The Laws of Subtraction: How to Innovate in the Age of Excess Everything

by: Matthew May

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“Our businesses are more complicated and difficult to manage than ever. Our economy is more uncertain than ever. Our resources are scarcer than ever. There is endless choice and feature overkill in all but the best experiences. Everybody knows everything about us. The simple life is a thing of the past. Everywhere, there’s too much of the wrong stuff, and not enough of the right. The noise is deafening, the signal weak. Everything is too complicated and time-sucking.

Welcome to the age of excess everything. Success in this new age looks different, and demands a new and singular skill: Subtraction.

Subtraction is defined simply as the art of removing anything excessive, confusing, wasteful, unnatural, hazardous, hard to use, or ugly—and the discipline to refrain from adding it in the first place.”

Click here to download Matthew’s Change This manifesto on “The Laws of Subtraction.”

Tags: Leadership Development, Leadership Engine, Less is More, Matthew May

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7 Reasons Your Project Stumbles

by: Seth Godin

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Not as catchy a title as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but I hope you’ll walk through this with me:

I can outline a strategy for you, but if you don’t have the tactics in place or you’re not skilled enough to execute, it won’t matter if the strategy is a good one.

Your project’s success is going to be influenced in large measure by the reputation of the people who join in and the organization that brings it forward. That’s nothing you can completely change in a day, but it’s something that will change (like it or not) every day.

None of this matters if you and your team don’t persist, and your persistence will largely be driven by the desire you have to succeed, which of course is relentlessly undermined by the fear we all wrestle with every day.

These seven elements:

• Strategy
• Tactics
• Execution
• Reputation
• Persistence
• Desire
• Fear

These seven elements make up the seven points of the acute heptagram of impact. If your project isn’t working, it’s almost certainly because one or more of these elements aren’t right. And in my experience, it’s all of them. We generally pick the easiest and safest one to work on (probably tactics) without taking a deep breath and understanding where the real problem is.

Feel free to share the AHI, but please don’t have it tattooed on your hip or anything.

Read more from Seth here.

Tags: Leadership Development, Leadership Engine, Seth Godin

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8 Questions that Leaders Should be Asking Themselves

by: Perry Noble

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Perry Noble, the founding and senior pastor of NewSpring Church in South Carolina, offers eight questions that leaders should be asking themselves on a regular basis:

#1 – Is there ANYTHING that God is really dealing with me about right now that I am trying to deny?  (Denial doesn’t make us a great leader…if God’s pressing in on YOU then He wants YOU to do something.)

#2 – Am I known as the person who sits around and complains about a problem or the one who rolls up his sleeves and dives into how to deal with it?

#3 – Would I rather hear about the church down the road having a major win or a major problem?  (This reveals our heart!)

Read the rest of Perry’s list here.

Read more from Perry here.

Tags: Leadership Development, Leadership Engine, Perry Noble

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4 Keys to Creating Momentum in Your Church

by: Artie Davis

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At times momentum can be an illusive goal. It seems to come when least expected, and dissipates when we feel it should be present. In the church world, it seems even more illusive.

I’ve found there are four vital pillars that must be in place in order to hold any momentum that begins or maintained.

Mission

Mission is the “What” your church should be doing. In the Bible, we would recognize this is our commission or the great commandment. “God and make followers of all people.”

No matter where you are, that is your mission. Don’t let any “method” drive or steer your mission. The mission must drive the method.

Mechanism

What’s the vehicle that will drive the mission. Again this may seem a little elementary, but the simple things are the ones that seem to end up being ignored or forgotten, and the latest get big quick plan becomes the flavor of the year.

The Mechanism we have to accomplish our mission is the Church. The church is the only vehicle ordained by God to carry out and grow the Kingdom. And the church has three parts:

• Me (The individual)
• We (The circle or group)
• Us (The Congregation)

All of these are the church, and must be fully engaged in order for any momentum to take place.

Movement

This takes, on-ramps and predetermined measurable steps. It’s not just a matter of getting people into the Kingdom, they have to be helped, enrougaged, and empowered to move from one level of maturity to the next.

This process of movement will differ from church to church, but every church must have a process and the process must be measurable to ensure people are moving in maturity and becoming more like Jesus.

Multiplication

What doesn’t reproduce will eventually become extinct! The multiplication factor must be apart and it”s the main hub of momentum. When the (3) parts of the church… Me, We & Us begin to grow and multiply. Momentum, lasting, earth shaking and hell robbing momentum occurs!

And when a church has momentum in growing the Kingdom, it’s an incredible force!

Read more from Artie here.

Tags: Artie Davis, Leadership Engine, Recasting Vision, Structure, Vision Frame

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5 Practical Ways to Try Leadership the Very First Time

by: Mark Howell

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Help! I can’t find enough leaders!

I don’t know about you…but that is the most common complaint/concern I hear when I talk with small group champions.  And the most common question I hear is “How can I find more leaders?”  I’ve written a number of articles in answering that question.  You can see them right here.

Today I want to talk about how to develop more leaders.  This is an essential skill for all small group leaders but it’s not intuitive for most and it will rarely happen naturally or on the initiative of your existing leaders.  If you want it to happen system-wide, you must teach the concept and develop the expectations and skills that make it happen.

Basic Concept

The basic concept is that every group has multiple people who can lead (or help lead) a group.  I’m not suggesting that everyone can lead.  I’m simply pointing out that there are many group members who actually could lead a group if they were given the opportunity and motivated somehow to try it.

Do you believe that?  I hope so.  If you believe that, then the next step is to help your existing leaders begin to practice the skills that will allow and encourage everyone who can lead to give it a try.

Leader Development Practices

Here are five practices that will help more adults give leading a try.

• Make it a fun experiment!  As you begin a new study, let everyone know that “we’re all going to take a turn facilitating this one.”  To do that, you’ll need to select a study that requires little preparation and comes very close to leading itself (which is always a great idea).
• Begin by handing off sections of every session.  “Bob, why don’t you lead the Connect section next week?”  “Sue, next week I’d like you to lead the prayer time at the end.  Watch how I do it this week and then you do it next week.  Okay?”  Starting members out with bite-sized assignments will ease a toe into the water of leading.  Always a good place to begin.
• Practice sub-grouping as often as you can.  Start when you have 7 members.  Never stop.   You can begin by random sub-grouping (I’ve tried everything from counting off by threes or drawing numbers from a hat) and move to more intentional (affinities that might ultimately result in a new group).
• Meet separately from time to time or on a regular basis.  Many groups have developed the practice of meeting together twice a month and separately twice a month (i.e., let the men and women have their own time on occasion).  This helps develop additional leadership capacity…as long as you don’t just recruit the usual suspects.
• Broaden the invitation list for leader training events and meetings.  Encourage all of your group leaders to bring additional facilitators to your leader training events.  Include a breakout designed for new facilitators in the skill training section on your meeting agenda.

Want to develop more leaders?  Start making leader development a priority.  Better yet…start measuring the number of groups that do what we’ve talked about here.  You’ll begin to see development.

Tags: Leadership Development, Leadership Engine, Mark Howell, Structure

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How to Avoid a Financial Crisis

by: Steve Caton

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Tags: Financial, Leadership Engine, Steve Caton

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The Importance of Moving People

by: Steven Furtick

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Great preachers and leaders know how to move people.

As soon as I say that I know that the first thing that comes to many people’s minds is emotional manipulation. After all, when unchurched people say they really liked your sermon they usually say that it really moved them. And in their minds they’re probably talking about pure emotion. Maybe intellectual curiosity.

But that’s not what I mean. Anyone can do that and it doesn’t guarantee any kind of positive growth in the lives of the people you’re preaching to and leading.

What I mean is the concept of moving people further along in their lives. Advancing them beyond their current level of development. Beyond their current walk with God.

I like that concept. That image. And it’s something that I think all pastors should strive after. Pastors have to know how to move people. And they have to know how to move them on two tracks – 1) individually and 2) corporately.

The words you speak should move people on a personal level. It should grip their hearts and make application to their lives personally. If you don’t move the individual and you’re only casting broad vision to the church as a whole, you’re only going to preach to the highest commitment level people and your church isn’t going to go very far.

For example, you can make the greatest pitch for the greatest capital campaign in church history. But if the individual people and families in your church aren’t moved to live lives of generosity, the thermometer on your stage is going nowhere.

You have to move the people to move the church.

But you also have to move the church as a whole in the right direction. You should always have a direction the church needs to move in corporately. A common goal that you want the collective efforts of the individual people in your church aimed at. If you don’t, the church won’t advance.

Going back to our example, it’s not enough just to move people to tithe. What you have to do is figure out where God wants to take your church. What it’s going to take financially to get there. And then cast a compelling vision that moves individual people to get on board to make it happen.

You have to move the church to move the people.

Good preachers and leaders are great at moving individuals.
Good preachers and leaders are great at moving churches.

Great preachers and leaders are great at both.

Tags: Discipleship, Leadership Engine, Multiplication, Steven Furtick

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Entrepreneurial Leadership in Non-Profits

by: Bill Donahue

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I came across an old file in my desk when I was teaching on change and innovation recently. It was a chapter by Peter Drucker on Entrepreneurship in Service Institutions. The book?  Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 1985 edition. His insights and observations have relevance to non-profits, graduate schools, hospitals, and a plethora of organizations who are “called to serve” others.

We must remember, says Drucker, that we are called to maximize rather than optimize our impact. We cannot say things like, “We committed to healing every person who needs care anywhere on the planet!” Such missions are not just grandiose but are impossible to complete. You will always be a failure. But if instead the idea is maximizing resources to reach certain people, then that is more realistic.

So how do we accomplish our mission with innovation and entrepreneurship at the core? He gives a few guidelines.

1)     Make sure you have a clear definition of your mission. Focus on objects not programs and projects. “Feeding the hungry” is not clear enough. “Reaching people who do not know we exist” is too vague.

2)     Have clear goals that are attainable. “We are focused on serving 200 new patients in the free clinic this year” is more of what it should sound like.

3)     Failure to achieve an objective means the objective is wrong, especially after repeated tries. I see this with people who lay out a grand strategy for developing hundreds of leaders “in just three months” and they fail repeatedly. The objective needs to be right-sized.

4)     Constantly search for the innovative opportunity. Because funds are limited, creativity is even more of a need. Creative strategies and use of finite resources will allow you to thrive. The volunteer movements we are seeing are an example.

If you can convert your non-profit into a for-profit, Drucker says to do it. Entrepreneurship and Capital formation is a driver of innovation, and non-profits consume capital rather than form it. This is not true for churches and some groups, obviously. But some aspects of ministry or social work could be shifted so that resources are regenerated for the organization.

As I work with church leaders and business leaders, I see the same mistakes and issues. But they are more dramatic in the non-profit world. People must have a continued sense of the mission and clear guidelines for their contribution. You do not have an authority relationship with them, and they can walk at any time. No salary strings to pull and no emails saying, “Report to me today at 3:00 in my office.”

It is innovation, participation, a sense of urgency and a feeling of real contribution to the cause that keep people connected to your non-profit venture.

What are you doing to make sure people are part of the innovative vision you are pursuing? How can you use them without abusing their expertise? Are you seeing their potential to bring innovation not simply implement your ideas.

The non-profit service institutions need innovative leaders on the staff and in the volunteer ranks. Let’s rise to the occasion!

Tags: Bill Donahue, Innovation, Leadership Engine

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Lead Small

by: Bruce Wesley

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Leading small is a big deal.

When churches (or other organizations) are new and small, we tend to lead small. I’m not talking about having a small vision or a small heart. Leading small is about how we interact with people to prepare them to lead in the church. Leading small is interpersonal and dialogical. Leading small is an act of discipleship. The leader who leads small asks questions like,

• “Is he operating in his gifts?”
• “How can we help him actualize his potential?”
• “Is she demonstrating concern and patience with her team as she keeps them aligned to our mission?”
• “Does he inculcate our values in the way he relates to people?”

Leading small happens on the front lines, in the moment, at a breakfast table and in the afterglow of serving. It seldom happens 9 to 5.

The church needs leaders who can lead large too. Leading large serves the entire organization at once. Leading large is about vision, values, plans, processes and resources. Leading large is a team function, but usually it’s a strategic team having animated conversations about the preferred future in a boardroom. Charts and graphs give way to carefully crafted communication strategies. Leading large creates big plans, and that’s not bad in itself, but it is bad by itself.

Here’s a word of prophecy. If you only lead large, I see a sinkhole in your future. Whatever it is that you are leading is about to cave in.

Problems arise when you lead large to the neglect of leading small. You have plans, but you don’t have prepared people. When your plans outdo the people who are prepared to carry out your plans, you are just writing music that no one can play. If you are constantly trying to find a leader to carry out your plans, you better listen for the sinkhole warning blaring in your ears.

Notice the contrast in these two types of leadership.

Leading Large vs. Leading Small

Making Plans vs. Preparing People

In the future vs. In the moment

In the boardroom vs. At the breakfast table

Professional vs. Interpersonal

Presentation (One way) vs. Conversation (Dialogue)

With the Crowd in Mind vs. With the Person in Mind

Leading small is essential to building healthy congregations. The leader who leads small will continually build an army of people who are equipped for the mission at hand; he will prepare that army through meaningful, personal encounters. Leading small will keep the leader engaged with people. Leading small will create a multiplying culture for disciple making and leadership development. Leading small will help you remember that it’s about people—who give glory to God.

By all means, lead large. Dream great dreams and cast big visions. Get the best thinkers in the room. Push through to clarity about who God made your church to become and map out a credible strategy to make disciples. By all means, do the hard work of leading large.

But for heaven’s sake, don’t neglect leading small. Make sure every leader at every level is face to face with a few people, on their knees with future leaders, at the breakfast table, answering questions, recasting the vision and building the army of saints who will carry out the mission.

Tags: Bruce Wesley, Leadership Development, Leadership Engine

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12 Keys to Authentic Leadership

by: Brad Lomenick

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Here are 12 points on the importance and practice of being Authentic as a leader. Authenticity rules. Some best practices I’ve found helpful:

1. Be real in all mediums. Digital age makes it easy to be inauthentic. Although we are always “on,” ultimately we can create a fake persona behind a profile on Facebook or a twitter account. It’s easy to live a secondary life and feel like we are someone we aren’t. Have to be authentic across the board.

2. Constantly turn the rocks over in your life and in your leadership. Uncover the areas that need to be made clean. Big things are at stake. It’s exhausting to not be the real you. It’s easier and less work to be who you really are.

3. The more successful you become, the less accessible you are. It’s reality. More people clamor for time with you, but it’s not possible to be available to everyone. Be wise and discerning, but also open to helping where you can. As Andy Stanley says “do for one what you wish you could do for many.”

4. Learn to open up. You can impress people more easily from a distance, so many leaders keep others at arms length. For example, we often prefer digital interaction to life-on-life exchanges. This insulates us and prevents others from uncovering our weaknesses and flaws. But it also reduces our ability to influence others.

5. Ask great questions. Great leaders I know solve problems and create solutions through the questions they ask. Questions many times reflect your values.

6. Invite direct reports to do a 360 degree review of you on a regular basis. It’s uncomfortable, but also helpful. As Rick Warren has said, “You can’t love people and influence them unless you are close to them. Up close means you can see my warts.”

7. Accept a better standard. The goal of every Christian is to become more like Christ, but often our standard becomes some “great” leader who we admire. When we exalt fellow influencers, we try to dress like them, talk like them, pray like them, tell jokes like them, and achieve like them, it’s dangerous. By emulating them we hope to someday become like them. This never works, and a painful side effect is that deep down we end up feeling like a cheap knock-off.

8. Be interested over interesting. Start with leaning into others and caring about them vs. only worrying about yourself.

9. Be accountable to those who know you best. Know your blind spots in your leadership. We all have areas of weakness. Know what they are and give your team, your family and your friends permission to call you on them. Are you comfortable enough in your leadership that those around you have the freedom to tell you the truth without repercussions?

10. Authentic leaders make more of those around them, and less about themselves. They are servant leaders and willing to be less in order for others to be more. Authentic leaders seek to serve and understand the power of putting others first. And great leaders attract great people to their team. Like attracts like.

11. Actively Build a Support Network– Beware of CEO disease, the temptation to surround yourself with people who only tell you what you want to hear. Keep honest people in your life so that you can stay grounded in the reality of your experiences. Don’t ever think you’ve arrived. Don’t take yourself so seriously. You’re not a big deal. Seriously. I don’t care who you are. Humility is way more attractive than arrogance.

12. Be who you are. Authenticity requires true honesty, self awareness and a selfless approach to leading. One of the challenges in organizations today is actually creating space for leaders to admit and share their challenges. We need to create community where you can talk about the things you are dealing with without getting arrows in the back. Be willing to share your struggles. Create and find environments where we can deal with things and be honest and real.

Tags: Authentic Leadership, Brad Lomenick, Leadership Engine

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