I have the unique privilege of serving as an executive in a very cool global organization. We’re doing a global restructuring this month (ok, this year) to stay true to our roots while leaning into the future.

One of our focal points is learning to share leadership through highly effective teams. Unfortunately, some of our old cultural baggage has translated this shift as “we need more meetings, with more people, so that everyone can have a voice in everything.” That’s not really what anyone wants, and it is certainly not what we need. That’s why I’m excited about Michael Hyatt’s review of Rework. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve entered Hyatt’s online contest here to win a copy next Monday. If I don’t win a hard copy I’ll probably Kindle it. (Michael, if you’re reading this, please don’t let this disqualify me from the pool of potential winners, ok?).

Hyatt summarizes: “The authors’ simple premise is that work does not have to be as complicated as we make it. We gunk it up with too much planning, too many meetings, and too much process and paperwork. What we really need to do is to stop talking and start working.”

Have you read Rework? What were you moved to start, stop, or change?

Leadership Reading List 2010

Here’s my freshly updated Leadership Reading List for 2010.

“Leaders are readers, and readers are leaders.” Prof Howie Hendricks

What are the best two books you’ve read lately? I’d love to hear from you.

Recently my friend Craig recommended the book “I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus.” Craig plants postmodern churches that are raised out of the surrounding culture. He helped envision and coach 12 plants in the past three years. Craig knows what he’s talking about. So I Kindled the book and sat down to read it today.

The book provides an excellent overview of leading people to Jesus. Authors Doug Schaupp and Don Everts work with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. In the past 10 years they (and many friends) have seen more than 2,000 college students choose to follow Jesus Christ. I like their emphasis on the path being both mysterious and organic. This is in stark contrast to the traditional/modernistic approach of classical apologetics and truth-based certainty.

They have debriefed many of these students to get inside their heads and find out what barriers they faced in coming to know Jesus. Five thresholds that postmoderns must cross include:

• from distrust to trust. Somewhere along the line they learned to trust a Christian.
• from complacent to curious.
• from being closed to change to being open to change in their life. This usually proved to be the hardest.
• from meandering to seeking. There is a big difference between the curious investigator and someone who actively, purposefully, even urgently seeks God.
• and finally crossing the threshold of the kingdom itself. They needed to repent and believe and give their life to Jesus.

We serve our friends by sticking with them through each stage and helping them identify where they are on their journey toward God. Though I don’t believe each stage is as clear-cut as the book suggests, the authors’ framework will help anyone who genuinely desires to nudge, guide and lead someone else to connect with Jesus.

In their article “SuperLeadership: Beyond the Myth of Heroic Leadership” authors Charles Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr. question whether the heroic figure of a leader is the most appropriate image of the organizational leader of today.

Their answer: true leadership comes mainly from within a person, not from outside. Thus the challenge for any of us giving and receiving leadership within an organization is to understand how to mine the immense wealth of talent each employee or volunteer possesses.

Two great quotes came across my desk in the past 24 hours that reflect this idea of self-leadership. One is ancient, one is fresh.

A leader is best
When people barely know he exists,
Not so good when people obey and acclaim him.
Worse when they despise him.
But of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will say:
We did it ourselves.
- Lao-tzu, 6th century B.C. Chinese philosopher

“Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor each morning the devil says ‘Oh crap! She’s up!’”
- Rachel, student-led movement intern

In stark contrast to most daily headlines and the last post concerning How The Mighty Fall, I have two deep convictions. First, every human endeavor stands or falls on leadership. Second, good leadership is possible and accessible to most people who are willing to learn, to serve, and to make decisions that are unpopular.

How do you go about becoming a good leader?

Warren Bennis, in his excellent essay “Become a Tomorrow Leader” succinctly answers:

Figure out what you’re good at. Hire only good people who care, and treat them the way you want to be treated. Identify your one or two key objectives or directions, and ask your coworkers how to get there. Listen hard and get out of their way. Cheer them. Switch from macho to maestro.

Insight for aspiring servant-leaders: How are you growing in the nine areas listed above?

“Too big to fail” now adorns the tombstones of once-great companies that have stumbled, fallen and can’t get up. Companies such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Merrill Lynch and WaMu,  General Motors and AIG.

How do the mighty fall? Is decline inevitable? Can it be detected and even avoided?

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, spent the past four years researching the decline of institutions and he has some good news for us: Decline can be detected and avoided. In his new book How The Mighty Fall (and why some companies Never Give In), he outlines five stages of decline that tend to proceed in sequence before a Goliath hits the dirt:

1. Hubris Born of Success. Accumulated momentum can carry an enterprise forward for awhile, even if its leaders make poor decisions or lose discipline.
2. Undisciplined Pursuit of More. More scale, more growth, more acclaim, more of whatever those in power see as “success.”
3. Denial of Risk and Peril. Internal warning signs begin to mount, yet external results remain strong enough to “explain away” disturbing data as “temporary” or “cyclic” or “not that bad.” Those in power start to blame external forces for setbacks rather than accept responsibility. The honest, vigorous dialog that characterizes high-performance teams dwindles or disappears.
4. Grasping for Salvation. The cumulative effects of risks-gone-bad assert themselves throwing the enterprise into a sharp decline now visible to all. The critical question is, How does its leadership respond? Common “saviors” include a new charismatic-visionary leader, a bold but untested strategy, a dramatic cultural revolution, or a new blockbuster product. All may appear positive, but results usually do not last. The signature of mediocrity, says Collins, is not an unwillingness to change, but chronic inconsistency. Fortunately, there is hope for those companies who discipline themselves to refocus on their core competencies.
5. Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death. Nuf said.

The book is a lightning quick read at 123 pages of text, followed by an equally thick section of seven appendices (research criteria/results and Good to Great principles) and notes. At the end of each chapter you will find helpful Markers for This Stage that help translate theory into real-life practice.

Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.  – Jim Collins

See Jim’s excellent online interview that gives an overview and summarizes each stage.

Insight for leaders: Whether you’re leading a corporation, a cell group, your kid’s soccer team or anything in between, if you have that sinking feeling that the ship is going down, you may want to dig deeper into these insights. Failure is not inevitable.

Here’s a pretty good plumb line:

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stand at times of challenge and controversy. – Martin Luther King Jr.

Want to change the culture in an organization, business, church or institution? Ask “what should it look like around here?” then begin taking action in that direction. That’s how the new growth at the fringes makes its way into the center. This is leadership at its raw essence.

I stumbled across some words of wisdom that support this idea:

Do not seek to follow the footsteps of men of old. Seek what they sought! – BASHO

Take from the altar of the past the fire, not the ashes! – JEAN JAURES

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. – Author of Hebrews

Sitting in a meeting this week, my good friend Chip observed: “Every grand vision eventually degenerates into real work.”

Leaders are readers… because leaders must be continual learners. For years I have made it a practice to ask others whom I respect what they are reading, then pick up the best books and glean from them. There is much wisdom to be wrought from others’ insights and experiences. Here is my 2009 Leadership Reading List. These authors have shaped my thinking on how to live well, love well, and lead well.