Great thoughts from Chick-fila Leaders Conference

On Friday, Chick-fila and John Maxwell lead a Leadercast (leadership-oriented simulcast). Some of the content may be available for download, so check it out.

I'll continue to post some other notes, but here were some very quotable quips from the day:

• Great ideas come from having fun and being together without an agenda. Best ideas happen in meetings with no agendas.
• Jim Knight- Coke Chairman: Selling products is not enough, we all need 2 be a better partner with society.
• Relationships, not transactions, lead to transactions.
• When it is really hard, look up and put a smile on your face! If you can't do it, how can you expect it from your employees?
• Humility and being able to carry your own bag are important in leadership." - Muhtar Kent
• Learning from a mentor: not always what they say but the subtleties of what they do. Dan Cathy
• People who want to change the world try MANY ideas!
• Innovative ideas almost always seem obvious after the fact. The trick is to come up with them before the fact

How to Make Decisions

The Art of Decision-making by Seth Godin from my notes of Leadercast by Chick-fil-a.

Lot's of great thoughts and easily tweetable one-liners.

Discover that leadership means making decisions. Leaders must be willing to answer the following questions:

• Will I accept what is and what will be? Willing to acknowledge reality, and make decisions based on that reality. Don't be like newspaper industry, ignoring how business is changing.
• Temptation is to see what we are hoping for, not what is.
• Are you invisible or remarkable? Making average stuff for average people (make everything “good enough”) rather than customizing and making unique.
• Are we willing to earn the right to whisper rather than yell? We have to stop yelling at our audience, and earn the right to start whispering to them.
• Are you in the story business or fact business? We purchase, decide, join based on the story we tell ourselves and what we believe/ our bias.
• Will we defend past or adapt to invent future? Do you resist future, because you’re happy where you are? How do you need to adapt/ invent future? Get rid of hammer, so that you have many tools rather than only a hammer.
• Thinking inside vs. outside box: in box- really dark. At edge of box is where innovation happens- poke edge. Won’t get ovations every time you get to edge- usually experience resistance. Action is on the fringe, edge of box.
• Lesson from Ford: Interchangeable parts = interchangeable people. Can run a factory making average stuff for average people. BUT if personal, custom needs irreplaceable people doing work we can’t imagine, dependent on people who work for you.
• Be the organization you want to buy from, invest in, join.
• Hard work is scary because it takes guts.
• Leading is scary because it means giving up control.
• Are you in business of complying or inspiring? We don't need more compliance, we need better decisions
• Management produces status quo. Leadership is innovation.
• Difference between scarcity and abundance. Either accountant doing things over again or an artist creating uniqueness. Artists use skill to do work worth doing, have difficult discussions. If you take responsibility, then people will allow you to be irreplaceable. Stand out rather than fit in.
• Do something no one else is willing to do.

Who we are under pressure

When we're under pressure, what comes out of us? Our best? Our worst?

The truth is that our truest self is revealed. What we truly are is squeezed to the surface. Under calm and comfortable circumstances, we can hide our intentions and weak character. But in the thick of battle, our character is exposed.

Do you like what pressure reveals about who you are?

Trials, hardship, and pressure are not sent by God, but are used by God to expose weakness and sin, so that we can grow in our faith and Christ-like character by repenting of sin and allowing the Holy Spirit to transform our heart.

We may not like it, but trials and hardship are our greatest teacher. Here's how Charles Spurgeon wrote about this topic in his commentary on 1 Peter 1:7 "The trying of our faith..."

"Faith untried may be true faith, but it is sure to be little faith... Faith never prospers so well as when all things are against her: tempests are her trainers, and lightnings are her illuminators... no faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs in adversity."

How is the Holy Spirit trying to develop your character today?

In what areas has pressure revealed sin or weak character of which you need to repent?

Celebrate! Our faith is growing stronger and our character more Christ-like!

Stand Firm: concluding 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting

Our focus in prayer today is for fruitfulness and faithfulness. Read John 15:1-11 as a reference point, and let's pray for "much fruit" through pruning, so that we are able to see increased impact in our community, many transformed lives, changed hearts, saved souls- all to the Father's Glory!!

When we are fruitful and faithful, the enemy will attack to discourage us, frustrate us, and lead us to believe that we should quite. But that is no time to quite. Instead,

"Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9.

Here's a very encouraging letter written by an anonymous pastor from the jungles of New Guinea explaining His situation to the preacher John Yates:

"Man, it's great to be in the thick of the fight, to draw the old Devil's heaviest guns, to have him at you with depression and discouragement, slander, disease! He doesn't waste time. He hits good and hard when a fellow is hitting him.

You can always measure the effectiveness of your work, by how hard Satan hits back. When you're on your back with fever and at your last ounce of strength, when some of your converts backslide, when you learn that your most promising inquirers are only fooling, when your mail gets held up and some don't bother to answer your letters, is that the time to bail out?

"No Sir! That's the time to pull out the stops and shout hallelujah! Satan’s really getting it and he’s launching an all out attack. And all of heaven is watching and asking: 'Will he stick it out?'

And they see who is with us…and they see around us the unlimited reserves, the boundless resources, and they see the impossibility of failure with God on our side…how sad the angels must be when we run away from hard times. Glory to God! We're not going to run away. We're going to stand."

So, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, BE ENCOURAGED, STAND FIRM, NEVER GIVE UP to the GLORY of GOD!

Profound leadership teaching from Chuck Swindoll

Notes from hearing Chuck Swindoll live at Catalyst Conference last week in Atlanta, GA.

When God wants to do an impossible task, He takes an impossible person and crushes them. –Allen Redpath. So, leave room in your life for the crushing.

Ten Things I have Learned about Leadership:
1. It’s lonely to lead,
2. It’s dangerous to succeed (because it takes pain, failure, disappointment, and
that requires time),
3. It’s hardest at home (even, Chuck Swindoll get’s mad and tells his wife to “shut
up”. Didn't expect that level of honesty),
4. It’s essential to be real,
5. It’s painful to obey,
6. Brokenness and failure are necessary (Mugridge- contrary to what would be
expected, I’ll look back on experiences that were especially painful with greater
fondness than success… everything I’ve learned has been through affliction to
through success. Without which life would not be delectable, but unbearable),
7. My attitude is more important than my actions. Am I getting hard to be around?
8. Integrity eclipses image,
9. God’s way is better than my way (God cannot pour His riches into hands already
full),
10.Christ-likeness begins and ends with humility.

Five things worth remember during my Next 50 Years in leadership:
1. Whatever you do, do more with others and less alone,
2. Whenever you do it, emphasize quality not quantity,
3. Wherever you go, do it the same as if you were among those who know you best,
4. Whoever may respond, keep a level head, whether highly praising or critical.
Be cautious with those on both extremes, and neither deserve much time or
attention,
5. However long you lead, keep on dripping with gratitude and grace.

Random Quotes

Just a few quotes I've read recently that made me... think.

• Women should not have children after 35; thirty-five children are enough. -anonymous

• The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. -Thomas Jefferson
  

• A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. -Thomas Jefferson

• There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.- Albert Einstein
  

• To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it. -Thomas Jefferson.

• If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor. -Albert Einstein

• Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person. -Albert Einstein