It's All About Jesus

Life and the summer are speeding on in my little Operation Christmas Child world. We had a very long, hard winter here in Erie. On those cold February days I couldn't wait for summer and planned all the things I would do. Now it's August and I've done very few of those things.

We haven't been to one local fair or festival to get our beloved kettle corn. Presque Isle, our beautiful Lake Erie beaches, are five miles away from my house and I've only been there twice all summer and never managed to see a sunset.

But...I have been blessed with lots of stuffed animal sorting. In the past 16 days alone God has provided over 3,900 stuffed animals! Praise Him! We still are praying for 7,300 or more before our packing party which is now only 23 days away (gulp.)

This is the time when all the questions start rolling in: will we have enough volunteers? How will we set up the line to keep it moving at a steady pace? Will the creation of 'school packs' this year cause the line to move too fast and overload those who are carbonizing the boxes? How do we prepare for that? How will we get 30,000 boxes folded in four days?

Well, there are more questions but you get the idea.

This morning, by God's grace, I read a passage in Isaiah 7:9-14 that really spoke to me.  King Ahaz is in a crisis. Enemies are waging war against Jerusalem and those folks of Judah "shook as trees of the forest shake in the wind."(vs. 2)

So the Lord sent Isaiah to reassure Ahaz that they would not be destroyed and said to him in verse 9 "If you do not believe, you surely shall not last."

Then the Lord asks Ahaz to request a sign--anything from heaven to hell--to reassure him, but Ahaz wisely refuses to test the Lord and says, "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign:  Behold a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel."

In the midst of the crisis Ahaz knew, even centuries before He would be born, that it was ALL ABOUT JESUS.

Compared to Jesus nothing else matters--not even the threat of death at the hands of enemies. And with the promise of Jesus there is victory even when you seem to face imminent defeat.

Thank You, Lord, for Your word to me this morning. Because even though we have a million questions, even though we have no idea how this packing party will all come together, even though we actually fear the long hours of preparation it will take to get set up in just a few days prior to the packing party itself...

even though...we know JESUS is already there bringing us victory. Because, in the beginning and in the end, it's ALL ABOUT JESUS.

Willow Creek GLS18--Craig Groeschel--Anticipatory Leadership

Here's Craig Groeschel's talk from the Willow Greek GLS18 about anticipatory leadership (which pretty much drained my brain.)

Where do we go from here?  We’ve absorbed so much.  I want to talk about anticipatory leadership. How do we look forward and anticipate what could be coming in the future?

I lead a church and we’re passionate about eradicating Bible poverty.  About 12 years ago we had an idea to create a website called YouVersion.com like a Christian Facebook.  We were about two weeks from taking down the site when Bobby Grunewald said Apple is coming out with an app.  What if we took our content and built and app and released an app with the Bible on it.  We decided to ask around to see if anyone knew how to create an app. We found a 19-year-old part-time staffer who built the app and we launched it 10 years ago.  We found the first weekend 81,000 people had downloaded the app.  On Monday the 19-year-old had a full-time job and now 10 years later 1/3 of a billion people have downloaded the app.

Everyone say “What if”—how do we anticipate where things are going?

The difference between a good leader and a great leader is one who learns to anticipate rather than react.

“Most players skate to where the puck is. I skate to where it’s going to be.”—Wayne Gretzky

The lifespan of your structure is diminishing as we speak.  If we are not changing we’re falling farther behind.  As we’re anticipating the future you have to realize what you know may be wrong.

For centuries around the world pastors ministered in one local church but now because of technology we can do ministry in multiple sites. We formed very strong opinions about how this should work.  Some called us experts. If we start to wrongly own the title of experts we’re susceptible to the “curse of confidence.” 

When Twitter came out I didn’t believe people would care what I thought about in 140 characters or less…or pictures on Instagram.  I thought it was a fad. I was sure.  Therefore, I am behind in social media influence.

When we’re completely sure, we’re vulnerable:

The Curse of Confidence

--Difficult to receive feedback

--Answer more questions than they’re asking

--Assume too much and stop innovating

How we learn to anticipate:  The three D’s of Anticipator y Leadership

Develop

Discern

Disrupt

1)   Develop situational awareness—honestly and accurately assess the true current state of our organization. Many times we don’t know what we don’t know. Self-awareness is incredibly difficult. The Dunning-Kruger Effect—people have difficulty recognizing their own incompetence. Those who rank themselves as the most skilled are generally the least skilled.  Those who are the most capable often don’t know it.  We have to work hard to fight for humility so we can assess ourselves. Most leaders could learn more from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them. Look honestly and have the integrity to tell the truth. No one lies better than leaders. Look at the culture and the health of the team.  If something is not working, ask why. Andy Stanley says, “If you don’t know why something is working when it is, you won’t know how to fix it when it’s not.”  A doctor who was diagnosing me said, “I always force myself to ask 21 questions.” I asked him why and he replied, “Because 21 is one more than 20.”  You are asking questions to get to the root reason of why something is working or not—honestly diagnosing your organization

2)   Discern future threats and opportunities—I encourage you to start to learn to anticipate in areas outside of your area of expertise.  Begin to practice in areas outside your field developing theories.  For instance, I have a theory that younger people may reject social media.  I have a theory about higher education—that it might be overrated.  The cost/benefit may be starting to tilt.  How do we approach this?  --Embody healthy skepticism and lead with bold optimism. What we’re doing now will not work forever.  In 66 years Lego never had a down year, then suddenly everything changed in 1998 and profits plummeted from 146 million to 48 million in one year. Lego underestimated the digital revolution.  All kinds of things could go wrong. The price of oil could drop, the housing market could plummet…  At the same time we remember fear is a choice and so is faith.  You’ll always face obstacles but we remember new challenges always equal new opportunities. Lego showed this when they partnered with Star Wars which led to them creating their own movies.  When you see a problem you train yourself to think opportunity.  Innovation is born out of limitation. “ Innovation is seeing what everybody else sees and thinking what nobody else thought.”

3)   Disrupt what is and create what could be—Think about Air BnB or Uber. See possibilities before others see them.  Sometimes people ask me what I see as the future of the church.  These are my opinions for my culture.  My theory is that for a while churches have been trying to make the gospel cool. I think people are getting tired of cool and want more Jesus and less cool. The contemporary service is the new traditional. There needs to be more focus on substance than style.  Now I believe the focus should go from trying so hard to get them in the one hour and go to them for the rest of the hours. What matters in engaging people? They need to be needed and to be known. One of the greatest forms of discipleship is getting people into community. Less Jesus in me and more in we.  Christianity is experiencing God together.  When the world gets darker the light shines brighter. Through Jesus Christ the local church can make a difference.

What do we do from here?  Three Questions:

1)   What is the true, current state of your organization? Your leadership: Where are you successful? Flat? Struggling?

2)   If you were starting now, what are you currently doing now that you would not do? Why are you doing it?

3)   If you were starting today, what would you attempt? When are you going to attempt it?

If you wait until you’re 100% to try something new you will always be too late.

Willow Creek GLS18 -- Simon Sinek

Willow Creek GLS18 -- How do you lead an infinite game?

January 1968—North Vietnamese Army launches a surprise attack of 85,000 troops called the Tet Offensive.  There’d never been fighting on Tet before.  Americans repelled every single attack. After about a week North Vietnam had lost about 30,000 troops.  America lost 58,000 in the war and Vietnam lost 3.5 million.  How could we still lose the war?  There need to be more definitions.

If you have at least one competitor you have a game. Finite game=fixed number of players with fixed rules and results.  Infinite game=known and unknown players who keep the game going indefinitely. 

Problems arise when you pit a finite player against an infinite player. The finite player will always waste resources when those situations arise. Americans were fighting to win and Vietnamese were fighting for their lives.

We’re surrounded by infinite games—they are all around us. They are a part of our existence. Most of us only know how to lead in finite games, not infinite ones. 

The infinite player understands the only true player is yourself. How do you get stronger and better than last year?  If leading an infinite game is so different, how do you lead an infinite game?  There are five elements…

Just cause—a true cause so just we’d be willing to sacrifice to advance it. Might mean working at night, taking business trips away from family, etc.   Tests of a “just cause”=resilient (can resist change); inclusive (serves as invitation to anyone to contribute); service-oriented (primary benefit must go to other than the contributor)

Trusting teams—Leaders are responsible for creating an environment wher people can be their best selves and trust enough to ask for help…  If you don’t have trusting teams people are lying, faking, and hiding.

Worthy rival—On the stage with a rival speaking at the same event. I said to him, “You make me very insecure because your strengths are my weaknesses.” And he said, “I feel the same about you.”  So he became my worthy rival—not a competitor but like a pacer in a race to push me.  Individual rivals can push us to be better than ourselves through tactical improvements.

Existential flexibility—Have to be willing to take risks and be flexible

Courage to lead—Takes remarkable courage to believe in something bigger than myself and compete against no one but myself.

It raises one simple question: what does it mean to live an infinite life?  Every one of us has a choice to live by finite rules (driven to be richest, most powerful) or for the infinite (for a cause you believe in and when you pass others will say they were better because you were here.)

Willow Creek GLS18--Nthabiseng Legoete

Willow Creek GLS18 -- talk by a doctor who is working to make health care accessible to underserved patients in South Africa

I’m grateful for the opportunity to tell my story. When I started Quali Health I wanted to provide health care for those who don’t have access and that everyone has a fair chance at life. As the organization started I realized my role morphed into that of a leader and that’s not how I saw myself.

“The Man in the Arena” by Teddy Roosevelt

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who pointsout how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

This poem touches me deeply because it encompasses my journey. How do you fight your way out of defeat and seeming failure? How do you forgive yourself and move on?

2016 was a triumphant year. Everyone told me how great we were doing and that allowed us to attract funding and open more facilities.  Then in the spring of 2017 things started going south.  We had problems with cash flow. I did not want this to be a nonprofit because it is not sustainable. All of a sudden what I’ve been adamant about wasn’t working.  I had to step back and examine and the tendency is just to throw out the whole concept. I fell victim to that for a couple of weeks.

Then I began to see what I had done wrong. You need to focus on WHY you started. I had to realize that challenges don’t mean the dream is not working. Challenges are stepping stones to lead you to a better place.

We don’t discuss times when we doubt our own dreams and lose our focus. As long as you are achieving what you set out to achieve you are on the right path. 

While focus has to be on what you want to achieve, be FLEXIBLE on HOW you get to the goal.  My dream is to build 100 facilities but I’ve had to rethink the method for getting there. Changing the HOW doesn’t mean you change the WHY. 

I had to develop patience since I am trying to solve a problem that’s been there for hundreds of years. I needed to realize this couldn’t be sorted out by me alone.  I had to learn collaboration. 

Collaborate with those in alignment

Disassociate with those not in alignment.

Be relentless and unwavering in WHAT you want to achieve but not inflexible in how you get there.  Don’t be surprised when we face defeat, challenges, or resistance. We tend to think visions from God happen unopposed. Challenges are part of a purpose-filled journey.

I realized I had too many people who were not leading us to the goal of providing the least expensive health care. We needed to be profitable.  Most of the costs came from people who were not leading us forward so a big challenge was letting people go.

We need to forgive ourselves for mistakes.  2018 began with a process of cutting people and restructuring the organization. We suddenly had to deal with emotions and critics. You have to realize it’s not about you.   I had to face those challenges to get more efficient. Expect pain, challenges and doubt.  Don’t let the surprise paralyze you.

With faith comes letting go of yourself and how you want things to work out. I needed to look intently at the situation and see what God wanted to show me. I was so set on people being the success of Quali Health and I realized a vision cannot be dependent on any one person.

Maybe if we are able to just stand and take in all the criticism without being deterred by them maybe more businesses will succeed.  I want to inspire people to stay with their dream. Are you doing what you set out to achieve? If you are, everything else is just noise.

Willow Creek GLS18--Erwin McManus--The Last Arrow

Erwin McManus's talk from the 2018 Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit--

If we can figure out how to conquer the darkness inside of us we can keep moving on toward the light.  Most of us are here not only to try to find out how to lead better but we’re afraid there is greatness inside us that will never be actualized. We don’t want to drown in mediocrity.

A huge part of my personal journey has been a search for my identity.  My grandfather named me after Hitler’s general in North Africa. I took my son to meet my stepdad and y stepdad told me son I was just average and my brother was exceptional.  Actually I was below average.  I think that terrifying realization haunts us all. 

I began writing this book called “The Last Arrow” about saving nothing for the next life. Life isn’t really about talent or gifting; there’s so much more. We’re terrified of breaking away from the pack and becoming who God created us to be.  

I think we’re in danger of trying to learn how to conform and belong when we should be breaking out of the momentum of mediocrity.  I found a story in 2 Kings—a conversation between Elisha and King Jehoash.  Elisha tells Jehoash to shoot the arrow through the window—a metaphor for putting your life in God’s hands and seeing Him do more with it than you could do on your own.  Then he tells the king to take the arrow and strike three times.  Then Elisha became angry and said, “Why did you stop striking? God would have given you complete victory but now you only get a partial victory.”  Why didn’t Elisha tell him that before? 

Many people need permission to get started but almost no one needs permission to quit.  How many of us have confused and thought we failed when we actually quit.  We never pushed ourselves to do more.  How many of us are saving ourselves for the next life when this one is all we have?

I’ve been trying to get life insurance for seven years and could never qualify though doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me. I tried again and kept failing the tests and said, “I’ve never been good at tests.”  Around Christmas we went for a routine exam and the doctor said, “You have cancer.”  It felt so surreal because it was unexpected.  As we were processing that right before Christmas and found it was high-volume cancer I wondered if “The Last Arrow” would be my last book.  That night I read page 93 and read a sentence I’d written a year before and I didn’t remember, “I need to tell you before you hear it from anyone else that I’m dying.” And the next sentence was “So are you.”

Most of us act like our life will last forever. You don’t get this day back.  You need to treat each moment as sacred—as if it’s the last day of your life.

Three weeks later I had a 6.5 hour surgery to remove the cancer. I gave myself permission to feel whatever I would feel.  I never felt bitter because life has been good. I never felt angry. What surprised me most was I never felt afraid.  I started processing that and I remembered when I was new in my faith journey and met Jesus.  I drove my little yellow Pinto into the ghetto and my heart was pounding so I prayed and asked God to help me.  The one verse that came to me was “To live is Christ. To die is gain.” It was as if God was telling me, “If you’ll just die right now I’ll take you where only dead men can go.”  I had dealt with death so many years before so death doesn’t scare me now.

You need to step through your fears to your freedom.  I had a little personal funeral that day decades ago and died to myself.  Death is not supposed to be in front of you; death is supposed to be behind you.  All you have in front of you is life.

I want you to know something. Before you’re ever the CEO of the company you’re a human and if you don’t deal with fear in your life you’ll never life the life you were created to live.

So many of us only have a structure to lead when the world is at peace. Leadership is facing your fears and going through them. Dick DeVoss said,”Leaders don’t run from the fires; they run into them.” 

What you fear establishes the boundaries of your freedom.  It’s only in relationship to God that perfect love casts out fear. Only God can destroy the fear and set you free with His love.  Every other master is a cruel master. 

A lot of us don’t understand that our greatness is on the other side of our pain. We don’t often recognize the pain it takes to get to greatness.

After 6.5 hours of surgery I woke up. I told my wife I was going to get up and walk.  She called the nurse who said I couldn’t get up and walk.  I refused painkillers because the point was if I could stand in the pain I could face whatever pain was ahead of me. I got off that high hospital bed and put my feet on the ground. I felt such intense pain but I took 3 or 4 steps then walked down the hall and it hurt SO much. One of the things we need to learn more of is how to walk in our pain.

Three hours later I got up and walked again around the hospital then I took a shower and got dressed. My wife said, “Why are you doing this?”  I went home and my wife had a room all set up and when she left I sneaked out of the house and walked down the street with my catheter.  Three months after surgery I went to play basketball for two hours.

I started getting emails from around the world. I got an email from a friend who was an atheist and he said, “This may be the one thing that drives me to pray.”  My atheist friends ask, “Where is the proof of life after death?”  They haven’t known life before death.  I want those friends to know pain is not the limitation of our life, but you have to be willing to go through the pain to step into your greatness.

There are many of you going through pain right now. When you live a life of pain, when you connect with the God who created you, you learn that pain is not the end of the story. Even for Jesus His greatness was on the other side of His pain.  Jesus didn’t come to give us a way out of pain but a way through the pain.

Not only is your freedom and greatness on the other side of pain but your future is on the other side of your failures. God doesn’t define you by your worst moments; He defines you by your best moments. He sees in you a future you can’t even imagine.

One day I got an email that my former business partner took millions of dollars from our company. I had to tell my wife I lost everything and she said, “I thought I was your everything.” I didn’t know how to respond so I said, “I lost my other everything.” I couldn’t eat for 30 days.  We had to talk a million dollar loan on our house to complete projects that were left undone.  I wanted God to meet me in my faith but God met me in my faithfulness.

I stand before you as a person who has had failure after failure after failure. So many times I thought I would quit. We need to stop pretending this life is easy. Your faith doesn’t make life easier; your faith makes you stronger. 

Forty years ago I had a lifechanging encounter with the creator of the universe. I didn’t care about heaven. I didn’t care about hell. But I was terrified I would live and die and drown in my own mediocrity and never live the life I was created to live. 

There’s a life waiting for you. Your faith is the strength to step into your pain and your fear and take the arrow and strike and strike and strike and strike and when you die let your last arrow be in your hand.

Willow Creek GLS18--Sheila Heen--Difficult Conversations

Difficult conversations are always...well...difficult...  Here's Sheila Heen's talk from the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit

You know those on-again, off-again relationships? I had friends in relationships like that and I swore I would never do that. Then I got into one of those relationships where I kept getting talked into giving it one more try. I wondered why I was having such a hard time negotiating myself out of this relationship. This was when I began working on how to have difficult conversations.

I kept the image of finishing this book and going home for a reading. Eventually we finished the book and went on a tour and I looked forward to the hometown reading at the end of the tour. We show up at the venue and there are 18 people there, 11 of whom are related to us.  About half way through the talk my sister takes her 3 kids out the side door and we hear the 5-year-old say, “Mom, that stunk!” The older 7-year-old said, “Charlie, it was supposed to stink!”  That experience has stuck with me because it reminds me of how we often feel about the difficult conversations in our lives.  I’m here to tell you every one of us on this planet has difficult conversations in our lives. It’s part of being human and in relationship together.  Your job as a leader is to have these conversations.  How you handle them defines your leadership.  The bad news is they are supposed to stink. 

Think about the difficult conversations in your life.  Here are some themes that were given—

--standing up for myself

--saying no and disappointing someone

--working across cultures

--telling my boss they are wrong

--helping my peer with their self-awareness

Write the name of the person you’re thinking of.  The most important thing to understand is we have to look beyond what we’re actually saying to each other to what is in our internal voice.  Think about your own internal voice. In difficult conversation your internal voice is turned up to loud.

(Video of Monicia and Paul—friends who are also business partners in the midst of a difficult conversation.)

The first thing you’ll notice as you listen to people’s internal voices they are busy with the same things every time. Every difficult conversation has the same underlying structure.

The story in our head is driven by a few key questions:

1)   Who is right?

2)   Whose fault is it?  (defines the problem)

3)   Why is the other person acting this way?

What do I do with the strong feelings I have? There are two more things going on. There are strong feelings and often conflicting feelings.  Write down some feelings in the difficult conversation you are having. 

By the time something becomes a difficult conversation we have two problems: the surface problem and the way we treat each other.

What does this say about me? At the deepest level is our identity.  This colors the story.  What about money? If you bring it up will you look greedy? 

In my off-again, on-again relationship I wondered was I a good person? Was I being forgiving?

Two topics, two talkers, and zero listeners.

So what do we do? 

1) Ask who do we each think this conversation is about? Why do we see things so differently?

1)   Instead of asking whose fault it is ask what each person’s contribution was.

2)   Instead of asking why are they acting this way separate intentions from impact.

Instead of blame, look at joint contribution—that’s where learning comes from.  Get beyond telling and persuading to asking and exploring and trying to understand.

Remember the difference from talking at to talking to and then to talking with. 

What if we could see ourselves and each other as God sees us—as people who sometimes disappoint each other but also need each other? It doesn’t guarantee we will work this out but gives a better chance.

Researchers told subjects they were going to another building to give a talk and planted someone along the way who needed help. What percentage of the subjects do you think stopped to help the person in distress?  The answer is 10% stopped to help.  The students they used were seminary students.  The talk they were told to go give was on the parable of the Good Samaritan.

That is us—the challenge in our busy lives is to see the opportunities to walk our own talk and help someone with an important conversation.  Leadership is about showing someone a better future we will co-create together.

Willow Creek GLS--David Livermore on Cultural Intelligence

(Notes from the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit)

I want to share a story with you.  I was in China speaking for 10 days straight and on the 3^rd day I’d started to find my stride. I started my presentation well and didn’t know my speaker wasn’t translating my story. The translator was actually cuing the audience when to laugh.  I thought I was culturally relevant!  Often our mistakes teach us more than our successes.

Cultural Intelligence=Capability to work and relate effectively in culturally diverse situations

Described by—

1)   CQ Drive—your level of interest, persistence, and confidence during multicultural situations; can I see the situation through the eyes of the others?  Exercise perspective taking—can I see their perspective?

2)   CQ Knowledge=Your understanding about how cultures are similar and different—studies done about how Christians in different cultures view Jesus’ teachings—in story of prodigal son, why does he end up in the pig pen: Russians—he ended up there because it was a famine;  Tanzania—because no one gave him food; Americans—because he squandered the wealth he’d been given (the actual text supports each of these perspectives) The benefit of different voices is the various perspectives we gain.  Maybe convene a diverse group of leaders to discuss a leadership topic together.

3)   CQ Strategy—Your awareness and ability to plan for multicultural interactions.  Many times what happens is we don’t teach strategy. You make the situation worse if you just teach diversity with no strategy. Before doing a routine task sketch a brief plan about how to approach this with an unfamiliar culture and make adaptations.

4)   CQ Action—your ability to adapt without going too far

To Adapt or Not?—

1)   Is it a ‘tight’ or ‘loose’ culture?—how much difference will it make if I adapt or not?

2)   Will adapting compromise the organization or me?—sometimes the cultural norm may be something I’m unwilling to do because of my values

3)   Will retaining the differences make us stronger?—too much adaptation may be patronizing or harmful

Diversity doesn’t always lead to innovation. Homogenous teams generally innovate better than diverse teams unless the leaders have high cultural intelligence. 

How do you know what your Cultural Intelligence is? Visit culturalIQ.com/gls for one complimentary self-assessment.

Everyone who desires to can improve their cultural intelligence.

Willow Creek GLS--Rasmus Ankersen

(Notes from the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit -- whew! This leadership stuff can get complicated!)

I want to start by showing you something (old model cell phone Nokia.) In many ways it embodied resiliency, quality, and innovation. It led to a case study at business schools around the world. Nokia is not just a story about success; it’s also a story about a company that lost their mojo.  Maybe we don’t talk enough about the challenges that follow success: arrogance, complacency, resistence to change.

Human beings are living longer and longer but companies live shorter and shorter.

As leaders we need to think about how we keep our organization relevant and fresh? How do we reinvent from a position of strength?

If it can happen to Nokia, it can happen to you too.

Two stories—one about football and one about a statistician.

Outcome bias= we assume good results always come from superior performance

Newcastle United football (soccer) club plays at St. James Park and has 50,000 fans at the stadium every week.  In 2012 they finished 5^th in their league—an amazing performance for them.  They rewarded the head coach with an unbreakable eight year contract and tried to keep the squad together.

The following seasons they dropped to 16^th place. Nothing had changed yet they dropped 11 places in a year. In football there’s an old expression “The League Table never lies!”  But it’s not that simple according to a gambling pro—an Oxford grad in physics.  We discussed whether gambling strategies/predictions would apply to predicting football success.

What you need to understand is “The League Table ALWAYS Lies” because football is a very random game. The fewer goals there are in a sport the more impact there is from random events. The best team wins less often in a low-scoring game like football.  The way a gambler deals with this he looks at underlying performance that has more predictive value.

All goals in football are important but not all are equally important.  This is called goal differential. Another statistic gamblers look at is shot differential.  They look at these rates to see which teams are most likely to have sustainable success. 

We can assume that good results are always the result of good decisions or performance, BUT

“Success turns luck into genius.” 

Successful organizations should think more like good gamblers. Why were we successful?

Lego has been willing to evaluate their success. After they sent out 30,000 sets of police station Legos and all were sold they realized one piece was missing in each set. Less than 2% of the people who bought it called for a replacement part and the rest may have just bought a competitor’s product the next time.  When we hear from 5,000 complainers there may actually be a million complaints.

1)   Never trust success

Second story  --4 Ethiopian runners winning gold medals in the London Olympics and all came from Bekoji, Ethiopia that has 17,000 people and produced many gold medals.  

35% of the world’s best female golfers are from South Korea. 

What can this teach us about how to develop high performance success?

The Gold Mine Effect --  video of Kenya training camp; Jamaican training camp, South Korean golf training camp; -- 6 months I traveled around the world and trained in each of these places.  I wrote a book called “The Gold Mine Effect”

Jamaica—Usain Bolt—fastest man on the planet—people say “there must be something in the water in Jamaica”.  Let’s rule out super-genetics.  I got to the training camp early in the morning and couldn’t see a running track.  Ten minutes later Stephen Francis head coach of MVP track in Jamaica arrived.  He’s never sprinted; he graduated with a statistics degree.  I expected to see a modern training facility but all they had was a grass track and a shack with rusty weights.  Stephen Francis said,  “I believe strongly a performance center must be designed with work in mind and not comfort.” 

The important question is: who cares the most? Who wants it the most?  Sometimes comfort becomes more important than improvement.  Too much comfort=no real improvement.  Can you have too much comfort?  As leaders how can you create the discomfort you need to move forward?

Back to Lego—who is the main competitor? Is it another toy company or is it Apple? Coca Cola won the battle against Pepsi but then said what if we’re competing not just against other soft drinks but against any beverages in general? 

2)   Re-think your potential

Make the world bigger and yourself smaller.

Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit--John Maxwell

(At the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit for some leadership training to help our Operation Christmas Child team.)

Here John Maxwell shares what all leaders have in common...

All leaders see more than others see and they see before others see.

Fast is faster than it’s ever been and forward is shorter.  In the 1980s there weren’t any leadership book; there were management books. Leadership books started in the early 90s.  The question is: if it’s that way, how do we see more and how do we see before?

Let’s just think of getting started first. How Do I increase my “more and before”?

1)   Know that there is more “More and More Before” out there (Think Abundance) – creativity and flexibility. If you don’t think there’s an answer you will quit. Flexibility means there’s probably more than one answer.  As I’m older I have less certainty. The things I’m certain about, though, I am MORE certain about than ever. I’m certain that if we think abundance that there is more and before in front of us.

2)   Develop a process for finding more “More & More Before” – action process with 5 steps (test, fail, learn, improve, reenter)

3)   Put yourself in places & with people who will inspire you to see more “More & More Before.”—the GLS over the years has helped me learn so much.

4)   Intentionally grow every day so you will have capacity for more “More & More Before.”  If you’re still excited about what you did 5 years ago you’re not growing.. I talked to my 96-year-old father last week and he said, “Son, my best years are still ahead of me.” My father is going to live until he dies and not the other way around.

5)   Always have a vision gap that requires you to need “More More & More Before” – vision gap is the space between what you are doing and what you could be doing. 

How do we fill the vision gap?

1)   Ask God to send you the right people (and pray that you will become a better person)

2)   Ask God to do for you what you cannot do for yourself (Ephesians 3:20 from The Message)—this leaves God room—the ceiling of my potential is the floor of God room.  He wants to do in you and me a God room work. One of my mentors said, “Do something so big that people who know you will says that is beyond his ability and only God can do that.”

Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit--Danielle Strickland

Danielle Strickland talks about gender mutuality at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit

We’re in a strategic cultural intersection where the relationships between men and women are eroding. Women are exposing the pain of sexual harassment. And thank God. I believe the truth will set us free. But that disrupts us and we hate chaos and being out of control. Our reaction is to deny or blame or hide or try to find knee jerk reactions.

For those of us who want to be transformational leaders we’ll see this as an opportunity to create a different better world. Years ago I met a woman who changed Sweden’s mind about prostitution. She said it was easy. She  said there’s two things: 1) to be able to imagine a better world and 2) to understand oppression.

The first day my son came home from kindergarten he said it was boring. We told stories about what we did over the break and I wanted mine to be really good so I made one up.  The thing my son was after is what we’re all after—a better story.  I want to live a better story.

I’ve got a story that’s possible. Women and men are better together. We desire this deep inside of us because we’re designed for this.  When God created He first tried a man by himself in charge and God said, “This is not good.”  Then God creates woman as a helper so we could be better.  The world will be better if we lead together.

Step 1 – Believe it is possible.  If it became accessible for women to achieve their potential it would add 12 trillion dollars or 28 trillion to the world economy.  A necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world is gender equality.  Believing it’s possible is to refuse despair—to shatter the status quo and believe for the future to change.

Step 2—Do not be afraid.  2/3 of women in the world are not optimistic gender equality can be obtained.  Gandhi said we think the enemy is hate but it is fear.  God’s design is for every single person to be free. Exodus 1 says because Pharaoh was afraid of the Israelites he oppressed them.  If our decisions and dreams are fear-based we will be oppressed or be oppressors. Fear is the currency of oppression. So how do men and women work together without fear.  Difference and mutuality.

Difference=we are not the same. To be human is to be unique. Part of our humanity is difference. When we over-emphasize one difference it leads to a distortion of our humanity. Difference through the lens of fear is a threat but through the lens of faith it’s an opportunity.

Mutuality=the sharing of a feelings, actions, and relationships between people. Ubuntu: the belief in a universal bond between us.  Power and sex are the foes of mutuality.  35% of women living globally hae experienced physical or sexual violence; 1 in 4 women in US will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime.  We hear the pain of women who have suffered inequality, injustice, and sexism on any level. The truth you are telling is essential for us to understand to make the world a better place. 

We believe the future will be better together.  We have to look at one of the main sources fueling that oppression.  Pornography—1 in 6 computer searches are for porn. 60% of men admit to using porn once a week. What happens to the way you view gender if the lens through which you view it objectifies women. Pornography needs to be confronted by a generation that will not be afraid to tell the truth.

Objectification is the opposite of mutuality.

Power is the other foe of mutuality.  Power is the ability to influence the behavior of others.  Abuse: use to bad effect or purpose.  How do we use our power for change?

How we use our power is the measure of our leadership.  Misuse of power is coercion and threats; a good use is negotiation and fairness. 

A misuse is intimidation and a good use is non-threatening behavior.

Isolation is a misuse of power; trust and support is a good use of power.

Minimizing, denying, and blaming is a misuse; honesty and accountability is a good use.

Economic abuse is a misuse; economic partnership is a good use.

Male privilege is a misuse and shared responsibility is a good use.

Poverty is not just about economics; it’s about power. Great leaders use power to empower other people.   If power is a tool, how are you using yours.

This is so clear in the life of Jesus. Jesus’ modus operandi was to give power away. In a culture where women couldn’t sit in a room with men he invited women to sit at the feet of a rabbi.  Jesus invited women to be part of the Kingdom of God. Jesus shows us how to live our lives by using power to empower other people.

Step 3—Start now and start with you—How are we going to do that? I’m part of a movement called Amplify Peace. We listen intentionally to voices we don’t normally hear.  

Step 4—Never, Ever Give up.  –Morgan Stanley—Gender equity is a long term objective with demonstrable goals.  It takes a lifetime of doing things a different way.

Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit--Carla Harris

Carla Harris speaking at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit about influential leadership.

I am so excited to be here today to talk about influential leadership.  I have learned a few things on Wall Street in 31 years. In my capacity as a banker I’ve taken hundreds of companies public I’ve seen influential leaders and some not so influential.

L = leverage—somebody on your team has the experience or access to a relationship that will help your team succeed. As a leader it’s your job to show your team how to access other relationships. Your job as a leader is to create other leaders.

E=efficiency—Be clear about what success looks like. Even when you’re unsure you need to define success. When you make a mistake, celebrate the mistake.

A=authenticity—authenticity is at the heart of power. No one can be you the way you can be you.  When you are comfortable in your own skin people will gravitate toward you.  Your authenticity is your distinct competitive advantage.

D=decisions & diversity—Make a decision even if you feel you don’t have all the wisdom you need. Every experience will give you the blessing or the lesson.  Diversity—every organization is competing so you need a lot of ideas in the room that will allow you to obtain and retain a leadership position.  Perspectives are born from experiences. Experiences are born from people. To get to innovation you have to start with a lot of people in the room. Diversity takes intentionality, accountability. There should be no lowering the bar. You have to guard against organ rejection. The body will naturally dispel what is foreign so when you bring in diverse people you have to work hard to make sure that person is accepted.

E=engagement—Being inclusive means hearing people and seeing people. When artificial intelligence becomes the norm relationships are the discriminator.

Transformative Leaders are--

Thoughtful

Transparent

R=Risks—You must be comfortable taking risks. Why don’t we take risks? Fear.  Fear has no place in your success equation. If you approach in fear you will always underpenetrate that opportunity.

The one word that goes through all these letter is courage.  It takes courage to take risks, to be intentional, to engage, to be authentic, to define success and to leverage other people’s intellect.  As people of faith you know you should never be deceived by fear.

Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit--T.D. Jakes

(here at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit for some leadership training that might help us get more Operation Christmas Child boxes to children around the world.)  Here T.D. Jakes shares from his book "Soar."

I’m excited to be here and spend a few minutes with you. I’m amazed by the brain power on this stage.  I want to spend a few minutes talking to the people who don’t have enough time or money or support or energy to get ‘there’. 

A vision can be tormented. A vision should be a little bit annoying and frustrating. If you have a vision everybody believes in it’s too small. You want a vision that you have to  choose who to share it with.

I am the son of a janitor and a schoolteacher. My father was whatever he needed to be to feed our family. My father started a business in 1960 with a mop and a bucket in West Virginia.  Five years later with 52 employees I learned to believe in crazy stuff.

Recently I did research on the Wright brothers’ story and I am amazed at someone who can stand on the ground and say I belong up there in the sky.  You need to think something scary—something you can’t tell anybody about—you need to think beyond your means and dream something so ridiculous it gets you out of your comfort zone. When we’re petrified we’re also electrified.

The greatest things that ever happened came through people who didn’t have enough but had a vision bigger than their circumstance.  It doesn’t matter where you start; it matters where you finish.

When we started gospel plays the first three almost made us bankrupt. I finally did a play that got some acclaim and I hooked up with someone else who was trying to get started—Tyler Perry.  We started the play “Woman Thou Art Loosed” and won a festival and got a movie contract that changed the next 15 years of my life.

Things happen out of small places. What started in Dayton, OH ended up in Kitty Hawk because the wind was right.  Sometimes you’ll have a great idea in the wrong place.  You can fail because the wind is not right.  You might have the wrong wind.

I believe you are here today because the wind is right. If you do the right thing in the right wind you can spread your wings and soar. I’m not talking to the winners who have multimillion dollar budgets. I want to talk to the young entrepreneur who can’t figure out how to get off the ground.

So much of what we learn is about winning but what really stimulates growth is losing. You will learn more from losing than you ever will from winning. The things you learn from failure sets you up to fly. Never count your failure as wasted time. What inspired the Wright brothers were eagles.

Eagles make love in the air, they build nests on cliffs, and when the eggs hatch they kick the kids out of the house. Eaglets don’t learn how to fly by flying they learn to fly by falling.  As they flap to keep from falling they find out how to fly.  What do you learn from the failure that gets you ready for the next dimension?  Those are the lessons that enrich your lives.

If you’re making bicycles and thinking airplanes I want to talk to you.  That is what produces the mystery, the majesty. To believe you can stand on the ground but you belong in the air. And if you keep flapping and falling it might look dumb at first but after awhile you’ll get your rhythm.

Soar.  It’s your time.