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Innovation

Discipline Yourself To Dream

By Business, Encouragement, Innovation, Leadership

We have had a busy season at Grace Community Church. Fall is the time of year when most churches ramp up their ministries, which tracks with back-to-school schedules and the change to cooler weather. Our church has been in a fast growth mode since day one, but we seem to be in a unique place of extraordinary growth right now. In addition to this growth we are launching new small groups, a college ministry, gearing up for our annual community outreach ministry, and adding a third service, along with numerous other changes occurring this fall, some that we are not ready to talk about yet. Some days it seems we have just enough energy to get through another week and all our time is focused on the next Sunday.

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The Encouragement Of Personal Branding

By Business, Innovation, Leadership

One trend in organizations today that I am not sure existed even ten years ago is the freedom employees have to promote their personal identity on company time. Companies today seem to allow and actually encourage employees to brand themselves separate from the organization. Whether it is with a personal blog or through authoring a book, employees can have a larger personal following and name recognition than the top leadership of the organization and at times even greater than the organization. This is true in the corporate world and the church world.

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What to do if employees don’t respond?

By Business, Innovation, Leadership, Organizational Leadership

This is a great question. I would encourage you to survey your employees to make sure you have the environment you think you have. If this is not realistic, perhaps you could bring in an outside perspective, such as a consultant or a friend who knows your organization well and understands these principles. Once you have done that, ask these questions about the employees who refuse to take initiative:

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Stress Results and Not Details

By Business, Innovation, Leadership, Vision

That is a hard concept for many leaders. They own their vision. They have in their mind what they want to achieve. They have pre-determined exactly what a win looks like. They can almost detail it out in their heads. Therefore, if a leader is not careful he or she begins to stress the details of that vision as opposed to stressing and rewarding people for results achieved.

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Does Your Organization Produce Innovative Leaders or Managed Followers?

By Business, Innovation, Leadership, Organizational Leadership

A friend of mine called recently to discuss his business. He wants his employees to assume more ownership for their work and take more initiative on their own, without having to be asked to do something. He wants to lead an organization that produces innovative leaders, not a bunch of managed followers. Knowing a little about his workplace, I asked him an important question. “Have you created an environment conducive to produce the kind of employees you say you want?”

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I Hate Job Titles

By Business, Innovation, Leadership, Team Leadership

Titles to me are too specific. They seem to indicate a defined area of focus. I realize some people need that for clarity, but I prefer a job description to a title. I like for a person to understand the goals and objectives for the position, and even more than that, the overall vision of the organization and for them to realize how they are part of the organization’s success. That is hard to capture in a specific job title.

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Leading People To Make a Positive Impact

By Business, Innovation, Leadership, Organizational Leadership

This can be a controversial principle, because it appears at first glance that an organization is strategizing to leave a group of people out of the equation, but really this strategy helps the entire organization be more successful, eventually improving things for everyone involved in the organization, even those in the last 20%. This principle assumes that in any organization:

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