I once asked one of my mentor pastors, (make sure you have one of those) who is in his 90′s now, how he was able to implement major changes in a large, traditional church. (If you’ve never tried it…trust me…it’s not easy.) He had a history of successfully leading churches and I knew he had surely faced opposition to change.

His advice was simple, yet profound.

After he had prayerfully decided change was needed, he said he always laid his groundwork first. Before he took an item to the church, or even a governing body (in this case a body of deacons), he always had meetings with key people to introduce the change, gain input, and solicit support. He asked himself, “Who is influential within certain circles? Who can ‘kill the deal’? Who can ‘make it happen’? Who can make the change even better?”

Then, using some of the ideas generated and the support already built, he attempted to implement the change.

I’ve never forgotten that advice.

Sometimes the meetings before the meeting are the most important.

When you are convinced change is necessary and prayerfully landed on a direction you feel is best, build a core group of supporters for your idea first. Flesh it out with people you trust and who are influential with other people. Even be willing to adjust your ideas to make them better and stronger. Then attempt to tackle the change.

You’ll find yourself with a greater success rate.

What tips do you have for implementing change?

I love working with younger leaders. It keeps me young and it helps to know I’m investing in something and someone who will likely last beyond my lifetime. I want to share some things I’ve learned from experience. Some of it hard experiences.

Here’s a random list of practical advice for young leaders.

If you can learn and practice these early in your career it will help you avoid having to learn them by experience.

Never attend a meeting without some way to take notes – It helps you remember but it also communicates you care about what is being discussed. If you take notes on your electronic device (phone), be sure to tell people that’s what you are doing.

Respect your elders – The fact is, you may not always feel respected by them, but that’s their fault not yours. Showing respect to people older than you now will ensure you receive natural respect from others when you’re the elder in the relationship.

Learn all you can from everyone you meet – This includes the awkward, even difficult people that you encounter. (You may actually learn more from them if you’re willing.)

Keep a resume handy and keep revising it – You may never use a resume again in today’s work world, but the discipline of gathering your experience as you gain it forces you to think through your worth to a future employer. You’ll likely be asked to defend this someday and need to be prepared.

Never burn a bridge- You’ll be surprised how many times relationships come back around. Don’t be caught by surprise.

Be an encourager in the organization – Encouragers win the approval of others and are rewarded because they are liked. Be a genuinely positive influence on your team.

Never underestimate a connection - When someone introduces you to someone, consider it a high compliment. Follow through on the opportunity to know someone new. You’ll be surprised how often these relationships will work for good.

Drop the defensiveness - Young people often get defensive when a person with more experience shares something they do not yet know. This is especially true when being corrected by a leader. Remember you don’t know what you don’t yet know. It’s okay. Learn from your mistakes. Grow from your correction. Be patient with those who are trying to teach you. Get the chip off your shoulder and allow feedback to make you better. Over time you’ll win over those who see you as inexperienced.

There are 7 random suggestions. Elders, what other suggestions would you advise?

A danger exists in completing the routine tasks you have to do…

• Routine assignments at work…
• Routines in relationships…
• Routines in physical activities…
• Routines in daily quiet times…
• Routines in weekly calendaring…

I call it the danger of the mundane…

The things we always do, things that we do everyday, as good as those things may be, can become so routine that they begin to be seen as more of a drag than a pleasure. If one is not careful, the routine becomes the only. our whole world becomes scheduled and predictable. I see couples struggle with this in their marriage and individuals in their careers. It’s common…even routine.

Some of the dangers of the mundane include:

• You stifle creativity
• You get bored
• You remain unchallenged
• You leave the best things undiscovered
• You take blessings and other people for granted

Here are some ways you can fight the danger of the mundane:

• Discipline time to dream
• Find new ways to do old things
• Rotate the schedule of when you do routine things
• Delegate routine tasks if possible
• Trade routine tasks with others…cross train for another position…
• Be willing to try something new…
• Always try to have some change in your life…

Have you ever faced the danger of the mundane? How did you fight this danger?

For further reading, you can see one way my wife and I addressed this danger in our marriage HERE.

Bad leadership is bad leadership. It’s usually easy to recognize.

It’s easier, however, to hide bad leadership in an organization, which isn’t growing. (I wrote recently that it’s easy to keep an organization small. Read that post HERE.)

The larger an organization becomes and the more growth, which occurs, the more bad leadership becomes apparent.

As an organization grows:

• More people ask questions and challenge the process…
• More decisions need to be made…
• More and better systems are needed…
• More people are required in the process…
• More leadership development is needed…
• More delegation and management is necessary…
• More responsibility is placed on leadership…

…and the better leadership must be.

Continuing to grow an organization requires a growing leader.

How are you growing as a leader?

What is your personal leadership development plan?

Opinion question: Do you think some organizations often outgrow a leader’s capacity to lead well? Have you seen this happen?

In my experience, many of the new ideas for our organization…and for my life…have come while I was doing something else.

Usually when we are working on planning a service it’s when the best ideas for a service develop…

Often when I’m working on a blog post, I get several new ideas for a blog post…

Look at most great inventions and they were discovered while doing something…many times while doing something totally unrelated to what was discovered…

That’s because…

New ideas come from doing…

If you want to learn to innovate…if your organization needs changes…if you need some new ideas…

Do more and you’ll discover more…

Try more…Experiment more…Test more…Take more risks…

You’ll find some new ideas…

What’s something new your church (or you personally) are trying these days?

We moved downtown…

Earlier this year, Cheryl and I sold the house where we raised our boys and purchased a condominium in the downtown area of our city. We have a river view. It’s an open floor plan. Everything we do is on one level, plus we have an upstairs living space for the boys when they come home. We walk downtown almost every night. When we can, we eat downtown too. On Saturdays, we visit with the downtown street festivals. We love it!

It was hard leaving our home with so many memories of raising our family and move from the safe and quiet neighborhood, but we sensed it was time for a change in our life. Here is something we have learned from experience: Sometimes people need intentional change in order to keep life interesting and protect or grow a marriage. I shared before about “Couple Dreaming“. Cheryl and I had always dreamed of living downtown, so rather than keeping it a dream, we took steps to accomplish that dream.

Working with many couples and individuals in counseling I have learned that becoming bored in a relationship can be dangerous. We don’t intend to let that happen! As we entered into a new chapter of our lives as empty-nesters, we decided to make some intentional changes in our life. We have a few more dreams in our future…we’ll see what happens next with them. It’s keeping our marriage and lives exciting!

It doesn’t have to be a move, but sometimes a change of pace will ignite new excitement in marriage. The same can be true of a career or a personal life. Change can bring about renewed energy and motivation. Cheryl and I were not bored in our marriage. We would have been fine had we stayed in the house, but change made us even closer in our marriage, because it forced us out of our routines and into new avenues in our relationship. It’s an exciting time.

What intentional change have you made or do you need to make in your life?

Motivate us: Share an experience of when you made an intentional change in your life!

I read recently that the creators of Google weren’t looking to create Google when they discovered the complex way of indexing pages. They were working on a research project for their PhD program and stumbled upon the genius of google page ranking, did a little more exploration, and the rest is the incredible history of Google. In fact, I also read where, learning from their history, Google allows employees up to 20% of their time to explore new ideas and innovation.

It made me think about how organizations function. Are we organized to discover the next Google?

Let your team explore and you’ll discover some great stuff. Finding the “next big thing” is certainly more difficult without the exploration.

Plus, it’s damaging long-term for a team to be limited in this area of growth potential. If your team isn’t freed to explore:

• They grow bored
• Growth stalls
• Valuable discoveries are never found.

What new insights is your team discovering?

More importantly perhaps, are they being positioned for discovery? Do they even have the freedom, built into your system?

Winners of Leadership is Dead Book

We’ll do more books later…thanks for reading!

A Fresh Look at Career and Success

Its time to dust off the resume. Not because of a job search, but rather to gain a new perspective on your career and how it lines up with “success.”

If you were to take your resume and truly list the successes and failures without all the hype, how would it look? What would it look like? Try it. Take out a piece of paper and list three columns. List the job you have held in column one. Then the major initiatives you tried to accomplish in column two. Finally, list either the word success, failure or mixed in the third column.

Let me show you an example of Winston Churchill’s executive career (partial list). It might just give you new insight on your own leadership career.

 

Do you see the strings of failure in the midst of success? If you were gut honest and laid your career out like this, what would it say?

Here is what Churchill said as he looked back over his career and his many failures and his success:

“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of confidence.”

Fresh perspective is the ability to look holistically over a person’s life without getting absorbed in the minutia of a 2-3 year portion of a career. Think bigger friends. Stretch your perspective to look at the larger mural of your life as it plays out in this world. It will bring much relief to the moments of insecurity and gloom.

Guard your confidence on the road through failure.

ABOUT JEREMIE KUBICEK
Jeremie Kubicek is the author of the newly released book, Leadership is Dead: How Influence is Reviving It. He is the CEO of GiANT Impact, a leader development company whose focus is to awaken leaders by raising their capacity to lead. GiANT also owns Catalyst and produces the Chick-fil-A Leadercast You can follow him on Twitter at @JeremieKubicek or his blog at www.JeremieKubicek.com.

=> SPECIAL OFFER: Visit www.LeadershipIsDead.com to learn more about the book and access a Leadership and Influence Resource Kit (available for a limited time).

If you’d like to win a copy, I’m giving away 3 copies Monday. To enter:

• Comment on this post
• Share this post on Twitter or Facebook

I’ll give 3 copies away Monday.

There are some things we can’t change and some things we can. Learning the difference and adjusting accordingly is in large part one of the secret’s of a happy life. Concentrating more on the things you can’t change than on the things you can causes frustration, disappointment, and even depression. Let me list a few and you’ll see what I mean.

Things you CAN’T change:

God’s sovereignty
The circumstances around you
The weather
The day of the week
Your past
Other people’s actions
Time passing
Words said to you
The economy
Your heritage

Things you CAN change:

Your prayer life
Your attitude
Your perspective
Your reaction to other people’s actions
Your words
Your preparation
Your priorities
Your habits
Your commitment level
Your facial expression

What examples would you add to my list of things you can’t change and things you can’t?

Which of the things you can change do you need to change today?