Category Archive: Strategic Planning

Four Critical Team Dynamics for Leading Change

Posted by on April 7, 2009

                             

How many teams have we put together over the years to help us lead the change process only to realize several months later that nothing happened that was sustainable?  In John Kotter’s excellent book on Leading Change he gives four key characteristics that must be in place for the team to be successful.

1.      Position power:  Are enough key players on board, especially the main line managers, so that those left out cannot easily block progress?

2.      Expertise:  Are the various points of view- in terms of discipline, work experience etc.- relevant to the task at hand adequately represented so that informed, intelligent decisions will be made?

3.      Credibility:  Does the group have enough people with good reputations in the firm so that its pronouncements will be taken seriously by other employees?

4.      Leadership:  Does the group include enough proven leaders to be able to drive the change process?

 

When I have been responsible for leading major change initiatives all of these types of people must be involved.  The other important dynamic is that you must avoid people who will try to take over the group and lead by positional power and the other extreme of individuals who will not engage and confront the brutal facts with their active participation.

 

 

Categories: Career Development Leading Change | Comments Off on Four Critical Team Dynamics for Leading Change

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.

 

 

 

 

Categories: Career Development Leading Change Pastoral Leadership | Comments Off on Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis

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.

 

Categories: Church Scattered Contextualization Missional Living Personal Leadership Spiritual Growth | Comments Off on Glocal

Crashing Churches

Posted by on March 13, 2009

It seems that a week cannot go by without hearing about another church that is in crisis.  The issues have gotten to the point where the entire community knows about the problems as well as people outside the area.

The amazing thing is that once you evaluate what went wrong in almost every situation it had nothing to do with a moral failure with the leader or some controversy concerning doctrine. At the end of the day, there was a leadership failure within the church that directly related to how people should relate to each other.

People on all sides of the issues, from the pastor to the pew do not apply the principles of Matthew 18 where you should go and talk directly to someone instead of talking about them behind their backs with other people.  Often times these conversations are veiled under the acceptable premise of sharing prayer requests when in reality they are nothing more than gossip.

When someone comes to you with negative comments about another person you have an opportunity to be a part of the solution or a part of the problem.  My first question is always the same, Have you talked with this person directly about this problem? 

If the answer is no, I will not listen to what they have to say and I will challenge them to go and speak with the other person.  If the answer is yes, and there are still issues then I will be glad to get involved and see if I can help resolve the conflict.

In the strictest sense this really is a theological problem.   It is not one though where there is disagreement on what the scriptures say, it is simply a failure on all sides to be obedient to clear teaching that cannot be denied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crashing Churches

 

It seems that a week cannot go by without hearing about another church that is in crisis.  The issues have gotten to the point where the entire community knows about the problems as well as people outside the area.

The amazing thing is that once you evaluate what went wrong in almost every situation it had nothing to do with a moral failure with the leader or some controversy concerning doctrine. At the end of the day, there was a leadership failure within the church that directly related to how people should relate to each other.

People on all sides of the issues, from the pastor to the pew do not apply the principles of Matthew 18 where you should go and talk directly to someone instead of talking about them behind their backs with other people.  Often times these conversations are veiled under the acceptable premise of sharing prayer requests when in reality they are nothing more than gossip.

When someone comes to you with negative comments about another person you have an opportunity to be a part of the solution or a part of the problem.  My first question is always the same, Have you talked with this person directly about this problem? 

If the answer is no, I will not listen to what they have to say and I will challenge them to go and speak with the other person.  If the answer is yes, and there are still issues then I will be glad to get involved and see if I can help resolve the conflict.

In the strictest sense this really is a theological problem.   It is not one though where there is disagreement on what the scriptures say, it is simply a failure on all sides to be obedient to clear teaching that cannot be denied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crashing Churches

 

It seems that a week cannot go by without hearing about another church that is in crisis.  The issues have gotten to the point where the entire community knows about the problems as well as people outside the area.

The amazing thing is that once you evaluate what went wrong in almost every situation it had nothing to do with a moral failure with the leader or some controversy concerning doctrine. At the end of the day, there was a leadership failure within the church that directly related to how people should relate to each other.

People on all sides of the issues, from the pastor to the pew do not apply the principles of Matthew 18 where you should go and talk directly to someone instead of talking about them behind their backs with other people.  Often times these conversations are veiled under the acceptable premise of sharing prayer requests when in reality they are nothing more than gossip.

When someone comes to you with negative comments about another person you have an opportunity to be a part of the solution or a part of the problem.  My first question is always the same, Have you talked with this person directly about this problem? 

If the answer is no, I will not listen to what they have to say and I will challenge them to go and speak with the other person.  If the answer is yes, and there are still issues then I will be glad to get involved and see if I can help resolve the conflict.

In the strictest sense this really is a theological problem.   It is not one though where there is disagreement on what the scriptures say, it is simply a failure on all sides to be obedient to clear teaching that cannot be denied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crashing Churches

 

It seems that a week cannot go by without hearing about another church that is in crisis.  The issues have gotten to the point where the entire community knows about the problems as well as people outside the area.

The amazing thing is that once you evaluate what went wrong in almost every situation it had nothing to do with a moral failure with the leader or some controversy concerning doctrine. At the end of the day, there was a leadership failure within the church that directly related to how people should relate to each other.

People on all sides of the issues, from the pastor to the pew do not apply the principles of Matthew 18 where you should go and talk directly to someone instead of talking about them behind their backs with other people.  Often times these conversations are veiled under the acceptable premise of sharing prayer requests when in reality they are nothing more than gossip.

When someone comes to you with negative comments about another person you have an opportunity to be a part of the solution or a part of the problem.  My first question is always the same, Have you talked with this person directly about this problem? 

If the answer is no, I will not listen to what they have to say and I will challenge them to go and speak with the other person.  If the answer is yes, and there are still issues then I will be glad to get involved and see if I can help resolve the conflict.

In the strictest sense this really is a theological problem.   It is not one though where there is disagreement on what the scriptures say, it is simply a failure on all sides to be obedient to clear teaching that cannot be denied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: Church Scattered Leading Change Pastoral Leadership Personal Leadership Spiritual Growth | Comments Off on Crashing Churches

Growth Barriers

Posted by on February 26, 2009

There are many things that can keep a church from growing and reaching its potential.  The most obvious is for whatever reason God is not able to bless the work and all you are left with is human effort and nothing supernatural can happen.

The list of other real issues includes lack of resources in the areas of staffing, programming and facilities that will prevent you from reaching the next level.  Oh by the way, every significant increase of 500 people creates an entirely new list of different challenges that must be addressed in all of these areas.

Sometimes the problem is that a church gets out of balance in any one of these areas to the detriment of all the others.  The most obvious is over building your site and incurring too much debt that strangles everything else you are trying to accomplish.

The single most significant issue beyond the blessings of God is the constantly changing role of the pastor and the people.  In most small churches the pastor does the ministry and the people run the church.  For any church to reach its potential the pastor must do the leading and the people must be equipped to do the ministry.

In my experience far too many times when this ongoing transition breaks down the primary blame is placed on the people and their unwillingness to follow.  The hard cold truth is the reason they are not following is there is not a leader in place that has the character and integrity to say clearly come follow me as I follow Christ.

 

Categories: Career Development Church Scattered Leading Change Pastoral Leadership Spiritual Growth | Comments Off on Growth Barriers

Worship Wars

Posted by on February 19, 2009

This is a subject that really breaks my heart because the pain that has been suffered by so many good people is so unnecessary.  If this issue is not dealt with in a thoroughly biblical manner most of our current churches will stop reaching the next generation and will eventually die.

To be sure our people should be spiritually mature enough to not insist on their own personal musical preference so that others may come to Christ.  However, poor leadership has caused far more problems than “older adults” that only want their hymns.

For at least 50 years or longer one basic musical style was enjoyed by both the World War II and the Baby Boomer generations.  Large choirs and orchestras were the preferred choice that could lead a primarily performance style of service that was a blessing to many.

Today the emphasis has shifted to participation styles of music that involve the people in worship and praise.  In our current services it is no longer come sit, watch and listen as it is get involved and enjoy.

I think every generation has its own heart language when it comes to music in worship.  The problem comes when we try to force everyone into one box and demand they like it or leave.

 I think the days of building one massive worship center are over.  As soon as your church grows large enough for multiple services you are already multi-congregational.  At that point if you are reaching different age groups you can choose to be multi-generational.

Then when you plan a service ask yourself one simple question, who is in the room and what do they need from the music and the message to help them move into the presence of God? 

 

Categories: Career Development Church Scattered Leading Change Pastoral Leadership Personal Leadership Spiritual Growth | Comments Off on Worship Wars

The Target Has Changed

Posted by on February 17, 2009

Any time you talk about some group of people being your primary target most people in the church get offended.  It is if they are concerned that because they are not in the target group their needs are not going to be met.  This of course should not have to be the case at all.

For over fifty years at least the same target group has existed from a demographic and psychographic standpoint.  They were the adults that made up the World War II and the Baby Boomer generations.  We developed programs and services to meet their needs and they would bring their children to church with them.

A typical adult conversation on the way home would be how did you like the message, music and the lesson?  If both adults had a good experience, then they would deal with whatever issues the children had and bring them back the next Sunday.

Today the overwhelming majority of adults under the age of forty are not coming to church any more.  They have a different world view about God and the need for role of the church in their lives.

When they do come because someone has relationally connected with them at work or in the neighborhood the conversation on the way home has completely changed.  Now the major thing that matters is what type of experience did their children have and do they want to come back again?

If the answer is yes, the adults are now willing to make the adjustments and they will be back.  If the answer is no, then regardless of what happened to mom and dad they are not going to give you a second look.

If your preschool, children and student ministries are not world-class in your church then you cannot expect to reach families in today’s culture.  The conversations on the way home have changed and your target group must change with it as well.

 

Categories: Career Development Leading Change | Comments Off on The Target Has Changed

New Marketing

Posted by on December 15, 2008

A good friend of mine recently exposed me to Seth Godin who is the author of several incredible books on the subject of new marketing and how it is significantly different from the old models most of us know.  He has an incredible blog and I would encourage you to visit Seth Godin.com and click on Seth’s head to read his blog.

In his book Meatball Sundae he writes, “New marketing leverages scarce attention and creates interactions among communities with similar interests.  New marketing treats every interaction, product, service, and side effect as a form of media.  Marketers do this by telling stories, creating remarkable products, and gaining permission to deliver messages directly to interested people.”

One of his incredible insights is that Old Marketing was all about interrupting people with ads that may have no interest whatsoever to the person involved.  Can I hear click the remote control?

New Marketing is about connecting people with similar interests so that when they get your information there is already a high degree of buy in because of the products and services involved and the relationships that already exist within the community.

As a matter of fact, the relationships within the community will initially be a stronger selling point than any brand loyalty to your company.  Failing to see the power in this human dynamic will position you with a competitive disadvantage the in new economy.

Marketing has always been about knowing what people want and providing them a way to get it. That basic dynamic will probably never change.  What has changed forever is how and when people get their information and what they do with it to make sure their friends know about it as well.

 

Categories: Career Development Leading Change | Comments Off on New Marketing

The Power of Vision

Posted by on December 3, 2008

My home town for all practical purposes is Tuscumbia, Alabama.  Our number one and only claim to fame is we are the birthplace of Helen Keller.  On CNN web site recently there was a story about researchers who had uncovered this rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod.

Helen was born blind and had to overcome many difficult obstacles in her life.  In spite of all the hardship she lived and very meaningful and rewarding life that impacted a lot of other people in a very positive way.

Helen was once asked, can you think of anything worse than being born blind?  Her immediate answer was, to have sight and yet lack vision for your life.  The overwhelming majority of people you know have physical sight but do they clearly see all the things that are really important in life.

What vision do you have for your life?  Please tell me it is more than going to work, coming home and watching T.V. and then going to bed.  There are so many important things to be done and hurting people that need to be touched.

Can you see them?

 

 

Categories: Career Development Core Values Leading Change Pastoral Leadership | Comments Off on The Power of Vision