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Faith for Exiles

Issue No. 438 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features the latest book from Barna—and their robust research on Millennials and growing “resilient disciples.” Must-read. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my review of Fearless Innovation: A No-Nonsense Guide.

5 Years in the Paint Aisle Won’t Make You a Painter! 

The authors of Faith for Exiles leave no cherished church practice unrebuked. They write:

A few years ago, the Barna team was conducting research among teenagers who had left the church. While interviewing a young woman about her relationships with the church before she left, David asked, “Did you have good friendships at the church?” 

“No, not really. I guess a couple of my age group were my friends, but not close.”

“None of the adults?”

“No.”

“What about the youth pastor?”

“The youth pastor was paid to be my friend.”

David needed a couple of seconds to catch his breath. “What do you mean?”

“That was part of his job. He’s paid to be a marketer of church to teenagers.”

Ouch.

Whoa. We have a big problem—and David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock are gutsy enough to talk about it. My words (not their words): Sunday morning at 11 a.m., while helpful, is not the whole enchilada. And the more we persist in adding more bells and whistles to the one-hour per week “main event”—putting most of our eggs into this basket—we are deluding ourselves. The king has no clothes, colleagues. It’s time to admit it.

The authors’ research concludes that “many young people (and older adults, for that matter) are dutiful churchgoers while remaining spiritually inert. Church involvement is a necessary but insufficient condition for resilient discipleship.” They add, “It is difficult if not downright impossible, to shape hearts and minds with only a few hours a week to work with.”

Yikes! “Let’s say you show up at a home improvement store and stand in the paint aisle every week for five years straight. You even attend a couple of demonstrations by the experts in the orange aprons. That doesn’t make you a painter.”

The good news: this book is hopeful, not disparaging. Subtitled, “5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon,” Faith for Exiles delivers on its bold promise—and along the way, you’ll experience all the emotions: mad, sad, glad. (I got teary-eyed reading some of the Kinnaman and Matlock family stories to my wife.)

Until Faith for Exiles was published last September, I had not seen such thoughtful segmentation thinking since The Engel Scale (see “Segment Your Customers Prayerfully” in the Customer Bucket of my book). High fives to the authors!

The Barna research reveals that “Resilient faith is not easy to sustain in any context, but it’s even harder for young people in digital Babylon. Among today’s 18- to 29-year-olds, here is what’s happening among those who grew up Christian.”
   • 22% are Prodigals (Ex-Christians)
   • 30% are Nomads (Unchurched)
   • 38% are Habitual Churchgoers
   • 10% are Resilient Disciples

The book defines each segment and notes that “Habitual Churchgoers” have attended church at least once in the past month, “yet do not meet foundational core beliefs or behaviors associated with being an intentional, engaged disciple.”

You might be discouraged upon learning that 90% (the first three groups above) are not on the disciple path, but Kinnaman and Matlock will, in fact, encourage you. They see great promise in the 10% and their research and practical next steps will inspire you to focus on the few. (Hmmm. Reminds me of the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13. If you’re a leader at a Christian college or camp, youth ministry or church—and/or you’re a fully devoted parent or grandparent—this is a must-read.)

So…the authors share their robust research and recommendations in five meaty practices for growing resilient disciples:
   • Practice 1: To form a resilient identity, experience intimacy with Jesus.
   • Practice 2: In a complex and anxious age, develop the muscles of cultural discernment.
   • Practice 3: When isolation and mistrust are the norms, forge meaningful, intergenerational relationships.
   • Practice 4: To ground and motivate an ambitious generation, train for vocational discipleship.
   • Practice 5: Curb entitlement and self-centered tendencies by engaging in countercultural mission. (For example—read about 18-year-old Katie’s amazing Ugandan adoption adventure on page 201. Eighteen!)

So what’s with the Babylonian exile metaphor? “Ancient Babylon was the pagan-but-spiritual, hyperstimulated, imperial crossroads that became the unwilling home of Judean exiles, including the prophet Daniel in the sixth century BCE. But digital Babylon is not a physical place. It’s the pagan-but-spiritual, hyperstimulated, imperial crossroads that is the virtual home of every person with Wi-Fi, a data plan, or—for most of us—both.”

“In digital Babylon, where information (and any thing we could ever want or need) is instantly available at the godlike swipe of a finger, Almighty God has been squeezed to the margins.” They add, “That transition—from faith at the center to faith at the margins—is happening in North America and other societies in the cultural West. Our data show widespread, top-to-bottom changes from a Christianized to a post-Christian society.”

Yikes…I had highlighted more than 100 quotable quotes for this review. Way too many. I identified more than a dozen zinger, attention-getting titles for this review. I could only use one! I was ready to wax eloquent on Practice 4’s “vocational discipleship” and why it was my favorite chapter—but it was replaced by Practice 5, which was replaced by the “What’s Next” conclusion. Killer insights: hard truth delivered with hopeful hearts. You’ll just have to read or listen to this book yourself. Don’t settle for the paint aisle at Home Depot.

Well—OK—if you insist. I’ll end with five teasers:
• “If, in trying to build our ministries, churches, and impact, we have contributed to the inoculation of a generation, how can we repent?” (See pages 56-57).
• “When Christians capitulate to the zeitgeist of cultural norms—if we cannot articulate a countercultural biblical morality, for example—we leave the next generation immunodeficient.” (Relevant metaphor!)
• David Medders at a seminar with Christian college students: “I’d like to personally repent for my generation, the Boomers, and how we’ve let these negative perceptions [about Millennials] take root.” (Must-read: pages 141-142)
• Three Buckets! Barna research identified three major career aspirations of practicing Christian teens: Entrepreneurial, Science-minded, and Creative. “Skye Jethani points out that, according to the book of Genesis, God ordains work to accomplish three things: to generate abundance, to bring order, and to cultivate beauty.” (Read more on this alignment in “What’s My Calling?” on pages 154-157.)
• “At one point in his life, Mark wrote down every biblical proverb on an index card and sorted the cards into thematic piles. As he did so, he discovered that each proverb falls into one of seven broad categories.” (See page 169 for the seven marks of a wise person, according to Proverbs.)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon, by David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock. Click here to listen to the book on Libro.fm (5 hours, 52 minutes). And thanks to Tom Matlock (Mark’s father/raving fan) for providing a review copy.



Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) The Barna team “invented” the phrase “vocational discipleship.” Brilliant. Re-read the review of Non-Obvious Megatrends and how to “name” a trend. Then read about “vocational discipleship” in Faith for Exiles. Identify something we’ve recently named well—and something we’ve botched when naming it.
2) According to Kinnaman and Matlock, “Many pastors admit they don’t enjoy developing younger leaders—but ensuring the transfer of leadership to the next generation is a requirement, not a choice.” Read “Mentoring in Digital Babylon,” pages 169-174, and then re-read the reviews of nine mentoring/coaching books. Rate our organization (1 to 5, with 5 being high): How effectively are we mentoring emerging leaders? 

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COVID-19: Customer Segmenting 2.0
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Customer Bucket is to segment our customers to more effectively meet their unique needs. Faith for Exiles focuses on a high priority 10% of today’s 18- to 29-year-olds who grew up Christian—but it’s a potentially high Kingdom impact segment—“Resilient Disciples.”

In Mastering the Management Buckets, we highlight “The Engel Scale,” named by an appreciative grad student who studied under Jim Engel. (Read What's Gone Wrong With the Harvest? by James F. Engel and Wilbert Norton.)

The scale begins with a -8 (a person with an awareness of a supreme being, but no effective knowledge of the gospel). It moves down to a -1 (repentance and faith in Christ), and then to a +1, +2, +3, +4, +5 and beyond (demonstrating growth in being a Christ-follower).

We note, “Fifty-two weeks of Sunday sermons may be 52 weeks of miscommunication if the message is targeted to +3 Christ-followers when 50 percent of the congregation is still at -1. Yikes!”

During this COVID-19 era, you and your team will likely move to Customer Segmenting 2.0—to go deeper on more research-based customer segmenting. Most organizations will need to drop some programs, products or services—and hone others. You’ll likely create new programs. But before you join the what-everyone-else-is-doing band wagon—and squander money down a black hole—read the Customer Bucket chapter.

And to fill in the blanks on your customer research, check out these jam-packed trend reports:
• Barna Trends 2018: What's New and What's Next at the Intersection of Faith and Culture (read my review)
• Barna Trends 2017: What’s New and What’s Next at the Intersection of Faith and Culture (read my review)

For more resources and books lists, visit the Customer Bucket.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Look at your recent marketing campaign. Was it targeted to the Info-Sponge Customer, the Just-the-Facts Customer, the Heartfelt Customer, or the Share-Meister Customer? Read REBRAND: Workbook + Coloring Sheets for Ministry Branding, by Jason Pearson, a fun and creative starter kit for nonprofit ministry and church marketing teams. Millennials will appreciate the fresh approach (a coloring workbook!) and marketing veterans will have a good laugh and a new coaching tool. Plus, check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video).
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Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

9 Mentoring and Coaching Books

Issue No. 437 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends you focus on the narrow mentoring window—before it’s too late. Here are nine books to help you. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my review of Non-Obvious Megatrends.

Hall of Fame-level Blunders 

I’m guessing the Library of Congress will need another building by the end of the COVID-19 era. Much has been written by experts and non-experts! But unless I missed it, I’ve not seen anything about the emerging managers, new CEOs, and just-appointed senior team members, who may be forgotten or ignored due to—yes—more challenging, but perhaps, misplaced priorities.

In their thoughtful article on March 20, “Leading Beyond the Blizzard: Why Every Organization Is Now a Startup,” Praxis leaders Andy Crouch, Kurt Keilhacker, and Dave Blanchard, note that COVID-19 may disrupt organizations for 18 months or more. They write:

“But 18 months is not a season—it is, for many purposes, more like an age or an era. Just to choose one example, the Tufts scholar Maryanne Wolf has theorized that there is a roughly three-year window, from ages 7 to 9, when children can transition from ‘novice’ reading to ‘fluent’ reading. Children who miss this window, for any number of reasons, seem never to acquire genuinely fluent reading skills no matter how much additional instruction they receive later in life.” (Click here to read their April 23 follow-up.)

With crises everywhere—and it’s very, very tough—let me encourage you to think about the mentoring window. If your new team members (those who arrived just before lockdown) are neglected, they may never catch up—never unlearning inappropriate leadership and management bad habits from their early months or years. But—if somehow—you can invest time in this formative window in their careers, the results can be transformational.

Letters to My Younger Self!

Now in her sixth decade, Michelle Hoverson has just published a brilliant coaching tool, Mentoring Moments with Myself. She writes to her “younger self,” reflecting on life lessons learned. Whew—talk about transparency! Must read: “Chapter 2 or Chapter 22?” She reflects on her early CEO years:

“Comparison will be an ever-present trap.”

After 23 years in ministry (compassion pastor in a large church) and several corporate communication positions ranging from a law firm to the White House, Hoverson became the executive director of an international missions ministry. But, she had never been the fundraiser. Her aha moment: “This will take you swimming in the deep end of the pool.”

So this new CEO connects with a friend who led “a massive international ministry,” and his response unleashed “a downward spiral of self-doubt.” She didn’t have the experience, the staff, the network, or the volunteers.

The conversation haunted her for 24 hours—then she prayed. So today, she writes to her younger self. “You will realize that your friend’s nonprofit is experiencing chapter 22 in its development. You, however, are just writing chapter 2. Nothing will steal the hope and joy from your heart more quickly than comparison.”

That’s from page 11 and she’s just warming up. What a brilliant idea (did I mention that?). Write letters to your younger self: counsel, thoughts, reflections. Hold nothing back. And thus inspire other leaders to write “Dear Younger Me” letters. (There are blank pages at the end of every short chapter.) Her insights abound:

• “In an effort to avoid mistakes, you will want to retreat from making daring and bold moves. When you find yourself deliberating too long or waiting for one more sign from God, you will risk missing the miraculous if you choose safety and don’t go up the mountain.”
• “As you age, you will see culture slowly releasing its grip on the importance of faithfulness.” (Read Psalm 31:23, Proverbs 3:3-4, and Luke 16:10-12. Question: “Why does God place a high value on faithfulness?”)
• On grumbling and complaining: “Don’t do it. Ungratefulness is socially unbecoming and spiritually limiting. No one is inspired by a grouch. You will do well to remember that the Israelite’s 11-day journey through the wilderness took 40 years because of their ungratefulness.” (Attn: COVID-19 pilgrims!)

The one-liners are convicting:
• “Listen instead of lecture.”
• “Let failure influence you, not define you.”
• “Stay in your own lane and not run the race someone else is winning.”
• “Take it one step at a time and not try to skip the steps.”
• “Oh my gosh, you are going to make so many mistakes! Some will be minor, and others will be real doozies—Hall of Fame-level blunders.”
• “People will pressure you to conform. Choose to be a prototype, not a stereotype.”

Who are you mentoring (or should be mentoring) that needs this book? Hoverson’s chapter, “The Aging Advantage,” is wisdom-filled. “The more you age, the more you realize…the value of the pause.”
     “When in doubt—pause.
     When making a big decision—pause.
     When angry—pause before responding.
     When tired—pause before reacting.
     And when you pause—pray.”

The author’s humility is arresting. She’s says she’s not really a writer, but her wise words are colorful and memorable. After a defining moment: “In a parking lot, you will wage a spiritual battle in prayer. Like never before, you’ll turn into a scriptural machine gun, firing relentlessly at the adversary of your soul and declaring the promises of God for your life.”

This is a keeper!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Mentoring Moments with Myself: Letters to My Younger Self about Life, Faith, Love and Leadership, by Michelle Hoverson.



Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) List the emerging leaders on your team that are currently in the “mentoring window.” What’s your coaching plan for them?
2) Michelle Hoverson writes, “When Jesus encountered future disciples and said, ‘Follow me,’ imagine what they would have missed if one replied, ‘Thanks, but I’m comfortable catching fish. I think I’ll just stay close to my boat.’” In this COVID-19 marathon, what does it mean to follow Jesus outside your comfort zone? 

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Resources for the “Mentoring Window”  
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Culture Bucket is to assess your team members through the filter of “The Ultimate Values Test” (page 94 in the workbook). This quadrant identifies four groups based on values and performance. Group 2, for example, includes people who live the values, but have unsatisfactory performance—so give them another chance. But here’s the big question: As you mentor your people on the importance of living your values—are you willing to “cut the cord” for people in Group 4?

These coaching books will help you address your culture—and your values. Share the books below and inspire every team member to have a coach/mentor—or be a coach/mentor:

[ ] Legacy: 60 Life Reflections for the Next Generation
Steve Macchia wrote 60 life lessons upon turning 60. (John Maxwell postponed writing Leadership Gold until he was 60. Catch the theme here?) I asked my son, Jason (not yet 60!), for his review of Macchia’s mentoring book:

Review by Jason Pearson: This book is a must-buy for any parent or grandparent who is intentional about their family’s spiritual growth [and their team’s growth]. Each two-page chapter gives practical, inspiring, and even some very powerful “soul care” lessons to reflect on with your own family [or team]. It isn't just a book—it’s an interactive journal that can be used around the dinner table.

If you were gone tomorrow—what are the key things you would want to pass on to your kids? Yes, we do think about those things, but Legacy provides an easy way to actually start doing them. Use the blank pages to share your own life experiences. Your family will keep and treasure your thoughts, we hope!

Warning! Legacy is not for the faint of heart. You may be asked to be vulnerable and bare your soul. Chapter 3, “Mistakes Regretted,” is perfect for sharing with teenagers and helping them to avoid a few of life's pitfalls!

What would you invest if you knew that your kids would have a consistent walk with Jesus? Certainly more than the price of this book! This book should be on every spouse’s wish list—and it’s a great resource for every team member.

GRANDPA JOHN’S NOTE: And while you’re in your bunker this month, it’s the perfect time to invest in your family (children and grandchildren) by completing the fun and meaningful journal by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. Click here to read my review.

MORE COACHING/MENTORING TOP PICKS:

[ ] 20 MENTORING SESSIONS: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Discover the 20 Workplace Habits You Need to Break, by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter (2013 Book-of-the-Year). This world class coach says that a “minor” workplace foible can become a major crisis. Why? “More often than not, it’s because people’s inner compass of correct behavior has gone out of whack—and they become clueless about their position among their coworkers.” (Listen to an abridged audio edition of the book at Libro.fm—just 6 hours.)

[ ] 11 MENTORING SESSIONS: The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead, by Eugene B. Habecker. The author quotes Henri Nouwen about blind spots: "The interruption…forced me to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there.”

[ ] 8 MENTORING SESSIONS: Monday Morning Leadership: 8 Mentoring Sessions You Can’t Afford to Miss, by David Cottrell. What if every person on your team had a Monday Morning management mentor for the next eight Mondays? Cottrell writes, “As a leader your job is to keep everyone’s bucket filled. You are the Chief Bucket-Filler, and the best way to fill buckets is with excellent communication.”

[ ] 10 MENTORING SESSIONS: The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible: Practical Insights From Extensive Research on Over 1,000 Biblical Leaders, by Steve Moore. PowerPoint worthy insights throughout!
   • “Pride hides from the consciousness of leaders behind a mask of overconfidence. Overconfidence isn’t just annoying to followers. It is dangerous for leaders.”
   • Did you ever read this parenthetical note in Numbers 12:3? “(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth.)”
   • “I find it easier to admit my lack of patience than my lack of humility.”

[ ] 14 MINUTES! The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier. View the author's 14-minute TEDx Talk (March 13, 2020), “How to Tame Your Advice Monster.” It’s meaty, funny, and might be your best use of 14 minutes this week!

[ ] STOP WORKING SO HARD! The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier. Follow his three memorable points on coaching:
   • BE LAZY: Stop working so hard.
   • BE CURIOUS: Stop giving so much advice.
   • BE OFTEN: Stop waiting to coach.

For more resources and books lists, visit the Book Bucket.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Who is mentoring and coaching the creatives on your team? Need help? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). 
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Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Non-Obvious Megatrends

Issue No. 436 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights an obvious Top-10 book for 2020, Non-Obvious Megatrends. Incredibly, the author grades himself with a “trend longevity rating” to the 135 trends he’s predicted since 2011. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my review of Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, by Dan Heath.
 
Be Observant, Curious, Fickle, Thoughtful, and Elegant

“At least 50 percent of pundits seem wrong all the time,” wrote Dan Gardner. “It’s just hard to tell which 50 percent.”

Can leaders spot trends—in advance? By page 28, the author of Non-Obvious Megatrends dramatically (dramatically!) shifted my thinking about trends. (Many books deliver pay dirt by page 25, but this was worth the extra effort.) Consider:
   • “Trend spotting isn’t the same as identifying actual trends.”
   • Definition: “A trend is a curated observation of the accelerating present.”

Rohit Bhargava, founder and chief trend curator of the Non-Obvious Company, shares this helpful metaphor: “When you focus on spotting stories that stand out, you gravitate toward collecting interesting ideas without understanding the broader context of what they mean. Calling the multitude of ideas spotted the same thing as a trend is like calling eggs, flour, and sugar sitting on a shelf the same thing as a cake. You can see ingredients, but true trends must be curated to have meaning just as a cake must be baked.”

Curated is the perfect word—and you will never, ever, read a book quite like Non-Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future. Five reasons:

#1. Research Methodology Unmasked! The author gives away the store in the first 67 pages. Actually, you could stop right there—read no further—and you’d already have a ROI more than 100 times the cost of the book. Example: You’ll rarely find a needle-in-a-haystack, but follow the author’s “Haystack Method” of curating trends—and you’ll find gold. Five steps:
   1. Gathering—save interesting ideas.
   2. Aggregating—curate information clusters.
   3. Elevating—identify broader themes.
   4. Naming—create elegant descriptions.
   5. Proving—validate without bias.

The “Naming” step is brilliant—how to wordcraft memorable trend titles. He delivers five questions that will scorch your first five trend-naming attempts! Example: “Does it make sense without too much explanation? Could you imagine it as the title of a book?”

Click here to watch a one-minute video of Rohit Bhargava’s Haystack Method. (See—he does give away the store and note that in this digital age, he’s old school.)


Click here to view this one-minute video of the Haystack Method.

#2. Five Mindsets Unmasked! Bhargava makes a bold claim: “Non-obvious thinking can make you the most creative person in the room, no matter what your business card says and help solve your biggest problems.” He quotes Isaac Asimov (author/editor of nearly 500 books): “I’m not a speed reader, I am a speed understander.” Bhargava summarizes “The Five Mindsets of Non-Obvious Thinkers” on page 15 (he’s an over-achiever!):
   1. Be Observant. See what others miss.
   2. Be Curious. Always ask why. [See also The Advice Trap.]
   3. Be Fickle. Learn to move on.
   4. Be Thoughtful. Take time to think.
   5. Be Elegant. Craft beautiful ideas.

Those five points will preach at your next weekly staff meeting. But he doesn’t stop with this well-designed page. He then summarizes the big ideas for each point (two pages per point, again, beautifully designed)—and lists three practical disciplines for each big idea. To be fickle, he suggests, “take shorter notes” and use a Sharpie marker so you note only the most useful observations. You’ll also appreciate his warning to avoid “the temptation to fixate on assigning meaning to every idea instantly.”

#3. Intersection Thinking Unmasked! Chapter 3 is a must-read. “Trends might offer a signal that you should consider abandoning an existing product line or staying the course in a direction that hasn’t paid off yet. Or they could suggest that you should pivot the focus of your career to learn new skills.”

He adds, “What gives you the power to receive these signals and reach these conclusions is intersection thinking, a method for connecting disparate concepts and beliefs from unrelated industries to generate new ideas or products.” The author lists four ways to leverage intersection thinking effectively:
   1. Focus on similarities.
   2. Embrace serendipitous ideas.
   3. Wander into the unfamiliar.
   4. Be persuadable.

Bhargava’s personal discipline is to read widely (off-beat magazines, A to Z industry publications, etc.). He takes a cue from the 1980s bestseller by John Naisbitt, Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives (14 million copies sold in 57 countries!). (See also the board retreat trend exercise, Tool #15, in ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Busby and Pearson.)

And here’s a non-obvious aha! When you leverage trend insights effectively, you will strengthen your culture (one of five tips for using trends—see the graphic on page 57). How? Trends will help you “improve your employee engagement and recruiting.” Brilliant.

#4. Four Tips for Running a Trend Workshop Unmasked! The author, apparently, can’t stop giving away the store! Also in Chapter 3, he elaborates on the five tips for using trends with a “Trend Action Guide” featuring five brief case studies (including one of my favorites: Zappos). He scolds us for the boring “About Us” pages on our websites (I agree!), and explains his “Lovable Unperfection” trend from 2017. (Another example of elegant wordsmithing.)

The case study for “Tip #2: Share Your Story” features the self-described “worst hotel in the world,” The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, which has been “proudly disappointing travelers for forty years, boasting levels of comfort comparable to a minimum-security prison.” (Did I mention you’ll annoy everyone in your sheltered-in-place family by your incessant reading of half-page snippets—both funny and profound—all day long?)

There’s more—and this is crazy. The guy who makes his living giving keynote talks and workshops, tells you how to run a trends workshop! Tip #4: “Always Have an Unbiased Facilitator.” He writes, “It’s easy to assume that the person closest to the problem you hope to solve is the one most suited to lead the workshop. This is never the case.” Must-read (pages 64-67).

By the way, on page 56—there’s a tantalizing fork-in-the-road:
• Option 1: Remain here and continue reading.
• Option 2: Jump to the 10 megatrends starting on page 71.
Oh, my. What will you do? Hilarious and brilliant. I stayed with Option 1 and feasted on the delectable details that delineate how Bhargava and his team curate the trends. If you’re more A.D.D., you’ll likely jump to the 10 trends for 2020—all worth the read.

#5. Trend Longevity Rating Unmasked! Bhargava devotes pages 187 to 230 for “Part III: Previous Trend Reports (2011-2019).” Yes, he’s been publishing non-obvious trends since 2011. (How did I miss them?)

But who does this? He rates his own track record for every non-obvious trend he’s identified since 2011. Honest. I counted 135 trends, and humbly, he gave himself some D’s and C’s, but (in his view) scored dozens of A’s and B’s. You gotta love the honesty—and this models something to all of us.

This week, I ran across Leadership Gold, John Maxwell’s “lessons I’ve learned” book (which he didn’t write until age 60!). My favorite chapter: “The Secret to a Good Meeting Is the Meeting Before the Meeting” (read my review). But I also reread this pithy pointer (just $1.99 on Kindle): “Your Biggest Mistake Is Not Asking What Mistake You’re Making.” So high fives to Rohit Bhargava for his well-documented process for soliciting feedback on his trend-naming—and the guts to publish his “Trend Longevity Ratings.”

OOPS! My mistake—I ran out of room and I didn’t give you my color commentary on the 10 trends for 2020. You’ll have to buy the book to learn more about Amplified Identity, Ungendering, Instant Knowledge, Revivalism, Human Mode, Attention Wealth, Purposeful Profit, Data Abundance, Protective Tech, and Flux Commerce.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss and Predict the Future, by Rohit Bhargava.



Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Does your organization’s uniqueness stand out? In his book, Rohit Bhargava highlights the worst hotel in the world, the world’s best umbrella, and the world’s smartest building. What are we famous for?
2) The author writes, “By some expert estimates, a whopping 90 percent of the data that currently exists in the world was created in the past two years and it will continue to multiply exponentially.” The 2020 trend, “Data Abundance,” addresses “how to make it useful, who owns the data, and who should stand to profit from it.” The author asks us, do we have a data strategy? And the answer is…? 

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The Secret to a Good [Zoom] Meeting 
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Meetings Bucket is to “design meetings like an architect designs buildings.” Are you as intentional about designing Zoom meetings as you are in face-to-face (mask-to-mask) settings?

Download (just $1.99 on Kindle), John Maxwell’s short chapter, “The Secret to a Good Meeting Is the Meeting Before the Meeting,” from his book, Leadership Gold.

In 16 quick-reading pages, Maxwell builds the case for turning routine meetings into productive action-oriented gatherings. Following the counsel of Olan Hendrix, he writes that the meeting before the meeting: 1) helps you receive buy-in, 2) helps followers to gain perspective, 3) increases your influence, 4) helps you develop trust, and 5) avoids your being blindsided.

The “no surprises” rule is critical for the key people in each meeting—and typically that means you must meet with them in advance. Maxwell preaches:
• “If you can’t have the meeting before the meeting, don’t have the meeting.
• If you do have the meeting before the meeting, but it doesn’t go well, don’t have the meeting.
• If you have the meeting before the meeting and it goes as well as you hoped, then have the meeting!”

For more resources for more effective meetings, visit the Meetings Bucket.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Is your organization the “best” or the “worst” in the world? Or just lost in the sea of online anonymity and overload? Need help? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). And while in your bunker this month, it’s the perfect time to invest in your family by completing the fun and meaningful journal by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

A Life of Listening: Discerning God's Voice and Discovering Our Own

Issue No. 435 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting suggests you leverage the slower pace during COVID-19 to discern God’s voice in the stillness. Leighton Ford, now 88, shares his transparent journey. Perfect timing! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my review of Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, by Dan Heath.

 

A Graduate Course in Discernment 

“Lord, what book should I read and review next?” is my on-going prayer. Many times I sense the Holy Spirit’s nudge about a specific book. So perhaps for you also—while hunkered down during this COVID-19 crisis—it may be God’s timing for us to read Leighton Ford’s masterful memoir of his very personal journey, A Life of Listening: Discerning God's Voice and Discovering Our Own.

When Leighton Ford reflects on calling and vocation, he notes that “we spend the first part of our lives finding a role—professional or parent, executive or explorer, solider or artist.” But then (quoting Thomas Keating), “the paradox is that we can never fully fulfill our role until we are ready to let it go.”

So who is Leighton Ford? One global title is noteworthy: Honorary Lifetime Executive Chair of the Lausanne Movement. But is he a preacher, or a proclaimer, or a prophet, or a painter, or a poet? Yes—all of the above. He’s also a listener. And his life has impacted mine across the years. I’m so grateful.

Coaching a young leader—early thirties—who was second-guessing his pastoral call, Leighton encouraged him. “Remember God is an artist. He doesn’t do copies. He does originals. And if you are called here, God will do something new through you.”

Thus, at age 88, when asked to declare his mission statement, Leighton Ford now says “To be an artist of the soul. And a friend on the journey.” What’s your mission statement—and has it changed over the decades?

But let me back up a bit—with a LOL story that will provide some context. At age 14 (because he was tall!), Leighton was named the president of his local Youth for Christ club in Ontario, Canada. In the late 1940s, Billy Graham—the emerging evangelist—was invited to speak at the YFC rally in Chatham, Leighton’s hometown. So with this God-planned connection—fast forward—Billy Graham tells his sister, Jeanie, about this young Canadian and Leighton and Jeanie meet at Wheaton College and eventually marry.

Then, as part of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Team, Leighton formed a team to focus on Canada and other parts of the world. Once, when Leighton’s team was conducting a two-week crusade in Nova Scotia, Billy Graham was invited to preach on the final weekend. Billy arrived a day early and sat quietly in the back of the crowd. During the invitation—when seekers would go forward to place their trust in Christ—Billy noticed an older man who perhaps needed encouragement. So Billy “tapped the man on the shoulder, and asked if he wanted to go down and give his life to Christ.”

“The old fellow turned, and, not recognizing Billy, who was wearing dark glasses, thought a moment, then said, ‘Nah, I think I’ll wait until the big gun comes tomorrow night!’”

So…you’re Billy Graham’s brother-in-law. Life is good. Bed of roses. Opportunities. Acclaim. Success. God’s blessings. (Eh?)

Hardly—and maybe you’ve hit a rough patch also along the way. So that’s why now would be the perfect time to listen, to go deep, and to discern God’s voice with the help of an experienced guide, Leighton Ford. Here’s a taste of the guidance:

• “As you read my story, perhaps it will stir a remembering of the voices you have heard in your life…”

• Following the tragic loss of their 21-year-old son, Sandy: “It’s been said that there are places in our hearts we don’t even know are there until our hearts are broken.” He then discovered: “My preaching was more from the heart, but what I sought was not so much more places to preach as more still places to listen. Silence and solitude, which I had often avoided, became more welcome and compelling.”

• The endnotes deliver readings for a graduate course in discernment: Leonard Cohen, Henri Nouwen, N.T. Wright, Mary Oliver, Parker Palmer, Richard Rohr, E. Stanley Jones, Amy Carmichael, Oswald Chambers, and dozens of others.

• On his birth parents and his adoptive parents: “It has also taught me that I cannot be a rescuer in unhealthy ways of those who carry deep wounds from life. To discern the difference calls for a lifetime of listening.”

• On recognizing God’s call to launch Arrow Leadership, a ministry to younger leaders: “For some time I had been keeping what I called my GGTW List—Guys and Gals to Watch. These were younger men and women in whom I observed strong potential for leadership.”

• In the chapter, “When We Lose Our Way,” he transparently describes his own angst during a devastating conflict: “Motives are misunderstood, and those involved project onto leaders their own needs. Reason shuts down, and emotions rule. We get wrapped in the ‘fog of war.’ The desire for power and control take over. And when those we have trusted let us down, the sense of betrayal is acute.”

On a country path walk through farm fields in northern England, Leighton remembered the discerning words from his “spiritual father,” an Anglican bishop, who tenderly said to him, “You just need to find a way to let the pain and hurt go. Hold it loosely even if you can’t fix it.” So Leighton “picked up a stick and drew a line on the dirt.” He stepped across the line and breathed this prayer: “Lord, as best as I can, I let go of the hurt, the resentment, the anger. I don’t know if the breach will ever be repaired. But as much as is in me I leave it behind. Help me to do so.”

• He quotes Frederick Buechner: “The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” And Leighton adds, “…where the Spirit’s deepest promptings bring a deepening conviction of being in the right place.”

• Looking for a deeper leadership model than the ones many believers adapt from secular models, Leighton notes how Jesus led: “the leadership of a son, a storyteller, a servant, and a shepherd-maker.” (Four S’s: that will preach!)

• Noting how E. Stanley Jones pictured a “Cosmic Loom” metaphor emanating from the unshakeable kingdom in Hebrews 12:28, Leighton writes, “As I respond to his calling, I may make mistakes. But he does not. And even my mistakes he can weave into his pattern.”

• An editor’s advice to Leighton and Jeanie’s son, Kevin (also an author), on making college decisions—discernment counsel from A.W. Tozer: “When you have to make a decision, concentrate on loving God from your heart. If there are several doors open, some will likely close. Then if more than one is open, go through the door you want to go, and trust God to make it right.”

• And this from a Quaker woman when asked how “to discern God’s way in her life.” Her answer: “Way has not often opened before me, but way has often closed behind me.” (Prophetic words during COVID-19?)

• Don’t miss Leighton’s exposition on the three-step process for discerning your calling: Observe, Reflect, Act. He notes John Wesley’s encouragement that we should “second the motions of the Holy Spirit.” He quotes Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life:
   --Pay attention
   --Be astonished
   --Tell about it.

• How might God get your attention? Study the great characters of the Bible and reflect on the diversity of attention-getting moments (see Moses, Samuel, Mary, Peter, and others).

• Leighton punctuates this powerful memoir with a probing question: “If right now the Lord walked up the back steps to where I am sitting on my porch, I wonder, how might his voice sound?” He answers his own question with 19 bullet-point phrases (arresting insights)—the strongest and most meaningful final two pages of a book I’ve ever read. Stunning.

A Life of Listening is rich. I read it slowly and I’m still discerning and discussing the book with my favorite listener—my wife, Joanne. I never aspired to be a Billy Graham or a Leighton Ford (not my calling)—but the book prompted me to think ahead to 2034, when I’m 88 (Lord willing). Will I have been a faithful lifelong learner and listener over the previous 15 years—so I might have something to write home about? Yikes.

Or even this, as Leighton notes: Inscribed on Ruth Graham’s memorial plaque at the Billy Graham Library,

          “Construction complete.
          Thanks for your patience.”

To order from Amazon, click on the title for A Life of Listening: Discerning God's Voice and Discovering Our Own, A Memoir by Leighton Ford.



Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) In Ruth Haley Barton’s book, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership (my 2009 book-of-the-year), Leighton Ford’s foreword pulls you into the richness of the text. The 10th anniversary expanded edition (2018), includes a new “afterword” also by Leighton Ford. He writes about the book’s impact: “My own soul responds both with ‘Ouch!’ and ‘Yes!’” Mention a book you’ve read or listened to recently that prompted an “Ouch!” response!
2) “Most of us need some kind of spiritual jolt to start us on the second journey, to make us stop and listen long enough to pay attention to what God is saying to us,” writes Leighton Ford in The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence in All Things. Describe a “spiritual jolt” you’ve experienced—and the result.

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Bullet Point Your Life!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Team Bucket is that “…we leverage the unique set of talents and strengths given to each person by God. Thus we serve with more fulfillment and joy.”

Have you ever “bullet pointed” your life’s journey? During this unique COVID-19 period, in addition to reading A Life of Listening, by Leighton Ford (above), select a second book from the list below—and use another person’s journey to reflect on your own journey.

#1. The Joseph Road: Choices That Determine Your Destiny, by Jerry White. The author’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 illustrates how to do this exercise with bullet points of his own life.

#2. Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, by Parker J. Palmer

#3. Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. Warning! You’ll weep as you journey with John Ames, the 76-year-old still-in-the-pulpit Congregational minister in Gilead, Iowa. It’s 1956 and Pastor Ames is journaling a life letter to his seven-year-old son, an extraordinary blessing from his second and younger wife.

#4. Listen to My Life: Maps for Recognizing and Responding to God in My Story, is a unique visual tool that helps you invite God into the process of reviewing your past, assessing your present, and enriching your walk with God into your future. Created by Sibyl Towner and Sharon Swing.

#5. Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You, by John Ortberg

#6. Leading Me: Eight Practices for a Christian Leader's Most Important Assignment, by Steve A. Brown (president of Arrow Leadership)

#7. The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington, by Robert D. Novak

#8. Myself and Other More Important Matters, by Charles Handy

#9. Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis—Suez and the Brink of War, by David A. Nichols. After a heart attack in 1955, the “doctors told him to take it easy—and in that we get a humorous picture of Ike. He wrote a friend that he had been ordered ‘to avoid all situations that tend to bring about such reactions as irritation, frustration, anxiety, fear and, above all anger.’ So he had snapped at the doctors, ‘Just what do you think the presidency is?’”

#10. Crafting a Rule of Life: An Invitation to the Well-Ordered Way, by Stephen A. Macchia.

Note: Click here to download PDFs of three lists from the Book Bucket, including more biographies, autobiographies, and other resources for the journey.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Your organization is also on a journey. How effectively are you painting your past, your present, and your future? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). And while in your bunker this month, it’s the perfect time to invest in your family by completing the fun and meaningful journal by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen

Issue No. 434 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting urges you to read or listen to this must-must-read book on upstream thinking—how to solve problems before they happen. Timely? And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for eight leadership flicks with more than 11 hours of informative and entertaining movies, videos, and YouTube clips.


Trial and Error, Error, Error  

During this COVID-19 marathon, could there be a more relevant, timely book than Upstream, by bestselling author Dan Heath? No way. The big idea: solve problems before they happen. Customer complaints, crimes (and get this!)—chronic illnesses are preventable.

RELEVANT! We must experiment. Heath quotes systems thinker Donella Meadows. “Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be shot at. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own….The thing to do, when you don’t know, is not to bluff and not to freeze, but to learn.

“The way you learn is by experiment—or, as Buckminster Fuller put it, by trial and error, error, error.”

TIMELY! Don’t make the problem worse. Heath notes, “When we fail to anticipate second-order consequences, it’s an invitation to disaster, as the ‘cobra effect’ makes clear. The cobra effect occurs when an attempted solution to a problem makes the problem worse.” That happened in India, during the UK’s colonial rule. “A bounty on cobras was declared,” and citizens received cash for producing dead cobras. You guessed it—the entrepreneurs began breeding more cobras. (Read more here.)

INSIGHTFUL! Data—the centerpiece of upstream efforts. Heath quotes Joe McCannon who uses “data for the purpose of learning” as distinguished from “data for the purpose of inspection.” Read chapter five (gulp!) to learn why you never hear about data systems “that are useful for people on the front lines.” (Maybe Heath was channeling our new physician hero, Ambassador Deborah Birx.)

Forget all the other “must-reads” I’ve cajoled you into reading. This is the must-must-read of the year. Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, by Dan Heath, was just published March 3, 2020, and—here at home, hunkered and bunkered—I naively thought, “For once, I’ll read a book without a pen. Just enjoy it. Learn. Reflect.” Not!

The two blank pages in the front of my book are now smothered with 47 page numbers and notes. Forty-seven! There’s no way to cram all this good stuff into a short review. Sorry!

I waded into Upstream while reading Sam Walker’s “Captain Class” column in The Wall Street Journal. The headline: “Covid-19 was a Leadership Test. It Came Back Negative. One lesson from the coronavirus is that we need leaders who prevent crises more than we need managers who scramble to handle them.”

Walker’s WSJ column included this:

Last year, before this virus began to spread, I learned about a parable that’s well-known in public-health circles. It goes something like this:

Two friends are sitting by a river when they spot a child drowning in the water. Both friends immediately dive in and pull the child to safety. But as soon as they do, another struggling child drifts into view. Then another. Then another. After completing several rescues, one of them climbs out of the water.

“Where are you going?” the other friend asks.

“I’m going upstream to tackle the guy who’s throwing all these kids in the water.”

This parable is on page one in Upstream—and it’s the metaphor for the next 243 pages, followed by a “Next Steps” section, a one-page graphic summary of the book (Brilliant—why doesn’t every author give me a one-page summary?), and a discouraging two-page appendix, “Scaling Programs in the Social Sector.” (Heath: “My own take is that this is largely an unsolvable problem—that there are few programs for improving the lives of human beings that are as easy to reproduce on a large scale as fried chicken or lattes.”)

So here are four options for this must-must-read:
• Option 1: View Dan Heath’s four-minute video (see below)—and then delegate your reading to a team member for a report at your next weekly meeting on Zoom.
• Option 2: Actually read the book! (Hardback or Kindle)
• Option 3: Listen to the book, an hour a day, during your daily exercise routine this week (the audio is just 7 hours, 47 minutes). Visit Libro.fm
• Option 4: Don’t read or listen to the book—and continue to manage your “willy-nilly” systems (per the downstream approach to the homeless problem previously used in Rockford, Illinois).

DAN HEATH EXPLAINS UPSTREAM THINKING (4 ½ minutes):

Click here to view the video.

MY TOP-10 TEASERS (and a bonus!):

#10. BOXES. The Dutch bicycle company VanMoof reduced shipping damage by 70% to 80% when “they started printing images of flat-screen televisions on the side of their shipping boxes, which are very similar in shape to flat-screen TV boxes.” (page 104)

#9. BARRIERS. Illustrating the three barriers to Upstream Thinking (problem blindness, a lack of ownership, and tunneling), Heath praises Chicago Public Schools for thinking upstream—and assigning their BEST teachers to ninth grade students, during the “whopper of a transition,” their vulnerable move from elementary school (K to 8) to high school. Where do you assign your best team members? (page 25)

#8. BRACELETS. In a sleepy New England town, north of Boston, a “Danger Assessment” tool brought agencies together to address domestic abuse instead of the previously splintered response. Dan Heath attacks silos like COVID-19 attacks those who don’t social distance. One simple “upstream” innovation—attach GPS bracelets to released offenders BEFORE they leave jail, not two days later at their first parole appointment. I know, “Duh!” But…read the book and you’ll find the finger pointing at you. (page 82)

#7. BUMMERS. Yikes #1: “Choosing the wrong short-term measurements can doom upstream work.” Yikes #2: “Getting short-term measures right is frustratingly complex.” Yikes #3: A ghost victory occurs “when measures become the mission.” (Did I mention “must-read?” See chapter nine, “How Will You Know When You’re Succeeding?”)

#6. BUNKERS. How does one city use “predictive modeling to accelerate ambulance response time? By forward-deploying ambulances around the city, based on the model.” Thus without that system, Heath suggests you bunker down near a fire station! “This could become a selling point for real estate agents: First floor master—AND just a three-minute drive from the fire station!” (page 138)

#5. BUSINESS. Read chapter eight, “How Will You Get Early Warning of the Problem?” and then view this witty IBM Watson TV commercial. (Click here.)

#4. BONKERS! Yikes! An Illinois school district tech director was concerned about phishing attacks—so with a security firm’s help, he sent a “phishing test to the district’s staffers from a weird email address they’d never seen before. The email announced that a suspected security breach had happened earlier in the week and encouraged them to click a link to change their passwords.” Yikes—29% of the staff clicked on the link. (page 221)

#3. BRILLIANT! Read how LinkedIn earned “tens of millions of dollars annually” by reducing the churn rate on a product. Attention: Church Leaders & Association Execs—a member’s first 30 days are the most important. Brilliant. (page 135)

#2. BROWNIE. Did I mention relevant? In the twelfth chapter, “The Chicken Little Problem: Distant and Improbable Threats,” you’ll weep when you read about the “Hurricane Pam” simulation. “The assignment: Create hurricane response plans for New Orleans and the surrounding region.” The July 2004 week-long gathering (amazing collaboration among agencies) launched the planning effort. Except…the follow-up meetings were cancelled because FEMA would not approve the additional $15,000 in travel expense. By the way, Heath notes that Congress ultimately funded $62 billion (not a typo) for the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina which hit 13 months later in 2005.

#1. BUREAUCRATS (see “LAZY”). When your team finally commits to upstream efforts—and you’re pondering how to measure success, Heath has five questions to prevent “pre-gaming” your results—aka “the careful consideration of how the measures might be misused.” They include:
   • The “rising tides” test
   • The misalignment test
   • The lazy bureaucrat test
   • The defiling-the-mission test
   • The unintended consequences test

BONUS TEASER: BIBLE-READING! One of Heath’s three types of “ghost victories” (where “it’s possible to ace your measures while undermining your mission”) is his youthful account of his father’s offer to pay him $1.00 for every book of the Bible he read. Younger Heath gamed the system—and instead of reading from Genesis to Revelation to earn $66—he started by fast-tracking through Second John, Third John, and Philemon—the three shortest books in the Bible—and then asked his Dad for his first cash payout—three bucks!

Note: I just shipped this book to my favorite state senator in California. You might want to do the same in your state.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, by Dan Heath. To listen to the audio version (7 hours, 47 minutes), visit Libro.fm

BONUS BOOK! You’ll also enjoy reading (or listening to) the bestselling book by Dan Heath, and his brother Chip Heath (my 2017 book-of-the-year), The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact. (Read my review.) Listen to the audio book here on Libro.fm (6 hours, 24 minutes). You'll appreciate the ideas in this book when planning the “Welcome Back!” celebration at your office, church, or classroom.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Who are you currently getting to know and collaborating with now—in anticipation of the NEXT crisis or disaster? Heath quotes a participant in a community-wide preparedness event, “You don’t want to be exchanging business cards in the middle of an emergency.”
2) One company (see page 160), discovered that email “open rates” were the wrong measurement when their spiffed-up email subject lines caused sales to plummet—even with increased open rates. So…how do we know if we’re measuring the right things? Are we thinking upstream or downstream?

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“Locked in a Room Together”
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

I know. I know. You’re already locked in a room during COVID-19, but this is different. Keep reading!

One of the big ideas in the Customer Bucket is this: “We listen to our customers. We are zealots for researching and understanding our markets.”

Whether you’re planning for your next crisis (visit the Crisis Bucket)—or you finally (finally!) exit your silo to research your customer—Dan Heath urges teams to get “locked in a room together.” That’s one of the not big, but HUGE, ideas of Upstream. Talk! Collaborate! Do it together—trial and error, error, error.

In 2012, about 20 million Expedia customers called the travel company. “At a support cost of roughly $5 per call, that’s a $100 million problem!” For every 100 online transactions, “58 of them placed a call afterward for help.”

But…customer service was hunkered down answering the phone—and their customer satisfaction ratings were acceptable, I’m guessing. Every other department had other metrics. No one saw the big number or the big picture or the big problem.

Finally two upstream thinkers recognized the problem and assembled a war room with a simple mandate: “Save customers from needing to call us.” The results are stunning! “Since 2012, the percentage of Expedia customers who call for support has declined from 58% to roughly 15%.”

The secret: assemble cross-functional teams—and lock them in a room together! (Read chapter one, “Moving Upstream.”)

For more resources from the Customer Bucket, click here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are your communication tools focused downstream or upstream? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). And while in your bunker this month, it’s the perfect time to invest in your family by completing the fun and meaningful journal by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

8 Leadership Flicks

Issue No. 433 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights eight movies and videos—some eligible for your lifelong learning goals (i.e. watch during the day without guilt!). Be safe, please. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my recent review of The Advice Trap—on how to be more coach-like every day.

11½ Hours of Movies, Videos & YouTube

Welcome to the movie issue with my recommendations of eight titles (including comedy) that address leadership issues, insights, and ideas. Enjoy!

#1. HARRIET (2019)
PG-13 (2 hours, 5 minutes) - Amazon Prime
Memorable Line: “The hole in my head just made God’s voice more clear.”



You think your life is hard? Take a run in Harriett Tubman’s shoes. In my 2019 review of Leaders: Myth and Reality, by General Stanley McChrystal (US Army, Retired), I urged readers not to skip the chapter, “The Heroes: Zheng He and Harriet Tubman.” McChrystal writes, “She never intended to lead, and that turns out not to matter—she became a hero, and a leader, all the same.”

Then Harriett premiered on Nov. 1, 2019. You’ll want to watch it twice. I was stunned by Tubman’s attentive heart—always listening for divine direction. Don’t miss this jolt, 38 minutes into the movie—Harriett, age 13, with a fractured skull, observes, “The hole in my head just made God’s voice more clear.” The writing is powerful: stinks, stings, and stature. Heart-breaking: learn what gave landowners their stature. God’s voice: “…something like a sting, like a slap in the face.” The river crossing scene: courage defined.

#2. WE HAVE A POPE (2011)
Original title: “Habemus Papam” (Italian with English subtitles)
Unrated (1 hour, 44 minutes) - Amazon Prime
Read my review.
Memorable Line: “Not me, Lord! Not me!”

No spoiler alert is needed because I’ll just set the stage for you. The papal conclave is in session—and balloting has begun. The thunderous murmuring from dozens of cardinals needs no sub-titles: “Not me, Lord! Not me!”

No one wants the job.

Makes me wonder if, post COVID-19, there will be more or less applications for presidents, prime ministers, popes, governors, and mayors? Leaders needed. Yikes!

#3. THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA (1969)
PG-13 (2 hours, 19 minutes) - Amazon Prime

I stumbled across this one last week when the WSJ recommended the novel by Robert Crichton (which I have not read). Set during WWII and directed by Stanley Kramer, and starring Anthony Quinn, a wine-producing Italian village must hide a million bottles of wine from the Germans.

The village clown becomes the mayor (has that ever happened before?)—and without reading a book, watching a TED Talk, or attending training sessions—Quinn masterminds an ingenious plan. Lots of laughs (and a bit rowdy for PG-13)—but the teamwork scene is incredible and memorable.

On one level—it’s the aspiration for every country, including Italy, during this COVID-19 crisis. (Not the wine—the teamwork!)

#4. TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH (1949)
Not Rated (2 hours, 12 minutes) - Amazon Prime
Read my review.
Memorable Lines: “And I want you to paint this name on the nose of your ship: ‘Leper Colony.’ Because in it you're gonna get every deadbeat in the outfit. Every man with a penchant for head colds. If there's a bombardier who can't hit his plate with his fork, you get him. If there's a navigator who can't find the men's room, you get him. Because you rate him.”

In the classic 1949 film, Twelve O’clock High, Gregory Peck plays an Air Force general tasked with rejuvenating an exhausted and demoralized bomber group in World War II. From 9,000 feet, the daytime air raids against Germany seemed hopeless and unending. The unspoken goal: fly 25 missions with all limbs intact and you’ve done your duty.

One mission arrested my attention in the middle of this remarkable movie. General Frank Savage (Peck) announces a strategic target: the ball bearing factory. Bomb just one factory (Germany’s sole ball bearing supplier) and you’ll disrupt assembly lines throughout the country. Brilliant!

So…what’s your strategic target?

The film is often used in MBA courses (google it). Constantino Salios taught a course at Biola University’s Masters of Arts in Organizational Leadership program in 2007 and invited me to join the class for this powerful film.

#5. IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON (2007)
PG (1 hour, 39 minutes) - Amazon 
Read my review.
Memorable Line: “And of course at that time, the Atlas boosters were blowing up every other day down at Cape Canaveral. And it looked like a very, you know, a good way to have a short career.” (Jim Lovell)

This extraordinary documentary has teachable moments in almost every one of my 20 management buckets. The Results Bucket: check. The Strategy Bucket: bull’s-eye. The Systems Bucket: 15 astronauts owned 15 segments of the mission. The Crisis Bucket: “Houston, we have a problem.”

The film is absolutely rich in memorable moments in the Team Bucket. Then there’s the People Bucket with often hilarious and poignant illustrations of the four social styles, including analyticals (Neil Armstrong) and expressives (James Lovell).

#6. Sesame Street: Ernie Puts Down the Duckie (2003)
G-rated – View on YouTube (5 min.) or Amazon Prime
Memorable Line: “Put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone.”



Add some hoopla! to your next Zoom meeting and screen this rousing sing-along video clip, “Put Down the Duckie.” Read the Book Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets—and learn why “You gotta put down the duckie…if you wanna play the saxophone.” Hoots the Owl is trying to teach Ernie a lesson in Learning 101. Hebrews 12:1 is also applicable for this principle: “Master the Management Buckets by Reading.”

This Sesame Street video (all ages will love it) features more than a dozen celebrities and musicians, including Paul Simon, John Candy, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, and my favorite, Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

#7. OUR DAILY BREAD (1934)
Not Rated: (1 hour, 13 minutes) – Amazon (sometimes on YouTube)
Read my review.
Memorable line: “Ya gonna follow me or quit like yellow dogs?”

The New York Times named Our Daily Bread, directed by King Vidor, “one of the 10 best films of 1934.” (Which may not mean anything.) But I titled my review, “The Cadence of Team Building”—and I urge you to skip the plot and just watch the last 12 minutes.

Let me net it out for you. Would you invest 12 minutes to enrich the team building culture in your organization? Of course you would.

So here’s the plan. Give your staff team (or department team) the movie synopsis—but just show them the last 12 minutes. In my opinion, it’s the best video clip on team building ever produced.

Our Daily Bread depicts the deep depression-era cultural discouragement of the time, but lands on an upbeat solution. No need to watch the entire 73-minute film—often termed as a propaganda piece for the idea of a socialistic community. (Any inferences to current left-leaning politicians are purely coincidental. Note that I’m not recommending the film’s message, so just use this closing scene as a powerful team building tool.)

#8. MAKE YOUR BED (2014)
Inspirational Talk – View on YouTube
Time: 19 minutes
Read my book review.
Memorable Line: “If you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud.”

The best-selling book, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…and Maybe the World, packs a punch at the fast clip of one big punch every 10 short pages. Admiral William H. McRaven (U.S. Navy Retired) delivered these 10 principles at a university commencement address. His speech on May 21, 2014, to the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin went viral—with over 10 million views!

Watch the 19-minute YouTube video here (and read a transcript of his speech in the back of his book). The big idea for Principle #1: “Start your day with a task completed.” Or, listen to the audio book (1 hour, 53 minutes) at Libro.fm

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Bonus Hymn (for crisis reflection)
“I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow” (5 minutes)
Read my notes.

The great hymn, “Amazing Grace,” penned by converted slave trader John Newton (1725-1807), is familiar to all. But…have you sung or read Newton’s other, more deeply convicting hymn? My opinion: at the heart of a person’s response to crisis looms a strong or inadequate theological foundation.

In Knowing God, by J.I. Packer, the esteemed author wraps up Chapter 21, “These Inward Trials,” with Newton’s remarkable lyrics: six convicting verses of “I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow.” I’ve listened to, sung, and meditated on the words for 18 months now. “Alexa, repeat!” Yet every repeat stings. (Read the lyrics here. Listen here.)
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Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) What’s the most insightful leadership lesson you’ve ever learned from a movie, video clip, TED Talk, or podcast?
2) “Give me any two pages of the Bible,” said Cecil B. DeMille, “and I'll give you a picture.” Aristotle said, “The soul never thinks without a picture.” Why do you think the right film, at the right time, for the right reason—can be so powerful?

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Never Worry Alone!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Team Bucket is that a balanced life honors God and “thus we serve with more fulfillment and joy.” Is that possible during a crisis?

Authors Michael and Katherine Stallard recommend 12 must-do action steps during this COVID-19 crisis. Big Idea #11: “Never worry alone!” They note, “‍Whenever you feel anxious or stressed, call up a friend and talk it through. Doing this will move your brain activity from the amygdala where threats are processed to the cortex where we make rational decisions.” Click here to read the short article.

The authors help effective leaders boost human connection in cultures to improve performance. Check out my reviews of their books:

• Connection Culture: The Competitive Advantage of Shared Identity, Empathy, and Understanding at Work, by Michael Lee Stallard, Jason Pankau, and Katharine P. Stallard. (Read my review.)
• Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity, by Michael Lee Stallard, with Carolyn Dewing-Hommes and Jason Pankau. (Read my review.)

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. “The soul never thinks without a picture,” said Aristotle. Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

The Advice Trap

Issue No. 432 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends the perfect coaching book for leading your team from home—and why you must tame the Advice Monster! It’s top-of-my-list, so far, for 2020 book-of-the-year. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here my recent book reviews.

Tame the Advice Monster!  

Hello. My name is John and I’m an Advice Monster. Yikes! If you’ve got the guts to read this book, you won’t come out unscathed.

Yikes! Once again, I apologize to the hundreds of colleagues I worked with over the years (especially direct reports). Had I read this book during my CEO years, I coulda/woulda been a more effective (and healthier) CEO. So, so sorry.

And even though the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The good news: the second best time to plant a tree is today.

And one more Yikes! Another superbly incredible book will have to pop out in 2020 to dethrone The Advice Trap from being named my book-of-the-year—it’s phenomenal.

Michael Bungay Stanier says “Your job is to make your coaching an everyday interaction.” He quotes a colleague, “Coaching is no longer an event. It’s a way of being with each other.” And get this: “Coaching is no longer a one-off, occasional, ‘come into my office so I can coach you’ way of managing someone.”

During this current COVID-19 crisis (and the next crisis, and the next crisis…), The Advice Trap is absolutely the first book you and your team should read. Now. Today. The author’s coaching principles are easy-to-remember:
   1. Be Lazy (“…about jumping in and solving other people’s problems for them Just stop it!”)
   2. Be Curious (Tame your Advice Monster by “staying curious and managing the process of the conversation.” This is the essential principle.)
   3. Be Often (You can be more coach-like outside of the “hierarchical, formal event.” Think meetings, phone calls, Zoom calls, email—all forms of communication.)

Whew! Perfect timing! While huge numbers of team members are working from their homes during this COVID-19 crisis, this book says you can be more coach-like today. And curiosity is a big key. He quotes Dorothy Parker (and three cheers for all of the full-page easy-reading quotes in this gem):
“THE CURE FOR BOREDOM IS CURIOSITY.
THERE IS NO CURE FOR CURIOSITY.”

In my 2016 review of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, I shared a personal experience with Michael Bungay Stanier’s “AWE” Question (“And What Else?”). The big idea: keep asking the AWE question until the person you’re coaching fesses up to the real challenge. It was powerful—and the four-minute exercise was a conversion experience! (Read my review.)

Pick One. Michael Bungay Stanier says “Your job is to stop seeking the solutions and start finding the challenges.” He adds, “You can be known as the person who helps articulate the critical issue or as the person who provides hasty answers to solve the wrong problem. Which would you prefer? Exactly.”

How? “From now on, frame your role as helping to find the real challenge. What this really means is being relentless: staying curious long enough to allow the other person to create the insight and space to reach the heart of the matter.”

View this 14-minute TEDx Talk, “How to Tame Your Advice Monster,”
by Michael Bungay Stanier (March 13, 2020). It’s meaty, funny, and
might be your best use of 14 minutes this week!

Since reading this book, I’ve used the practical tools and phrases six times. A caller wanted my advice (Yeah!), but I resisted giving advice and instead dug deeper for the real challenge (very hard, but very satisfying). Over several evenings, I made the mistake of reading 20-30 probing and hilarious paragraphs to my wife, Joanne. She now throws the “Advice Monster” phrase back at me. Yikes!

Even my email responses are shorter. “Joe, so sorry, but I just read The Advice Trap, and taking it to heart by asking YOU questions and NOT giving advice. Sorry!!!” (See pages 150-152 for ways to graciously and effectively respond to those long, rambling emails. Worth the price of 20 books!) I just shipped the book to a client and will recommend The Advice Trap on a webinar next week.

If you’re still thinking you’re a great coach—and this would be a great book for everyone else—check out page 43, the “Mix ‘n’ Match Advice Monster Table.” The author says “you can’t tame your Advice Monster until you know what sets it off.” There are 12 types of people who activate your monster persona (pick one!)—coupled with 12 situations (pick one!).
   • My deadly combination: someone who asks me for advice—paired with a “time is short” situation.
   • Yours might be: someone who challenges you—coupled with “they keep making mistakes.”
Remember my “unscathed” comment? Caution: Scathing Ahead!

Oh, my. There’s so much more meat—delivered with wit and wry wordsmithing. The layout, the end-of-chapter questions, the abundant resources. So stunningly fun to read! I’ll end with these teasers:
   • Most of your people are working very hard on the wrong problem. You can fix this. (See the “Practice Masterclass” options and abundant online resources.)
   • The “Advice-Giving Habit” (AGH!) “generates waste, leaches innovation, and reduces the capacity to scale for success.” (Understand “Easy Change vs. Hard Change.”)
   • Advice Monsters come in three packages: Tell-It, Save-It (the rescuers), and Control-It (Yikes. He writes about me!).
   • There are “prizes” and “punishments” with each style. (My style: “I protect us from chaos.”)
   • In “A Bonus Bonanza of Extra Goodness” resource section, the author tweaked my curiosity (he’s good!) with a HBR article about “chaos pilots.” (Wow—we need chaos pilots more than ever! Yes or No?)
   • And this quote: “Hire for intellectual curiosity.” Per Liz Wiseman, “Intellectual curiosity is the stem cell of good leadership behaviors.”

To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier.



Reminder! Delegate your reading! Ask a team member to also read and report on The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier. To listen to the audio version (3 hours, 10 minutes), visit Libro.fm

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) You’ll find dozens and dozens of practical ideas for being more coach-like, such as “Place the seven questions from The Coaching Habit near your keyboard. Set yourself the goal of asking at least one of them before you fire off advice, opinions, and suggestions. Maybe even ask two.” OK, team! I have a Starbucks card for the first five people who text me that you have done this!
2) The author quotes Peter Drucker, “The leaders of the future will know how to ask.” So how will you tame your Advice Monster—and move from telling to asking?

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1:1 Weekly Meetings: Scrap the Agenda! 
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

Yikes! Michael Bungay Stanier has a radical idea for my Meetings Bucket, Chapter 20, in Mastering the Management Buckets. Whether in person or on a Zoom call, he urges us to flip the script:

“Let’s face it, the standard weekly one-on-one meeting can be a dispiriting experience. It can easily become a ritualized reporting that, honestly, bores both sides of the conversation. You want to know what they’re up to…kind of. They want to reassure you that all’s OK and that they’re a good person who’s working hard, but they don’t love the ‘prove it!’ nature of the conversation.”

Instead, the author says a “coach-like approach can revitalize the experience. Cast aside the standard agenda that’s part of why the meeting feels stuck, and open with ‘What’s on your mind?’”

Read more on pages 152-153 and don’t miss this acid test: “See how long you can go in this meeting before you have to share an idea or an opinion.”

Click here for more resources from The Meetings Bucket, including the template, “Weekly Update to My Supervisor”—needed now more than ever during these work-at-home days. This tool pushes need-to-know info into the pre-meeting report, saving you time in your one-on-one meeting for being more coach-like!

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Many times…your breakthrough will come from an outside set of eyes and ears—and one or two powerful and probing questions. Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Fearless Innovation: A No-Nonsense Guide

Issue No. 431 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights a new quick-reading book (also on audio) on why your organization needs a chief innovation officer—especially for these unprecedented times. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here my recent book reviews.

Can You Crunch Crisis With Innovation? 

Timing is everything, right? So in my queue for this week’s book review is the perfect title at the perfect time: Fearless Innovation: A No-Nonsense Guide.

With the USA’s unprecedented response to the coronavirus pandemic this week (national emergency declaration, travel bans, schools and sports venues closed, stock market gyrations, etc.)—you may have time to think more proactively about your organization. At least two people at your shop should read and report on this book within seven days.

The managing director of Cisco’s global Co-Innovation Centers says that today 63 percent of companies are hiring chief innovation officers and “more than 90 percent of companies are implementing new tech to support innovation processes.”

Subtitled, “Going Beyond the Buzzword to Continuously Drive Growth, Improve the Bottom Line, and Enact Change,” Alex Goryachev has no small task. In the sea of books and resources on “innovation,” an over-used and mostly misunderstood buzzword, why should I read yet one more yada/yada/yada treatise on an author’s favorite anecdotes? Yikes! Especially when he quotes Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert:

“Large corporations welcome innovation and individualism in the same way the dinosaurs welcomed large meteors.”

But…read the contents page and you’re hooked. Here are just nine of the 42 juiciest chapter titles and subtitles:
   • No Leadership = No Strategy = No Innovation
   • If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It
   • Incentivize Innovation through Radical Transparency
   • Stop Thinking “Disruptively”
   • The Pen is Mightier Than the Program
   • The Lonely Innovator Myth
   • Hire a Chief Innovation Officer
   • Put Governance Processes into Action
   • Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Urgent! Order Fearless Innovation today and read the innovation and change insights with today’s coronavirus filter. How will this affect our organization? What should we do? What should we not do? A crisis brings opportunity (see my Crisis Bucket)—and this resource will help you inject new thinking and new creativity as you build a culture of innovation.

Our globe’s crisis mandates innovation and could bring out the best in entrepreneurship. Already, I’ve noticed this:

• From Fine Dining to Drive-Thru. Per the Seattle Times on March 12, 2020, “Canlis, Seattle’s premier fine dining institution, announced Thursday morning that, due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, it will suspend fine dining operations indefinitely, but start a drive-thru burger joint in their parking lot, a pop-up bagel shop, and an at-home dinner delivery service.”

• Small Groups. Many churches have long preached the core value that “life change happens best in small groups.” Now that cities and states are limiting attendance of public gatherings, maybe church leaders will double-down on enriching the small group culture of their churches with customized curriculum and beefed up leader training for small group settings.

• Pretzels and a Mask. When changing planes in Panama City, Panama, last month, I complimented the airport pretzel shop staff for their entrepreneurial smarts—they added surgical masks to the menu for just a buck!

• Move to Digital. Nick Nicholaou “was in a roundtable meeting last week with many of the largest churches in the south and west. Many said they are stopping the printing and distribution of bulletins…” He adds, “This could be a great opportunity to transition the congregation from physical to digital bulletins and programs!” (Read his article.)

I think Alex Goryachev would salute these innovators. The author, interestingly, writes about his early days with Napster. Noting that there are three common—but inappropriate—responses to change (ignoring, shaming, and regulating), he admits that “Napster never survived the litigation, but ironically, the music industry did not survive Napster either and had to adapt—the digital music revolution was unstoppable, no matter the amount of regulation.”

If your reading style is to surf a book first, you’ll get sucked into the fascinating case studies in each chapter, including:
   • Lego. Yup, those little bricks that ingeniously find your bare feet! Since 1949, they’ve sold more than 400 billion!
   • Wikipedia Foundation. Did you know that after 244 years, Encyclopaedia Britannica published its final physical edition in 2010 (and a 250th anniversary yearbook in 2018)? “Today, Wikipedia features over 48 million articles in hundreds of languages, which would fit into about 19,000 print volumes of Britannica.”
   • TripAdvisor. Get this—456 million people visit the site each month! There are two attention-getting signs on the founder’s office door: “Speed wins” and “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.”
   • Cisco. The author’s aha moment of transparency is worth the price of the book. Proud of the innovative program Cisco launched to partner with startup companies, he got push-back from a Cisco employee with a great idea (page 103 is a must-read).
   • IKEA. Three of our five grandchildren are 17 (they’re triplets!).The case study on IKEA is now required reading for them. Founder Ingvar Kamprad launched IKEA at age (wait for it…) 17. Read how IKEA innovatively leverages the open-source philosophy to stay close to the customer.
   • Bloomberg Philanthropies. Yes—that Bloomberg! Read how and why Michael R. Bloomberg’s philanthropy wing facilitates innovation teams (“i-teams”) in municipal governments.

If you delegate your reading—and a team member summarizes this book at your next weekly staff meeting, I’ll ship a free copy of this book to the first person who emails me that the reviewer did NOT mention the author’s hilarious true story on pages 55-56.

In one of his first jobs, the author produced a robust metrics scorecard each week. The emailed report was greeted with “Great job!” or “Fantastic!” or “So interesting!” But the numbers were not great—decline was evident—but clearly no one was reading the report.

“So I tried a little experiment,” writes Goryachev. “One week, I password protected the Excel spreadsheet before sending it out. To my amusement, I received the same positive responses, but not one person asked me for the password—obviously, no one was reading the report. So, a few weeks later, I just stopped producing the report and invested my time in surfing the web. And no: no one ever asked about those numbers again.”

(For another LOL example, read pages 222-223 in Mastering the Management Buckets, “Delete Dumb Delegation: Do you still need that monthly report?”)

You’re busy and this review is long enough. But if you’re ready to move from buzzwords to bounty—this “No-Nonsense Guide” will point you in the right direction. And let me add, with more than 32 pages of endnotes, the resources/links are phenomenal—and the succinct chapter summaries are PowerPoint-worthy.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Fearless Innovation: Going Beyond the Buzzword to Continuously Drive Growth, Improve the Bottom Line, and Enact Change (A No-Nonsense Guide), by Alex Goryachev. To listen to the audio version (6 hours, 4 minutes), visit Libro.fm. And thanks to Wiley and Fortier Public Relations for the review copy.



Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Alex Goryachev suggests there are three (worst) responses to change: ignoring, shaming, and regulating. Here’s permission to be frank during our staff meeting today: what is the typical default response to change in our organization’s culture? How do you feel about that?
2) The author quotes Peter Drucker, “What gets measured, gets improved.” After a team member presents a brief review of chapter 3, “If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It,” ask this question: What’s the difference between “activity” metrics and “impact” metrics? What are we measuring for improvement—that is actually improving?

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Innovation and Entrepreneurship:
The Lemonade Stand Continuum
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Program Bucket, Chapter 6, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is this:
“Don’t Be the 8th Lemonade Stand in a Row of 9! It’s risky to be the first program—it’s high risk to be the last.”

That’s a principle from Marketing Your Ministry: Ten Critical Principles, which I co-authored with Dr. Robert Hisrich in 1990. After reading Fearless Innovation, I would have enjoyed an afternoon of lemonade and pretzels with Alex Goryachev and Bob Hisrich. As Goryachev readily admits, there’s tension between schools of thought on innovation and entrepreneurship. To widen your thinking, read my reviews of two other books by Hisrich:

• Entrepreneurship, by Robert D. Hisrich. Along with co-authors Michael P. Peters and Dean A. Shepherd, Hisrich has created perhaps the most comprehensive study ever of entrepreneurial men and women. In this remarkable 602-page book, filled with fascinating sidebar profiles of in-the-trenches entrepreneurs, the authors uncover every entrepreneurial stone ever imagined and conclude their work with 17 case studies covering 120 pages from the Rug Bug Corporation to “Mamma Mia: The Little Show That Could!” (Read my review.)

• Corporate Entrepreneurship: How to Create a Thriving Entrepreneurial Spirit Throughout Your Company, by Robert D. Hisrich and Claudine Kearney. You’ll appreciate the practical insights, like the “Flop of the Month Award.” In seeking to build a core value for the “tolerance of mistakes,” (nine markers for entrepreneurial cultures), “BMW has a ‘successful failures’ program that awards employees whose innovative ideas fail during implementation by giving a ‘flop of the month’ award.” (Read my review.)

Delegate additional reading on the topic with these gems:

• Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder, by Jim Clifton and Sangeeta Bharadwaj Badal, Ph.D. Clifton’s core belief: “Entrepreneurs create customers. And customers, in turn, create jobs and economic growth. Almost no leader knows this.” He adds, “Virtually all U.S. and world leaders have misdiagnosed the core problem and put billions and billions of dollars into mistaken strategies that are not helping America’s economy, much less the world’s.” Hmmm. Still timely! (Read my review.)

• Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear, by Max Lucado. And speaking of fearless, encourage your team with this Master Wordsmither’s eight-letter acronym, “P.E.A.C.E.F.U.L.” delivering eight worry-stoppers. 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.” Read my review (click here) or listen to the book on Libro.fm (click here: 3 hours and 33 minutes).

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. To leverage the innovation gifts and entrepreneurial strengths of your team and board, it often helps to ask an outside (unbiased) voice to evaluate and inspire key people. Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
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Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

Issue No. 430 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights my book-of-the-year pick from 2013. Whew! This is one powerful, convicting book. Bestselling author Marshall Goldsmith says there are 20 workplace habits you need to break.

The author says that a “minor” workplace foible can become a major crisis. Why? “More often than not, it’s because people’s inner compass of correct behavior has gone out of whack—and they become clueless about their position among their coworkers.” So…if all of us are somewhat clueless, what should we do?

Click here for my review or click on the title to order from Amazon: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Discover the 20 Workplace Habits You Need to Break, by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter. 

 

Servant of All: Reframing Greatness and Leadership through the Teachings of Jesus

Issue No. 429 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a new take (with a deeper context) on the perilous path to greatness. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my Top-10 books of 2019 and my Book-of-the-Year pick.


“To Be Honest…”

To be honest…I have this thing about political pundits, CEOs, board members—even colleagues—who, after five minutes or more into a conversation then preface a statement with “Well, to be honest…” (I wonder: Is this now the first time they’re being honest with me?)

So—NEWS FLASH!—I’m saying this up front. To be honest, I really wasn’t motivated to read yet another book on servant leadership. We’ve all read them. We know (we know!) we could be and must be better at serving. Yada. Yada. Yada.

But (to be honest), because Ralph Enlow’s book, The Leader’s Palette: Seven Primary Colors, was on my Top-10 list for 2013 (and I still quote from it), I was willing to give servant leadership another try. And to be honest, Enlow’s latest book is only 125 pages, with lots of white space. I can speed-read this, I thought.

Whoa! Slow down, Pearson. Servant of All checks all of the boxes:
   • Convicting.
   • Motivational. Quotable.
   • Short chapters—long on wisdom.
   • Frequently, very, very funny. LOL funny.
   • Dramatically changed my thinking on Matthew 18.

As I’ve noted before, the measure of a great book is how often I’m reading selections to my wife, Joanne. And get this: Joanne picked it up and read it.

Subtitled, “Reframing Greatness and Leadership through the Teachings of Jesus,” the author (his day job is president of the Association for Biblical Higher Education), walks us through the Gospels to pinpoint the fuller and deeper context of what many take out of context:

     “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last,
       and the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35)

He writes that “some of the people who most often quote this simple and straightforward principle are among the worst violators of its true implications.” He adds, “…the disconnect between precept and practice is because much of our practical, theoretical, and even theological commentary on servant leadership fails to account for all the Bible has to say on the subject.”

In the foreword, Barna Group’s David Kinnaman notes, “We have a surplus of Christian leaders who mistake the size of their platform for the impact they are having for Jesus.” We all see it. Who’s the greatest? Check my Twitter followers. What’s your open rate?

The first five short chapters address how we misunderstand greatness. To be honest, I underlined most of the book. Example: “For all our talk about servanthood as Christ’s disciples, we just don’t like it when others are granted preference—especially in ways that expose our laxity or pettiness.” By page 57, Enlow has already called “Strike Four” on the disciples.

“Are you kidding me?” Enlow asks. Why did Jesus organize an inner circle campout on the mountain top with just three of the disciples? “Nine of the twelve get excluded from the greatest private screening of all time.” I underlined this:
     “The emotional path between exclusion and resentment
       is exceedingly well worn.”

I could fill this entire review with quotable quotes—dozens, wonderfully word crafted by Enlow. Plus, dozens more from a few hall of fame servants (is that an oxymoron?). Examples:

   • “What enables us to achieve our greatness contains the seeds of our destruction.” (Jim Valvano)
   • “If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which God would come to you.” (Peter Marshall)
   • “Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.” (John Donne)
   • “Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.” (H.G. Wells)
   • “A journey toward greatness is a journey down, not up.” (Larry Richards)
   • “Nothing—it would seem—fuels a crisis more than ambiguity.” (Ralph E. Enlow, Jr.)
   • “Not only did Jesus affirm that Simon’s answer was correct, he went way overboard.” (Enlow)
   • On Peter: “Often wrong, but never in doubt.” (Enlow)

In one setting, writes Enlow, “Matthew 18:15-20 was the go-to Scripture passage for addressing personal conflict on the team.” He describes the setting and then adds, “The frequency with which the passage was applied in an attempt to resolve these offenses became itself a source of irritation.”

Why the confusion over the Matthew 18 principles? Enlow: “One reason for this is that rarely, if ever, is this text recognized to be a continuation of Jesus’ lengthy discourse on greatness.” His insights in chapter 10, “The Pursuit of Greatness,” are worth the price of the book. (To be honest.)

How I wish other authors could deliver powerful content in small packages like Servant of All:
   • Five probing questions for each chapter (study guide quality)
   • Six memorable and alliterative chapter titles in Part 2—perfect for six weekly staff meetings. (Add prayer—and it preaches!)
   • Summary “In a Nutshell” sidebars contrasting “Worldly Thinking” versus “Godly Thinking.”

Did I mention humor? On forgiveness protocols, when Peter “was looking for a rule that would quantify his moral obligation and validate his righteousness,” you’ll recall Jesus’ answer on how often we must forgive someone: 77 times (some translations say 70 times 7). Per Enlow, here’s how Jesus responded:

“Put away your scorecard, Peter. You can’t count that high. In fact, if you’re keeping score on such things at all, it reveals that you have failed to understand what constitutes true greatness…”

To be honest—and this is the last time I’ll use that annoying phrase—I will read this book again. Enlow, himself, is amazingly transparent—which is arresting. This is a 10 on the must-read scale.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Servant of All: Reframing Greatness and Leadership through the Teachings of Jesus, by Ralph E. Enlow, Jr.



Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) In his conclusion, Ralph Enlow reminds us to pursue the context of Jesus’ teaching on greatness, and writes, “If you have the courage to engage it in this way, you will not come out unscathed.” OK, team—do we have the courage to read this book together?
#2. Enlow: “The sort of greatness Jesus has been commending in this passage only comes by means of grace. Gratitude acknowledges and appropriates God’s grace. God’s grace appropriated engenders, in its turn, true greatness.” (Or as Anne Lamott says, “Grace always bats last.”) Do you agree?

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“10 Biggest Mistakes”
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Budget Bucket, Chapter 15, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to implement best financial practices. Since the majority of my readers are board members and staff of nonprofit organizations and churches, I annually recommend two best practice resources:

• Zondervan 2020 Church and Nonprofit Tax and Financial Guide: For 2019 Tax Returns, by Dan Busby and Michael Martin
• Zondervan 2020 Minister's Tax and Financial Guide: For 2019 Tax Returns, by Dan Busby and Michael Martin

Both books include Top-10 lists, including “10 Biggest Tax and Financial Mistakes,” “10 Tax and Finance Questions Most Frequently Asked by Churches and Nonprofits,” plus (for the minister’s guide), “10 Biggest Tax Mistakes Made by Ministers.” Number 6 on the ministry mistakes list: “Weak controls over revenue, including failing to have offerings and other cash and checks controlled by two individuals until the funds are counted.”

For more resource in the Budget Bucket, click here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.