge, negative consequences.

Everyone knows this and yet many organizations – even those full of very smart people – often find it almost impossible to change.

Geoffrey James has written a manifesto that explains the source of the difficulty and provides a set of steps that can help an organization move from what might be called “20th Century” thinking to “21st Century” thinking.

That type of thinking involves asking some tough questions which lead to strategic changes you must consider when changing culture.

1. What is business all about?
2. What is a corporation all about?
3. What is management all about?
4. What role do employees play?
5. What really motivates people?
6. What is the nature of change?
7. What’s the role of technology?
8. What is the essential nature of work?

Also covered in this manifesto:

• 8 Strategic Changes You Must Consider When Changing Culture
• How to Change an Organizational Culture
• 26 Strategies that Match Action to Belief

>> Download James’ manifesto here

Tags: Change, Change leadership, Cultural Change

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Start with 3 Prerequisites to Make Change in Your Church Not Just Possible, but Transformational

by: Carey Nieuwhof

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One of the most common questions I hear from church leaders is “How long will it take my church to change?”

It’s such a great question because change sometimes feels, well, impossible.

• You hear a constant stream of complaints
• You’ve run into too many people who like things the way they are now (or the way they were a long time ago)
• You’ve got too many friends who got hurt badly trying to lead change
• The committees keep meeting and they keep stalling
• You’re starting to feel like Moses in the desert with no Promised Land in sight

I get that, I’ve been there.

But don’t get discouraged. Change—even radical change—is possible.

A Change From Dying Slowly to Growing Rapidly

I’ve led change in a local church for 18 years with the many of the same core group of people I started with when I was a seminary grad.

18 years ago, I began ministry with three small mainline churches whose total average attendance was less than 50. They churches were about as traditional as churches get: century old buildings, organs, choirs, committees, few kids and zero growth.

Within 5 years we had sold all three buildings and merged the three churches into a new church with a new name and a new mission. In the process, we changed the structure of leadership, engineered a radical overhaul of the style of worship, moved to an elementary school and launched a building campaign. In the process, we grew to over 10 times our original size.

Then almost 6 years ago, a core of us left the denomination we were a part of. We left a nearly paid for building to start again in neighbouring communities as Connexus, launching two locations at once. We moved from a permanent building to rented facilities and planted as a North Point Strategic Partner. Now, we’re able to reach more people than ever before, and 60% of the people who walk in our door come from an unchurched background. This has helped us realize our vision to be a church that unchurched people love to attend.

I realize, that’s a lot of change. Have we lost people? Of course.

But we have reached many more. And many didn’t leave. Some have been with us through the entire 18 year journey.

I share those things not to boast—God receives the credit—but to let you know that change is possible. Radical change is possible.

It Even Happens in Vegas

Your church doesn’t have to be stalled or dying to experience the benefits of change.

One of the best examples of this is how Jud Whilite took over the senior pastor role at Central Christian Church in Las Vegas after Gene Appel had led it from 400 to over 8000 in attendance. If you follow church world at all, those transitions don’t always go well (that’s an understatement). How do you build on that? Under Jud’s leadership, Central has become a distinctly different church and grown even more.

It changed. And reached more people.

Change won’t make peace with the status quo. Change bridges the gap between what is and what could be.

Three Prerequisites for Change

Before you start engineering change, there are at least three prerequisites:

1. A clear and compelling vision, mission and strategy. Most people have a vision and mission, but few have a strategy. Mission answers the question of what we’re called to do. Vision answers why we’re called to do it. But strategy is about how we will accomplish it. Strategy is often the difference between success and failure. And please, understand, I’m talking about embarking on good change here—godly, biblical, wise and courageous change that will result in a mission being accomplished.  Not some whim of a dictator like leader.

2. A team committed to bringing about the change. You can’t do this alone. You need at least a handful of people committed to the change. People who will pray with you and help broker the change. You can usually find them. You just have to look.

3. A deep resolve. Are people go to enthusiastically embrace even good change? Many will not, but most will—if you know how to lead them. Leading Change Without Losing It is a guide to help leaders navigate the nerve-wracking opposition that comes with change.

A Reasonable Time Frame for Change

So how fast can you change? While times will vary, here’s what I believe is a reasonable timeframe for change based on an organization that is currently not on a path way to change:

12-18 Month Prep Period. Again, assuming you are going to bring up change in a change resistant culture, it might take you 12-18 months to get the prerequisites outlined above in place. If you have a change-friendly context, you might be able to do this in 3-6 months. Either way, you’ll need to cast vision for change, create a vision, mission and strategy that will lead your church forward and share it all enough that is owned by at least a small group of people other than yourself (in our church of 50, we had maybe a dozen truly onboard to start).  One thing you can start changing in this window is your attitude. You can preach better, bring hope to meetings and inspire people. Attitude is something always in your control.

The goal of this prep period is to cast as clear and compelling picture as you can of who you are going to be and what you’re going to look like 5 years from now.

Then break the change down into short term (One year), medium term (2-3 years) and long term (3-5 year) goals.

Year 1. Year one is the time to get some quick wins under your belt. Move to a better curriculum. Preach better series. Introduce some new music. Change your meeting structure or frequency. Paint something. Pick some changes that are easy to make and will result in a better experience now.  Remember, these are clear steps that are going to help you get to your five year goal, not just random and unstrategic changes.

2-3 Years. Choose some structural changes you want to make. We reformed our governance structure, made initial plans to sell our historic buildings, started introducing new musicians and a band (as we moved away from traditional music), introduced some new spiritual growth initiatives and moved our kids ministry to where we wanted it to be. You need to start laying the structural support system for change now or by the time you get to year 5, your change won’t be sustainable.

4-5 Years. Make your final changes. For us, it meant that our transformation is Sunday service style, governance, structure and more was complete. The last 10% is always the hardest, so don’t quit. Don’t overestimate what you can accomplish in 1 year, but don’t underestimate what you can accomplish in 5.

5+ Years. Keep changing. You’re never done. And now you’ve got new issues to solve and anticipate that didn’t exist when you started. So keep going.

A Final Word on Change v. Transformation

You can create a lot of change in 5 years. But when does transformation happen?

I believe transformation happens when

>The changes you make become embedded in the organizational culture. What was new has become normal. People assume it’s just going to be this way. And what was novel is now a foundation for all future decisions. The change has become a part of your organizational culture.

>Most people no longer want to go back; they want to move forward. I say most people, because you’ll always have the dissenters. But most people want to move forward. They’re excited. Their vision has moved from being about the past to now embracing the present and future. The best is yet to come, and you can feel it.

So exactly when does transformation happen?

I believe transformation happens somewhere between Year 5 and Year 7.

Once you’ve made the change, have demonstrated that you’re not turning back, and you’ve begun to see some of the benefits of change (you’re healthier and likely growing), then the shift in values and culture happens —almost silently. You know it’s a new day when people can’t imagine going back to the way they once were.

And that is an incredible reward for those who navigate change. Not to mention to the people who will benefit from your renewed mission.

What have you learned about change? What stumbling blocks or change-accelerants have you discovered?

Read more from Carey here.

Tags: Carey Nieuwhof, Change, Transformation, Vision, Vision casting

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Using Social Media to Make Change: What Pastors Can Learn from Arab Spring and Occupy Fall

by: Brian Solis

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Social media has started a revolution in how people connect, learn and communicate, and its effects cannot be undone.   – Brian Solis

In 2011, the world was introduced a powerful uprising in the Middle East that would later become known as the “Arab Spring.” Facebook, Twitter and YouTube served as the nervous system of shared repression and fed the rise against tyranny.

A few short months following the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement emerged to rally consumer discontent to protest against big businesses, corrupt financial industries, and rising unemployment.

While history books will pay credit to social networks for their role in aligning restlessness with revolt throughout the Arab Spring and Occupy movements, what’s important to not overlook or underestimate is the shared experiences and sentiment of people. It is people, not networks, who bring about transformation.

Leaders must demonstrate why their vision is important, and articulate how they will lead us toward something more substantial than we know today.

Most notably, social media is helping to facilitate real world revolutions by bringing together passionate people around social platforms to organize efforts and achieve desired outcomes.

And through each, the world learns the importance of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other emerging networks in our society. As the old saying goes, “we ain’t seen nothing yet.” Change is in the air and the ties that bind are formed through the relationships between people who share online connections, experiences, and real world aspirations.

Thought leader Brian Solis has written a manifesto for change, to bring about evolution or revolution for what it is you believe in, for what it is you wish to change in your world. This was written to spark your rallying cry. His intention was to help you unlock what it is you already possess, a vision to see things differently, the way they should be, and a heart to inspire those around you to bring your vision to life.

We are no longer bystanders. It’s time to take a stand. You are an activist for transformation. You are the change agent your organization or cause so desperately needs.

To help lead transformation and change, Solis has developed 10 steps through which a leader can become motivated and aligned with the new mission and vision.

Look in the mirror and you will see change staring back at you. And as they say, objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

Download Brian’s manifesto on transformation here.

Tags: Brian Solis, Change, Social Media

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You Cannot Be Changed and Comfortable at the Same Time

by: Michael Warden

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All people everywhere possess a natural, inherent bias in favor of status quo. We resist change, and prefer keeping things just as they are because change involves risk and stress (even good change, or change from worse to better), and we are naturally wired to reduce risk and stress wherever and whenever we can.

The problem with this natural bias, of course, is that all true learning and discovery, all personal development and growth, and every experience of authentic transformation, happens ~ and can only happen ~ outside that protective “status quo” bubble.

Simply put, you cannot be changed and be comfortable at the same time.

Authentic transformation happens outside your comfort zone. Risk and stress are intrinsic aspects of all true personal growth and transformation. There is no way around this fact: To be changed, you must first be uncomfortable, and you must remain in that uncomfortableness for as long as it takes for the change to become, in essence, the “new normal.”

It’s one thing to study Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler (Mark 10). It’s quite another to actually surrender all our money to God, or (for many of us) to surrender even a tithe.

Yet it’s through just such transformational experiences that all meaningful change and growth happens.

In fact, recent studies in neuroscience have revealed that in order for any learning experience to be truly transformational (i.e. life-changing), it must include these four elements:

1. It must be interruptive & immersive ~ The experience must take people out of their established routines and immerse them in something novel and different. For example, relocating a group from its regular gathering place to someplace different or unexpected, such as a riverbank or downtown coffee shop.

2. It must be emotionally compelling ~ The experience must matter to people on an emotional level. This can be accomplished in several ways ~ for example, by engaging their compassion (as in feeding or clothing the homeless in your community), by challenging their fear (as in spending the night in prayer alone in the wilderness), or by appealing to their sense of adventure (as in inviting them to join a mission team to an exotic location)…to name a few.

3. It must be kinesthetic ~ Counter to the practice followed by public school for many decades, we learn best when our bodies are actively involved. This could be as simple as taking a class on a walk as you teach a lesson. The best experiences, though, engage the body in ways that mirror or amplify the primary lesson of the experience, such as taking a trust walk or a wilderness hike as a study on what it means to walk with God.

4. It must include an “anchor memory” ~ When people experience significant change, they almost always point to a specific moment or memory when “everything changed.” In the same way, transformational experiences must include a ritual, shared experience, or other kind “crossing the threshold” moment people can later use as their “anchor memory” ~ the defining moment they identify as the turning point when everything changed.

Now, consider all the educational programming pieces currently in play in your church or faith-based organization. This includes any Sunday morning program (if you’re a church), or any leadership development or training programs you have in place.

Based on the elements listed above, which of your programs are the most authentically transformational? Which are the least transformational? I encourage you to make a list, from most to least, then for each explore this question:

How could we redesign this to make it more authentically transformational?

>> Interruptive, emotionally compelling, kinesthetic, and memorable ~ 4 key ingredients for designing learning experiences that are not only “accurate,” but life changing.

Read more from Michael here.

Tags: Change, Michael Warden, Transformation

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Leading Change: Painful, But Worth It

by: Ed Stetzer

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Can there be change without pain?

The answer, of course, is, “No.”

(Ok, so this may be the shortest blog post ever.)

Actually, I think it’s an important question, so I want to address it in a more serious manner.

When Pain Is Worth It

When I was a seminary professor, a church called me to be their pastor. Actually, they asked me, “Can you come help us reach the young people?” That is what church tend to call the neighborhood around their building—the young people.

The median age of the church was 68 years old. In a church building that sat 250 people, 35 (mostly) senior citizens sat huddled together at the front left corner of the sanctuary. At the end of every row, it seemed like there were oxygen tanks and walkers.

As a former church planter, recently called seminary professor, I didn’t have a lot of contact with senior adults. They are not the most commonly responsive demographic in church planting. But, I learned to love these people and we loved one another.

They wanted to reach the community, so I had them go out to door-to-door to meet “the young people.” After it was over, I asked them what they thought about it. Here’s what they said: “The people aren’t like us.” Indeed.

The church that had been founded in the 1950s had stayed there, while the area around them changed. I worked with them to address the question they faced now, “What are we going to do about it?”

We went through a process of evaluation and change that took six months– a lot faster than normal. (Do not expect to go into a church and say one Sunday morning, “We’re going to change our worship style.” You had better have a U-haul truck ready and running behind the church because more than likely you won’t last long.)

But for this church, their desperation (and probably their perception of me as some sort of expert) made it possible to move quickly. There were still bumps along the way. When we decided to cancel Sunday night services, a lady I’ll call “Alice” told me, “Preacher, the devil’s gonna be runnin’ loose in our church because you cancelled Sunday night services.” I was a bit shocked that the Prince of Darkness had been held back this whole time because of the Sunday night service and the four people who attended it, but we moved on with the proposed changes anyway (and no Lucifer sightings were reported).

We reconsidered who we were as a church in light of who we were as a community. On top of ending Sunday night services, we changed our worship and made other adjustments to be more contextual to their neighborhood. And being an older church, we voted on EV-ER-Y-thing. The final vote for the changes was 34 to 1. (“Alice” voted no and left mad that day.) But everyone else in the church was on board. I led them through this process, but they wanted to make the change.

Two years later, the church had grown from 35 to about 175 in weekly attendance. The median age had dropped to the mid-thirties. On my last day, before I left to take a job in another state, all of the original members who were still living were there (except “Alice”).

On that final day, the wise, old chairman of the deacons (akin to elders in most churches), came up to me, poked me in the chest and said, “Preacher, I still don’t like the music. And the kids are breaking everything in this church.” He was right; the kids were breaking everything. That’s the difference between a church full of senior adults and a church full of kids with senior adults—vases.

If you’re a church with senior adults every little classroom at the church has a corner table that’s sliced off kind of at an angle, has a white doily and a vase with fake, dusty plastic flowers that have been there since 1972. Once you get the kids, the doily and the table are still there, but there’s a dust ring where the now-broken vase used to be.

So, I knew this older leader was right; I just wasn’t sure what it was he wanted to say. But with his finger in my chest, I looked into his eyes and I could see he was starting to tear up. This was not a man who cries easily– think the World War II generation. But as the tears formed in the corner of his eyes, he leaned in and said, “But preacher, it was worth it all.”

Changing Our Hurts

People hurt for their preferences when there’s change. But part of the role of pastors and church leaders is to help people hurt for the right things. When people don’t get things their way, it hurts them. That shouldn’t surprise you. But, instead, leaders have to help them hurt for the things that break the heart of God.

Change can come, but it will come by the way of pain.

I often use my shoes as an example. I hate buying new shoes. My feet are shaped weird and it takes awhile to break in a new pair. Bones on the side of my feet rub against the new shoe, giving me blisters for three weeks until it has worn down in the right areas. So, I just don’t buy new shoes unless things become unbearable.

I wear my shoes until the soles have holes in them. I’ll keep ignoring the ever-growing hole because it’s not bad enough for me to endure the way my feet hurt in new shoes. Then winter comes and everything changes. Walking around Nashville on a day that’s colder than a legalist’s heart, I’ll step into a barely above freezing puddle of water. It will shoot up between my toes, into my sock, and sit there. Now, I’m finally thinking, “I’ve got to change!”

Here’s the principle: people never change until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change.

That’s why there can’t be change without pain.

Now, with this church, their pain grew because they were desperate.

Early on, I showed them the statistical trends in their neighborhood. In one of the key meetings, that older key leader I mentioned stood up and said, “People, in 10 years, we’re all going to be dead and gone, and this church is going to be closed.” See, they had the pain already. It was helping them direct it to where it needed to be.

Leaders have to help their churches hurt for the things that Scripture tells us God hurts for. The body of Christ has to ache for those things that the Spirit of God leads them to, not the things they are told to hurt over by American culture and personal preference.

Change will require pain, but pain directed properly will bring results that are worth it.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Change, Change Principle, Ed Stetzer

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