Issue No. 365 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a reminder/rerun about strategy, and a LOL contrarian book for church leaders and board members. (See my Starbucks gift card offer!) And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and read recent book reviews on this blog page.
"Sameness: A Recipe for Mediocrity"
Most summers, I take a break and feature reruns of previous book reviews from my bulging office bookcases. Not this summer…no siree (or is it “No, Siri?”). Instead, this month I’m running a series of short-and-sweet book reviews AND a pithy quotation or thought from a previous review. I'll try to inspire you, but you’ll need to do the heavy lifting. Here goes:
SUMMER RE-RUN:
Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin.
Read my review from 2015.
Lafley and Martin: “Every industry has tools and practices that become widespread and generic. Some organizations define strategy as benchmarking against competition and then doing the same set of activities but more effectively. Sameness isn’t strategy. It is a recipe for mediocrity.”
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin.
FEATURE BOOK:
Leading the Other Way: How to Change the Church Planting World, by JD Pearring
Warning! Before your church jumps on the latest gospel bandwagon…and “plants” another church (or adds a “church campus” as they're called)…read this book. Why?
Barna Trends 2017 notes that according to a study by “the Center for Missional Research of 12 denominations and church planting networks, one-third of church plants do not survive past four years (32%).”
So buy this book for your pastor and church board members—before they leap before looking. It’s summer, so it’s possible your pastor has not received a “You must read this book!” mandate from a parishioner in what…maybe a week, 10 days?
Here’s the big idea:
Imagine! Just imagine if new churches were led by Holy Spirit-empowered leaders and teams—as described in Acts. And imagine if Christ-followers took seriously JD Pearring’s superb color-commentary on how to change the church planting world. Leading the Other Way is a discerning and paradigm-changing must, must-read.
Plus, it’s laugh-out-loud funny! I mean, when is the last time you enjoyed wisdom from Charles Spurgeon, Mother Teresa, Pogo, and Casey Stengel—all in the same book?
(Pogo? You’ll remember his famous line, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” For more on this “amiable, humble, philosophical, personable, everyman opossum,” read more here.)
Anyway…here’s my offer. Read the first 50 pages of Leading the Other Way—and if you’re not deeply convicted about God’s plan for the local church and/or you don’t laugh-out-loud at the hilarious stories and humor—I’ll send you a Starbucks card.
Example:
“Two church planters are in a bank, when, suddenly, armed robbers burst in, waving guns and yelling for everyone to freeze. While several of the robbers take the money from the tellers, others line up the customers, including the church planters, against a wall, and proceed to take their wallets, watches, and other valuables. While this is going on, one of the church planters jams something into the other church planter’s hand. Without looking down, the second church planter whispers, ‘What is this?’ The first church planter replies, ‘It’s the $100 I owe you.’”
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Leading the Other Way: How to Change the Church Planting World, by JD Pearring.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) In his chapter on “From Getting to Giving,” JD Pearring quotes Kenton Beshore, lead pastor of Mariners Church: “God loves you too much to let you win the lottery.” Quick: divide the staff in half (pro and con) and launch a three-minute debate on this statement (agree versus disagree).
2) In his chapter, “From Procedural to Relational,” Pearring argues from Acts 9 that the “secret sauce” for changing the church planting world is relationships. What’s your organization’s “secret sauce,” and if it is not relationships, could your ladder be leaning against the wrong wall?
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What Is Strategy? Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
The Strategy Bucket in Mastering the Management Buckets notes Michael Porter’s wisdom: “The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well—not just a few—and integrating among them. If there is no fit among activities, there is no distinctive strategy and little sustainability.”
If you have new team members (or board members) that have never read the classic article from Harvard Business Review, “What Is Strategy?” now’s the time. It’s one of 10 articles in HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategy. Click here to order.
For more resources, including “The 7 Reasons Why Strategic Plans Fail,” visit the Strategy Bucket webpage.
P.S. Read John’s recent blog on board governance, "Board Meddling on Management's Turf," from his 2017 series on Max De Pree's book, Called to Serve.
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 a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as a sponsor at no charge.
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