“Victory has defeated you,” Part 2

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 “Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s game.”
Babe Ruth

Has victory defeated you? I’m still thinking about this concept from my last post. I believe it’s important to dig deeper in this area because it’s so hard to see it within yourself. We may unknowingly have the attitude of Batman in the most recent movie, which the villain Bane pointed out when he said, “Victory has defeated you.”

When victory comes, we all celebrate. But it also puts us at risk.

We are at risk of…

 1.    Thinking the battle is over.

Batman relaxed because he thought the enemy was defeated. You take a big risk when you think you’ve defeated something that wasn’t. This got settled in my soul the third year of 12Stone. In my racquetball league, I had made it to the championship, to compete against an “old man” (probably 45 years old, tops) who I’d been trying desperately to beat for years. I won the first match 15-0. In the second, I was leading 11-0 when I made a huge mistake.  I stood up. Instead of remaining in a crouched “ready position” I relaxed a little. I was sure I was going to win. And the worst happened: my opponent came back to win that match, along with the next one. He took the championship away from me. Victory had defeated me.

There are moments in ministry right now when we’re standing up, but we  should be crouching. The church has an enemy who is strategically working to take down our kingdom efforts. Satan is alive and well. There will never be peace in the spiritual battle. So we always need to be ready to fight.

 2.    Thinking your last success ensures your next success.

Take a look at Joshua 7. It’s after the Israelites’ huge victory at Jericho. Preparing to attack the city of Ai, they sent out spies again. This time the spies returned to say, “Not all the army will have to go up against Ai. Send two or three thousand men to take it and do not weary the whole army, for only a few people live there.” (v. 3) So they relaxed. They didn’t prepare spiritually in the way that they needed to, and the sent only a few thousand. And they were routed by the opposing army.

Here’s the value of victory: it gives you the opportunity for the next battle. That’s huge. But it’s a mistake to believe that the next battle will somehow be easier to win. In reality, the same preparation is required. Are you at risk of assumption rather than attention?

 3.    Thinking you can ride on talent.

I recently read this article in USA Today about how Alabama football’s coach Nick Saban has handled his team’s position as defending national champions. Only two days after winning the BCS national title, Saban gathered the entire team in the locker room, minus the graduating seniors. Then he said to the remaining players, “This team is not the national championship team.… Nobody can take away what you did, but are you going to focus on what you did or about what you are going to do?”

It takes more than talent to win. It takes training, tenacity, and teamwork. But it’s easy to get comfortable with your accomplishments. Saban calls that the “success flu,” and it can lead to complacency and a weak work ethic.

Did you ever have more hunger than you do now? Where are you complacent? It’s hard to stay hungry when you’ve been satisfied. But the greatest threat to what God wants to do through your ministry could be within your team right now.

We all need to learn…

1.    How to train like you’re hungry when you’re full.

Are you working to live, or to make a difference? With one, it’s easy to get to a state of satisfaction. With the other, the hunger never ends. Are you working to make a living? Or so that others might live?

 2.    To redraw the victory line.

For those in Christian ministry, we should never feel like we’ve reached enough people. If you’ve lost interest in reaching lost people because of the last person you won, then you’ve drawn the wrong line. That can happen in a ministry of 100 or 10,000. It all depends on where you draw the line.

 3.    How to trade what once worked for what will work.

None of us should have our job already “down”. Why? Because to keep pursuing a win, we need to change. To be willing to make the necessary tradeoffs, you need to combat Fear and Fat. It’s natural to be afraid of losing something in a tradeoff. And unfortunately, it’s natural to get fat: to get to a point where you’re too lazy to reinvent anything. At that point, victory will have defeated you.

What if the last victory was Jericho, and you still have the whole Promised Land to conquer?

Which of the three risks is your primary?

Which lesson do you most need to learn?

“Victory has defeated you”

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“Victory has defeated you.” A line from The Dark Knight Rises, from the antagonist Bane to Batman. It got me thinking about what happens when we have too much success.

I think it’s possible to have so much success behind you that you assume success before you. As a result, you become soft, but you don’t even know it.

Like Batman versus Bane, you don’t discover it until confronted by someone who’s hungry.

What’s the risk of getting soft in ministry?

Could we become soft on holiness because of the victory of God’s forgiveness?

Soft on prayer because things are working?

Soft on preparation because of the talent available?

Soft on reaching people because of God’s past favor?

Is our success making us weak?

In the Olympics coverage, I was really frustrated by Michael Phelps in his early interviews. It seemed like all they talked about was the past – his previous medals. And in his early races in this Olympics, he was beaten. Fortunately for him, something shifted and the hunger came back, and he finished strong.

How hungry are we? Are we at risk of victory defeating us?

Is your organization a peach, or a pineapple?

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Is your organization a peach, or a pineapple?

As I wrote last time, the pressure of logistical needs often compels us to create strategies and systems. An organization can’t accomplish its big-picture mission without solving its logistical problems, so they must be addressed.

But it’s important to remember that solving the problem doesn’t make the pressure go away; it just redirects it. Your goal is to put the pressure on the right people. With my own staff, I’ve illustrated this by asking them which kind of fruit they think our organization should be:

Peach               or              Pineapple.

Peaches and pineapples are both fruits, but their structure couldn’t be more different. A peach is made up of soft flesh surrounding a hard pit, while a pineapple has a tough exterior wrapped around a mostly soft interior.

Most organizations are like one or the other. Where you direct the pressure when you implement your logistical solutions determines how outsiders see your organization. Do you make it harder on yourselves in order to make it easier on the customer/newcomer? Or is it your goal to make it easy on your staff and leaders, regardless of how hard that makes it for outsiders? You will be viewed from the outside as either a peach – soft and pliable – or as a pineapple – hard and impenetrable.

Case in point: The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). If you drive, you’ve had experience with them. Doesn’t it seem like every system in that place is designed for the convenience of the staff, not the customer? As an outsider, you wait in one endless line, only to be redirected to yet another line, in order to finally talk to a person who seems to care more for their own comfort than your convenience.

The DMV is an extreme example of a pineapple, but any organization can learn from them what NOT to do. Does your church make it easy or hard for newcomers to connect? What is expected of insiders and leaders? Are they focused more on their comfort? Or are they more concerned with the convenience of the “customer?” The firm commitment of those inside should be to keep things soft and pliable outside, making it easy for visitors to come to the church, for people to hear the Good News, for new believers to grow, for everyone to commit.

Here at 12Stone, we want to be a “peachy” organization. We are tough on our staff and leaders. We ask them to be uncomfortable for the sake of the people we serve. Authentically following Christ is challenging enough. We don’t need to create additional obstacles for people to overcome.

So how about you and your organization? Are you a pineapple or a peach?

Institution or Revolution?

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Last time I wrote about the value of both spiritual and strategic leadership. Most leaders understand that both are needed to have a high-impact Christian organization. But what happens when they get out of balance?

One positive outcome of strategic leadership is systems, which can be very useful. They create order. They save time. They often save money. And they can be used to keep the momentum of a revolution going. We get into trouble when our motivation for creating systems is to slow things down, to make them easier for ourselves. This can lead to an institutional mindset. Which is the opposite of what most of us want to lead if we want to break new ground, reach new people, and change the world. In a word: a revolution.

There’s a huge difference between a revolution and an institution. I recently asked my staff to consider some differences between them. Here is the list they came up with:

Revolution                                    Institution

Movement                                    Maintenance

Forward-looking                           Backward view

Out of the box                                In the box

Give your life                                  Give 9-5

Freedom                                         Captivity

Calculated risk                               Calculating risk

Taking new territory                       Holding steady

Acquiring                                        Protecting

Persecution                                    Perks

Die for                                             Kills you

Revolution comes from a fire at the core of your being. And the systems created under it are designed to create and maintain momentum, to keep striving and growing. Institution is motivated by a desire for consistency and security, which can kill momentum.

In your organization, are you sustaining a revolution or creating an institution? Are you striving or satisfied? Are you taking risks or playing it safe? It’s a daily decision. As you think strategically, it’s important to always stoke the fire of revolution. Otherwise, you’ll end up with an institution. And in the end, those don’t change anything.

 

Spiritual leadership or strategic leadership: Which do you choose?

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What kind of leader are you? I think it’s safe to say that if you lead within the Christian realm, you consider yourself a spiritual leader. And I agree; you have to be about the things of God if you intend to take people on a journey within His will. But what about the things of this world? Do they have any place in your leadership?

I think Acts 6 gives us a picture of the right focus. How the disciples handled the situation shows us what our priorities should be. And it makes me wonder,

What if the answer to question in the title is not really either/or? What if it’s both/and?

In the early days of the Church, we see the disciples busy doing the things of God. They had a fire at the core of their being, with a strong desire to declare to the world that the war with sin and death was over – and Jesus Christ had won. Every day believers were increasing in number as they preached.  What a fantastic time in the life of the Church. As Christian leaders, isn’t that the kind of impact we want to make?

Yet in Acts 6, as they were declaring the good news, the disciples were confronted with a logistical problem: Simply put, the Greek widows and orphans were being overlooked in the church’s distribution of food.

How they responded, I think, illustrates how we should prioritize our leadership today:

So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

The disciples didn’t overlook the problem. It would have been easy to do: to say that their focus needed to be on the spiritual alone. However, they didn’t do that because they knew that issues like that need to be resolved. Why? First of all, because people matter to God. But I think there was also another reason. If they didn’t handle it well, the complaining within could end up forfeiting momentum in reaching out.

It’s important to note that the leaders didn’t drop everything and go solve the problem themselves. Instead, they created a system: a specific team was appointed to take care of the widows. Effective leadership focuses on both the SPIRITUAL and the STRATEGIC.

Spiritual                        AND                   Strategic

Focus on prayer and people                    Focus on process and projects

Relationships                                            Results

Real and authentic                                   Relentless and with no excuses

Experience grace                                     Execute performance

Systems and strategies are necessary for any high-performance organization – even a revolutionary one. But the strategic must be yoked with the spiritual. An effective spiritual leader never overlooks either one, even a revolutionary leader.

Are you overlooking logistical or strategic problems in your quest to share the Good News? These problems won’t go away. In fact, if you don’t master the things that you overlook, they will eventually master you and your leadership. Instead, be more strategic. Create systems that allow you to keep your focus where it needs to be AND solve the problem.

Next time: Finding the line between revolution and institution

The value of simple leadership and communication

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So far in this series, I’ve talked about why leaders should obsess, what they should obsess about, and how they should obsess — by moving from simplistic to complex to simple.

Now let’s talk about how to know when you’ve obsessed enough. I touched on it last week: When you can explain what you’ve learned in a simple manner.  If you can do that, you’re ready to communicate about it and lead people through it. This goes back to the reason a person obsesses: because they’re a leader. And the most important outcome of obsession is the ability to lead your people well.

At 12Stone Church, one of my roles is that of primary communicator. And I learned a long time ago that in order to communicate effectively, I needed to drill down through all of the complex to reach simple. That’s why I my sermon notes always contain way more material than I can ever possibly use. I’m responsible to communicate at the simple level.

When you lead or communicate from the simplistic stage, you dole out simplistic concepts to people. Your message, whether it’s about discipleship or managing the nursery, ends up being trite and useless. And when your followers attempt to do what you’ve said, they run into all the barriers of complexity that you skipped. Many times, the reason laypeople can’t pull off ministry is because the people who lead have assigned something simplistically, without taking the time to think it through entirely.

Leading while still in the complex stage is no better. If you try to communicate instructions or concepts while you’re still working through their complexity yourself, you end up confronting your listeners with something too complicated for them to apply and use. Followers get “stuck” at this stage, wallowing in the complexity and unable to figure out what to do about it.

The nice thing about communicating at “simple” is that it can be understood at many levels. Those with the capacity can grasp the complexity that isn’t being shared, while those who need simplicity are still reached by the message. Think about Isaac Newton’s Theory of Gravity: My eight-year-old son can experience and define gravity. But that doesn’t mean he can explain or teach it! The person explaining it to him had to go through all the complexity to make it simple. And the complexity of the concept still exists, for the person who wants to go deeper in their study.

After all these years, I can tell when someone isn’t communicating at “simple.” Sometimes the communicator has borrowed the material he or she is teaching and doesn’t truly understand it, or maybe they’re just not in the habit of drilling down. Either way, leading or communicating at any level other than simple does your people no favors. To effectively lead in any area, you need to have obsessed over the topic long enough to move from simplistic, through complex, to simple.

How are you doing? Are you taking advantage of obsession and thinking through everything about a plan or idea before you try to lead or communicate it?

Moving from simplistic to complex… to get to simple

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What’s wrong with being an armchair quarterback? Nothing, really. It’s not like you’ll ever have any influence over the football game’s outcome. It’s unlikely that Peyton Manning will hang onto your every word of advice. So your opinions, simplistic as they probably are, don’t really harm anyone.

But what about in your area of leadership? You have skin in that game. Your decisions and actions will determine the direction of your ministry. Here, you can’t afford to stay simplistic.

That’s the value of obsession. As the leader, you need to obsess, to drill down deeper than the surface. To understand all of the details. To take into account all of the variables. To plan for all the ramifications of your decisions. This is complexity. This is real leadership.

Unlike simplistic thinking, which says, “All you have to do is THIS,”

Complex thinking says, “You have to do ALL OF THIS.”

Where simplistic is flippant, complex is earnest.

Where simplistic is trite, complex is puzzling.

Where simplistic results in a “Yeah, but…”

Complex results in a “Yeah,… What?”

But in spite of the confusion that it can generate for you, complexity thinking is necessary to good leadership. Looking at “all of this” and considering the full impact of decisions makes the difference between success and failure in an endeavor. And I believe you only get that deep into a leadership area by obsessing over it.

As a leader, don’t be afraid to dive into the complex. In spite of how it looks going in, there is a way out on the other side. Let yourself obsess for as long as you must to fully understand the process or problem you’re trying to solve. Try to look at it from every possible angle. Do research. Seek opinions. It will likely feel overwhelming. But here’s how you’ll know that you’re on your way out: When you can explain what you’ve learned in a simple manner, you’re ready to lead people through it.

How to go from complex to simple is the subject of my next post.

On simplistic thinking

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Last week I wrote that it’s the nature of a leader to obsess. And it’s important to obsess over the right things. Let’s talk a little today about what happens when a person approaches an issue too casually–without the necessary obsession that good leadership requires.

The result is simplistic thinking.

Simplistic thinking in itself is not always bad. It’s where we all start with any new idea. But it should be a starting point, not where we remain, because if we do, we won’t be effective in our leadership.

So what is simplistic thinking? It’s the “all you have to do is __________” response to any challenge or problem. It’s the knee-jerk belief that the solution to anything is simple and easy to implement.

One of the most well-known forms of simplistic thinking comes from the “armchair quarterback,” the guy who watches the football game at home and talks about everything that he thinks the team/coach/quarterback did wrong, and how he thinks they can easily fix it.

It’s easy to critique someone else’s performance and give them advice. But if you aren’t actually on the field, dealing with all the details and variables in the real game, your opinion is not worth much.

With simplistic thinking,

The activity of the mind is to OBSERVE (shallow and fast) 


It’s looking at the surface of the situation and making a quick judgment. And things do seem simple if you just glance at them. But the leader who believes everything is simple is a simplistic thinker. And he often gets blindsided.

We look at a struggling church and someone says, “All that church over there has to do is _________ to be relevant.” Of course, if we really examined the issue, we’d probably discover that the leaders are carrying 10 more things we didn’t think about.

We look at the problems with our country, and one particular group says, “All we need to do is occupy a public place and demand a $16 minimum wage, and that would solve all our problems.” But what about the prices of goods? Increase the minimum wage and the prices go up. Wouldn’t the cost of living just rise at the same rate as the minimum wage? Would implementing such a simplistic solution result in any real positive change?

Simplistic observations are most often shared by those who don’t have to actually carry out the execution of the idea. And they don’t have to deal with all the layers of difficulties and all the domino reactions that come as a result.

A caution about all the people creating content now: These days, anyone can publish an opinion. But be careful about the blogger or writer who hasn’t lived through what he’s advising. No matter how well-argued a position, if the writer hasn’t left behind the simplistic, his or her views will be trite and, at best, only half-right.

When we have simplistic ideas, it’s because we HAVEN’T obsessed over something. But staying simplistic is not an option if you want to make progress and grow in our leadership. It’s crucial that we fully examine the issue we face, down to the smallest details and ramifications. What things will Solution A set in motion that we’ll have to deal with? What other factors come into play? Who else is involved? What do others know and see that we don’t? How can we find these things out? What has blown up when someone else has tried to make progress in this area? How are conditions changing so that even our own experience could lead us astray? What’s at work below the surface? These and other questions help you to examine the complexity of any challenge or problem.

If you want to become a better leader, you need to tap into obsession. By its very nature, good leadership is not simplistic.

Next week, we’ll look at complexity and how confronting it can help you to become a better leader. And in the week after that, we’ll discuss how to regain clarity as a leader—without giving in to being simplistic.

What are you chewing on?

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What is obsession? The dictionary describes it as “to have the mind excessively preoccupied.” Some see it in a negative way, but I believe there is a good side to obsession. In fact, I believe that it is in the nature of a leader to obsess.

You see it all over the stories of leaders in the Bible. Think of King Saul; what did he obsess over?

If you say, “killing David,” you’re thinking of the latter part of his reign. But he wasn’t always fixated on guarding his throne from David. Early in his story, he possessed a healthy leadership obsession that honored God. It was only later that something shifted, and he let another obsession take over.

In the first half of his kingship…

Saul Obsessed over Victory: Protecting God as King.

In the second half of his kingship…

Saul obsessed over Vanity: Protecting Saul as King.

When Saul started to take his focus off of defending God as King and instead obsessed over protecting his own kingship, his leadership started to go wrong.

As a ministry experiences success, it’s very easy for the leaders’ obsession to shift. With size comes notoriety and options. You can easily get a sense of being somebody and looking to hang onto what’s yours. This shift, going from guarding what God has entrusted to protecting your own role, is very subtle and hard to detect. Our actions might not look any different (at least at first), but we’d be doing them for the wrong reasons.

Here’s a truth: What preoccupies you pretty much defines you. Your obsession is what you “chew on” when you appear to be doing nothing. It guides your decisions. And your decisions change you.

And as I said before, it’s the nature of a leader to obsess. So if you lead anything, the question is not IF you’ll obsess; it’s WHAT you’ll obsess about. Good leaders understand the value of this specific trait. They choose and train on where they will and will not obsess.

What about you?

Do you obsess over victory – for the sake of God’s Kingdom?

Or has something shifted, and you’re obsessed with vanity – for your own sake?

You WILL obsess. Self-deception on what preoccupies you does no good. Drill down to what it is. And then choose to obsess over the right things.

Pulling every trigger

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Did you ever see the movie Unforgiven? Clint Eastwood’s 1992 film dealt with what it really meant to be a gunslinger in the Old West. The characters didn’t just ride in, shoot’em up, and ride off into the sunset. Instead, they had to deal with all of the consequences of their actions, both internal and external. In Unforgiven, those consequences were dire.

Last week I wrote from a positive point of view about a leader’s role as a “gunslinger”– someone who has the confidence to pick the right target, the courage to pull the trigger, and the character to persevere through either trial or triumph. This week, I want to talk about the kinds of triggers that we leaders often need to pull.

It’s often easy to list the pivotal leadership triggers – the big decisions that change the course of our organization or church. But we also need to consider other triggers, which often precede the pivotal ones. Here are the three types of triggers a “gunslinging” leader must be willing to pull to achieve the right outcomes for his/her leadership:

1. Personal Triggers. These are the character qualities and personal disciplines that you demand of yourself – the decisions that determine whether you are personally ready to face the challenges of leadership day to day. In my case, every year I focus on a list of non-negotiable regular decisions that I intend to pursue throughout the year. They are in the following areas: Faith, Family, Fitness, Finances, and Fun.

2. Preparation Triggers. These are the daily decisions and actions that you make behind the scenes or before the big event. They might not be seen by others, but they’re just as important as the visible decisions. A Sunday morning is more than the three-hour event. Its success or failure is also the result of all the decisions running up to it. Do you pull all the triggers of preparation beforehand? Or do you sometimes find yourself saying, “I wish I had thought of that earlier”?

3. Pivotal Leadership Triggers. These are the big decisions – those that create and keep up momentum in moving toward the big goals. They are often the unpredictable triggers, and they demand a cool-headedness. When you’re in the habit of pulling the personal and preparation triggers, you have the confidence and courage to confront the pivotal ones.

Leadership can sometimes feel like the Wild West. Many decisions can have big repercussions, and we shouldn’t make them lightly. But we also shouldn’t shy away from them. Do you consistently pull all of the personal and preparation triggers that you face on a regular basis? Without that discipline, you may not have the cool-headedness that you need to pull the pivotal triggers.

What personal triggers do you need to pull on a regular basis? What areas need your attention?

What preparation triggers do you find necessary before the big events or decisions? Where have you neglected preparation?

What can you do to make yourself ready to face the pivotal triggers when it comes time to face them?