Lead Worship

Good to Great – Chapter 5: The Hedgehog Concept

Posted on August 29th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Book Notes, Good to Great, Leadership.

“Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything. It doesn’t matter how complex the  world, a hedgehog reduces all challenges and dilemmas to simple-indeed almost simplistic – hedgehog ideas. For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance” (page 91).

“No, the hedgehogs aren’t simpletons; they have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest” (page 91).

“Those who built the good-to-great companies were, to one degree or another, hedgehogs. They used 4their hedgehog nature to drive toward what we came to call a Hedghog Concept for their companies. Those who lead the comparison companies tended to be foxes, never gaining the clarifying advantage of a Hedgehog Concept, being instead scattered, diffused, and inconsistent” (page 92).

“In a world overrun by management faddists, brilliant visionaries, ranting futureists, fearmongers, motivational gurus, and all the rest, it’s refreshing to see a company succeed so brilliantly by taking one simple concept and just doing it with excellence and imagination. Becoming the best in the world at convenient drugstores, steadily increasing profit per customer visit-what could be more obvious and straightfoward?” (page 93).

“More precisely, a Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the following three circles:

1. What you can be the best in the world at (and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at).
2. What drives your economic engine.
3. What you are deeply passionate about. (page 95-96).

“Suppose you were able to construct a work life that meets the following three tests. First, you are doing work for which you have a genetic or God-given talent, and perhaps you could become one of the best in the world in applying that talent…Second, you are well paid for what you do…Third, you are doing work you are passionate about and absolutely love to do, enjoying the actual process for its own sake” (page 96).

“A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at” (page 98).

“Just because something is your core business-just because you’ve been doing it for years or perhaps even decades-does not necessarily mean that you can be the best in the world at it. And if you cannot be the best in the world at your core business, then your core business cannot form the basis of your Hedgehog Concept” (page 99).

“The Hedgehog Concept requires a severe standard of excellence. It’s not just about building on strength and competence, but about understanding what your organization truly has the potential to be the very best at and sticking to it” (page 100).

“To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. It requires the discipline to say, “Just because we are good at it-just because we’re making money and generating growth-doesn’t necessarily mean we can become the best at it.” The good-to-great companies understood that doing what you are good at will only make you good; focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness” (page 100).

“Our study clearly shows that a company does not need to be in a great industry to become a great copany. Each good-to-great company built a fabulous economic engine, regardless of the industry. They were able to do this because they attained profound insights into their economics” (page 104).

“But throughout the good-to-great companies, passion became a key part of the Hedgehog Concept. You can’t manufacture passion or “motivate” people to feel passionate. You can only discover what ignites your passion and the passions of those around you” (page 109).

“The good-to-great companies did not say, ‘Okay, folks, let’s get passionate about what we do.’ Sensibly, they went the other way entirely: We should only do those things that we can get passionate about” (page 109).

“What’s so striking about the comparison companies is that – for all their change programs, frantic gesticulations, and charismtic leaders-they rarely emerged from the fog. They would try to run, making bad decisions at forks in the read, and then have to reverse course later. Or they would veer off the trail entirely, banging into trees and tumbling down ravines. (Oh, but they were sure doing it with speed and panache!)
“For the comparison companies, the exact same world that had become so simple and clear to the good-to-great companies remained complex and shrouded in mist. Why? For two reasons. First, the comparison companies never asked the right questions, the questions prompted by the three circles. Second, they set their goals and strategies more from bravado than from understanding.
“Nowhere is this more evident than in the comparison companies’ mindless pursuit of growth: Over two thirds of the comparison companies displayed an obsession with growth without the benefit of a Hedgehog Concept. Statements such as ‘We’ve been a growth at any price company’ and ‘Betting that size equals success’ pepper the materials on the comparison companies. In contrast, not one of the good-to-great companies focused obsessively on growth. Yet they created sustained, profitable growth far greater than the comparison companies that made growth their mantra” (page 111).

“If you have the right Hedgehog Concept and make decisions relentlessly consistendt with it, you will create such momentum that your main problem will not be how to grow, but how not to grow too fast” (page 112).

“The Hedgehog Concept is the turning point in the journey from good to great. In most cases, the transition date follows within a few years of the Hedgehog Concept” (page 112).

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Good to Great – Chapter 4: Key Points

Posted on August 29th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Book Notes, Good to Great, Leadership.

• All good-to-great companies began the process of finding a path to greatness by confronting the brutal facts of their current reality.
• When you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of your situation, the right decisions often become self-evident. It is impossible to make good decisions without infusing the entire process with an honest confrontation of the brutal facts.
• A primary task in taking a company from good to great is to create a culture wherein people have a tremendous opportunity to be heard and, ultimately, for the truth to be heard.
• Creating a climate where the truth is heard involves four basic practices:

1. Lead with questions, not answers.
2. Engage in dialogue and debate, nt coercion.
3. Conduct autopsies, without blame.
4. Build red flag mechanisms that turn information into information that cannot be ignored.

• The good-to-great companies faced just as much adversity as the comparison companies, but responded to that adversity differently. They hit the realities of their situation head-on. As a result, they emerged from adversity even stronger.
• A key psychology for leading from good to great is the Stockdale Paradox: Retain absolute faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whtever they might be.
• Charisma can beas much a liability as an asset, as the strength of your leadership personality can deter people from bringing you the brutal facts.
• Leadership does not begin just with vision. It begins with getting people to confront the burtal facts and to act on the implications.
• Spending time and energy trying to “motivate” people is a waste of effort. The real question is not, “How do we motivate our people?” If you have the rightpeople, they will be self-motivated. The key is to not do-motivate them. One of the primary ways to de-motivate people is to ignore the brutal facts of reality.

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Good to Great – Chapter 4: Confront the Brutal Facts

Posted on August 29th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Book Notes, Good to Great, Leadership.

“There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away” (page 65, taken from Winston S. Churchill).

“The good-to-great companies displayed two distinctive forms of disciplined thought. The first, and the topic of this chapter, is that they infused the entire process with the brutal facts of reality. (The second is that they developed a simple, yet deeply insightful, frame of reference for all decisions.) When you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of the situation, the right decisions often become self-evident” (page 70).

“You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts” (page 70).

“The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better lang-term results than their more charismatic counterparts” (page 72).

“Indeed, for those of you with a strong, charismatic personality, it is worthwhile to consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems, when people filter the brutal facts from you. You can overcome the liabilities of having charisma, but it does require conscious attention” (page 73).

A Climate Where the Truth is Heard

1. Lead with questions, not answers”The good-to-great leaders made particularly good use of informal meetings where they’d meet with groups of managers and employees with no script, agenda, or set of action items to discuss. Instead, they would start with questions like: “So, what’s on your mind?” “Can you tell me about that?” “Can you help me understand?” “What should we be worried about?’”

   “Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.

2. Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.
3. Conduct autopsies, without blame.
4. Build “red flag” mechanisms. (page 74-78)

“Life is unfair – sometimes to our advantage, sometimes to our disadvantage. We will all experience disappointments and crushing events somewhere along the way, setbacks for which there is no “reason,” no one to blame. It might be disease; it might be injury; it might be an accident; it might be losing a loved one; it might be getting swept away in a political shake-up; it might be getting shot down over Vietnam and thrown into a POW camp for eight years. What separates people, Stockdale taught me, is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life. In wrestling with life’s challenges, the Stockdale Paradox (you must retain faith that you will prevail in the end and you must also confront the most brutal facts of your current reality) has proved powerful for coming back from difficultites not weakened, but stronger – not just for me, but for all those who’ve learned the lesson and tried to apply it” (page 86).

“The good-to-great leaders were able to strip away so much noise and clutter and just focus on the few things that would hae the greatest impact. They were able to do so in large part because they operated from both sides of the Stockdale Paradox, never letting one side overshadow the other. If you are able to adopt this dual pattern, you will dramatically increase the odds of making a series of good decisions and ultimately discovering a simple, yet deeply insightful, concept for making the really big choices. And once you have that simple, unifying concept, you will be very close to making a sustained transition to breakthrough results” (page 87).

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Good to Great – Chapter 3: Key Points

Posted on August 22nd, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Book Notes, Good to Great, Leadership.

• The good-to-great leaders began the transformation by first getting the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.
• The key point of this chapter is not just the idea of getting the right people on the team. The key point is that “who” questions come before “what” decisions – before vision, before strategy, before organization structure, before tactics. First who, then what – as a rigorous discipline, consistently applied.
• The comparison companies frequently followed the “genius with a thousand helpers” model – a genius leader who sets a vision and then enlists a crew of highly capable “helpers” to make the vision happen. This model fails when the genius departs.
• The good-to-great leaders were rigorous, not ruthless, in people decisions. They did not rely on layoffs and restructuring as a primary strategy for improving performance. The comparison companies used layoffs to a much greater extent.
• We uncoverd three practical disciplines for being regorous in people decisions:

1. When in doubt, don’t hire -keep looking.
2. When you know you need to make a people change, act.
3. Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

• Good-to-great management teams consist of people who debate vigorously in search of the best answers, yet who unify behind decisions, regardless of parochial interests.
• We found no systematic pattern linking executive compensation to the shift from good to great. The purpose of compensation is not to “motivate” the right behaviors from the wrong people, but to get and keep the right people in the first place.
• The old adage “People are your most important asset” is wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.
• Whether someone is the “right person” has more to do wtih character traits and innate capabilities than with specific knowledge, background, or skills.

(pages 63-64)

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Good to Great – Chapter 3: First Who…Then What

Posted on August 22nd, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Book Notes, Good to Great, Leadership.

“The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it. They said, in essence, ‘Look, I don’t really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong peple off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great’.” (page 41)

“The good-to-great leaders understood three simple truths. First, if you begin with ‘who,’ rather than ‘what,’ you can more easily adapt to a changing world. If people join the bus primarily because of where it is going, what happens if you get ten miles down the road and you need to change direction?…Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don’t need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great. Third if you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether your discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant” (page 42).

“The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor needed in people decisions in order to take a company from good to great” (page 44).

“The purpose of a compensation system should not be to get the right behaviors from the wrong people, but to get the right people on the bus in the first pace, and to keep them there” (page 50).

“To attract and keep the best workers, Nucor paid its steelworkers more than any other steel company in the world. But it built its pay system around a high-pressure team-bonus mechanism, with over 50 percent of a workers compensation tied directly to the productivity of his work team of twenty to forty people…Nucor system did not aim to turn lazy people into hard workers but to create an environment where hardworking people would thrive and lazy workers would either jump or get thrown right off the bus (page 50-51).

“Nucor rejected the old adage that people are your most important asset. In a good-to-great transformation, people are not your most important asset. The right people are” (page 51).

“In determining ‘the right people,’ the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience. Not that specific knowledge or skills are unimportant, but they viewed these traits as more teachable (or at least learnable), whereas they believed dimensions like character, work ethic, basic intelligence, dedication to fulfilling commitments, and values are more ingrained” (page 51).

“The good-to-great companies probably sound like tough places to work and they are. If you don’t have what it takes, you probably won’t last long. But they’re not ruthless cultures, they’re rigorous cultures. And the distinction is crucial.
“To be ruthless means hacking and cutting, especially in difficult times, or wantonly firing  people without any thoughtful consideration. To be rigorous means consistently applying exacting standards at all times and at all levels, especially in upper management. To be rigorous, not ruthless, means that the best people need not worry about their posistions and can concentrate fully on their work”(page 52).

How to be Rigorous

1. Practical Discipline #1: When in doubt, don’t hire – keep looking
   “Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people.”
2. Practical Discipline #2:When you know you need to make a people change, act.
   “The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The best people don’t need to be managed. Guided, taught, led-yes. But not tightly managed. We’ve all experienced or observed the following scenario. We have a wrong person on the bus and we know it. Yet we wait, we delay, we try alternatives, we give a third and fourth chance, we hope that the situation will improve, we invest time in tryaing to properly manage the person, we build little systems to compensate for his shortcomings, and so forth.”
   “Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people.”
   “Indeed, if we’re honest with ourselves, the reason we wait too long often has less to do with concern for that person and more to do with our own convenience.”
3. Practical Discipline #3: Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.
   “When you decide to sell off your problems, don’t sell off your best people…If you create a place where the best people always have a seat on the bus, they’re more likely to support changes in direction” (pages 54-59).

“Even during the darkest and most intense times of the takeover crises of the 1980s and despite the increasingly global nature of Gillette’s business, Mockler maintained remarkable balance in his life. He did not significantly reduce the amount of time he spent with his family, rarely working evenings or weekends. He maintained his disciplined worship practices” (page 61).

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Good to Great – Chapter 2: Level 5 Leadership Key Points

Posted on August 7th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Good to Great.

• “Level 5″ refers to a five-level hierarchy of executive capabilities, with Level 5 at the top. Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional well. They are ambitious, to bsure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves.
• Level 5 leaders set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation, whereas egocentric Level 4 leaders often set up their successors for failure.
• Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions.
• Level 5 leaders look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility.

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Good to Great – Chapter 2: Level 5 Leadership

Posted on August 7th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Good to Great.

“You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit – Harry S. Truman” (page 17).

“A Level 5 leader – an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will” (page 21).

“Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless” (page 22).

“Ambition first and foremost for the company and concern for its success rather than for one’s own riches and personal renown. Level 5 leaders want to see the company even more successful in the next generation, comfortable with the idea that most people won’t even know that the roots of that success trace back to their efforts” (page 26).

“In contrast to the very I-centric style of comparison leaders, we were struck by how the good-to-great leaders didn’t talk about themselves…Those who worked with or wrote about the good-to-great leaders continually used words like quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated, did not believe his own clippings; an so forth” (page 27).

“The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extra-ordinary results” (page 28).

“It is very important to grasp that Level 5 leadership is not just about humility and modesty. It is equally about ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great”(page 30).

“Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce results. They will sell the mills or fire their brother, if that’s what it takes to make the company great” (page 30).

“Ten out of eleven good-to-great CEO’s came from inside the company, three of them by family inheritance. The comparison companies turned to outsiders with six times greater frequency-yet they failed to produce sustained great results”(page 32).

“Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion created to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly. The comparison leaders did just the opposite. They’d look out the window for something or someone outside themselves to blame for poor results, but would preen in front of the mirror and credit themselves when things went well”(page 35).

Summary: The two Sides of Level 5 Leadership (page 36).

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unChristian

Posted on July 7th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: unchristian.

unChrstian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity…And Why It Matters

written by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons (From The Barna Research Group)

Quotes:

“Young outsiders generally do not get the impression that Christians have good intentions when it comes to trying to ‘convert’ them. Most reject the iddea that Christians show genuine interest in them as individuals” (page 68).

Development of the Christian Mind:

1. Thinking
2. Loving
3. Listening. (page 81-82)

“A faith that does not effectively address convoluted and thorny issues seems out of tune with a generation asking big questions and expressing candid doubts. Spirituality that is merely focused on ‘dos and dont’s’ rings hollow” (page 126).

“Are we trying to please God or polishing our holy credentials in front of fellow insiders?” (page 186).

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Good to Great – Chapter 1: Good is the Enemy of Great

Posted on July 1st, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Good to Great.

“Good is the enemy of great.
“And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great” (page 1).

Nine surprises in great companies

1. Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from the inside the company.
2. We found no systematic pattern linking specific forms of executive compensation to the process of going from good to great. The idea that the structure of executive compensation is a key driver in corporate performance is simply not supported by the data.
3. There is no evidence that the good-to-great companies spent more time on long-ranger strategic planning than the comparison companies.
4. The good-to-great companies did not focus principally on what to do to become great; they focused equally on whatnot to do and what to stop doing.
5. The good-to-great companies paid scant attention to managing change, motivating people, or creating alignment. Under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change largely melt away.
6. Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice. (page 10-11).

Framework of concepts

1. Level 5 leadership. We were surprised, shocked really, to discover the type of leadership required for turning a good company into a great one…Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy-these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
2. First Who…Then What. We expected that good-to-great leders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats-and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are. [We have deacons who wouldn't know how to serve if it sat in their lap and called them mommy.]
3. Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith). You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
4. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles).
5. A Culture of Discipline. When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls.
6. Technology Accelerators. (page 12-13).

“Those who launch revolutions, dramatic change programs, and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap from good to great. No matter how dramatic the end result, the good-to-great transformations never happened in one fell swoop. There was no ingle defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembled relentlessly pushing a gieant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond” (page 14).

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Spiritual Leadership – Chapter 1: An Honorable Ambition

Posted on July 1st, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Spiritual Leadership.

“To aspire to leadership in an honorable ambition” (I Timothy 3:1, page 11).
“Should you then seek great thins for yourself? Seek them not” (Jeremiah 45:5, page 11).

“Has not ambition cause the downfall of nuerous otherwise great leaders in the church, people who fell victim to ‘the last infirmity of noble minds’?” (page 11).

“When our ambition carries out a burning desire to be effective in the service of God – to realize God’s highest potential for our lives-we can keep both of these verses in mind and hold them in healthy tension [refer to first two verses]” (page 12).

“Rewards for the work of leading the church were hardship, contempt, rejection, and even death. The leader was first to draw fire in persecution, first in line to suffer” (page 12).

“Phonies would have little heart for such a difficult assignment. Under the dangerous circumstances taht prevailed in the first century, even stout-hearted Christians needed encouragement and incentive to lead. And so Paul called leadership an ‘honorable ambition’” (page 12).

“Paul urges us to the work of leading within the church, the most important work in the world. When our motives are right, this work pays eternal dividends. In Paul’s day, only a deep love for Christ and genuine concern for the church could motivate people to lead. But in many cultures today where Christian leadership carries prestige and privilege, people aspire to leadership for reasons quite unworthy and self-seeking” (page 12).

“Desiring to excel is not a sin. It is motivation that determines ambition’s character. Our Lord never taught against the urge to high achievement, but He did expose and condemn unworthy motivation” (page 13).

“Ambition which centers on the glory of God and welfare of the church is a mighty force for good” (page 13).

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10: 44).

“True greatness, true leadership, is found in giving yourself in service to others, not in coaxing or inducing others to serve you. True service is never without cost. Often it comes with a bitter cup of challenges and a painful baptism of suffering. For genuine godly leadership weighs carefully Jesus’ question: ‘Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?’ (Mark 10:38b).

“The final estimate of men shows that history cares not an iota for the rank or title a man has borne, or the office he has held, but only a quality of his deeds and the character of his mind and heart” (Samuel Brengle, page 14).

Because we children of Adam want to become great,
He became small.
Because we will not stoop,
He humbled Himself.
Because we want to rule,
He came to serve. (page 14)

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