Issue No. 401 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting suggests a team-building way to stay on top of the information overload avalanche. It works! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and visit Issue No. 397 for my 2018 Book-of-the-Year and my Top-10 books of 2018.
Information Overload Avalanche
You can’t possibly read all the books (or listen to all the audio books or podcasts) that your board, your boss, your co-workers, your consultants, your mother-in-law, and your favorite eNews editor INSIST you read.
So how do you stay on top of the information overload avalanche—while taking a shovel to your mountainous to-do list?
The answer (write this down): DELEGATE YOUR READING.
For example, at your next weekly staff meeting bring four books from your dusty reading pile. Inspire four team members to each take one book. Ask for a five-minute “highlights” report at your next staff meeting (one book per week). The math is amazing! In four weeks, your team will have the CliffsNotes for four important books.
Ask each reviewer to use a yellow highlighter, or Post-It Notes, or dog-eared pages. Or try my favorite approach—write one-line notes in the front of the book. Example:
• Page 18 – 4 snares (“a recipe for disaster”)
• Page 31 – 4 pitfalls (“Spelling them out helps overseers learn how not to govern.”)
• Page 93 – killer quote from C.S. Lewis!
Those are just some of the must-read pages from a new book I just read and reviewed, The Council: A Biblical Perspective on Board Governance, by Gary G. Hoag, Wesley K. Willmer, and Gregory J. Henson. Read my review on the ECFA blog, Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations.
Next…feature the book on your organization’s bookcase/resource center (you do have a resource center, right?) and as I mention in the Book Bucket chapter of Mastering the Management Buckets, “Mentor your team members with niche books. Leverage their strengths with thoughtfully selected chapters.”
Do the math:
• 4 books reviews per month (five-minutes each)
• 44 or more books per year
I’ve repeated Henrietta Mears’ wisdom hundreds of times, “A teacher has not taught until the student has learned.” And—my opinion—the best way team members learn is to read for themselves (or listen for themselves) and then inspire their co-workers with what they’ve learned.
Here’s what I learned when I read The Council recently (click here for the full review):
Hoag, Willmer, and Henson ask: What does the Bible say about board governance? That’s the weighty (but short and sweet—just 106 pages) commentary on what board members can discern from biblical and historical councils, such as the Council of Moses, the Jewish Councils, the Gentile Councils, and the Jerusalem Council described in Acts 15.
The authors urge boards to practice four disciplines of what they call the “council model:” Scripture, Silence, Sharing, and Supplication. This may seem like a no-brainer at first, but—honest now—when was the last time you experienced intentional silence in your boardroom? The Council quotes Richard Foster:
“Silence frees us from the need to control others. One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. A frantic stream of words flows from us in an attempt to straighten others out. We want so desperately for them to agree with us, to see things our way.”
Foster concludes with this jab: “We evaluate people, judge people, condemn people. We devour people with our words. Silence is one of the deepest disciplines of the Spirit because it puts a stopper on that.”
If you serve on a board, the “delegate your reading” approach is very effective. Ask one board member, per meeting, to read and review a board governance book. (See below for more book options.)
That killer quote from C.S. Lewis on page 93?
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Council: A Biblical Perspective on Board Governance, by Gary G. Hoag, Wesley K. Willmer, and Gregory J. Henson. (And thanks to ECFAPress for sending me a review copy.)
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Try this: “Over the next 12 months our team is going to ‘read’ at least 40 books together. Here’s the plan…” For a bonus, give a Starbucks card or a Chick-fil-A gift card each week to the book reviewer.
2) In The Council, the authors remind us that board service can get messy. “To share Moses’ burdens meant the seventy would voluntarily inconvenience themselves and put the needs of the people ahead of their own.” Is “voluntarily inconveniencing ourselves” one of our values here?
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Best Board Governance Books
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
Chapter 14, “The Board Bucket,” notes a Chinese proverb, “If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people.”
You can grow your people—and your board members—by investing in their personal development with a “Delegate Your Reading” plan. I’ve recently reviewed my picks for “Best Board Books” on the ECFA blog, Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations. As of today, I’ve posted 16 mini-reviews of board books (random order—one size doesn’t fit all). Consider picking four for your next board meeting—and (here it comes again): DELEGATE YOUR READING!
• Best Board Books #1: Boards That Lead
• Best Board Books #8: The Practitioner's Guide to Governance as Leadership
• Best Board Books #9: Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board
• Best Board Books #15: Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom (Second Edition)
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⇒JASON PEARSON notes these pokes in the intro to the Board Bucket chapter of Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson: “Would you trust a surgeon who was not a lifelong learner? Would you trust an airline pilot who relied on outdated training?” Who is inspiring your board to be God-honoring stewards? For more help, visit the Board Bucket webpage here. Click on the graphic below to order the workbook from Amazon.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Delegate your reading—and ask a team member to read This Is Marketing, the latest from Seth Godin. He says “trust and tension create forward motion.” Then check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.
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