Starfish

“Everybody arrives somewhere.  Very few people arrive somewhere on purpose.” 

The story goes something like this…

A family is on vacation at the beach and the kids are collecting shells.  It's a well-scavenged beach, so this means that they are essentially filling their hands with fragments of shells.  One of the boys notices a beautiful starfish bobbing in the water and decides he is going to wade in and capture the prize.

After several exasperating trips into the waves with the exuberant support of his parents, he abandons his quest in tears.  When the parents inquire why he isn’t grabbing the clearly available treasure, he simply says:

“I can’t because my hands are full of shells.”

It is a point beautifully and poignantly made. 

We are sometimes so preoccupied with good things that we miss out on what is truly great. 

We are so consumed with the broken that we can’t seem to put our hands on what is glorious and within reach.  Jim Collins even said that good is the enemy of great.

We encounter this a lot when we work with leaders and their companies: 

1. They are having a tough time seeing the forest for the trees.
2. They can’t find any port in the storm.
3. They are overwhelmed with the tyranny of the urgent.
4. They can’t see beyond what it is right in front of them.

Possibly the most valuable currency we traffic in is “clarity." Whether it is for an individual leader’s life through Lifeplan or an organization through our business coaching, the process starts with clarity.

Let’s get clear on who we are and what we believe.

Let’s get clear on where we could go if we lived that out.

Let’s create a plan to get there.

We’ve had to respectfully agree to disagree with one prospective client.  We aren’t interested in just creating a plan.  We don’t think it makes sense to craft a plan that isn’t powerfully anchored in values, purpose, vision and the clarity therein.  We also believe that the best version of those building blocks are discovered when a team creates them together.

To watch powerful and inspiring clarity emerge for every individual at Lifeplan as well as each team in our Strategic Enterprise process over a couple of days is a beautiful thing to behold.  Once the starfish becomes crystal clear, it becomes a powerful forcing mechanism for choosing the great over the good.

• Difficult decisions on who to hire or fire get really easy.
• Where to allocate time and resources becomes simplified.
• Life for everyone gets lighter, more focused, and filled with momentum.

Why wouldn’t everyone choose that over the alternative?

His burden is easy.

His yoke is light.

His uniquely inspired purpose for your life and business is relatively effortless compared to the weight of anything else you are carrying.

It is time to drop that fragmented shell collection and grab the treasure bobbing in the water right in front of you.

• Do you know where you are going?
• Is where you are going founded in who you are and what you believe?
• Are you clear on the things that you need to drop and what you need to grab hold of?
• Are you ready to do the things it will take in order for you to live a more powerful story in your life and your business?

Dreams

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” 

Mark Twain

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How do you train an elephant?  It’s pretty simple really. Baby elephants are all trained for the circus in a similar way.  They spend the first year of their life tethered by a strong 6-foot rope and a stake in the ground.  After that, a trainer can easily control them with a thin nylon cord tied to their leg because the elephant thinks it can’t go any farther than the rope allows.

The circumstances or limitations most people grow up with largely shape and define the future they realize as well. They almost can’t imagine a life outside of the one they’ve always known.

I am embarrassed to say that I used to carry some contempt for those on the other side of the tracks.  I would surmise that their ethnicity and lack of economic mobility gave them opportunities I didn’t have.  That they were given support for things like secondary education that I would never enjoy.  

In my confused thinking, the disadvantaged were actually more advantaged than I.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized that it wasn’t the opportunity for advancing and changing your life that determined success, it was the hope and expectation of that change that determined the outcome.  If I grew up in a world where largely no one went to college or envisioned a life outside their disenfranchised circumstances, it was pretty miraculous to break ranks.

If I grew up in a home and in a community where I was taught that I could do or become anything, I could find any career or level of success. Nothing would be off-limits to me.  The world becomes a table of endless possibilities.

Matthew Kelly’s Dream Manager posits a really beautiful idea. In the hearts of everyone you employ, there are hopes and dreams. Maybe given up on, repressed, or the source of a lot of diminishment and shame; but dreams nonetheless. There are things for which they hope and desire.

In their parable of an industrial cleaning company, they found that those hopes and desires were far more simple than you might imagine:

• owning a home

• sending a child to college

• getting a degree themselves

• fixing a marriage

• learning English as a second language

• travel

They found that by drawing out their employee’s dreams and helping them craft simple plans toward realization, they could change their lives for the better.  They could address their deepest hopes for extending their reality beyond their circumstances. 

They could make their dreams come true.

Through affinitizing their employees' hopes and dreams, they found there were a handful of consistent themes; themes that allowed them to easily address those desires with simple resources, support, and training.

High degree of care.

Low cost of implementation.

Huge return on investment.

And not that it is the primary objective of this kind of initiative, but how do you think those employees responded?  What do you think happened to turnover, employee loyalty, and engagement when their employer genuinely started to care about the things they desired most?

Small confession:  As a faith-based guy, reading Matthew Kelly’s book was one of the things that convinced me that businesses could be the hope of the world.  That they could be the front line in changing lives.  It gave me an enormous amount of motivation to transition from a successful career in banking to a more fulfilling one as a coach.

We are in the early stages of discussion and implementing some version of this with several clients, and buried dreams are already starting to resurface. 

Consider

• What are the deepest desires of those you employ?

• Do you think their lives and expectations are constrained in ways you don’t understand?

• Do you care enough about them to actually desire to understand their hopes and dreams?

• How do you think their lives might change if you did?

Kindness

“Target fixation is an attentional phenomenon observed in humans in which an individual becomes so focused on an observed object (be it a target or hazard) that they inadvertently increase their risk of colliding with the object.”  

-Wikipedia   

This concept is often associated with driving.  As in, trying so hard to not run into that barricade that you inexplicably do.  It is also associated with the desire to purchase something.  Once I started to permission myself with the idea that I might one day own a Jeep, it felt like every other car was one.  I have heard similar things from those wanting to buy a house or get a motorcycle.

It is also associated with seeing the best or worse in other people.  If you believe others are generally up to no good, they will confirm it for you every time.  If you believe there is the possibility and reality of good in others, you will find it as well.

The lens you look through determines what you see.

Television is a mine field for our family.  With most of the stuff produced with a decidedly Christian worldview being of such poor production quality, we’ve turned our attention toward the things that aren’t explicitly Christian, but consistent with our beliefs.  This allows for powerful conversation within our family to confirm and cement our values.

A friend recently recommended “The Kindness Diaries” on Netflix.  Season 1 is 13 episodes of approximately 20 minutes each.  The shows protagonist operates with a simple belief that despite all the war, pestilence, and hatred in the world, there is the capability of kindness and goodness in everyone.  It can be found anywhere.

Although a retired wealthy investment banker, he left his wallet behind and is traveling the globe, surviving only on the kindness of strangers. 

Despite the incredulous thoughts of others, he is fixated on the idea that the kindness of strangers exists everywhere.  As a result, he is finding it.

It is unorthodox, haphazard, and glorious.  And my family can’t get enough of it.  There is also a beautiful way that he rewards the kindness of strangers at the end of each show.  It is stimulating some great thoughts and ideas around our house.

You could apply the idea of target fixation to almost anything.  “Glass half full” people maybe aren’t naive and insipid, but possibly just more hopeful and expectant.  They aren’t imagining things that aren’t there, but possibly identifying the things that some of us just can’t see.

This comes up with clients from time to time.  Sometimes a leader gets so exasperated with another that there is seemingly no goodness in them at all.  We start with reminding them that we are all created in the image of God.  We were placed here to uniquely offer an aspect of God’s glory that no other creature can.  Identifying that glory and unique identity in another can bring healing, unlock glory, and truly change a person.

Isn’t one of our objectives as a leader to find the ultimate value in others?  Isn’t our ultimate purpose as a leader to help others awaken what is most profound, unique, and valuable in those we lead?

• Where are you targeting your fixation?
• Are you looking for the good in others or are you assuming the worst?
• What lens are you viewing the world through?
• What does largely seeing the worst in others say about the way you feel about yourself?

Onboard

“If we want a feeling of meaning in life, I don't think we have a choice but to live a good story -- that is, to propel ourselves into some noble adventure, enduring difficult conflict for a cause greater than ourselves so we can see a tension resolve for the betterment of the people around us, for our families and our friends and for strangers less fortunate, thus setting a moral compass for everybody watching our stories, giving them the inspiration to lead a better life themselves.”

Donald Miller

Some of our clients are literally on-boarding new employees daily.  Others do it on at least a routine enough basis where it is a regular part of their monthly routine.  For example,  a business with 60 employees and a 20% turnover ratio is on-boarding a new employee about once a month on average. 

For us and many of our more typical clients, bringing someone else onto the team is quite a bit less frequent.  Turns out, the smaller you are, the more crucial “getting it right” becomes.  If you have 50 employees and you hire someone, they immediately represent 2% of your employee base.  A new hire for a team of 4 represents 20% of their new employee base.

We coach a lot of principles around good hiring:

• Slow to hire
• Personality testing
• Layers of interviews
• Values, purpose, culture alignment
• Check every reference
• Etc.

We need to add to our team.  It doesn’t happen very often.  Given what we coach our clients, we set the bar pretty high for us as well.  We exhausted every tool, step, and process we knew to determine the right fit.  We even asked one of the most powerful questions we learned from a restaurant in Seattle:

“How will working here help you become more of the person you want to become?”

Once we found the perfect next member to our team, we were faced with a simple challenge:  How do we welcome them aboard the first day?

We frequently refer to the concept that you don’t really know someone until you know their story. You can’t fully know who is standing in front of you until you have the context of the trail someone has walked from the first day to the last. And when you read all the great writers on group dynamics and the needs of individuals, they use words like… 

belonging, known, heard, seen, understood, appreciated

So after a lot of thought, prayer, and consideration, we scrapped all our other plans and met for several hours over a long breakfast at a nice hotel to start her first day.  

We all told the story of the vocational journey we took to get to SummitTrek, how much we loved what we did, how aligned it was with our unique gifting and calling, and how working there was helping us become the people we want to become.  And then we had her share her version of the same.

What could be more powerful or precious than a person’s story?

Every day of her first week was a firehose of information.  There is so much to learn.  But in terms of learning the things that matter most, it almost feels like she has always been here.

• Do you hire well?
• Do you know the things that matter most about the people you work with?
• How do you onboard new employees?
• Do you have an articulated process for hiring?

Return

“Find like-hearted kings living in the same direction. Sign treaties. When they're at war, you’re at war.”    

Dan Allender

I was introducing a client (who has become a very good friend) to a ministry leader.  It was a beautiful collision of gifting and ability with hope and desire.  The three of us were powerfully aligned in many ways.

It is what I imagine a war council must feel like. 

Leaning in.  Map on table.  Our territory was a generation of young people being overwhelmed by a cultural post-Christian tide and some like-hearted kings shoring up their battle plans to re-take some ground.

You might think I am making a bigger deal of a simple breakfast conversation than the situation warrants, but I would argue against that idea. 

In the heavens a far greater battle is underway…the hearts of God’s most precious are at stake. 

We were simply agreeing with and joining the larger story of what is ongoing.

But the most interesting thing about the breakfast for me was something even more beautiful than all of that.  As I was introducing these strangers to one another, my eyes teared and throat tightened.  The one I barely know is a really good hearted man fighting for the hearts of young men and women on the most treacherous of battlefields, an American college campus.

The other is a leader of the most rare a variety…a person who truly walks with God.  That is a rare thing for anyone, but for a successful business leader to walk with God in all things is approaching the territory of endangered species.  Watching him over the last 7 or so years has been one of the most beautiful and disruptive things I have ever experienced.

I am a logician.  

A process oriented person.  

An A+B=C guy.

Watching someone faithfully move this way and that…outside the bounds of logic or conventional thought…is unnerving. 

And it is glorious. 

While some would say that he “marches to the beat of a different drummer," I would say that he simply doesn’t move outside the whisper of a still small voice.

He doesn’t merely line up his actions against a static set of do’s, don’ts, tips, and techniques; he tries to lay each step in the path of his Father’s command. 

Ask.  

Listen.  

Act.  

Repeat.

“We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

My life is more liberated because of his.  While he is a successful business man who produces fabulous returns on investments, the thing I realized during our breakfast is that this isn’t his true objective.  He is working toward a KROI, a return on investment for the Kingdom.  

I aspire to be that kind of like-hearted king.  I want to sign treaties with that kind of man and go to war.

• Who is counseling your biggest decisions?
• Are you marking each step the same way?
• What territory are you fighting for?
• Have you surrounded yourself with like-hearted kings and queens that are hastening you to war?

Contribution

“I want to live a life of meaning. I don’t want to come to the end of my life and realize that I invested in all the wrong things…gave my life to the trivial many instead of the vital few.”

- Greg McKeown

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Greg McKeown’s best selling book Essentialism is, in a word, essential.  Who do you know that isn’t struggling with how to determine the essential list of things to lend their focus?  Most leaders I knew were having a hard time managing their priorities even before there was:

• Social media

• The internet

• Smartphones

The barrage of inputs is only making things worse.  It is almost impossible to untether and focus.  We used to feel good if we could get leaders to just block a day, portion of a day, or a couple of hours per week to get some clear bandwidth. Get them to commit to a little bit of focus time to think strategically, work on their business (instead of in it) and make their highest contribution.

Turns out we were setting the bar really high. Some of today's thought leaders on focus are asking leaders to start with finding just 15 minutes a day for some focused time before they start their day.

15 minutes!

It's kind of like Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University" first step of saving $1,000 for a rainy day fund that you will not touch.  That fund doesn’t address the financial issues people are facing, but if they can at least find some small measure of success, some sense of accomplishment in the right direction, all the other steps will become realizable. 

Maybe 15 minutes a day of solitude is the necessary first step toward real freedom.

Greg has three beautiful questions that help you arrive at the small intersection of all the things you should be doing.  He asks leaders to answer:

• What do I feel deeply inspired by?

• What am I practically talented at?

• What meets a significant need in the world right now?

The areas where all three of the answers to these questions collide is a strong clue into you finding clarity and purpose for your life.  Any answer that shows up in each of these three questions will be a pretty great place to be spending your time.

The great thing about spending time in this space is that it provides fuel for all the others.  The energy and momentum of working in the areas of your highest contribution (where talents and passion collide), is additive to your bandwidth instead of dilutive.  It not only invigorates you and makes a difference, but also produces more of the necessary joules to get everything else done.

Why wouldn’t you forsake everything else to purchase the field where this great treasure is buried?  

What else could produce a bigger return on your investment for you and for everyone else?  It is the source of your highest Kingdom contribution.

Maybe your purpose involves adoption issues, human trafficking, or fending for others that are marginalized in our cities.  Maybe you are drawn to the leadership focus of helping others find greater success.  Whatever you were created for is essential and needed by the rest of us.

“Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.”
Steven Pressfield

You could probably discern what my calling is at this point; it is helping individuals and organizations find the irreplaceable role they were created to play in the larger story of God.  I get to live in that space every day and enjoy the clarity, freedom, and momentum that businesses and individuals find.

Consider

• Why do you exist?

• What is the purpose of your life, your family, or the business you lead?

• Are you clear on your highest contribution? (Our Lifeplan retreat is where I got clarity on this and it can help you as well.)

• Want to know more about how powerful this can be for your business? Let me know. It is my favorite thing to talk about!

Hopeless

“There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives…”

Paul to the church in Rome

Henry Poole believes he is dying.  In fact, his doctor told him as much.  Tragically, as a middle-aged man, his happiest memories are from his childhood home. That was well before the problems with his parents started, when he experienced all those disappointments, and when he was given this death sentence.

It was the last place he could remember being happy.

So he buys a home in the old neighborhood, starts to drink a lot, and attempts to numb his final days.  But he has a couple of big problems:

1. Neither the home he purchased in the old neighborhood or consuming large amounts of alcohol is making him feel any better.
2. The home he purchased in the old neighborhood is apparently healing everyone else that comes into contact with it.

The neighborhood busybody noticed the familiar face of Jesus in the stucco job on the side of his house.  Oh yeah, and it appears to be crying tears of blood.  Against Henry’s will, she introduces it to the neighborhood and her church.

With each passing revelation and miracle something really interesting starts to happen to Henry:

He gets angrier and angrier.

He is in short supply of the crucial ingredient of hope that everyone else seems to be bringing to the equation.  Whether it is due to their hope and faith in general, or the attribution they all seem to be awarding the icon, miracles keep happening…to everyone but Henry.

Henry begins to feel (things he thought he would never feel) for a beautiful younger neighbor.  Her daughter was one of the recipients of the miraculous and they inched their way into his life.  His feelings for them and his desire to not be the next source of abandonment for them, puts him in a very precarious situation. 

(I’ll leave the rest of the details to you and your older kids for a great family movie night and discussion.)

So what does this have to do with being a leader of a family or a business?  In this story, it is the hope of everyone around the protagonist of the story that breathes a sense of hope into him.  In my experience, however, it is typically the complete opposite.

Whether it is in families or companies, the hope that the members tend to carry, emanates from above.  If the parents or company leaders (the protagonists in all our situations) tend to be hopeful with great expectations, everyone they lead tends to feel the same way.  If they are negative and rueful, everyone else is shrouded by a similar perspective.

The apostle Paul spoke about this beautifully.  He contended that having a good attitude (being hopeful), is the external manifestation of deeply held inner beliefs.  Our being hopeful actually has very little to do with our external reality.  

Hope is a choice.

It has nothing to do with our circumstances. It affects everyone it comes into contact with.

When the storm rages around your life and company and those you lead look into your face, do they find a hope and peace that surpasses understanding or the opposite?  

• Are you generally a hopeful person?
• Do you help others find the same?
• How would it change those you love and lead if you carried more of this crucial resource?

Root

“May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.”

- The Son, talking to his Father

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I went to the doctor recently.  Like most men I know, I went as a last resort.  If I wasn’t speaking several times at a men’s event over the coming weekend, I may not have gone at all.  I gave him all my symptoms and he prescribed something.  Ironically, he didn’t give me something to treat my congestion, unclog my ears, or address my sore throat. He gave me a single powerful medicine to knock out the infection that was causing it all.

He skipped the outer manifestation of the rooted source and went right after the heart of the issue.  Trees can be beautiful and majestic, but the source of all that beauty and strength lies below the surface.  That is where all the action is.  Conversely, if a tree is in some sort of distress, what’s happening below the dirt will also hold the clues to that as well.

In my faith tradition, we talk about something similar.  We talk about the heart as being the rooted issue that must be addressed.  I agree, but I think about it in a different way than most interpretations I have heard.

I’ve mostly been taught that my heart is desperately wicked…even unredeemable this side of heaven.  I’ve been taught that my heart is bad, mostly capable of bad things, and that if I work hard enough to overwhelm the bad with good, I might be able to modify the behavior that all that badness is causing.  I’ve largely been taught to treat the symptoms.

• My heart is desperately wicked.

• It is likely to produce mostly bad things.

• The best I can do is behavior modify.

But I feel like we’ve been sold a bill of goods here.  Old Screwtape has pulled another one over on us.  God’s plan all along was for us to be the billboard for his glory.  If we are going to be oaks of righteousness that display his glory, the root system that those trees shoot up from have to be pretty glorious as well.  

The heart may be desperately wicked, but the root structure of the redeemed is capable and intended for glory.  How differently do you think a life might look if it had the banner of GLORY hanging over it instead of DESPERATELY WICKED?  For me, focusing and believing in the former has dramatically reduced the challenges found in the other.

I would much rather wrestle with the stewardship of glory than merely manage my sin.  So would you.  That is why you were created.

We’ve heard quite enough about original sin, but it is high time that we started talking about original glory. 

We were made for it…it is our heritage and intended destination.

Consider

• Do you spend more time managing your sin or stewarding your glory?

• What would it look like if we were all offering the unique aspect of the Father’s glory that no other creature can?

• How different would the lives of those you love and lead look if you focused on the glory of the Lord in them?

• How different do you think your life might look if you spent more time on the latter?

Perception

"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and
often times we call a man cold when he is only sad."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Rusty, dirty, and dark.  That was the way my father perceived the Chicago that I had moved my family to in the mid 90’s.  

Apart from his grandchildren being there, why would he possibly want to visit?

What he found, however, was almost the complete opposite.  Everything was vivid, clean, and bright.  Endless green belts, parks, and overflowing flora and fauna.  An immense major metropolis seasoned with incredible diversity, culture, and art.  Even the buildings crowding the lakeside were canvases for the world’s greatest architects.  

Floating through the downtown on the city’s famous river cruises into the lake provided a sense of perspective, overwhelm, and wonder.  Like Dorothy, he had walked out of the black and white canvas of his imaginings into a technicolor Oz.

His perception was far different than the reality of things.

Longfellow identified something similar about people.  We may find a person a certain way, but realize something far different upon further inspection.  The visible external is a result of an internal reality.  Some of us are even good at pretending (or posing) for a while, but eventually our inner life begins to surface.

One of the reasons for this misunderstanding, is that we typically know very little about the people we interact with on a regular basis.  I mean, we know things about some people (age, name, marital status, job, etc.), but we really don’t know them at all.  If you really want to know someone, you need to know the story of the life they lived from the very first day to the last.

And guess what?  That is pretty impossible to do in 144 characters.  Your fingers would likely cramp and cease and desist over text before you even learned how to ride a bike in your story.  And most of our stories are far too messy to share among the highlight reels mostly offered over social media channels.

But being known is not only an essential need for all us, but the answer to actually understanding everyone in our lives as well.  When is the last time you sat across the table, shared some foam or suds, and the stories of your lives.  I get to do that hundreds of times a year.  It is beautiful and humbling.

I end every first hearing of someone’s story with the same thing…

It was an honor to hear your story.

What could be more precious than the story of someone’s life, the good and the bad, from the first day to the last?  It is their everything.  It is far richer, nuanced, and glorious than any perception you could possible have of someone from the outside.

Being known is the great need of everyone.

It is the key to really seeing and understanding someone.

It is how we connect our perceptions to our realities.

What matters most is what is going on inside and the way the story we have lived is crafting everything else showing up in the present.

• How many people know the real story of your life?
• How do you think your perceptions of them might change if you knew the reality of their stories?
• How would other’s understanding of you change if they knew the story of your life?
• How many other people’s story do you know?

Chosen

“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.”

- Paul to the church in Ephesus

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One of the beautiful things around the adoption process is the idea of the “gotcha” day.  Rather than just celebrating when a person came into the world, they celebrate their being chosen on the day they joined their new families.  It is one of the concepts that adoptive parents employ to offset the whispered assault of “abandoned” or “rejected”.  They replace that history with the beautiful reality that they were specially selected by their new loving parents.

Horst Shulze (you’ll be hearing me referencing him a lot in the next few months) was the architect behind the celebrated world class service of the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain.  Many of those concepts can be found in the book, The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company,  he freshened some of them in a series of podcasts.

The things that were resonating the most with me this morning was the hiring and on-boarding philosophy that Horst employed.  Three things in particular:

• Culture cannot be outsourced. In fact, the highest ranking person in the organization should teach, inspire, and get commitments to that culture as a necessary first step (this meant that CEO Horst trained dishwashers and maids around the world).

• “You were not hired, you were chosen.” You were specially selected among many applicants for the way you would uniquely meet their objectives.

• Everyone should have a vision. Once overarching purpose, core values, and best practices are shared, every group of employees comes us with a personal vision statement. For example, every group of dishwashers had their vision statement for what they wanted to achieve each year and in the future.

He would also tell them that if he doesn’t show up for work tomorrow, that nothing would be changed and very few people would even notice.  If one of them were to fail to show up or not do their job well, however, it would be immediately felt and be seriously disruptive.  

Even though he is the CEO, every one of them is equally valuable to him.

He raised the nobility of doing the most rudimentary things to the level of most important.  He put the incredible opportunity to change lives on their shoulders and got them all to buy into that ideal.

Whether it is the adopting of a child, the hiring and on-boarding of even the lowest common denominator employee, or rescuing mankind from their role as orphans, the best practices are the same:  choose them, celebrate them, and welcome them into the family.

Consider

• As a Christian, do you feel the weight of having been chosen? (death to life, orphan to sonship)

• What is the right next thing you could do to make progress in this area?

• Do you make those you love and lead, feel chosen, celebrated, and welcomed in as part of the family?

Knowledge

“The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand.”

- Wikipedia

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The curse of knowledge is typically referenced in educational situations where the teacher knows so much that they have a hard time simplifying the message down to the experience or understanding level of the audience.  They also refer to it as “talking over the heads” of people.

Increasingly, it is being referenced in the marketing space.  A recent Yankelovich study estimates that the average person is exposed to 5,000 marketing messages a day. 

That is a pretty confusing and noisy marketplace to try to get someone’s attention!

As a result of this, master storytellers like Donald Miller and his StoryBrand marketing methodology are really gaining traction.  They say, “if you confuse you lose”, and getting your message down to its’ most powerful and simple to understand level is the key to your success.

After going through training on his StoryBrand methodology in Nashville, we completely reworked our website, messaging, and our business cards.  I even walk our message through his story construct before every single talk that I give.  (It has become part of the experiential toolbox we incorporate into every client engagement.)

For instance, there are dozens of processes we employ.  There are several different products we offer.  We pull from a half dozen different coaching certifications/methodologies and incorporate the best and brightest from dozens of authors and thought leaders into our coaching.  But at the end of the day, what we really do with every client is help them…

1. Build a Team

2. Define a Future

3. Create a Plan to Get There

There are thousands of words, examples, justifications, processes, and even powerful testimonies I could offer to support each of those three bullet points, but very simply, that is what we do.  

The curse of knowledge makes it way easier to confuse than clarify.  StoryBrand says that you are typically explaining what you do at a 9 or 10 level, where your average customer is approaching what you do at a 1 or 2 level.  Simplifying what you do into its’ most fundamental and powerful essence is going to be way more difficult than you think, but it is the path to understanding and impact.

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Mark Twain

Jesus of Nazareth actually modeled this idea beautifully.  When legalists of his day tried to trick him with complicated conundrums, He summed up the entire gospel into a few simple words…

Love God.  Love others.

Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) modeled it beautifully also.  After wrestling with trying to explain what a jerk he had been and how much he cared for Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger), he simply said, 

“You complete me.”

In three very simple words, he conveyed volumes.  And as cheesy and contrived as it sounds now, it struck a chord with millions when he said it to her in the film.

Consider

• What great need are you filling with your company?
• How many words would it take for you to powerfully convey your message?  (It took us 12, Jesus a handful, and Jerry Maguire just 3!)
• Are you explaining that in a way that almost anyone could understand?

Highlight

“Believe me: I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can’t believe that, believe what you see—these works. The person who trusts me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing. You can count on it.”

Jesus of Nazareth

I don’t really recall going on a vacation as a child.  At least in the way I now know about vacations.  I recall sleeping on the floor at an aunt’s house in Dallas one summer and a single day at an amusement park when the temperatures were over the century mark.  Not a great memory.  Oh yeah, and there was a trip to a funeral south of San Antonio where there seemed to be a lot of drama related to real estate and an undisclosed amount of money.

And don’t hear that I am complaining.  I didn’t know any different.

In fact, I have embarrassing admitted that some of my memories of this sort of thing were so co-mingled with the vicarious life I found in television that I once reminisced about my vacation to Hawaii with Greg, Peter, Bobby, Marsha, Jan and Cindy.  Of course I didn’t go to Honolulu with the Brady bunch, but when you don’t have the real thing, you sometimes dream stuff up.

I remember going to college and meeting folks who had been to all kinds of exotic places that seemed almost as normal to them as me never having gone anywhere.  They started sentences with things like “That was the summer we went to….” and “The place we go to every year…” or “On our annual family vacation…”.  Awesome for them, but not my reality.

There is kind of a general understanding that no one really wants to look at someone else’s slide show of their vacation.  You couldn’t pay most people enough to do that.  Ironically, most Americans spend an increasingly larger amount of their day looking at other people’s highlight reels.  What cool place they went, what they saw, what they ate, how much fun they had, and who they were with.  But we are largely looking at slide shows of the exceptions and not the reality of their day-to-day lives in our social media consumption.

The science on this stuff is terrifying.  Levels of depression, suicide, feelings of isolation are at unprecedented levels and rising annually.  There is a whole generation who have been branded by their social media consumption, but this epidemic is affecting all our generations. 

Funny, we know what we’re viewing isn’t reality, but we volunteer to do the thing they couldn’t pay us enough to if they tried…watch the highlight reel of their lives.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to finding the abundant life is our hidden conviction that the Bible shares stories of only exceptional people.  The reality is that the Bible is filled with examples of how all our lives are supposed to be lived.  In fact, Jesus said we would accomplish even more amazing things than him.  That is a book of examples, not exceptions.

When we treat abundant life like an exception to the rule and not our expected reality, we miss out on the intended glory of our lives.  Much of what we do in our coaching practice is awaken, highlight, and encourage the extraordinary that already exists in individuals and their organizations.  

Every person and organization exists to change the lives of others.  Excavating that treasure is how we are going to change the world.

• Have you made an agreement with the lie that your life isn’t extraordinary?
• How much would your life and leadership change if you believed the extraordinary was possible?
• Honestly, do you read about the people in the Bible as a group of exceptions or as examples?
• Have you given up on believing that your organization is going to make a real difference in the world?

Pinball

“Every past experience is preparation for some future opportunity.  God doesn’t just redeem our souls.  He also redeems our experiences.  And not just the good ones.  He redeems the bad ones too—especially the bad ones.  How? By cultivating character, developing gifts, and teaching lessons that cannot be learned any other way.”  

Mark Batterson

It was ironic that I spent so much time as a kid at a 7-Eleven playing pinball with my friends.  Careening though life, bouncing from one stimulus and response to another, like the metal ball in the games I stood in front of, couldn’t have been a better metaphor for my life during my first 18 years.

No boundaries.  
No prohibitions.  

I made most of my own decisions and they were largely poor.  But that all ended when I went to college.  I went to the kind of environment that allowed me to rebel the opposite way than most.  I walked into the light from the darkness, instead of the other way around.

College was all about the discovery and deep immersion into a faith system.  Everything that was wrong suddenly became right.  In one powerful decision, everyday I had lived from the first to the last, was whitewashed and made new.  Almost as if all of that ping-ponging around had never really happened.  Who I was and where I had come from no longer held any sway over the life I would live.

I couldn’t have been anymore wrong.

We are all a product of the story we have lived.  We view everything we experience through the interpretive lens of the experiences we have had.  When you meet a person, you meet the cumulative effect of every day they have lived prior.  It all matters, all shapes, and all defines.  Without understanding the past, you will never really understand the present.

One of the more decorated commercials from last year was from a small writing school in Chicago called Clark Street Bridge.  In this powerfully evocative ad, they talk about how “home”, the place we came from, still defines us in many ways.  Just like the NASA cameras did in this commercial, it is helpful to turn around and take an honest look at the past. 

Interpreting the story you or your company emerged from, may be the most powerful, clarifying, and informative thing you will experience.

That is why it is part of every Lifeplan we do and every corporate team experience we conduct.  Taking an honest look at where you came from tells us a lot about what the future could best look like.  We mine if for key learnings that shape the way things are interpreted and help light a path to the best expression of your life or company in the years to come.

Turns out that where things come from are determinant but not definitional.  They provide understanding, but with proper distance and applied perspective, they don’t have to define the life you live going forward.  They can actually be used to inform, but not be allowed to inexplicably control our present or future.

One of the beautiful paradoxes of the gospel is the power of the redemptive process.  The things that shouldn’t have done or had happen to us in our past are not to our disqualification, but as redeemed, to our qualification.  Looking back can help us look forward better.

“Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana

Turns out that all that careening around, as interpreted and understood, is powerfully informing and shaping my future.  The stumbling block it once was, has largely been removed.  

It can be the same for you or your company.  All you need to do is look back.

• Do understand how determinant your past is?
• Do you know that understanding someone else’s story is the key to understanding, motivating, and inspiring the best in them as well?
• Do you know how powerfully your company’s story affects the way you operate and your prospects for the future?

Space

“Attitude is a choice.”

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We often tell our clients about a 30 and 90 day rule.  It relates to the fact that we are all called to be generative governors (life-giving leaders).  As co-heirs of a Kingdom, we have been tasked with tending the flock and the fields they occupy.  

Our great privilege and our responsibility are the same.  

Lead and love well, what is right in front of us.  Use the talents, resources, and time we have in the way that best serves the most precious asset in the Kingdom, His children.

We actually learned the 30/90 day rule from a church in Chicago.  It really helps leaders provide appropriate leadership and oversight to those they are responsible.  

It goes something like this…

• 90 day rule - if an employee’s performance isn’t meeting expectations, set two appointments 90 days apart.  At the first, let them know how they are performing and describe what the right level of performance looks like.  Tell them you will support them with tools, coaching, training, etc. to help them get there.  But if they are not at that newly established level of performance when you meet again, they will need to find another place to work.
   
• 30 day rule - if an employee’s attitude isn’t meeting expectations, set two appointments 30 days apart.  At the first, let them know what their attitude is like and what an acceptable attitude looks like for the team.  Tell them you will support them with tools, coaching, training, etc. to help them get there.  But if they are not operating with an appropriate attitude when you meet again, they will need to find another place to work.

There needs to be a certain level of intolerance when it comes to leadership.  God is glorified when we do things beautifully, excellently, and bring life to others.  We need to commit time and resources for training, proper tools, coaching, etc. to help team members grow and advance, but if they don’t meet expectations in terms of performance or behavior, it is our responsibility to deal with the problem.

Attitude is always a choice.

Susan David writes about "Emotional Agility."  She says that emotions are valuable data points, but not directives as to how you should respond.

• Fear - can save your life
• Anger - points to an injustice you might be called to address
• Sadness - is a result of some misalignment between the way things are and how you would like them to be

Emotionally healthy people don’t feel and react, but try to understand why they are feeling that way and address the issue.  Emotionally unhealthy people see every emotion as justification for their responses, appropriate or not.  Healthy people create space between what they feel and how they respond.  They allow appropriate room before they leap to a response.  

Maybe Pavlov’s dog couldn’t pause between stimulus and response, but we should be able to.

Victor Frankl said:

Between stimulus and response there is a space.  
And in that space is our power to choose.  
And it is in that choice that comes our growth and freedom.

Modeling healthy attitudes and responses is our responsibility.  Requiring it of others is the pathway to growth and freedom.  As generative governors, we are supposed to be offering and emulating the currency of the Kingdom, this space and freedom, to others in every sphere of our lives.

• Do you have unhealthy people on your team?  (Are you one of them?)
• Do you have people on your team that seem to have no filter between what they feel and what they say?
• You likely already know who they are and what you are supposed to do.  Are you ready to find the courage of your convictions?
• Who do you need to apply the 30 day rule to?  When are you going to do it?
• What is it costing the rest of your team if you don’t?

Gift

“Gifts are symbols of the value you place on the relationship.  When you act generously, people take notice. They’ll begin to feel appreciated, and in turn, they’ll want to pay it forward. It’s a natural inclination for us to want givers to succeed because we can appreciate the generosity that was shown to us.”

John Ruhlin

John Ruhlin has a business completely based on helping people give gifts better.  Most of his clients are larger corporations that want to more effectively wield the dollars they spend to honor clients and woo prospective ones.  In his recent book, “Giftology, The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention” he tells fantastical tales of extravagant gift giving.

I wanted to immediately dismiss him as both materialistic and manipulative, but the more you read (or listen to him) you hear the heart behind the man.  It is out of the incredible generosity he feels in the gift of his Christian faith, that he feels compelled to offer and encourage the same in others.

“Most people walk around feeling under-appreciated, not over-appreciated.”

There is an excellently produced set of videos and study materials explaining basic Christian apologetics called “For the Life of the World”.  One of their short video tells the entire gospel story in 2 short minutes.  It makes the case that everything is a gift (“All is Gift”)…the creation, the fall, and the restoration.  It turns out that receiving and offering gifts is pretty fundamental and important.

I love how Eugene Peterson explains the gift of salvation in his rewriting of the book of Romans:

“If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?” 

I don’t know that I have heard salvation described in a more beautiful or powerful was than a "wildly extravagant life-gift”.

Back to Giftology.  John says that out of all that has been given for him, how could he do anything but build a life of giving to and honoring others.  He has all kinds of ideas and principles that guide his work (actually a book full of them).  But here are a few…

• No strings attached - give to honor with no expectation
• Practical - something that will bless them every day
• Surprise & delight - unexpected and thoughtful
• Out of season - don’t give when everyone else does (Xmas)
• Less is more - give less, but nicer gifts
• Do your homework - what would make them feel honored

With these ideas fresh in our mind, we were faced with giving a gift to a friend who was moving.  We are typically very frugal, but we wanted our friend to know how much we thought of him and wanted him to think of our appreciation often.  He was moving his family across the country on an adventure to start a life that included spending a lot more time out of doors.

We got him a Yeti cooler.  It was way beyond what we would normally budget for this type of gift, but the thought of him and his family loading that thing up for excursions, picnics, trips, and all manner of other adventures made me smile.  It is the kind of gift that will ultimately only cost us only $1 for each of the hundreds of times he will use it…and hopefully think about how much we appreciated him.

• Does your family or company regularly provide gifts to others?
• How much time do you spend thinking through what and how you will give?
• Do you know anyone (have anyone working for you) that you think might feel under appreciated?
• What could you do for them that would surprise them, honor them, and let them know how unmistakably you value them?

Love

“I know men and I tell you, Jesus Christ is no mere man.  Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison.  Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires.  But on what did we rest the creations of our genius?  Upon force.  Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour, millions would die for him.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

One of the more arresting things I encountered in marrying a woman of peace, was the imperative of love she brought into my life.  It was so foundational that it seemed to punctuate every conversation and seemed to be the “nuclear option” whenever an incredulous frustration would justify an inappropriate reaction or judgement by me or one of the kids.  She would simply say…

“love, love, only love”

My cynicism born of an over-exposed and unsheltered youth, didn’t have much patience with pithy statements or contrived sentimentality.  Even as a Christian, I was challenged by the notion that just approaching things with the posture of love might change anything.

Could John Lennon possibly have been right when he wrote, “Love is all you need”?

The scriptures I had claimed talked about it a lot and something deep inside me knew that it was a profound truth, but it is also felt soft and ineffectual.  The kind of thing that poets and pastors could say that didn’t really fit in the “real” world.

But all that changed for me a few years ago.  The guys I lead men’s weekends with were “shadowing” a team from a large national ministry.  These were the preeminent guys who speak to guys.  They have even been accused of assigning too masculine and violent a metaphor to the gospel.  These are guy’s guys.

They were in East Texas, fighting for the hearts of 600 or so men and we were given a ringside seat.  The feeling and conversion was more of a military invasion than any other I could offer.  Strong, intentional, and powerful.  At one point the main leader was addressing all the opposition they were facing in this effort and he said the thing I had only heard a version of from my wife…

“Love, love, only love.  Our only weapon is love.”

Our only weapon is love.  Didn’t see that coming from them.

But love in this context, was powerful and ferocious.  It was the necessary force that needed to be applied.  It was the nuclear option, but in a whole different way.  It didn’t end the conversation, it started it.  It was offered as the ultimate weapon…the one that could cut through steel and any other barrier that stood in its’ way.

This was a “no greater love than this love” kind of love that would lay down its’ life for others.  Turning over tables kind of love.  Calling out injustice kind of love.

The kind of love that says the challenging and difficult things.  Tough love.  Fighting for what is right.

The weapon that even Napoleon could identify as the one thing that trumped even his seemingly unrivaled power.  

The one my wife knew would change everything.  It did.

• Do you associate strength, nobility, and power with the word “love”?
• Do you see it as the thing that ultimately trumps all other things?
• Do you approach those you love and lead with a measure of this most powerful weapon?
• Could you handle firing and other difficult responsibilities of leadership better if this were part of your experiential toolkit?

Barometer

ba·rom·e·ter  (bə-rŏm′ĭ-tər)
n.
1. An instrument for measuring atmospheric pressure, used especially in weather forecasting.
2. Something that registers or responds to fluctuations; an indicator.

When I did a Lifeplan retreat seven years ago, it clearly indicated that the life God was intending for me was supposed to be focused more on working with individuals leaders and their teams.  It was clear that making a ridiculously big pile of money into more money, as important and formative as that was to my employer’s financial viability, was not my appointed task.

One of the confirmations of that was the initiation I had received into working with individual leaders over the prior few years.  My vocational life primarily consisted of sitting, headset on, in front of a bank of screens from market open to market close.  A few years before Lifeplan, however, my calendar started to fill with breakfast, lunch, evening, and weekend one-on-one meetings.

During that season, I was regularly meeting with 5-10 people a week.  300 or so meetings a year.  Those meetings were the stuff of initiation and invitation.  I felt more alive in those conversations than even the most successful trade ever felt…even though those trades or programs sometimes were in the billions of dollars.

I felt clear, focused, and powerful in those meetings.  I felt the manifestation of God’s intention for my life and His power flowing through me.  When you offer in His strength and under His direction, really powerful things can happen in even a simple conversation.  I love working with teams, helping them define a powerful future, and creating a strategic plan to help them get there,

but if my calendar doesn’t have a regular diet of
one-on-one meetings, I am not at my best.
It has become a barometer for me.

The honor and privilege of hearing someone’s story, getting to the bottom of an issue, challenging a position, and asking the right question (one that will produce real and measurable change), is one of the most invigorating things I have ever known.

We are all better at doing all the other stuff, when we spend regular time doing the things we were most created to do.  There is a clarity and confidence that rises in me when I am regularly doing the things that make me feel most alive.  (This is another post for another day, but this is actually the place where God is most glorified through your life as well.)

Another barometer for me, is writing these posts.  They have been posted weekly for over five years and twice-weekly for almost one.  I am often weeks or even months ahead.  So many complete in excess of the posting schedule, that I often can’t remember what a particular post was about when someone references a “current” one that I actually wrote weeks before.

But when I checked the gauge on this barometer this morning, I didn’t like the reading I found.  Not only was I out of posts, the last time I had written anything was a week and a half ago.  

Time to practice what I preach and not only honor the time in my weekly calendar for one-on-one meetings, but for writing as well.  

Time to honor the “ideal week” I challenge so many others to practice.

Time to carve out space for the necessary things that makes everything else make sense.

• What makes your heart come alive?
• What do you do where you feel the most power or impact from your life?
• What is the thing you must have time for in your schedule that makes all the other things make sense?
• When is the last time you spent time doing that?  What does the barometer reading look like?
• Don’t have good answers to any of those questions?  Join us for our next Lifeplan retreat in May.

Reluctant

Galadriel appears to Frodo in Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings and tells him some unsettling news.  He is feeling overwhelmed and not worthy of the immense responsibility he is carrying. Does that feel familiar?  She tells him something we all know, but often wish weren’t true:

“This task was appointed to you, and if you do not find a way, no one will.”

So, like it or not, as leaders of families or organizations, we carry both the privilege and burden of responsibility in leadership.  You may have reluctantly found yourself in this position, but it is the position you hold.  

Yvon Chouinard, founder and sole owner of the private Patagonia company wrote a book about his journey with that company, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.  He named his company after the beautiful and untamed Patagonia he experienced on an epic journey in the 70’s.  His company was actually created to provide him and his friends the requisite gear to experience what he found in Patagonia (in the picture above) and other beautiful places. 

It is one of the more obscure business books I have read.  His disdain for business and becoming a businessman makes him an unlikely leader of a billion dollar clothing and gear line.  He says in the book:

“After we had pondered our responsibilities and financial liabilities, one day it dawned on me that I was a businessman and would probably be one for a long time. It was also clear that in order to survive at this game, we had to get serious. I also knew that I would never be happy playing by the normal rules of business; I wanted to distance myself as far as possible from those pasty-faced corpses in suits I saw in airline magazine ads. If I had to be a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms.”

Okay, maybe a little more than disdain.  Hatred actually probably fits his feelings better, but like it or not, he had become what he disliked most.  There are several key things to note in what he said:

• He weighted the responsibilities and liabilities

• He realized that survival required getting serious

• If he was going to be a businessman, he would do it his own way

He seems to sum up why our coaches are so motivated to help leaders be more intentional in their leadership.  Why one of the hills we’ll die on is helping them get clear on the most important priorities and build accountability structures to help accomplish them.  Leadership requires weighing the responsibility and getting serious about business in order to survive.

He also points to why we think a Lifeplan is so essential for a leader.  Their business should serve the life they were intended to live.  The life they were placed here for that makes them feel most alive, most glorifies God, and best serves humanity.

This is the place where Chouinard and I diverge.  He says, “If I had to be a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms.”  I say that we were all born to be leaders (of our family, enterprise, and community) and that we need to do it on His terms and not ours.  

That is the place where His divinity and humanity’s great need most powerfully meet.

Consider

• Are you aware of your reluctance to lead?

• What is it costing you and those under your responsibility?

• Is it time for you to get serious (whether you like it or not)?

• Who is in your life that can actually challenge you about this sort of thing? (Most senior leaders don’t have anyone in their orbit who they have permission to do that.)

Serve

“They are not just taking food to a table.  They understand that when a guest walks in the door, this night needs to really matter.  They are bringing to us their most precious asset, their time.  Their first date.  Their only proposal.  Their anniversary.  Their celebration.  They are offering us this precious fragile memory and trusting us to take care of it.  They are coming to eat and drink but they are coming to make sure that tonight will matter.”

Mark and Brian Canlis took over the family restaurant from their parents.  Bucking the statistic that 70% of second generation businesses fail and many of the remaining ones really struggle, the Canlis brothers have actually helped the restaurant thrive in even greater measure.

Canlis restaurant is one of the most celebrated and decorated restaurants in the Pacific Northwest.  They built their success by focusing on their most valuable asset, their employees.  Interesting that the owners focus is not primarily on the food (which is world class), their clients (which wait months to get reservations) or the restaurant’s reputation (which is stellar) as you might imagine.  They focus all their energy on serving those who serve…hosts, waiters, valets, and kitchen staff.

“They are bringing us a treasure and asking us to hold it…to take care of it for a few hours.”

The owners of the restaurant have a high bar and commitment to this kind of experience, but how do you get your staff to feel the same way?  First of all, they don’t hire the kind of people you would expect:

• They often don’t have any restaurant experience (they typically think they know how to serve, and they don’t)
• “We hire people whose parents did a great job on them when they were kids, who have comfort in their own skin.”
• “We’re hiring people that don’t think the world revolves around them.”
• “We’re hiring people of character.”
• “We’re hiring people you would want to take a road trip with.” (people you actually enjoy spending time around)
• People who get excited about serving other people.

They say that the technical part of good service is pretty simple to teach if they come into the restaurant with the right heart and character.  They consider those filters above to be “step 1”.  Step 2 is asking:

“You may be an amazing person, but prove to me that working at Canlis will help you become who you are trying to become.”

What!?!?

They say that if they aren’t interested in the staff, their life desires and dreams, they think they might as well just tell them that they are just interested in using them to get what they desire.  If they view their team as something they use to get what they want, their team will treat their customers as something they use to get what they want.

If we use them, they will use our guests.  They’ll bring your food to you (what you want) to get what they want (a tip).  A simple transaction.

But, if they prove to their team that they are most interested in their lives, hopes, and dreams (and they are the right kind of people), they will treat each customer with great interest in their lives, hopes, and dreams.  If we teach them that our primary objective is to serve them (and serving was first our intellectual property as Christians), they will, in kind, serve.  

And if each employee sees that working for their restaurant is helping them become the kind of person they want to be, I bet you can guess what turnover looks like and how nearly impossible it is to get a job there.  There is a long line to get in and no one wants to leave.

• Is your primary focus on your employees?
• Are you serving them in such a way that makes them want to serve?
• Do you think your employees would say that you are using them?
• Do your employees see your organization as the place that is helping them become who they ultimately want to be?

Weak

“In sports, what is true is more powerful than what you believe, because what is true will give you an edge.” 

Bill James

David Sally and Chris Anderson wrote kind of a “Moneyball” book about soccer called, “The Numbers Game; Why Everything You Know About Soccer is Wrong”.  In the book, they extensively compare the game of soccer (a “weak-link phenomena”) to the NBA (a “strong-link phenomena”).  

“In certain sports, having weaker players hurts your overall chances of winning more than in other sports. Think about soccer. There are very few opportunities to score, so mistakes by weaker players have a proportionally higher impact. Then think about basketball. There are many opportunities to score. So typically, one dominant player–Michael Jordan, say–can make up for the weak links on the team. Therefore, having a few weaker players isn’t going to have as big of an impact in basketball as it would in soccer. Basketball is a strong-link game. Soccer is a weak-link game.”

David Sally

International soccer teams are notorious for giving record setting contracts to their superstars.  According to Forbes, Ronaldo and Messi are the two highest paid athletes in the world.  Even as a pretty illiterate soccer person, I have heard those names.  Sally and Anderson have made their pitch for focusing on the “weakest-link” to team owners abroad and have found limited acceptance.

They contend that if winning is their primary objective, owners are very interested.  If notoriety, jersey sales, and rubbing elbows with the rich and famous are a priority, then the “strong-link” phenomena prevails.

It would almost take a team with the lowest payroll, eschewing the superstar mentality and finding supreme success (like the Oakland A’s in “Moneyball”) to change conventional thinking.

Sally contends that the most extraordinary goal by Messi and Ronaldo is often only as good (or even possible) as each of the 9-11 passes it takes in the average scoring sequence.  So, with 11 players on the soccer pitch at all times, it is often the play of the weakest link, the 11th best player, that materially affects the actual outcome.  The best superstars, requiring the most disproportionate amount of resources, might be handicapping their own future success.

This got me thinking about the average small business.  It seems like there is often one area (sales, engineering, etc.) that gets a disproportionate amount of our resources and focus.  I could even make the argument that this is rightly so, but Sally’s thoughts on weak-link phenomena challenges us to think more broadly.

Our companies are likely constrained by our weakest links.

Should we neglect the talent in our companies for the sake of focusing on the least common denominator? 

Maybe the best answer lies in a “yes and” solution instead of an “either or”.  Maybe we need to take care of the talent on the tip of our spears, but also apply the focus, resources, and energy necessary to our “weakest links” to make sure we are not constraining our entire process.

And as Kingdom-minded folks with a broader lens for how we view the world, maybe applying a little more focus to the least of these is the inherent right answer.  But, don’t hear what I am not saying either.  Strengthening our weak links likely means replacing some of our folks with stronger links and valuing them appropriately

• Do you think you are more of a “weak-link” or “strong-link” type of person?
• Do you think your business favors one more than the other?
• Are you aware of the incredible impact your weakest link might be having on overall success?
• Do you need to focus resources and attention or possibly even make a change in a weak-link?