All posts in Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2010

What Motivates Us :: Daniel Pink

by Tim Schraeder on 08/06/2010 in Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2010 with 10 Comments

Best-selling author, business thinker, and former White House speechwriter, Daniel Pink has been credited with defining a new era in the workplace. His book A Whole New Mind examined the kinds of “right brain” skills that will be required as we move from an Information Age to a Conceptual Age. His new book, Drive, looks at the science of motivation, and he’ll be revealing key findings about the forces that will drive employees in well-led organizations of the future: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Pink is also the author of Free Agent Nation, and his articles on business and technology have appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review,Fast Company, and Wired.

  • We all have drives.
  • Some drives are biological.
  • Human beings are complex and have multiple drives that motivate us.
  • We also have a reward and punishment drive.
  • If you want people to do certain things you reward them.
  • If you want them to stop doing something you punish them.
  • Human beings have a third drive.
  • We do things because they are interesting, we like doing them, they are meaningful, they contribute to the world, etc.
  • If the third drive doesn’t exist, what are you doing here?
  • We are here because we want to learn, connect, believe in something larger than ourselves.
  • The problem with the Third Drive is that it is routinely neglected inside of organizations.

Science of Rewards

  • We try to restrain the biological drive and amplify the reward/punishment/drive, neglecting the Third Drive.
  • Rewards are good for simple tasks.
  • Rewards don’t work very well for more complicated, complex conceptual tasks that require creativity.
  • Rewards create tunnel vision.
  • A larger reward can create worse results.
  • When we see “carrots and sticks” demonstratively fail before our eyes we go for more carrots instead of looking at the problem.
  • Rewards take us down the wrong path. There is a better way.

2 False Assumptions Inside of Organizations

  • We make the wrong assumptions about people.
  • If you begin with the wrong assumptions, no matter how hard you work, it doesn’t go well.

1 – Human beings are complicated machines.

  • We believe people will do what we want them to do.
  • That is not true.
  • If you think of human beings as machines, you will run awry.

2 – Human beings are blobs.

  • Our nature is not to be passive and inert; our nature is to be active and engaged.
  • Our essence as human beings it to be creative.
  • We can have our default setting switched, but that’s our nature.

3 Key Elements for Enduring Motivation: Autonomy, Mastery,  Purpose

Autonomy

  • Before we talk about autonomy we have to talk about MANAGEMENT.
    • We don’t consider that word carefully.
    • We look at it like a river, tree or mountain.
    • Management didn’t emanate from nature.
    • Management is a technology.
    • Management is a technology to get compliance.
    • We don’t want COMPLIANCE… we want ENGAGEMENT.
    • Management doesn’t fundamentally lead to engagement.
    • Self-direction leads to engagement.
  • Give people autonomy over their time, team, task and technique.
  • Google gives people 20% of their time to work on whatever they want.
    • GoogleNews was not an official project of Google.
    • GMail was not an official Google project.
    • Just about all of their good ideas bubbled up from their 20% time.
  • How do you bring this into play in your church/organization?
    • You need to go slow.
    • We have need for “Scaffolding.”
      • Have a FedEx Day.
      • Try it out for awhile… see what happens.
      • Try 20% time with training wheels.
      • What about 10% time? 1 afternoon a week?
      • Do it with a group of people that you think would be receptive to it.
      • Give people the freedom to be self-productive.

Mastery

  • Making progress is the single-most motivating factor.
  • This re-casts the role of the manager.
  • Managers should be encouraging progress instead of enforcing compliance.
  • Flow happens when the challenge is so matched to our capabilities that we lose track of time and of ourselves.
  • We’re more likely to have moments of flow in work than in leisure.
  • Leisure is passive.
  • In order to achieve mastery you have to have feedback.
  • The workplace is one of the most feedback-depirved environments in our existence.
  • ANNUAL performance reviews tend to be our only form of feedback.
  • Performance reviews are not authentic conversations.
  • We need to encourage people to take it into their own hands.
  • Set monthly performance and learning goals for yourself and call yourself into your own office.

Purpose

  • There’s a sense that a page is turning.
  • We are seeing the limits of the profit motive.
  • The profit motive is a very good thing morally and for efficiency.
  • It’s not the only thing.
  • In the last decade, we’ve seen when the profit motive comes unmoored from the purpose motive, bad things happen.
  • Not just bad things, mediocre, average, uninspiring.
  • If the single cry is to raise profits, it’s not something that will make people leap out of bed.
  • It’s insufficiently motivating.
  • We always tell the social sector to act like a business.
  • The reverse is happening now.
  • Businesses realize they have to act more like the social sector.
  • People have to be animated by something larger than themselves.

Diagnostic

  • Listen to what people tell you and the pronouns they use.
  • Do people say “we” or “they?”
  • “We are doing…” or “They are doing…”
  • “WE” organizations are high-preforming.
  • “THEY” expresses dissatisfaction.

How Do We Change?

  • You can’t change your organization.
  • One person can’t do that.
  • That’s the wrong question.
  • You need to ask: Can YOU change what YOU do tomorrow?
  • Change happens when people take small steps in their own worlds that cascade into another.
  • Anything good thing in life begins with a conversation.
  • Conversations change the world.
  • The cascades of conversations we are having will change the world.

When Leaders Emerge :: Terri Kelly

by Tim Schraeder on 08/06/2010 in Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2010 with 11 Comments

Terri Kelly is president and CEO of W.L. Gore & Associates, a 50-year old, multi-billion dollar enterprise that is often profiled as an example of the future of management. A pioneer in lattice-based management structure, Gore’s “associates” become leaders based on their ability to gain the respect of their peers and to attract followers. Kelly became president and CEO in 2005, after she was elected by her peers to serve in that role. Employing more than 8,000 associates in 45 plants around the world, Gore produces many unique products, including Gore-Tex® fabric, and is perpetually named on lists of “the best places to work.” Kelly will explain how this unique culture works on a practical level.

So much of the DNA of Gore came from their founders. What were they trying to do?

  • More than the business model they focused on creating the right foundation and values.
  • To be innovative you have to create an environment of collaboration.
  • Personal relationships that form around problem-solving create different team dynamics.
  • As your company grows, how can people feel like they are still part of a team and not a number?

If you were a brand-new employee, what woudl you notice as being different

  • It’s a peer-based organization.
  • Everyone understands their job is to make everyone else successful.
  • There’s a fundamental investment of time put into developing relationships.
  • People are more vested in owning their own outcome and feeling part of a whole.
  • People care about the success of the organization.

What’s on-demand hierarchy?

  • There’s a formal hierarchy that shifts.
  • Hierarchy shifts dependent on who is most knowledgeable.
  • Who is taking the lead and driving the decison isn’t made in a fixed structure.
  • They want on-demand hierarchy that’s fluid with what’s needed.

Ladder vs Lattice

  • Lattice beleives we’re all connected around with a set of nodes.
  • Instead of two contact points, you want to encourage everyone connecting with everyone in their network.

“We don’t tell people what to do or what projects to work on…”

  • Leadership plays a different role here.
  • The leader isn’t the person who is responsible or tells the organization what to do.
  • Leaders have to lead from a point of influence.
  • You want individuals to feel ownership and why it’s important.
  • That shifts energy and commitment from the leader to the team.
  • Ownership and commitment is more powerful when it’s felt by the whole organization, they are equally committed to the outcome.
  • It won’t ever be neat and tidy.
  • Make sure everyone is operating with common foundational values and beliefs.
    • Belief in the individual.
    • The power of small teams. As they get larger they want people to feel connected.
    • All on the same boat. Even though small teams can do a lot, the entire enterprise benefits when everyone is collectively advancing.
    • Take a long-term view. Business are so focused on short-term results. They focus on healthy work environments, innovation vs profit.

How do people get money to fund their ideas?

  • Everyone is responsible to sell their ideas.
  • It’s an issue of influence.
  • Not all ideas are great ideas.
  • There’s a natural selection process that happens.
  • Passion matters but if they can get other people interested is most important.
  • One constraint every organization faces is people and resources.
  • They try to create success factors that let teams evaluate projects they will work on.
  • Associates want to work on things that they can do that make the greatest impact.
  • A team is asked to rank their teammates and identify who is making the greatest impact.
  • Everyone wants to make the greatest contribution.
  • They plot compensation according to those who are making the greatest impact.
  • The leader, most vocal, etc aren’t paid the most, it’s who is making the greatest impact.
  • Success is developed and measured by the entire organization not a select few.
  • In every organization people will confuse what they need to do to be successful with their passion.
  • This allows people to work on their passion and be successful.

There are more coaches than leaders.

  • They have “sponsors.”
  • Each person has a personal sponsor, someone who has made a commitment to their development.
  • The sponsor understands their job is to challenge and help individuals grow and develop.
  • By focusing on the individuals, they are maximizing the success of the organization.
  • This fosters a culture of trust.

They don’t allow plants to grow larger than 200-250 people.

  • Leaders need to learn how to divide so they can multiply.
  • It’s not about getting mass to gain influence.
  • It creates a different level of ownership and engagement.
  • Larger plants make it harder to develop relationships.
  • Over time the workplace lacks personality and team spirit.
  • Diminished collaboration happens when plants get larger.

Is it scalable?

  • What binds us together is our shared set of values.
  • Fundamental beliefs are transferrable across multiple locations.
  • Practices and culture may need to be adapted to the local environment.
  • Respect differences.

What are practical things you do to protect culture?

  • In the hiring process they do behavioral interviewing.
  • They want to make sure that the beliefs and values resound with the individuals they are hiring.
  • Leadership sets the tone for the values.

What is the waterline principle?

  • Gore hated policies and manuals.
  • If everything is put in a manual telling people what to do, it doesn’t tap into people’s wisdom.
  • The Waterline Concept says if drill below the waterline because you could sink the ship but gives you freedom to drill anywhere you want above the waterline.
  • It was a way to protect the company.

Leadership is defined by followership

  • People are only leaders if people are following them.
  • Leaders don’t get there because of seniority, popularity or title, they get there by respect and influence.

Leaders over-explain their decisions.

  • Your role as a leader is shifted.
  • Reaching out to people and helping them understand the rationale is key.
  • It’s not a waste of time.
  • It reinforces that you walk the talk and mean what you say.

What is the CEO’s job?

  • Stay out the way :)
  • “I can’t attempt to be the most knowledgeable person here.”
  • The cultural foundation needs to continually adapt and change according to the current environment.
  • Help to provide the broader framework.
  • Spend a lot of time with the other leaders.

Can anyone lead?

  • Over 50% of the people believed they had capacity to be a leader.
  • If you had an organization where everyone feels like a leader, how powerful would that be?
  • Collective leadership is much more powerful than singular leadership.

In the church we know everyone is a minister… we’re all championing our cause. What would it be like if every church was a place where people were constantly growing, developing each other, spontaneously developing teams, where leadership happens more by influence than position/title? THAT sounds like a prevailing church.

The Land Between :: Jeff Manion

by Tim Schraeder on 08/06/2010 in Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2010 with 24 Comments

Known for his vibrant teaching skills and passion for communicating the Scriptures in a clear and relevant way, Jeff Manion has served as teaching pastor of Ada Bible Church in West Michigan for more than 25 years. His church of 6,000 attendees was named by Outreachmagazine as one of America’s largest and fastest growing churches in 2009. Using video venues and two offsite campuses, they strive to create a small church feeling within a large church setting. Invited to the Summit after Bill Hybels heard a taped message he gave on The Land Between, Manion will share biblical insights on how to avoid pitfalls that can easily entrap those who are living in a time of transition.

  • We have a gracious God who redeems all things.
  • We need to open our hands that have been holding on to things to receive what He has for us.

The Land Between

  • “For now” is the language of the Land Between.
  • Many of us find ourselves in the Land Between today.
  • Discouragement, depression… we don’t know how we got there and don’t know how to get out of it.
  • Prayer doesn’t seem to be working.
  • If you want to find yourself in the Land Between, you are in the desert.
  • The original “Land Between” was the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land.
  • God called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery and into the land of promise. (Exodus 3)
  • Egypt was the land of slavery. Things flourished and grew there because of the Nile.
  • The Israelites were slaves there.
  • The Promised Land, Canaan, was flowing with milk and honey.
  • They were in the Land Between.
  • How did they eat in the brown space? God provided manna.
  • Manna means “what is it?”
  • Manna was substance God provided for them in the Land Between.
  • You might think not much can grow in the desert but the Land Between is fertile ground.

Complaints

  • The Land Between is fertile soil for complaints.
  • The Israelites complained about the manna (Numbers 11)
  • Have you eaten the same meal over and over and over again?
  • Instead of putting ourselves above the characters in these stories, it is healthier to see ourselves among them.
  • They weren’t complaining about their position, they were complaining against God.
  • They said, “We were better off as slaves, we were better off without you.”
  • Guard your heart in the Land Between.
  • It’s easy to want to write off God and complain.
  • How is God going to meet His servant Moses?
  • Moses didn’t want the job from the beginning.
  • Numbers 11:11-14, “the burden is too heavy for me.”

Emotional Meltdown

  • The Land Between is fertile ground for emotional meltdown.
  • Numbers 11:15 “God, if you love me, kill me now.”
  • Moses crashed.
  • Who’s voice do you hear other than the voice of Moses in this interaction?
  • Have you ever been at a place where you’ve said, “God I can’t carry this anymore!”
  • Anyone in a leadership capacity will get to this point.
  • When you throw yourself into any form of spiritual leadership, you will have moments where you come to the end of yourself.
  • Who’s voice will you listen to in those moments?

God’s Response: Provision

  • Maybe the way God moves towards Moses is the way He moves towards us.
  • verse 16 – God asked Moses to bring 70 of Israel’s elders to the tent of the meeting.
  • “They will help you carry the burden of the people so you won’t have to carry it alone.”
  • The tent is where people went to meet with God.
  • The Land Between is fertile ground of God’s provision.
  • God is good and gracious and wants to provide for us.
  • God loves to provide; it’s what He does.
  • What if, instead of holding on, we open our hands to release and leave them open to receive whatever God would provide for us?
  • His provision could come in many different shapes or forms.
  • Numbers 11:23, “is the Lord’s arm too short?”
  • Do we doubt God’s character or His competency?
  • Is God too weak to intervene?

God’s Discipline

  • The Land Between is also fertile ground for God’s discipline.
  • God sent a plague and killed them!
  • We respect loving parents who bring timely and appropriate discipline to their children.
  • Discipline is inflicting pain for a redemptive purpose.
  • Discipline is pain inflicted to provide rescue.
  • We are naive to think we are immune to God’s corrective hand.
  • When we embrace a spirit of complaint it’s fertile ground for God’s discipline.

Our Response

  • The Land Between is fertile ground for transformational growth.
  • It will be the place where we can learn to trust in God the most.
  • The Israelites were not a well-ordered, disciplined group of Christ-followers.
  • They were ex-slaves indoctrinated in idolatry.
  • They were not ready, they were not the people of God yet.
  • The Land Between was intended to transform them from being slaves to being the people of God.
  • It is in this space that we learn to pray.
  • Growth will not happen automatically.
  • We say “time heals all wounds” but this is not true.
  • Some people get bitter, angry, and toxic over time.
  • Our heart is in danger in the Land Between.
  • Choices of the heart have to be made that will determine who we are in the future.
  • The wilderness is the best greenhouse for transformational growth or the place where our faith can die.
  • Complaint arrives as an uninvited guest.
  • Good movement pushes out bad movement; bad movement pushes out good movement.
  • Trust expels complaint.
  • Trust evicts complaint… they are incompatible roommates.
  • The space in your life that you most resent is the very soil where God wants to produce the crop we so desperately desire.
  • The land between, the space we hate, is where God does His richest and deepest work

May God bless you in the Land Between. May you guard your heart. May trust grow. May our gracious God who knows what we need provides it when we need it… may He restore our laughter, increase our joy and may we find Him present and good in the Land Between.

Download a free chapter from Jeff’s book “The Land Between” here.

The Upside of Tension :: Andy Stanley

by Tim Schraeder on 08/05/2010 in Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2010 with 18 Comments

Under the leadership of Andy Stanley, North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia, has become one of the largest and most innovative churches in the United States. Founded in 1995, the church has grown to three campuses and a weekly attendance of more than 22,000 people. They have also helped plant more than 20 strategic partner churches across North America. Stanley is a dynamic speaker and author whose books include Visioneering, Next Generation Leader, and Communicating for a Change. His latest volume, The Principle of the Path, explores a basic truth that can eliminate regret, as it helps to successfully move people from where they are to where they want to go.

  • I’m not going to try and inspire you.
  • I want to take you back where you began.
  • We began with specific leadership principles.
  • It’s always tempting to look at mature and successful leaders and think they know it all.
  • It’s tempting to look at successful churches and think they have it all together.
  • All of their challenges/problems are just great stories because they are great leaders who know how to solve them.
  • The myth we tend to believe is that if you are a great leader with a well-lead organization that you will solve all of your problems and get rid of all of your tension.
  • The general notion is that problems and tension are a result of poor leadership.
  • Great organization have tensions and problems that are never solved.
  • Leaders learn to leverage the problems that never go away in a way to create progress for the organization.
  • The right amount of tension and pressure at the right moment can lead to extraordinary results.
  • Tension and pressure can lead to progress and can allow us to go farther and faster.
  • We can create a third-category for all of our problems.

Every organization has problems that shouldn’t be solved and tensions that shouldn’t be resolved.

  • Example: The tension between work and family life.
  • It’s not a problem we can solve, it’s a tension we can manage.
  • In business there are many different problems and tensions… but they are VERY specific to individual industries/companies.
    • Marketing/sales
    • Systems/flexibility
    • Led by the Spirit/Led by the Clock
    • Attracting/Nurturing
    • Local/Global
    • Numeric Growth/Maturity
  • If you “resolve” any of those tensions, you create will new tension.
    • What if you opt to commit to excellence without regard to finances?
    • What if you are all theology and no application?
    • What if you let the Spirit lead and neglect your volunteers?
    • If you were to cut off your thumb the results would be immediately recognizable.
    • In organizational life, we cut off our thumbs by solving the wrong problems.
  • If you resolve any of those tensions, you create barriers to progress.
  • Progress depends not on the resolution of those tensions but on the successful management of those tensions.
    • How do you know the difference between problems and tensions?

To distinguish between problems to solve and tensions to manage, ask the following:

  • Does this problem or tension keep resurfacing?
    • If it keeps coming up you have a tension to manage, not a problem to solve.
    • If it resurfaces seasonally, it’s more than likely a tension.
  • Are there mature advocates for both sides?
    • If yes, you’ve stumbled on a problem you can’t solve but a tension you have to manage away.
    • Every single healthy church should have the tension of calling seekers and teaching believers. We must be comfortable living with this tension.
    • We must get comfortable living in the tension.
  • Are the two sides really interdependent?

The role of leadership is to leverage the tension to the benefit of the organization.

  • Identify the tensions to be manage in your organization.
    • What are the problems we need to quit trying to solve and need to learn to manage?
  • Create terminology.
    • When you create terminology you create a third category for your teams.
    • When you get two strong personalities on opposing sides of an issue, if there is no third category it’s only win/lose.
    • Some people shouldn’t win.
    • It gives you an option to say, “this is a tension we are going to have to learn to manage.”
  • Inform your core.
    • Make sure your key players understand this principle.
    • Help create new terminology around the idea.
    • It allows conversations to go better.
    • Don’t try to solve, leverage.
    • Certain tensions are key to progress.
    • If you decide them out of the conversation you miss an opportunity to grow your organization.
  • Continually give value to both sides.
  • Don’t weigh in too heavily based on your personal biases.
    • We have an opinion.
    • We all have personal values.
    • As a leader, if we aren’t careful, we are by personality and the weight of our words, will accidentally take things off the table because we don’t want to talk about them anymore.
    • We can’t afford to weigh in too heavily as leaders.
    • Understand the upside of the opposite side; understand the downside of your side.
    • “Our churches are characterized by something that is a weaknesses for me.”
  • Don’t allow strong personalities to win the day.
    • We need passionate people who will champion their side, but we need mature people who will understand its reality.
    • We need people who are passionate but mature enough to understand there’s a tension we have to learn to live with.
  • Don’t think in terms of balance. Think rhythm.
    • When you think about two opposing sides of an argument, we have a tendency to look at both sides and we try to figure out a way to be fair.
    • Fairness ended in the Garden of Eden.
    • Don’t think in terms of “fair” or “balance.”
    • In the rhythm of your organization there is a time to weigh in heavily and times when you need to lean away.
    • There’s a time in the rhythm of church life where you need do more of something and less of something else.
    • It’s not about balance or fair, it’s about paying attention to the rhythm.
    • Make the call in the light of what’s going on around us.

As a leader, one of the most valuable things you can do for your organization is differentiate between tensions your organization will always need to manage vs. problems that need to be solved.

  • If you’ll identify and leverage them, these problems and tensions will actually become part of your story and part of the progress of your organization.
  • Taking your organization to the next level and keeping it relevant will mean you living with these tensions and problems and managing your team through them.
  • There’s a tension that benefits you and a tension that benefits your organization.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →