Want To Be a Better Leader?

• May 24, 2012
• #Leadership
• #Reading
• #Books
• #List
• #Humility
• #Learning

Leaders are ____________.

What comes to mind? Influencers, world-changers, innovators, egocentric, power-hungry… Many times our association with leaders has more to do with personality quirks or individual leaders rather than really what it means to be a leader.

Being a leader can mean many different things to many different people. But when it comes down to becoming a better leader it comes down to only one thing:

To become a better leader you must crave the humility found in learning from any source.

Leaders are readers. Too bad not all readers are leaders…

I started to think about all the books I have read (or reread*) in the last year and a half… (not in any particular order and just because it’s listed does not necessarily mean that I enjoyed the read)

• Communicating for Change* - Stanley
• Six Thinking Hats - De Bono
• Sticky Church - Osborne
• Boundaries in Marriage - Cloud & Townsend
• God’s Timing For Your Life - Sheets
• Lean Ministry - Duffert
• Breakout Churches - Rainer
• The Disciple-Making Church - Hull
• Doctrine - Driscoll
• Prodigal God - Keller
• Blessed Life - Morris
• Tale of Three Kings* - Edwards
• 7 Practices of Effective Ministry* - Stanley
• Quitter - Acuff
• Strengths Based Leadership - Rath
• Strengths Finder 2.0* - Rath
• Steve Jobs - Issacson
• Addicted to Love - Berrios
• Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Starts - Griffith & Easum
• Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century - Malphurs
• Everyday Absurdities - Stanton
• Bringing Up Girls - Dobson
• Jolt - Cooke
• Weird - Groeschel
• Reverse Mentoring* - Creps
• Tales of the Revolution - Godin
• Think Orange - Joiner
• Untitled - Hogan
• Church Planter - Patrick
• The King Jesus Gospel - McKnight
• We Are All Weird - Godin
• Go Big - Easum
• Leadership is Dead - Kubicek
• The Me I Want to Be - Ortberg
• The Dirty Little Secret - Gross
• Love Wins - Bell 
• Graceful - Godin
• Poke the Box - Godin
• Practicing Greatness - McNeal
• The Volunteer Revolution - Hybels
• Sun Stand Still - Furtick
• The Land Between - Manion
• First Impressions - Waltz
• It* - Groeschel
• Choosing to Cheat* - Stanley
• Linchpin - Godin
• Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting - Malphurs
• 11 - Sweet
• The Coming Economic Armageddon - Jeremiah
• Growing True Disciples - Barna

I’m sure I’m missing some, I mean, it has been a year and a half… However, I just feel I need to clarify something. I was never a big reader. I started by committing to read 1 book a month many years ago. Now, I have read in less than 18 months what used to take me almost 5 years to read. Again readers are not necessarily all leaders. But all leaders are readers.

Right now I’m in the process of reading…

• Platform - Hyatt
• Exponential - Ferguson
• Put Your Dream to the Test - Maxwell
• Necessary Endings - Cloud
• How to Change Your Church (Without Killing It) - Mellado
• Rediscovering Church - Hybels
• Launch - Searcy

What have you read lately? What do you want to read? What should I read next?

I Love Owning an NFL Franchise!

• May 23, 2012
• #Accomplishment
• #Lawrence Taylor
• #memorabilia
• #Green Bay Packers
• #New York Giants
• #Owner
• #Superbowl
• #Superbowl Ring

Last year when the stock opened again for my favorite team, the Green Bay Packers, I bought one share. That’s right, I invested into stock that is not worth any money and may never rise in value. But technically I own .001% of the team… It’s memorable. I remember opening up the package and reading these words, “We are the Green Bay Packers. We are co-authors of one of the more compelling stories of human history.” I thought - this is an organization that GETS IT!

Why do some leaders of organizations “get it” while others, simply, don’t?

I thought… The Green Bay Packers, a football team, believe they are co-authors of one of the more compelling stories of human history. How many leaders of churches even believe that?

Acts chapter 2 shows us that at the very first meeting of what we now know as the church. Verse 41 tells us that 3,000 people received the message spoken by Peter and were baptized! Thousands of people heard the all encompassing story of the Gospel. They heard about the prophets of old and the fulfillment of the Messiah in Jesus Christ. The church grew from 120 people to 3,120 people in a few short moments. That’s 2500% growth! Lives are changed at the intersection of legacy and vision. People want to be a part of that! It’s memorable. We are all about memorabilia. We want to remember great events - why do you think many churches bear the emblem of the cross? 

A week ago the New York Giants unveiled their Superbowl rings. Pretty spectacular rings - though I’m not a Giant’s fan. They pay homage to all of their previous Superbowl victories. There’s something special about remembering a legacy. It’s almost like history comes alive in the idea of honoring. 

A few days later Lawrence Taylor’s 1991 Superbowl ring was sold at auction for $230,401. Not only can I not imagine paying that much money for something smaller than a house but I can’t imagine paying that much money for someone else’s trophy. That was a victory that I (even as a fan) had no part in. Now it’s one thing to buy some memorabilia to remember an event but its another to purchase someone else’s achievements. (This is a really sad story - BTW).

There’s a difference between memorabilia and achievement. Memorabilia helps remember an event, achievements have an owner. Memorabilia focuses on the story, the legacy. Achievements are personal they are custom made for the individual. There’s nothing wrong with purchasing memorabilia, and despite what I think about LT’s ring, I’m not even saying it’s wrong to buy someone else’s trophy. 

I just started to think… As a leader it can be easy to live off of previous achievement rather than legacy coupled with vision.

Keep the memorabilia, honor the past, but vision moves us beyond the rut of previous achievement. After all, lives are changed at the intersection of legacy and vision.

What do you think? Am I off? Would you have bought LT’s ring if you had the cash?

Why I Got Rid of All My DVD’s

• May 22, 2012
• #Product Review
• #AppleTV
• #Digital
• #DVD
• #DVD Ripper
• #iTunes
• #Handbrake

I love it when products or services enhance the quality of my life. Making one’s life better is an innate human desire, it’s hardwired inside of us, yet it is completely subjective. What enhances your life may not enhance my life and vice-versa. That being said I want to give props to some products that I believe have made my life better, easier or just more fun!

About five years ago I got onto this kick where I wanted to go all digital with our media. So I went out and purchase the original AppleTV with the 160GB hard drive. Here’s the concept: If it plays in iTunes, it plays on your TV via AppleTV. One major problem… We had amassed quite the collection of DVD’s (this was before BluRay really started to take off). The last thing I wanted was to have another VHS debacle. 

*Remember when you could not use VHS tapes anymore and you had to pretty much re-purchase all your movies on DVD because there was too much of a quality discrepency?

In order to save all our old movies I needed to find a way to get them into digital format. Thanks to my trusty MacBook and a free, third party DVD ripper called Handbrake, I was able to make that happen. It took FOREVER to rip them but finally I had over 200GB’s of movies and tv shows on an external hard drive connected to my home computer running the latest version of iTunes. 

We still have all of our media on an external hard drive attached to our home computer, streaming through iTunes to the new(er) AppleTV. Now that it’s all set-up, I love the ease of use and all of our music, podcasts, movies and tv shows are all in the same place.

**Let’s not forget that the AppleTV also contains the greatest Netflix interface, hands down! 

What about you? Are you going digital or clinging to your collection?

***BTW - you can go through this same process with your BluRay collection.