[This post is a part of a series of notes from Catalyst 2011]
Jim Collins started out his session sharing with us that he was nervous. He wasn’t nervous about the fact that he was speaking in front of 13,000 people. He was nervous because the content of his talk was in large portion new material. Jim Collins has a new book entitled Great by Choice, which is what his talk was based on.
[This post is a part of a series of notes from Catalyst 2011]
Andy Stanley opened up the Catalyst Conference in typical Andy Stanley fashion with a solid lesson on leadership. The following are some of the notes that I made from his talk.
“The more successful you are, the less accessible you become.”
Catalyst is one of the best leadership conferences around and has some incredible speakers from the both the business and Christian spheres. I am planning on sharing some of the notes that I take throughout the two days we are in Atlanta. This post will be a table of contents for the notes that I post on the blog. Feel free to subscribe to this blog or periodically check back to this page if you want to follow my notes for the conference.
The Catalyst Conference is only days away and our team will soon be heading down to Atlanta, Georgia to be soaking in the great sessions. Last year was my first year getting to experience this conference and I was blown away by the quality of every session I went to. This year I am expecting more of the same as we listen to Andy Stanley, Jim Collins, Mark Driscoll, Francis Chan, and many other leaders that have greatly influenced me.
Facebook is a massive social network that has had a huge influence on culture as we know it. Because of the amount of people using facebook, there is a lot that can be learned about people by observing the culturual reaction to changes on facebook. As we observe the flurry of reactions from people, there are a few observations that seem to be consistent in my experience on facebook.
Chipotle is one of my frequent visits for lunch; I cannot help but enjoy a delicious burrito bowl with some chips and guac. As with any organization that does things well, there are often great insights that we can learn about ourselves or specifically about working in ministry. Chipotle is no exception.
If you want a lot of options for Mexican food, Chipotle isn’t the place to choose. But if you want an incredible burrito with some of the best ingredients, Chipotle will not leave you disappointed. What Chipotle has realized in the creation of their simple menu is that it is more important to worry about doing a few things exceptionally well than trying to meet every possible taste in the Mexican style of food.
No matter what your vocation in life there will be times where knowing how to train someone is critical to your job and potentially the vision of the organization you work for. Unfortunately for most of us, we search for the person that can do it and sometimes forget to work through the whole process of training. We may find someone who can accomplish the task at the end, but if we don’t train they might miss important skills and more importantly an understanding of why and how behind the task that needs to be finished.
What is it you want them to learn? Let them watch you do it. Do you want somebody to learn how to be a teacher? If so, the first step is them spending time watching you teach. Imagine somebody trying to be a great artist without ever spending time learning about the great artists of past.
At this point your protégé has spent some time watching you, so now it’s time to do it together. Work on the skill together, talk about what you’re doing, and then actually work through the entire process as a team. Don’t skip ahead to other steps; don’t just give them the task and expect them to figure it out, work with them.
I feel like this is when it really starts to get fun. We start to let go a little bit and make some room for them to really lead and use their skills. And when they start using their skills, we also begin to see how they are uniquely gifted and what they are passionate about. At this point, we still aren’t completely letting go, we are present watching, critiquing, and following up to help them continue to grow i their craft.
At this point, they know what to do. They’ve seen you do it, they’ve done it with you, and have been done it several times while you’ve watched. Now you need to be willing to completely let go and hand it over to them while you go find something else to do. This may be difficult for you, but it’s an important step in the learning process. And the confidence that comes from knowing, “I can do this on my own,” makes a huge difference as they use their new skill.
Photo Credit: Wyane
Note: This process is not an original idea, I learned it in a class my freshmen year of college and I’ve also heard the same process describe by our Executive Pastor. I don’t know the origins of this process, but it’s incredible.
Perry Noble was a fun preacher to listen to and I love that fact that he gets on stage and talks about what it’s like to be preaching at the same conference with “Andy-freaking-Stanley.” Perry preached out of 1 Kings 17 and spent some time exploring the story of Elijah and where God took him and how that relates to us in leadership.
As we look at the story of Elijah and at our own lives, the best advice any of us could ever take is to simply “do what the Lord told you to do.” Perry challenged us to think about our relationship with God and spending more time listening to what God tells us to do.
Spend more time of your face…less on your facebook.
One of the interesting things that happens in the life of Elijah is that as God leads him to a brook, we find out in verse 7 that the place that God led him to dries up.
Sometimes, as leaders, things get difficult simply because we are following Jesus. Elijah was led by God to this brook; imagine the frustration of being there and not having water. But God uses this situation to prepare him for things that he planned for him that were far beyond what Elijah could have ever imagined for himself and this happened because Elijah listened to God.
Photo Credit: escapedtowisconsin
Daniel Pink lead the second session of Catalyst and he focused on the concept of motivation. There are a lot of things that can motivate people in life, the most common of which is money. But there’s an important truth that we learn about money:
Once you pay people enough, money stops being a motivator.
Since motivation diminishes when money no longer is a motivating factor, it is important that we realize the ingredients to motivation within our organizations.
1. Autonomy
Management is a technology; it’s an old, outdated technology that is no longer the best tool for our organizations. Management is created to get people to comply and get a task done; it is not something created to encourage creativity.
When we value autonomy in our organizations, we allow people to just try things. Google’s employees use 20% of their time to work on whatever they want. It is in this freedom that the majority of the great innovations take place and it’s essential to the success of their organization. Imagine if Google never created Gmail.
2. Mastery
Mastery is simply getting better a stuff. As humans we have the desire to get better at our craft, to improve ourselves. Unfortunately despite this desire, most organizations do not have a culture of feedback, which is essential to improvement. Daniel recommended disciplining yourself to review yourself; create goals and review how you are doing.
3. Purpose
Why do you do what you do? Creativity and innovation will flourish when people believe in what they are doing. When we take away purpose, people are just working through a list and doing what they were told to do.
Photo Credit: Purplemattfish
The theme for Catalyst this year is “Tension is good.” Andy Stanley opened up the conference and in typical Andy Stanley fashion had incredible insight into the tensions that we must manage as leaders.
Appetite was a large focus of this session; as leaders we are constantly looking for more. We are doing something and always looking to what’s next, what’s bigger, what else we can do.
3 Things You Need to Know about Appetites:
1. God created them, sin destroyed them.
2. Appetites are never fully and finally satisfied.
3. Your appetites always whisper NOW, never LATER.
As leaders the appetites we have and the things that we desire need to constantly be kept in check. Because the danger for us is that we let the current desire to take so much focus that we aren’t able to step back and look at what God wants for our lives. Andy talked about the story of Jacob and Esau. He told the story of Jacob and Esau and Esau trading his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew. He asked the question what if the story of the Bible, the genealogy of Jesus spoke of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Esau instead of Jacob. But instead Esau changed all that by trading his birthright for a bowl of stew! What are the bowls of stew in our own lives?
Andy closed the session by challenging us to look into the future of our lives. To look at the things we desire for our lives 10 years from now. What do we hope our marriages are like? What do we hope our ministries look like? What do we hope our life looks like? And when we start to clearly look at what we hope for our lives, we can reframe our appetites. And the importance of doing this comes from the fact that it is easier for us to get so focused on what we want now and the reality of our hopes and God’s hopes for our future get blurred out. We often don’t care how great our future should be and are more concerned with the fact that we are hungry now.
We have no idea what God wants for our lives, so when we reframe our appetites we help protect ourselves from trading something important, like our marriages, for a “bowl of stew.”
