The Rise and Fall of YOUR Successful Organization

This is Lesson 2 from our Leadership Lessons series.

LESSON TWO: It’s dangerous to succeed.
KEY QUESTION: How can we make success less risky while keeping success as a priority?

Many things can take down your church or company, but none may be sneakier than success.

Here are seven deadly sins of organizational success:

1. A “good news” focus, where we excuse away the bad news and celebrate anything better than average.
2. Mounds of red tape that keep the staff from even asking to innovate.
3. The previous generation (or founders) make all the leadership decisions, and keep the organization tied to what once worked.
4. Unnecessary risk aversion, because the organization is too afraid to fail.
5. Doubling-down on what and how, not why.
6. Maintaining order at almost any cost.
7. Stewardship of the budget and expenses is replaced by decisions void of value.

In this NEW POST, I outline in more detail the above sins and propose solutions for each.

Five Healthy Solutions for Lonely Leaders

This NEW POST is Lesson 1 from our Leadership Lessons series.

LESSON ONE: It’s Lonely to Lead
KEY QUESTION: How can leaders reduce loneliness without abdicating their leadership?

The dynamic of loneliness is a tension that demands attention. As a leader, when we feel organizational isolation, we are tempted to resolve the tension by:
1. Abdicating our leadership.
2. Pretending our leadership presence is irrelevant.
3. Playing favorites to gain friends.

These unhealthy solutions don’t resolve the problem, but they do create other problems.

How can a leader solve the loneliness that is inevitable with point leadership?

In this NEW POST, I offer you 5 Healthy Solutions for Lonely Leaders.

Also, I’ll tell you how I’ve got this wrong and how I eventually fixed the problem in my own life.

10 Leadership Lessons You Can Learn The Easy Way

This is the first post in a leadership series. Make sure you subscribe to remain part of the conversation. 

HERE WE GO…

Fifteen or so years ago, I attended my first-ever leadership conference. This was my first exposure to John Maxwell.

What an incredible leader, pastor, and communicator!

During his keynote, he unpacked 10 lessons on leadership. I took a lot of notes. Now, 15 years later, I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing each of the 10 lessons.

In this post, I give you the list of 10. In future posts, I’ll unpack each one through my personal, leadership experiences. More, I hope these posts give you plenty of practical advice.

The life of a leader is full of lessons. Most are learned the hard way through experience. My hope is too allow you to learn from my previous experience.

See you on the blog!

An Easy Leadership Development Strategy You Can Put In Place Today!

This short post is for any leader working to develop the leaders around them…

We all know leadership development is important. We equally know leadership development often feels like an over-complicated strategy requiring processes, plans, and systems.

Perhaps that is needed. Or maybe there is something we can all do now to begin helping the leaders around us grow.

Not that we shouldn’t attempt to implement processes and strategies for leadership development. But we can’t allow our lack of strategies keeps us from doing one of the most basic things to help develop the leaders around us.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “great leaders ask great questions.” That’s true. Equally true is this statement:

“Great leaders grow leaders through asking great questions.”

Asking the growing leaders around you great questions is perhaps the most overlooked leadership development opportunity.

In this NEW POST, I give you 8 QUESTIONS THAT GROW LEADERS.

How can I help?

Partnering with ministry and marketplace leaders from innovation through implementation is why I created Transformation Solutions. I’m dedicating my time to helping leaders like you discover potential problems, design strategic solutions, and deliver the preferable future.

Go right now to mytransformationsolutions.com and sign up for a free, 15-minute conversation to decide if working together works for you.

7 Questions to Determine If Your Ministry Model Needs to Change

Have you ever experienced a “solution looking for a problem?” I love that phrase. It most commonly looks like a product developed by a company for a customer that doesn’t exist. Not in the Steve Jobs or Apple way. In the legitimate “we spent time and resources creating something that nobody will ever want or […]

Should You Stay Or Should You Go? A Fresh Look at Job Change.

How do you know when it’s time to go?

In the last week, I’ve had 5 conversations with leaders considering a job change.

I understand. I recently changed jobs myself!

As I thought about these conversations and my own job journey, I realized our search for job purpose and fulfillment is found when we exist in a mutually beneficial relationship with our company, church, or organization.

In this NEW POST, I unpack how purpose and fulfillment are connected to our job, and how our job is connected to our purpose and fulfillment.

If you are considering or believe you will eventually consider quitting your job, give this a read first.

When Interruptions Become Disruptions

It’s evident that many leaders (especially in the church) see this moment in history as an interruption. A significant interruption, but an interruption nevertheless.

Interruptions are no doubt problematic. Interruptions are like pause buttons. Interruptions give us time to reflect and adjust. These moments can be constructive encouragement to look at things differently.

But, and this is critically important, interruptions mostly pause our way of executing our current model. We may look at something differently during an interruption, but looking isn’t behaving. When the interruption ends, and you press the play button again, we resume “business as usual.” Some things might look different, but these alterations are primarily surface changes, not strategic adjustments.

That’s the difference between an interruption and a disruption.

Disruptions aren’t simply more extensive interruptions. Disruptions are destructive. Disruptions force innovation and require leaders to look and behave differently. Disruptions challenge leaders to swallow their pride. Admitting a strategy and model you created and implemented no longer works is not easy. Disruption causes leaders to look and behave differently. Disruptions devastate the old way of doing things. That includes your tried and true ministry model of yesteryear.

If interruptions drive introspection, disruptions demand innovation.

In this NEW POST, I offer a shortlist of areas most likely in need of strategic innovation. And, I give you some core questions to consider.

How To Never Lose a Staff Member Again!

Is it possible to stop losing staff members?

If you lead an organization of any kind, you’ve most likely experienced the effect of the “Great Resignation.”

Workers are evaluating their employment and changing jobs in record numbers.

Losing staff isn’t a pandemic-created crisis, though. Staff retention is a constant battle for any organizational leader. It seems too often you hire a great young leader only to invest in their development so they can go somewhere else.

It’s frustrating.

In our humanity, we tend to cast blame. Mostly toward others. The exodus of employees is a perfect place for blame casting. “They’re leaving because __________________ (fill in the blank with something that is clearly their fault).

There is an easy way never to lose a staff member again.

Are you ready for it?

It’s foolproof. Always works. You’ll never invest time, resources, and energy on an employee again only to see them take their talents elsewhere.

Here’s the solution to never lose a staff member again…

Click the link for my 100% guaranteed solution!

How to Lead Something You Didn’t Start

If you’ve ever led something you didn’t start, you understand the unique challenges.

Starting something can be very challenging. Transitioning something can feel impossible.

The first few weeks and months for a new leader in an established organization are critical to long-term success.

In this article, I outline 7 tips for taking over.

If you’re a leader who might one day be in charge of something you didn’t start, save this article for later. If you have taken over something, I’d encourage you to take 10 minutes and give this a read.

Thanks, friends.

8 Peak Performance Habits to Elevate and Transform Your Personal Productivity

Do you feel unproductive these days?

If so, this post is for you. If not, this post is still for you, because a season might be lurking around the corner that makes personal productivity more challenging than ever.

It’s tempting to excuse our lack of production on a season of life. And partially, that’s fair.

I just launched my new leadership content, coaching, and consulting business (Transformation Solutions), and my wife and I just bought a coffee shop in our downtown district (Copper Coin).

I’m in a really busy and new season. But I can’t blame my productivity drop on the season. Like you, I need a pathway to productivity that exists independent of life seasons.

That’s exactly why I’ve decided to implement these 8 Peak Performance Habits immediately.

Give them a read and perhaps even a try yourself. I’d love to know how they work for you. Or, what you’ve found helpful outside of my list.