February 8, 2010
Simply Relational - Part 2
My friend and mentor John Maxwell loves to tell the story of me walking briskly by a bunch of people with briefcase in hand. He asked me where I was off to in such a hurry and I replied, "Off to my office get my work done." In a private moment later that day, he let me know that I just walked by my work -- people! John taught me my first great lesson in leadership, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." (Note that he started with relationships.) He followed that up with "Walk slowly through the crowds." That was over twenty-five years ago. That lesson still stands today as the solid relational platform from which I lead. I'm grateful that it now comes naturally. On a Sunday morning, these days, it takes me thirty minutes just to walk across the lobby of the church because I'm engaged in so many conversations! And loving it!
One lesson - that was all I needed. I'd mastered relationships as a leader. Not. A few months later, round two. This time John sat me down in his office and said: "Dan, I know you deeply love and care about people. In fact you are passionate about people. But here's your problem. You are lousy at expressing that love and concern." That knocked the wind out of me. It was an epiphany. I had no idea people didn't know I cared. After all, I knew, why wouldn't they know?! Hey, I was young and stupid, give me a break! I had no idea that good relationships don't just happen, I didn't know I needed to intentionally invest in people. Like a good marriage, if you don't invest in the relationship it won't remain good for long. Again, the good news is that was over twenty-five years ago!
February 8, 2010
Accidental Growth Versus Purposeful Growth
John Maxwell
In 1940 two brothers, Dick and Mac McDonald, started McDonald's Barbeque Restaurant in San Bernardino, CA. Typical of the drive-ins of its time, McDonald's offered an expansive menu from which customers could order and then be serviced by carhops. Through time, the brothers noticed a trend in their sales. A small number of items on the menu accounted for a bulk of their restaurant's profits.
Struck by the trend, the brothers embarked on a bold strategy to streamline McDonald's. They temporarily closed their doors, remodeled the restaurant, and did away with the carhops. Three months later McDonald's reopened as a self-service drive-in specializing in fast service thanks to a simplified, nine-item menu. The combination of low prices and speedy service made the new McDonald's a smashing success with motorists, who flocked to the restaurant en masse to buy burgers and milkshakes.
Accidental Growth
Despite their impressive innovations, the McDonald brothers never put together a growth plan to spread their concept of fast food across the country. Over the next few years, the brothers haphazardly agreed to open a handful of franchised McDonald's. However, the isolated additions were largely unintended, and they barely scratched the surface of the restaurant's potential to expand.
January 6, 2010
Sometimes I'm not willing to let God be God
I've been working with a spiritual director for the last six months or so. In my travels around the country developing the Transforming Leaders Initiative (TLi), I met another lay leader up in Salisbury, North Carolina with a story similar to mine. Mark Ritchie and his brother were the third-generation leaders of a family business named Cheerwine. It's a local soft drink company. Mark worked since college for the company rising to the top, where he and his brother grew the business far beyond what the founders imagined. Then, over a period of time, a calling unfolded, and he walked away to become certified as a spiritual director. Our experiences growing up in the South, spending our careers in the family business, and making a move from success to significance gave us a shared understanding of many things. He's also Lutheran with a real passion for discipleship. It's been a pleasure working with Mark since I met him last spring.
My good friend Ernie Hinojosa admonished me that on this journey, I am encountering spiritual warfare and need to pick up the armor of God. "They're right at your feet, brother." As I've read the books Reveal and Follow Me, coming out of the research behind the Reveal Spiritual Life Survey, I have been fascinated by their findings. They define Reveal this way on their website. The Spiritual Life Survey enables you to go beyond headcounts, providing you with the ability to get a snapshot into the hearts of your congregation and know for certain whether your church is truly meeting their spiritual needs and fostering their growth. It’s a focused, research-based view of how the spiritual journey unfolds, validated through extensive survey input from over 157,000 congregants in more than 500 churches. A number of Lutheran churches have participated, including the 15 churches of the pilot class of the TLi.
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January 5, 2010
No Disciples, No Mission
Alan Hirsch
Having been believers and ministers for over 25 years now has given Debs and I an appreciation for just how hard it is to be an authentic follower of our Lord and Savior. To be an authentically radical disciple requires a relentless evaluation of life’s priorities and concerns—together with an ongoing, rigorous, critique of our culture—to ensure we are not adopting values that subvert the very life and message we are called to live out. For true followers of Jesus, discipleship is not simply the first step toward a promising career of being a Christian, rather it is itself the fulfillment of our destiny. So, Debs and I have decided to write a book on what we call “missional discipleship.” Appropriately called Untamed, it is meant to be a penetrating look into the things that keep us from becoming all we were made to be and has many practical suggestions about how to become wild followers of Jesus again.
The truth is that discipleship, at least the way the Bible understands it, cannot be limited to a personal exercise in personal spirituality. There are much greater, perhaps even global, consequences at stake in our becoming more like Jesus. So much so that we have actually come to believe that discipleship is a frontier issue for the people of God at this time in history. Why? Because most commentators would now agree that the Western Church, because of its deep embedding into the prevailing consumerist culture, has all but lost the art of discipleship. Reggie McNeal has concluded that “church culture in North America is now a vestige of the original [Christian] movement, an institutional expression of religion that is in part a civil religion and in part a club where religious people can hang out with other people whose politics, worldview, and lifestyle match theirs.”
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January 5, 2010
Simply Relational - Part 1
There is intentional irony in the title of this article. Relationship "stuff" is simple in print, but it's wildly difficult to practice. And when you attempt to be consistent in your pursuit of great relationships, few, if any of us nail it all the time.
Let's start with some sage wisdom from others. "Treat people as though they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of being." (Goethe) "The most useful person in the world today is the man or woman who knows how to get along with other people. Human relations is the most important science in living." (Stanley C. Allyn) "Do you realize that one in every four Americans is unbalanced? Think of your three closest friends. If they seem okay, then you're the one!" (Ann Landers) If those don't work for you, try this. "You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." (Al Capone)
Mr. Capone may not be the most reliable source of practical relationship wisdom, so let me offer you of one of the best. Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) wrote the book titled How to Win Friends and Influence People. He wrote it in 1936. There is truly nothing new under the sun. In my opinion, it's a classic. So simple, and yet few practice all that he writes about. Carnegie says things as simple as know people's names, smile, encourage others, put others first, don't criticize, admit when you are wrong, praise often, say I'm sorry, and on the list goes. If I could add "share your graham crackers" that's the stuff I taught my kids. It's crazy simple.
So why then is it so difficult for adults to practice this stuff consistently? Bottom line. We're human, check out Genesis 3. We are part of a fallen and sinful world. James 4:1-2 says: "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it." As leaders we must intentionally practice behaving in a way that is better than our sin-bent hardwiring. The good news is that II Corinthians 5:17 tells us we are a new creation. We are capable, with the help of the Holy Spirit, of living in a better way!