Category Archive: Church Scattered

Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis

Posted by on April 2, 2009

Virtually every American institution is facing major crises these days, from declining businesses to evaporating financial portfolios. To get out of these crises, authentic leaders must step forward and lead their organizations through them.
The current crisis was not caused by subprime mortgages, credit default swaps, or failed economic policies. The root cause is failed leadership. New laws, regulations, and economic bailouts won’t heal wounds created by leadership failures. They can only be solved by new leaders with the wisdom and skill to put their organizations on the right long-term course. “Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis”
The Wall Street Journal – February 24, 2009

 

Bill George

Here are seven lessons for leaders charged with leading their organizations through a crisis:
Lesson #1: “Leaders must face reality.” Reality starts with the person in charge. Leaders need to look themselves in the mirror and recognize their role in creating the problems. Then they should gather their teams together and gain agreement about the root causes. Widespread recognition of reality is the crucial step before problems can be solved. Attempting to find short-term fixes that address the symptoms of the crisis only ensures the organization will wind up back in the same predicament.

In order to understand the real reasons for the crisis, everyone on the leadership team must be willing to tell the whole truth. As J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said at a panel I chaired at the World Economic Forum at Davos in January, “It’s not sufficient to have one person on your team who is a truth teller. Everyone on the team must be candid in sharing the entire truth, no matter how painful it is.” How can we solve problems if we don’t acknowledge their existence?

Lesson #2: “No matter how bad things are, they will get worse.” Faced with bad news, many leaders cannot believe that things could really be so grim. Consequently, they try to convince the bearers of bad news that things aren’t so bad, and swift action can make problems go away.

This causes leaders to undershoot the mark in terms of corrective actions. As a consequence, they wind up taking a series of steps, none of which is powerful enough to correct the downward spiral. It is far better for leaders to anticipate the worst and get out in front of it. If they restructure their cost base for the worst case, they can get their organization healthy for the turnaround when it comes and take advantage of opportunities that present themselves.

Lesson #3: “Build a mountain of cash, and get to the highest hill.” In good times leaders worry more about earnings per share and revenue growth than they do about their balance sheets. In a crisis, cash is king. Forget about EPS and all those stock market measures. The question is, “Does your organization have sufficient cash to survive the most dire circumstances?”

Goldman Sachs, where I serve on the board of directors, anticipated the difficult times and built up its cash reserves. When the markets got really bad, Goldman had adequate cash reserves to weather the storm.

Lesson #4: “Get the world off your shoulders.” In a crisis, many leaders act like Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. They go into isolation, and think they can solve the problem themselves. In reality, leaders must have the help of all their people to devise solutions and to implement them. This means bringing people into their confidence, asking them for help and ideas, and gaining their commitment to painful corrective actions.

Lesson #5: “Before asking others to sacrifice, first volunteer yourself.” If there are sacrifices to be made – and there will be – then the leaders should step up and make the greatest sacrifices themselves. Crises are the real tests of leaders’ True North. Everyone is watching to see what the leaders do. Will they stay true to their values? Will they bow to external pressures, or confront the crisis in a straight-forward manner? Will they be seduced by short-term rewards, or will they make near-term sacrifices in order to fix the long-term situation?

Lesson #6: “Never waste a good crisis.” This piece of advice comes from Benjamin Netanyahu, the next prime minister of Israel, at the panel I chaired in Davos.

When things are going well, people resist major changes or try to get by with minor adaptations. A crisis provides the leader with the platform to get things done that were required anyway and offers the sense of urgency to accelerate their implementation.

Lesson #7: “Be aggressive in the marketplace.” This may sound counter-intuitive, but a crisis offers the best opportunity to change the game in your favor, with new products or services to gain market share. Many people look at a crisis as something to get through, until they can go back to business as usual. But “business as usual” never returns because markets are irrevocably changed. Why not create the changes that move the market in your favor, instead of waiting and reacting to the changes as they take place?

The Bottom Line:
In a crisis we learn who the real leaders are, and whether they have the wherewithal to stay on course of their True North.

About the Author
Bill George, author of “True North,” is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. He is also the former CEO of Medtronic and serves on the boards of directors of ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs and Novartis.

 

 

 

 

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Attitude of Gratitude

Posted by on April 1, 2009

 

I was reading again Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff by Richard Carlson and he talked about his tendency to start thinking negative thoughts with all the bad news that is out there today.  I fight this as well especially when you are going through a hard time personally or when there is this slight issue of a global recession.

It is important to build into your life the daily discipline of thinking about all the good things that you have in your life.  We all should be grateful just to be alive and the basics of life including food, clean water and shelter.  There are multiplied millions of people who struggle  just to make it through one more day.

Beyond that we have families and friends and hopefully we are fulfilled by doing something with our life that we know will make a difference.  Through our faith we can have forgiveness for our failures and hope for the future.

The power of gratitude though is released when we go beyond thinking about it and personally telling someone else how thankful we are for what they mean to us.  This sets off a chain reaction of them passing on their gratitude to someone else in their life and the cycle continues.

So as we all are waiting today for the new evil conflicker virus to start spreading through our computers lets start spreading something positive in our lives by telling just one person thanks.

 

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Principle vs. Precept

Posted by on March 26, 2009

Any good dictionary will help you know the difference between these two important words.  A precept is a commandment or direction given as a rule of action or conduct.  On the other hand, a principle is a primary truth from which other truths are derived.

In Christian speak, a precept is black ink on white paper where someone quotes you chapter and verse with the understanding that there is one and only one meaning of this truth.  Salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ period, end of conversation.

To be sure we as churches have beaten unbelievers over the head with our precepts to the point they are totally turned off to the gospel.  I am not talking about watering down the truth but when people do still walk into our buildings they just want to know is there any good news for my life today?

On the other side of this issue, many Christians can spiritually rationalize their behavior because they cannot find a clear precept that prohibits certain behavior on their part.  Obviously the New Testament was written in the first century so the writers did not cover the part about staying away from internet pornography. 

Eating meat offered to idols was a big deal in the first century so the principle of deference was taught to make sure a Christian did not offend a weaker brother or an unbeliever with their behavior.  Today there are many contemporary issues that will never be addressed by precepts but the principles that are taught in scripture still apply.

If you have any doubts just use I Corinthians 10:31 as your guide, “therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”  Just always remember, everything that is for His glory is also for your good.

 

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One Day At Time

Posted by on March 25, 2009

The Christian life at times can be extremely complicated.  We all suffer from the consequences of our bad decisions but sometimes we suffer not because we have done something wrong but as a testimony to the world that God’s grace is indeed sufficient.

I have learned the hard way over the years that the only way to work your way out of one of these black holes of the soul is to discipline yourself to live one day at a time.  When you do not know why things have happened and how it is all going to work out it comes down to what can I do right now.

The first practical step in this process is to experience forgiveness for the past.  We must first receive it for what we have done wrong and then give it to others who have hurt us and caused pain.  We should learn from the past but we cannot live in it.

The second step is to have faith for the future.  God is able and He is good so you can rest in the fact that He will meet our needs.  All worry and fear will do is to rob us of the spiritual energy we need to live today.

The last and probably most important truth is to embrace His promise of grace for today.   Every new day comes with the necessary spiritual power to deal with whatever happens within that twenty-four hour period of time.

If we do not waste that power on unforgiveness for the past or fear of the future then we will be able to live today with eternal perspective.   That perspective is that no matter what happens to me in this life that may hurt deeply at the time we win in the end.

 

 

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Generational Leadership

Posted by on March 23, 2009

As a follow up on the last posting about Situational Leadership I want to make an observation.  I recently spoke at national conference on the subject of Leadership for 21st Century.  The major point of the presentation was the need to shift from a positional leadership model to a participative one.

The feedback after both of my sessions confirmed everything I have been reading on this subject.  There is very little honest and clear communication taking place between key leaders and their teams on an ongoing basis.

The challenge for most corporations today is that the majority of senior management positions are filled by baby boomer age leaders who know nothing but a positional model.  They were trained that way academically and that is the only system that has been a part of their entire career.

The new workforce is made up of generation x employees that have an entirely different world view that impacts how they view their career.  They are highly motivated and want to be a part of interactive team where they can actively be a part of the process.

If we do not provide the critical situational leadership skills that both generations need then we are creating unnecessary leadership cultural wars that destroy moral and diminish productivity.  The result of any lack of relevant training is that the older generation think the younger are too aggressive and the younger are convinced that the old guard will simply not let go and delegate.

 

 

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Multi-Generational Churches

Posted by on March 22, 2009

There is always the debate about what is the most effective strategy for reaching new people, change an existing church or simply start a new one with its own unique culture.  In my opinion both have their strengths and weaknesses, so the decision should depend upon the context.

There are several things I have noticed when churches are started with one particular age group in mind as the target.  All of your programming, especially your worship can be one style depending upon the age group in the room.  The staff and the facilities can be designed with the needs of this age group in mind as well.

Although this may work for a short period of time there eventually will be serious challenges that must be addressed.  One day all of these single adults will get married and then they are going to want programming for their children.  Eventually, this same group will become empty nesters and that will bring on another whole set of needs.

My point is simply this, every church given enough time will become multi-generational unless you are going to tell people at some point you need to leave.  Since that is a reality then why not start with a multi-generational model from day one that will avoid all of these potential crisis points that can kill momentum and destroy unity.

An even more significant reason is that it is biblical.  Every person is important to God from the youngest newborn to the oldest senior adult.  The gospel will always be more receptive with younger people but the ministry of the church must include the widow who is all alone.

 

 

 

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Glocal

Posted by on March 21, 2009

During the last century there were very clear distinctions between the concept of evangelism and missions.  In the simplest of terms evangelism was reaching people for the local church and missions was reaching people for the kingdom.

Within the context of missions there was a local, national and an international segmentation.  This implied the potential for several different strategies to be effective in all of these areas.  It was understood that to reach people in an international context that significant cultural barriers had to be addressed for the gospel to be effective.

Today the cultural distance between the people who are in the church in America and the people who are not is significant enough to require a cross cultural missiological approach to reach them.  They hold an entirely different world view and they are simply not going to come to our buildings regardless of how cutting edge our marketing may be.

For churches to be effective today in reaching the unchurched in America we are going to have to become missionaries in our own local context.  We will have to find ways to take the gospel to where the people live, work and play and do it in a culturally relevant way.

That is why we need to stop thinking in terms of the old models of segmentation.  The world has literally moved to America and through the use of technology and the new global economy everything has changed.

The church must become glocal in its thinking, which means one missiological mindset that produces multiple strategies depending upon who we are trying to reach in our area.

 

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Cursing The Darkness

Posted by on March 19, 2009

As a lifelong Southern Baptist I am deeply concerned that we still do not understand why we are declining as a denomination.  I hear everything blamed from emerging churches, seeker services, contemporary worship, reformed theology, postmodernism and watered down preaching just to name a few.

We certainly will never be able to solve the problem if we can not accurately diagnose the cause.  We must stop cursing the darkness and talking about everything that is wrong and start shinning the light about what is right.

We must start with the simple truth that the people who are not attending church are significantly culturally different from the people who are.  This means that all pastors in America must become missional  in their methodology in order to reach new people or our churches will die.

The days of build it and they will come through transfer growth are over forever and in the end that is a very good thing. 

We must stop preaching that the culture is our enemy.  It is simply the context in which we have been called to do ministry.  As a necessary reminder the modern culture with all its logic and reason was no friend to the gospel because it produced humanism and evolution.

I am extremely excited about the next generation and their passion for community, integrity, spirituality and service.  We need compassion for their lostness but respect for their uniqueness.

 It is our responsibility to understand them if we want to reach them and not require them to become like us if they want to come to Christ.

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Conflict Management

Posted by on March 18, 2009

At times we all have difficulty working with other people especially in stress charged environments.  It is very easy especially as leader to fall into the bad habit of making negative comments about people especially when they are not present.

This type of conflict resolution will do nothing but add to the problem and ultimately destroy your leadership credibility.  When anyone hears you making destructive comments about another person who is not there, they too realize that one day they will not be there either.

The principle that I have adopted is that if I have something negative to say to another person I will go directly to them and talk about it privately.  If it is not a big enough deal for me to go and talk privately then it should not be a big enough deal to talk with others.

This one discipline has eliminated at least seventy-five percent of my need to make negative comments  to other people and almost completely stopped the destructive habit of public personal criticism of others.  Now when I do need to talk with someone about a real performance issue my motives are right and my methods are positive.

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Creation

Posted by on March 17, 2009

 

 

Several weeks ago I noticed on my CNN breaking news a story about Southern Baptists and the environment.  As I read the post I was pleased to see that Jonathan Merritt working with others has formed a group that basically says that as Christians we have a stewardship over the planet God has created.

 

You can go to baptistcreationcare.org and check it all out for yourselves.  This is not an attempt to get into bed with Al Gore but to get our heads out of the sand on things that not only matter to people but to God.

As Southern Baptist we have lost our voice with the overwhelming majority of people in America because they think we care more about preserving our institution than we do about helping them.  When Bono and Habitat for Humanity are doing a better job than we are in meeting the needs of real people we are in serious trouble.

This has nothing to do with a social gospel agenda so don’t even go there.  Every generation has to find a way to contextualize the gospel within the culture of their day.  Our passion is still to save people not the planet.

However, our neglect of the culture on any major subject of our day, the environment, aids, poverty, genocide and illiteracy will cause us to lose an opportunity for the gospel even to be heard.  The culture is not our enemy it is simply the context in which we must do ministry if we want to impact people for eternity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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