John Pearson's Buckets Blog

You're Not the Person I Hired!

Issue No. 162 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a no-brainer, gold standard book on hiring top talent.  This will keep you awake at night: “…roughly 56 percent of newly hired executives fail within two years of starting new jobs.” And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. 

Useless Interview Questions

This week’s book is You're Not the Person I Hired! Let me add this thought: This Isn’t the Book I Thought I Was Getting. It’s better! I’ve immediately added it to my Top-10 List for 2009.

The authors warn, “When you are tempted to rush a hire, think in terms of Return on Investment over the course of years, not months.” They quote Michael J. Lotito, “If you spend a lot of time figuring out who you’re going to hire, you’ll have to spend far less time figuring out who to fire.”

I’ve noticed two startling trends in leadership and management these last four years in my consulting and management workshops.  1) Poll after poll, I ask leaders and managers if they’ve ever read a book, listened to a CD or attended a workshop on “Effective Delegation.” At best, less than five percent of the room stands up.  2) Ditto for “Effective Hiring Practices.” People must think they’re good at it—and don’t need any professional development. Not!

This book delivers.  How many “Useless Interview Questions” have you asked recently?
   • Tell me about yourself.
   • What are your strengths?
   • What are your weaknesses?
   • Why do you want to work here?
   • If you were an animal/tree/plant, what would you be?
   • How do you feel about long working hours?

OK. So those don’t work. What should you ask, according to the co-authors? They list five key questions, including: “Would you please give me an example of a situation in which you have demonstrated initiative?”  In your search for what they call the “Top 5% Talent,” you’ll find that top performers are self-motivated.

The authors warn that you must unlearn some bad habits—but effective interviewing and hiring skills can be learned.  Rule #1 is “Describe the opportunity they want, not your needs.” (Their Success Factor Snapshot™ methodology “clearly defines what the new executive must achieve during the first 12 to 18 months, and dramatically increases hiring accuracy.”)

The tools and insights leap from dozens and dozens of pages, like:
   • The Cost of One Bad Hire Worksheet
   • The Top Ten Hiring Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (desperation hiring, fishing in shallow waters, and inappropriate “prerequisites” used too early in the selection process)
   • How to avoid Jane Clone hiring, and worse—getting stuck in the Anti-Clone Zone
   • Why the “first step to staffing up with Top 5% Talent is to remove deadwood.”
   • How to spot a bad hire within the first three to six months
   • How to tell the difference between non-candidates, sleeper candidates, selective candidates and aggressive candidates (80 percent of your applicants)
   • How to market your position—and how to avoid the top five worst sourcing strategies

The Number One hiring mistake: “Inadequate job descriptions drove the hiring process; these focused solely on experience and skills, not company expectations. A staggering 93 percent of searches that resulted in new executive failure made this mistake at the outset.”

The solution: eliminate tired-out, traditional job descriptions and instead, create measurable expectations around four S.O.A.R. areas: Substantial Departmental Goal, Obstacles, Action, Results. (Three cheers for authors who focus on the Results Bucket!)

Chapter 8 delivers remarkable insights in the Culture Bucket. The book lists a three-page self-test with 14 cultural dimensions (with three options for each).  The authors warn that cultural mismatches will torpedo unprepared candidates. Example: Which of the following three statements defines your organization’s views on “Work/Life Balance?”
• If you have a life elsewhere, that’s your problem. We certainly didn’t issue you one.
• We want you to take care of yourself so others don’t have to do your job when you’re sick.
• Happy, healthy workers make better, stronger companies. Onsite yoga, anyone?

This is a no-brainer resource for anyone who interviews or hires people.  (Let me think about this…buy one more book that might help me…or keep hiring people I ultimately will need to fire because they’re a mismatch?)

To order this book from Amazon, click on this title: You're Not the Person I Hired! A CEO's Survival Guide to Hiring Top Talent, by Janet Boydell, Barry Deutsch and Brad Remillard.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Make a list of at least 10 “unique cultural dimensions” about our organization that a job candidate should embrace BEFORE joining our team.
2) The authors suggest when you find a great candidate, you should “Make the Offer an Event.” What could we do differently to attract and hire top candidates?

Social Styles Interviewing - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the People Bucket, Chapter 7, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to communicate creatively with the four social styles (Analyticals, Drivers, Amiables and Expressives.)

Before you interview your next job candidate, review the four social styles and understand how each style will approach their job and career. It’s different for each style. One of the keys to social styles is “versatility.” If you’re a Driver, for example, don’t allow your style to define your organization, especially if you’re interviewing an Amiable. Yikes!  Click here to download Worksheet #7.1: "Do's and Don'ts for the Four Social Styles."

 

The Joseph Road

Issue No. 161 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features the perfect book to read before your next department team day or staff retreat.  It’s a book you’ll savor—yet it’s a page-turner. And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. 

Chewable Joseph

“This is the crux of The Joseph Road,” writes Jerry White in this wonderful new book. “Not knowing one thing about the future, Joseph simply did good in whatever tasks or opportunities came his way.” 

Some books you must read quickly—vainly searching for the good stuff.  Other books you savor slowly and chew on the morsels and insightful questions. This is a chewable book. It’s devotional. It’s thought-probing.  And amazingly, it’s also a page-turner. How could that be? After all, many of us have known the story of the Old Testament’s Joseph since childhood.

White weaves the reader in and out of Joseph’s journey from favorite son…to hated brother…to forgotten slave…to Potiphar’s senior VP…and then to prison.  Yet even behind bars, “he ended up managing the whole operation,” says Genesis 39:22 in The Message. I must confess, I’ve never used any leadership and management principles from the life of Joseph—but his faithfulness, endurance, and integrity ooze with dozens of insights for future staff meetings.

As the president emeritus of The Navigators, you would expect Jerry’s book to have meat.  But he also adds a friendly dose of personal stories (including a tragic family event) as he notes his faith-walk through the Air Force, NASA, teaching at the Air Force Academy, serving as a major general in the Air Force Reserve and then giving leadership to The Navigators.  There’s joy—but there’s also plenty of tough CEO choices and sadness.

White’s bullet point summary of Joseph’s life is fascinating and so he convinced me to “bullet point” my major life events—to see what I could learn from those forks-in-the-Joseph Road. Jerry illustrated how to do this exercise with bullet points of his own life.

I won’t spoil the ending of this epic biblical account for you. You may think you already know the story. Think again. This is the PERFECT book to give to your staff or department prior to a team day or staff retreat.  I just hope Jerry is working on another Old Testament hero for his next book.

To order this book from Amazon, click on this title: The Joseph Road: Choices That Determine Your Destiny, by Jerry White.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Jerry White says that “our good times are preparation for the bad times.” Have you experienced that in your life?
2) When Joseph’s brothers arrived in Egypt, White calls it “one of the most fascinating and intriguing stories in all of Scripture.” So he asks, “What would you have done in Joseph’s shoes?”

Sustainability: God’s Idea - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Program Bucket, Chapter 6, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to put a hold on new programs until you’ve addressed capacity and sustainable issues. Read Luke 14:28-30 in The Message before you embarrass yourself and your organization by having to pull the plug on yet one more ill-fated, poorly resourced program.

At your next staff meeting, distribute copies of the “Top 10 Questions to Ask About Program Capacity and Sustainability.” Download this worksheet (PDF) and identify the three most important questions for your organization.

 

The Longview

Issue No. 160 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a book with an important niche chapter to help leaders deflate their egos.  Speaking of books, according to G. Gordan of the American Library Association, “Setting aside just 15 minutes a day will enable you to read up to two dozen books in a year. Keep it up and you will have read 1,000 books in your lifetime. That’s the equivalent of going through college five times.”  And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. 

Exhausting vs. Equipping

“Ego is a megaphone that is always obnoxious,” warns Roger Parrott.  His new book, The Longview: Lasting Strategies for Rising Leaders, is filled with poignant insights like that one. His second chapter, “Deflate Your Ego to Expand Your Influence,” is remarkably fresh and convicting.

When is the last time (or the first time), you’ve voluntarily read a chapter about keeping your ego in check?  Parrott, the president of Belhaven College, Jackson, Miss., since 1995, must struggle—like all college presidents, mega-church pastors, CEOs and senior leaders—to downplay his own role and showcase the roles of others.

The author offers “a portrait of the showmen” with the compilation of 14 traits, along with brief commentaries, he’s observed in ego-driven leaders. They include:
   1. Live Flamboyantly
   2. Inflate Vision
   3. Act Invincible
   4. Ignore Critics
   5. Crave Adrenaline
   6. Exaggerate Actions
   7. Become Sensitive
   8. Attract Groupies
   9. Demand Appreciation
   10. Require Empathy
   11. Listen Poorly
   12. Enjoy Competition
   13. Control Obsessively
   14. Ignore Boundaries

Commenting on the trait of leaders who exaggerate actions, he notes: “These leaders move in wide, sweeping motions that take up space wherever they might be. They don’t do anything simply, but every action is so exaggerated that the staff around them is exhausted, rather that equipped, by their leadership.”

After reading these 14 traits to my wife, Joanne, I gave her my brilliant idea: create an online “Ego Assessment for Leaders” and encourage my clients and other CEOs to do a 360 survey with their board members, their direct reports and their own self-assessments. Joanne’s response: “Yeah, John. After you are willing to do that!”

Parrott has 13 more chapters including: “Planning Will Drain the Life From Your Ministry” and “Preempting the Stickiest Challenge of Long-Term Leadership.”  The latter focuses on conflicts of interest—a rare and practical look at this leadership stumbling block. This college president’s style reminds me a bit of USC President Steven Sample’s book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership. (Click here for my review from March 24, 2008.)

You’ll get your money’s worth from this book in savvy corner office wisdom.  Like this from chapter three, “Applause Lasts for a Moment, but Leadership is for a Lifetime.” He writes, “…bad news must be announced, or the gossip and speculation will run far ahead of the facts.”

Instead of letting bad news leak out, Parrott is pro-active. “I don’t bring my entire employee base together lightly, because I figure it costs us about $10,000 an hour in wages when we gather, but the cost of not meeting during a time of bad news is much higher. Without the full story, coworkers become fearful, assumptions run rampant, and energy is drained by the uncertainty. Leaders may have learned to live comfortably with a high level of ambiguity, but others have not.”

To order this book from Amazon, click on this title: The Longview: Lasting Strategies for Rising Leaders, by Roger Parrott. And special thanks to Bob Andringa, former president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, for mentioning this book.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Which “ego trait” from the list of 14 bugs you the most about ego-driven leaders?
2) Which “ego trait” might eventually be your stumbling block? Which one would your family, friends and colleagues warn you about?

Niche Chapter Mentoring - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Book Bucket, Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to mentor your team members with niche books and to leverage their strengths with thoughtfully selected chapters.

The “ego chapter” in Roger Parrott’s book (above) is a perfect example of how to use books as team-building tools.  “Hank, do I have your permission to be frank with you? I know you want to be God-honoring. That doesn’t happen automatically. So I’m wondering if you’ve ever looked in the mirror—or asked a trusted friend to give you some authentic feedback on keeping your ego in check? You might benefit from reading this chapter, ‘Deflate Your Ego to Expand Your Influence.’”

On the Buckets website, you can download the list of my Top-100 books on leadership and management.  I update this list every January.

Well Connected

Issue No. 159 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features the classic book on creating sustainable partnerships. But be prepared to assess your current partnerships against this book’s truth-telling principles on what constitutes a true partnership. Charles Handy once said that “the world may admire truth-tellers, but few will want to employ them.” Hopefully, that isn’t the case in your organization.  And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. 

Expect Problems With Partnerships

“They’ll know we are Christians by our love.” (How’s that working out for all of us?)

What if the next verse to that song read, “They’ll know we are Christians by our partnerships?” (Oops. That’s not working out either.)

Here’s the deal.  Many Christian organizations—even in their mission statements—proudly proclaim that they are partners with the local church. Others have a “Director of Strategic Partnerships & Alliances” on their teams.  But gut-check time: how competent are we in building and sustaining God-honoring partnerships?

There’s help.  Phill Butler’s classic book, Well Connected, is your Partnership 101, 201, 301 and 401 course and baptism into the hope of John 17: unity in the body of Christ.

You may want to just read the summary (Chapter 1) and then delegate your reading to a team member who will review the book at a future staff meeting.  The appendix is worth the price of the book, especially the five-page “Partnership/Network Diagnostic/Evaluation Tool” for your current presumed partnerships.  Or you can rate yourself with 10 questions: “Are We Good Partnership Material?”  If you score 60 or less (100 is possible), Butler suggests you host a leadership meeting to look at your scores and discuss improvement options.

Finally, the “15 Critical Principles” of partnerships are excellent. For example:
   • #2. Lasting partnerships need a committed facilitator.
   • #4. Effective partnerships have limited, achievable objectives in the beginning.
   • #5. Effective partnerships start by identifying key felt needs among the people being served. [The Customer Bucket]
   • #8. Effective partnerships are even more challenging to maintain than to start.
   • #15. Effective partnerships expect problems and pro-actively deal with them.

To order this book from Amazon, click on this title: Well Connected: Releasing Power, Restoring Hope Through Kingdom Partnerships, by Phill Butler.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) In groups of two, make a list of all of our organization’s partnerships.
2) Phill Butler says that effective partnerships have a “partnership champion” inside every church, ministry or organization in the partnership. Why might that be absolutely critical? How are we doing on this principle?

Tiger Woods Has a Coach - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Drucker Bucket, Chapter 4, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is that we don’t just give lip service to management—we actually are disciplined students of great leadership and management thinkers like Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard and others.

Peter Drucker preached that you must practice, practice and practice the art of management. He said it was like any other discipline. World-class musicians hone their gifts up to eight hours a day. Athletes practice, practice and practice. Professional golfers finish 18 holes and head to the driving range. Tiger Woods has a coach.

What do hassled leaders and managers do? After the nine-to-five battle (more often 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M.), they overeat, drink or distract their joyless days with mind-numbing entertainment. On the other hand, great managers stay at it—always digging for fresh insights and solutions. Drucker writes, “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.”

On the Buckets website, you can link to a website that will help you impress your colleagues with a few Druckerisms at appropriate times in boring business meetings. Here’s one of my favorite quotes: "Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done."  Also on the website, you can order four of my top picks of the Drucker books.

MANAGEMENT BUCKETS WORKSHOP:
• October 20-21, 2009 – Mastering the Management Buckets Workshop Experience (Dana Point, California). Click here for more information.

 

Master Leaders

Issue No. 158 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a feast of one-liners and leadership insights from an unusual new book from George Barna. I had a long plane ride this week—hence a long eNews. Enjoy. And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. 

Amplified 10 Times

I’m calling this book review, “Barna’s Brilliant Brainstorm: The Big Name Speaker’s Backroom Buzz.” Every leader will wish he or she had thought of writing this book. It’s brilliant—on so many levels. George Barna’s goal: “Create the ultimate leadership event and report what happened behind the scenes where the leaders mixed it up a bit.”

The robust gathering included: Warren Bennis, Ken Blanchard, Colleen Barrett, Henry Cloud, Newt Gingrich, Laurie Beth Jones, Mike Huckabee, Rich Stearns, Patrick Lencioni, Seth Godin, John Townsend. Oh…and Tony Dungy and Lou Holtz. And 18 more, including a former Mafia boss.

The unique setting: the “green room” where speakers hang out in between speaking assignments. The conference: a fictitious “Master Leaders” two-day leadership event attended by thousands. (While fictitious, Barna actually did interview all 30 leaders and, obviously, got their sign-offs on their “quoted” conversations.)

It’s the perfect leadership book if you’ve got attention deficit disorder or you don’t or won’t take the time to read the thousands of pages written by these 30 leadership doers and thinkers. Hang onto your Kindle, the book moves fast. Dialogue is spirited. Insights are short and snappy—without any of the patronizing dribble so common in “I’m the guru” books.

Barna, who plays himself in this leadership axioms marathon, is hilarious at appropriate times. Laugh-out-loud funny. His segues between conversations are masterful. George is no leadership novice himself, but his self-effacing tone models a savvy humility. (Can you put those two words together?)

So…if you pay attention, you’ll enjoy 200 pages crammed with executive level street smarts and about a thousand years of leadership experience. It’s a leadership and management feast. So taste these morsels (or as Barna labels the book, “an educational blitzkrieg):

RICH STEARNS: “The most effective leaders are good at constantly pushing away the things that consume them but that are not adding value at the end of the day, and they try to spend more and more time on those things that do add value.”

DON SODERQUIST: “I discovered you can’t change everybody.”

GEORGE BARNA: “Note to self: leaders teach through stories, even if the tale is told at their expense.”

JOHN ASHCROFT: “First leadership is the identification of noble goals and objectives, and second, it is the pursuit of those noble goals and objectives with such intensity that others are drawn into the process.”

NEWT GINGRICH: “You get what you measure.”

JON GORDON (on vision and values): “Repetition is the number one thing. I have one story that I love to tell and I have probably told it over four thousand times.”

PATRICK LENCIONI (on vision and values): “We talk about being humble, hungry, smart.”

SODERQUIST: “Egos get bigger and people become more arrogant, the higher their position.”

BARNA: “Ken [Blanchard] was doing something that great leaders do: take the complex and make it simple.”

GORDON: “Culture drives behavior, and behavior drives habits in an organization.”

MILES McPHERSON: “One way to get a healthy culture is to hire healthy people.”

GINGRICH: “Wisdom beats being the smartest. That’s the great problem Bill Clinton had. Clinton is tremendously smart; he just has the least wisdom of a senior leader I’ve ever seen.”

BOB DEES: “I was in Germany in a training environment and we didn’t have any training aids, like PowerPoint or projectors. But I always thought it was a sin to bore the troops when you were training them, so I asked my platoon sergeant for some chalk and an armored personnel carrier. He got them, and we used the side of the carrier as a blackboard.”

SAM CHAND: “Is this person a can’t or won’t? Can’t is about abilities…but won’t is about attitude.”

BARNA: “Vision is the air that leaders breathe.”

HENRY CLOUD: “Leadership development, in some form or fashion, is always about leaders being coaches.”

JIMMY BLANCHARD: “One thing we learned is that developing leaders is probably the most appreciated benefit in the company.”

CLOUD: “When trust is high, speed is high, so we can get things done faster and the costs are lower.”

GINGRICH: “You have to surround yourself with people who can fire you.”

KEN BLANCHARD (on listening): “I love the whole concept of leading with your ears.”

DEES: “There is an expression in the military: threat clears a man’s head—when that happens, you’re very teachable.”

CLOUD: “The good [leaders] don’t see a problem as a problem. They see it as part of leading.”

LOU HOLTZ: “We don’t like where we are, but the only thing that’s going to change it from where we are today, to where we’ll be five years from now is the books we read, the people we meet, and the dreams we dream.”

J. BLANCHARD: “Everybody who works for us has a right to work for a good boss.”

STEARNS: “Leaders have to be very aware of the power they wield. When you’re at the bottom of the hierarchical ladder, sometimes you have to shout to be heard, because you don’t have any title or you don’t have authority. But when you are the CEO or a top leader, you can speak softly and it sounds like a shout to someone. So when you criticize someone, you have to be very careful abut being too blunt or cutting, because whatever you say will be amplified ten times just because you’re the president. You have to adapt your style to realize that it’s not just you, the person, speaking; it’s the position that you hold that’s speaking.”

There are a zillion more insights like these. The chapter on hiring and firing is brilliant, as is the rarely addressed topic (an entire chapter) on confrontation and conflict. Like I said, this book is a feast. Kudos to George Barna and Bill Dallas!

To order this book from Amazon, click on this title: Master Leaders: Revealing Conversations With 30 Leadership Greats, by George Barna with Bill Dallas.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) How do you coach a “can’t” person? How do you help a “won’t” team member?
2) Rich Stearns says that effective leaders “try to spend more and more time on those things that do add value.” What should you STOP doing today that doesn’t add value here?”

Get Real. You’re Insane! - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Strategy Bucket, Chapter 3, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to be strategic about strategic planning.  It was Albert Einstein who said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If your company or organization has gone three or more years without a written strategic planning process and you think that this year you’ll finally get around to it, Einstein has one word for you: insanity!

One solution: recruit or retain a volunteer or consultant to help you keep your feet to the strategic planning fire. A team-crafted, staff-driven strategic plan is not more busy work.  Instead it can be transformational for your team as you focus on your mission and eliminate activity-driven money-wasters in favor of results-driven big ideas.

On the Buckets website, check out the strategic planning resources, including Worksheet #3.1: "Summarize Your Plan With a G.N.O.M.E. Chart."

MANAGEMENT BUCKETS WORKSHOP:
• October 20-21, 2009 – Mastering the Management Buckets Workshop Experience (Dana Point, California) - Click here for more information.

Personal Action Journal (The Hole in Our Gospel 6-Week Quest)

Issue No. 157 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting suggests you lead your staff team in a 42-day journey with the new Personal Action Journal—to help make poverty personal.  And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. 

Do the Math on Tithing

Here’s a real gut-check for every Christ follower and every church.  According to World Vision U.S. President Rich Stearns, our charitable giving is, well, shockingly stingy. On average, Christians in the U.S. give just over two percent of their income to God’s work.  Then, of that two percent, just two percent of that amount goes to alleviate poverty and injustice around the world.

Stearns writes, “The bottom line is that the commitment that American Christians, the wealthiest Christians in all history, are making to the world is just about 2 percent of 2 percent—actually about five ten-thousandths of our income.”

But you probably have enough guilt already.  Instead, how about taking a 42-day journey to make poverty personal? “Day 34: Do the Math on Tithing” is one of 42 action-oriented awareness and soul-probing exercises in the hot-off-the-press Personal Action Journal, just one resource in The Hole in Our Gospel Six-Week Quest—a radical, eye-opening campaign for churches, small groups and individuals, developed by CrossSection, in concert with World Vision and Thomas Nelson. (I was privileged to write the journal with major input from my son, Jason, co-founder of CrossSection.)

Probing and pondering the 2,000 verses in the Bible that address poverty and injustice, the daily action items include:
   • Day 1: Ask “What Does God Expect of Me?”
   • Day 3: Pack Your Suitcase (Limit: 5 Items)
   • Day 6: Give a Chicken
   • Day 15: Track One Day’s Consumption
   • Day 16: Imagine Yourself as a Slave Trader
   • Day 21: Picture an Orphan at Your Door
   • Day 30: Don’t Go to Church, Be the Church
   • Day 31: Try a Rice and Water Day
   • Day 38: Wear the Same Clothes 2 Days in a Row

The six-week campaign materials (including fast-paced and hard-hitting DVD documentary “shorts” and real life pack-a-punch stories and insights on poverty, plus a study guide) are based on the book by Richard E. Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? The Answer That Changed My Life and Might Just Change the World. (Click here to read my review.)

Click here to download a free preview of the 42-day Personal Action Journal from “The Hole in Our Gospel Six-Week Quest.”

Stearns asks, “What does God expect of us?”  The hole? One wise sage observed, “We have shrunk Jesus to the size where He can save our soul but now don’t believe He can change the world.”

Stearns calls the church to a new awareness about the nearly 3 billion people who live on less than $2 per day, often without access to clean water, food and medicine. But why, he asks, are not Christians mobilizing to serve the world's poor and tackle the problems that fuel the cycle of poverty?

He adds, “Here is what would happen if we all paid our tithe—that is, 10 percent of our incomes instead of the 2.5 percent we actually give: we would have an extra $168 billion [per year] to spend in funding the work of the Church worldwide!”

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Calculate your total gross income for the last 10 years.  Then add up the funds that you have given to help the world’s poor.  How do you feel when you compare these numbers?
2) Research how much of your church’s budget goes for the following categories: Your Church, Your City, Your State, U.S. (except your state), Outside the U.S. (for the poor), Outside the U.S. (other than the poor). Is there a hole in your church—or in your own giving?

One-Size-Fits-All: Not! - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Customer Bucket, Chapter 2, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to move customers from ignorance to purchase.  If your organization has just one website and a one-size-fits-all brochure to reach the diversity of your customers, clients, members or donors—you’re likely missing huge opportunities. 

You must segment your current customers and potential customers into at least six levels. Level 1: Ignorance, Level 2: Awareness, Level 3: Interest, Level 4: Trial or Consideration, Level 5: Preference, and Level 6: Purchase.

Before your print your next brochure, determine customer levels from “ignorance” to “purchase”—and target your product, program or service to their unique needs. (Talk about this at your next staff meeting and bring your rack brochures.) On the Buckets website, there are 10 books that will give you more guidance in the Customer Bucket.

MANAGEMENT BUCKETS WORKSHOP:
• October 20-21, 2009 – Mastering the Management Buckets Workshop Experience (Blue Lantern Inn, Dana Point, California). Click here for more information.

Cheers for Bo's Cafe

Issue No. 156 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a novel with a real life message on grace.  I’ll bet any CEO $500 that behind the masks of many of their team members are sad faces needing a divine dose of grace. This book is one of my Top-5 Books of the Year for 2009. And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. 

Cheers for Bo’s Cafe

Warning. If you read this book on an airplane, you’ll have to explain to your seatmates why your eyes get teary-eyed toward the back of this can’t-put-it-down novel. (Fortunately, the middle seat was empty on my flight.)

“Why do you enjoy making everything I say sound stupid?” Steven Kerner asks his Southern California out-of-the-box mentor.  The loud Hawaiian-shirted, 1970 Buick Electra-driving, cigar-smoking, becoming-a-trusted-friend responds, “I don’t. I only enjoy making the stupid things you say sound stupid.”

“Will grace finally win?” is the big question in this life-changing, profound first-person story. It’s a novel, but don’t let that fool you. It’s in-the-trenches real life. Uncomfortably so. It’s for Christ-followers who don’t and it’s for Christ-seekers who might.

Andy, the Beach Boys-era sage (with his own warts) comments, “Nothing defines religion quite as well as a bunch of people trying to do impossible tasks with limited power while bluffing to themselves that it’s working.” 

Bo’s Café is the Pacific Ocean view hangout.  The assembled cast is part Cheers (where everybody knows your name) and part sit-com accountability group. Carlos (who used to fake it as a pastor) guts it out about the environment of grace that is the gang at Bo’s Café:

“Listen, we don’t need places like this to become more like church. We need churches to become more like this place. You know?”

But don’t think that this is about church or Cheers.  Fast-track marketing exec Steven (age 34, married, one daughter) has blown it.  Married. Marriage problems. Angry. Anger problems. Serious mask problems. All the past fixes don’t fix it.  “Lies picked up when we’re young can stay with us for a lifetime.”

And so enters grace.  An environment of grace. I won’t spoil the story.  But let me say this. I have three more months of books to review this year. I can announce already that Bo’s Café is on my Annual Top-5 list. It’s that important. You’ll hear from God and want to share it with many, many others.

I’m so grateful for John Lynch, Bill Thrall and Bruce McNicol—and the whole TrueFaced team—for this gift to God’s people.  William Paul Young, the author of The Shack, writes, “Bo’s Café is a treasure for all of us who harbor a longing to be authentic.” Treasure indeed.

To order this book from Amazon, click on this title: Bo’s Café: A Novel, by John Lynch, Bill Thrall and Bruce McNicol.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) In this novel, Andy (the mentor) says, “Meagan isn’t different from anyone else. She’s just another on an endless conveyor belt of those who’ve been trapped into believing a lie about themselves.” Have you ever worked with a team member like Meagan?
2) On the TrueFaced blog post on Sept. 7, 2009, John Lynch begins, “Today I’ve been thinking about that place in us that doesn’t change by will power, diligence or good intention.” He then goes on to write a hilarious, yet poignant restaurant scene about self-perception and the lies we believe.  It’s a great staff meeting opener followed by this question, “What validates your worth in God’s eyes?”

Your 90-Day #1 Goal - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Results Bucket, Chapter 1, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to prioritize results with S.M.A.R.T. standards of performance (maybe 5 to 10 SOPs).  Guess what? I’m suggesting everyone take a time out and focus on JUST ONE GOAL!

Here’s the shocking reality: few CEOs and even fewer senior team members and even fewer direct reports to those team members can articulate their Top-10 goals for the year.  So…let’s put the cookies on the bottom shelf again. 

For the next 90 days (your next quarter), ask each team member to post their ONE BIG GOAL on the whiteboard or flipchart by the coffee pot. Then, do a stand-up meeting once a week for the whole team or department (with food, of course). Go around the circle and ask each person to report on the status of their Number One goal.  Celebrate goal accomplishment and encourage those who are facing challenges. Give grace (read Bo’s Café first!).

On the Buckets website, you can download a story that Peter Drucker told about goal alignment between a Fortune 500 company CEO and his VP of Marketing. 

NEXT CEO DIALOGUES:
• October 1, 2009 – CEO Dialogues 1-Day Roundtable (New York City)
Click here for more information.

MANAGEMENT BUCKETS WORKSHOP:
• October 20-21, 2009 – Mastering the Management Buckets Workshop Experience (Blue Lantern Inn, Dana Point, California)
Click here for more information.

 

Fearless

Issue No. 155 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting delivers biblical solutions for addressing the issues that keep you and your team members up at night (fear, worry, anxiety, etc.) Max Lucado delivers the perfect book for your worry worts and those who pretend not to worry. And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. 

8 Worry-Stoppers

“Worry is the darkroom where negatives become glossy prints,” writes Master Wordsmith Max Lucado.  His latest book is Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear.  Recently, I wrote about Google’s Eric Schmidt who uncovered a “culture of fear” when he was assigned the turn-around task at Novell in 1997. It’s one thing to label the problem—it’s another thing to fix it.  Lucado does both by creatively attacking 14 fears— and offering up biblical solutions with his trademark stories and masterful writing.

Chapter 4, “Fear of Running Out,” arrested my attention because he had a writing deadline by 5 p.m. that day and so did I.  He reminded me, “Fret won’t fill a bird’s belly with food or a flower’s petal with color.”

When Jesus’ disciples had a catering problem with just five loaves and two fish (seven items) Max asks, “How do you suppose Jesus felt about the basket inventory? Any chance he might have wanted them to include the rest of the possibilities? Involve all the options? Do you think he was hoping someone might count to eight?”

Eight? “We have five loaves, two fish, and…Jesus!”  That’s a spectacular reminder for all of us number-crunchers and strategic planners.  Count to eight!

So Lucado gives us another eight:
1) Pray, first.
2) Easy, now. Slow down.
3) Act on it.
4) Compile a worry list.
5) Evaluate your worry categories.
6) Focus on today.
7) Unleash a worry army.
8) Let God be enough.

He expands on each best practice with minimal words, but poignant promises.  Then, Classic Max, he points out that the acronym for the eight worry-stoppers is P.E.A.C.E.F.U.L.  He blessed me and he’ll bless you.  There is more good fear-fighting stuff in the other 13 chapters.  It’s the perfect book to delegate to a team member. “Pick a chapter and give us a five-minute reminder on how to imagine a life without fear.”

To order this book from Amazon, click on this title: Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear, by Max Lucado.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) What keeps you up at night?
2) Make a list of your Top-10 worries.  Jesus said in Matthew 6:32-33 (NLT), “Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”

Weekly Pulse-Checker - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Meetings Bucket, Chapter 20, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to be intentional with one-on-one meetings with your direct reports each week. In reality, it won’t be every week because of vacations, days off, travel, etc. But, at a minimum, meet twice a month.

CEOs, senior leaders and managers who consistently meet with their direct reports and use a tool such as the “Weekly Update to My Supervisor” form, affirm that the time and energy invested pays rich dividends. Here are just a few of the powerful things that happen when you meet weekly with your direct reports:
   • Team members are affirmed regularly.
   • Direct reports more consistently leverage their strengths, their social styles and their spiritual gifts.
   • Standards of performance are clear and goals are achieved on time and under budget.
   • Staff conflict, gossip and misinformation challenges are dramatically reduced because truth-telling is a practiced core value.
   • Bottlenecks and missed deadlines are eliminated.
   • Recommendations are more thoughtful and intentional.
   • Communication is enhanced as you use your direct report’s preferred communication style.
   • The pulse (morale, passion and energy) of your team is checked weekly.
   • Affirmed and productive team members mean less staff turnover.
   • And . . . team members often give you affirmation!

On the Buckets website, you can download a template for the “Weekly Update to My Supervisor” form, plus a commentary on how to use the form.

 

Myself and Other More Important Matters

Issue No. 154 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting asks why would anyone want to read your autobiography? After reading Charles Handy’s book this week, I was inspired, educated and encouraged. His book delivers some memorable management stories to share at your next staff meeting.  And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. 

Charles Handy, Guru

Absolutely fascinating.  Charles Handy, often called the “Peter Drucker of the United Kingdom,” (though he’s much more than that) has penned a page-turner autobiography. If you’re over 50, it’s must-reading.  In between his short, crisp management meanderings, he dispenses wisdom on the “portfolio” life—why your middle and later years might be better invested on your own versus at the whims of an organization. (Attention all wanna-be consultants!)

Under 50? Then I’d suggest it’s required reading.  You’ll be shocked—and educated—when you discover that Britain had no books on management in the 1950s (none). And no business schools until he co-founded the London Business School in 1967 (after a year at MIT’s Sloan). “Business…was long seen by the British as a lower status occupation, definitely inferior to the armed services.” His thoughts about America, flavored with his peculiar “cultural Christian” insights (his father was a Church of Ireland minister) will intrigue you.

While paradigm-changing concepts like the shamrock organization, the sigmoid curve, “doughnuts,” and the “portfolio worker” elevated him to management guru status, his humility is remarkable. He said that Drucker “once quipped that journalists only came up with the word [guru] because ‘charlatan’ was too long for a headline.”

Handy’s written 14 books, including his classics Understanding Organizations, The Future of Work, Gods of Management, and The Age of Unreason.  While this book is autobiographical, his professor/consultant bent pops out on every page.  His early employer, Shell, became big fans of Douglas McGregor’s 1960 book, The Human Side of Enterprise. Of McGregor’s two styles of leadership, Theory X (people need to be told what to do) and Theory Y (people can act responsibly on their own initiative), Shell decreed that “they would be a Theory Y organization, unaware, presumably, of the confusion they caused by using Theory X to implement Theory Y. Old habits die hard.” That’s just one anecdote in a feast of memorable management stories, with wisdom and dry wit thrown in at no extra charge. 

I can’t resist adding one more. Later in life, he limited his speaking engagements to five per year for fees and five for expenses only (never in the summer).  Handy’s wife, Elizabeth, handled his bookings. When asked to speak in Calcutta for the British Council, the proposed fee was minimal. “Pay him nothing,” Elizabeth suggested. “But you must have all the right connections, so could you arrange for us to have an hour alone with each of the four most interesting people in Calcutta?”  The result?

“So it was that we met privately and personally with the chief minister, who turned out to be a jovial Marxist, with Mother Teresa, surrounded by her nuns, the vice-chancellor of the university and a prominent local artist. Money can’t buy that kind of experience.”

To order this book from Amazon, click on this title: Myself and Other More Important Matters, by Charles Handy.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Why would anyone want to read your autobiography?
2) This week’s assignment: research the management concepts of Charles Handy and then next week share what you learned about the S-shaped sigmoid curve and plot where our organization is on that diagram.

Return on Design - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Printing Bucket, Chapter 19, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to use print deadlines to burn the fuzz off your organization’s blue sky plans that otherwise would rarely be committed to the printed page (or the website). Ditto for design. Think it out—write it down.

Seth Godin, the guru marketing author, recently suggested that organizations take a closer look at “return on design.” There are four zones: 1) Negative return, 2) No impact, 3) Positive return, and 4) The whole thing. He writes, “I find it's more useful to look at them as distinct states as opposed to a graduated line, because it's easy to spend a lot of time and money on design but not move up in benefits the way you might expect.” Click here to read his blog on this subject.

On the Buckets website, you’ll find some rarely-mentioned resources for improving your critical competencies in the Printing Bucket—and ways to leverage that bucket for organizational health.

 

 

Spiritual Leadership

Issue No. 153 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a spiritual leadership classic.  At your next staff meeting, ask a team member to read and review it for a future meeting. Why?  “Read to re-fill the wells of inspiration,” wrote Harold J. Ockenga, who took a suitcase full of books on his honeymoon. (Yikes!)  And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. 

Enmeshed in Secondary Detail

“There is no virtue in doing more than our fair share of work,” writes J. Oswald Sanders in his oft-quoted classic, Spiritual Leadership. Referencing the delegation counsel from Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, Sanders adds, “Moses could doubtless have done the task better than the 70 men whom he selected, but had he persisted in doing so, he would soon have been only a memory."

My buckets-leaning heart was blessed to know that Oswald Sanders included a chapter on “The Art of Delegation” in this masterpiece on spiritual leadership.  (See the Delegation Bucket chapter in my book.) So…what’s the spiritual issue at play in effective delegation? “It is a mistake to assume more duties than we can adequately and satisfactorily discharge,” he warns. “It is good to be able to recognize and accept our own limitations.”  Leaders who have spiritual depth have delegation depth also.

Sanders cautions us that the person who is “in a place of leadership who fails to delegate is enmeshed in a morass of secondary detail that not only overburdens him but deflects him from his primary responsibilities.”  He adds, “The leader who is meticulous in observing priorities adds immeasurably to his own effectiveness.”

The 22 chapters have something for every leader, including: Can You Become a Leader? The Cost of Leadership, The Perils of Leadership, Replacing Leaders (good stuff!) and Reproducing Leaders.

Published in 1967, Spiritual Leadership has sold more than 500,000 copies and shows no signs of slowing down. When I checked its sales ranking on Amazon this week, it had a #2 ranking in one of the bestselling lists. That’s amazing! If you have never read this classic, or it’s been some time since you’ve feasted on the author’s wisdom, then read it again. Or…delegate your reading to a team member who will appreciate a leadership book that soars above the trendy stuff.

To order this book from Amazon, click on this title: Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer, by J. Oswald Sanders.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Why do you think Oswald Sanders included “The Art of Delegation” as one of 22 chapters in his book on spiritual leadership?
2) In groups of three, make a quick list of the other 21 chapters you might include in a book on “spiritual leadership” that will sell at least 500,000 copies—and will still be selling in 2050!

Diminishing Returns - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Systems Bucket, Chapter 18, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to understand the Law of Diminishing Returns. This law fits in many buckets, but it’s a frequent sin in the Systems Bucket.

Ken Behr, former president of ECFA, cautions leaders and managers to evaluate growth and decline cycles so they know when it’s time to pull the plug on a program, product or service. For example, if you invest $5,000 to increase your customer base by 10 percent, should you invest another $5,000—or will you have diminishing returns? If two staff members are overloaded, does adding a third person make economic and organizational sense? Use systems thinking, Behr preaches, to analyze the Law of Diminishing Returns.

On the Buckets website, you’ll find a unique add-water-and-stir resource that is amazingly simple, yet profound.  FYI: For Your Improvement: A Guide for Development and Coaching offers a systems approach to coaching your people.