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May
12
I’ve been a longtime fan of Brennan Manning. From reading his books to hearing him live, he’s one of the most profound one-hit-wonders I’ve ever encountered. His message is the same in all he writes and speaks, told in many different ways. His latest book, The Furious Longing of God, is another concoction of re-told necessities. If you’ve never read Manning before, this book is any easy way to begin. The following are a few of my highlights:
“I believe that Christianity happens when men and women experience the reckless, raging confidence that comes from knowing the God of Jesus Christ.”
Theology is “faith seeking understanding” and spirituality is “the faith-experience of what we understand intellectually.”
“The men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence.”
“The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender.”
“Love by its nature seeks union.”
Referencing Luke 11:2-4, “Jesus is saying that we may address the infinite, transcendent, almighty God with the intimacy, familiarity, and unshaken trust that a sixteen-month-old baby has sitting on his father’s lap—da, da, daddy.”
“How is it then that we’ve come to imagine that Christianity consists primarily in what we do for God?”
“Our religion never begins with what we do for God. It always starts with what God has done for us, the great and wondrous things that God dreamed of and achieved for us in Christ Jesus.”
“I’ve decided that if I had my life to live over again… I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. No, not one.” “What would I actually do if I had it to do all over again? Heeding John’s counsel, I would simply do the next thing in love.”
The ordinary pablum of popular religion caters to the idealistic, perfectionistic, and neurotic self who fixates on graceless getting worthy for union, while allowing the prostitutes and tax gougers to dance into the kingdom. Our strategies of self-deception persuade us that abiding restful union with Jesus is too costly, leaving no room for money, ambition, success, fame, sex, power, control, and pride of place or the fatal trap of self-rejection, thus prohibiting mediocre, disaffected dingbats and dirtballs, like myself, from intimacy with Jesus.
“The idolatry of ideas has left me puffed up, narrow-minded, and intolerant of any idea that does not coincide with mine.”
“What is the sign, par excellence, of authentic discipleship? The night before Jesus died, he left no doubt in anybody’s mind. ‘A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you… By this all men will know’ (John 13:34-35 NASB).”
“You have the power to give someone the courage to be, simply by the touch of your affirmation.”
“By extinguishing the spirit that burns in the gospel, we scarcely feel the glow anymore.”
“To prefer contempt to honor, ridicule to praise, humiliation to glory—these are some of the classic formulas of Christian greatness.”
The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand new creations. Not to make people with better morals, but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all…
Thanks, Brennan, for the reminders, the reprimands and the relentless way you pursue the heart of God.
Apr
21
A Sense of Urgency
Filed Under Leadership, Reading Room | 2 Comments
We are much too complacent. And we don’t even know it.
—John P. Kotter
Although familiar with John P. Kotter and his best-selling books Leading Change and Our Iceberg Is Melting, I am finally getting around to immersing myself in some of his genius. Kotter’s latest book, A Sense of Urgency, is both accessible and actionable, even if I can’t relate to all of his big biz stories and examples. After all, he is a professor of leadership at that place.
If you don’t have time to read A Sense of Urgency, it’s definitely worth skimming. Everything, says Kotter, must start with a true sense of urgency. Like most wisdom, the big idea here is not breathtaking. It’s the implementation of such wisdom that separates the wise from the weary.
The Strategy
Create action that is exceptionally alert, externally oriented, relentlessly aimed at winning, making some progress each and every day, and constantly purging low value-added activities—all by always focusing on the heart and not just the mind.
Kotter suggests four tactics to increase a true sense of urgency:
1. Bring the Outside in
Reconnect internal reality with external opportunities and hazards. Bring in emotionally compelling data, people, video, sites, and sounds.
2. Behave with Urgency Every Day
Never act content, anxious, or angry. Demonstrate your own sense of urgency always in meetings, one-on-one interactions, memos, and email and do so as visible as possible to as many people as possible.
3. Find Opportunity in Crises
Always be alert to see if crises can be a friends, not just a dreadful enemy, in order to destroy complacency. Proceed with caution, and never be naïve, since crises can be deadly.
4. Deal with the NoNos
Remove or neutralize all the relentless urgency-killers, people who are not skeptics but are determined to keep a group complacent or, if needed, to create destructive urgency.
Mar
24
The Big Sort
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It took me way too long to get through Bill Bishop’s book, but The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart was worth the read. It’s a very dry book loaded with research. That combination alone is enough to scare me away, but the title pulled me in and wouldn’t let go.
“Over the past thirty years, the Unites States has been sorting itself, sifting at the most microscopic levels of society…”
This is not good.
Three major themes frame the book: politics of the Big Sort, economics of the Big Sort, and religion of the Big Sort. “Freed from want and worry, people [are] reordering their lives around their values, their tastes, and their beliefs.”
You can read the author’s website for reviews and excerpts, including Bill Clinton’s endorsement for the book. For the purpose of this blog, I’ll simply reference my major highlights.
Politics
“In 1976, less than a quarter of Americans lived in places where the presidential election was a landslide. By 2004, nearly half of all voters lived in landslide counties.”
“Over the past fifty years, political scientists have proved that homogeneous communities become self-propelled engines of partisanship, squelching dissent and emboldening majorities.”
“In fact, exposure to a wide array of views increases tolerance. But Americans are increasingly unlikely to find themselves in mixed political company.”
The most bi-partisan period in the history of modern Congress was roughly from 1948 to the mid 1960s. “In Congress, members visited, talked across party boundaries. They hung out at the gym, socialized at receptions, and formed friendships that had nothing to do with party or ideology.”
“Congress has been most productive when both parties have been ideologically mixed and when the members have soothed political differences with social grace.”
“People were siding with a party and then voting a straight ticket, from city council to president. Political party affiliation had more to do with social identity than ideology. Choosing to be a Republican or a Democrat reflected a way of life.”
Economics
“The appeal of the Big Sort is powerful because consumers, believers, and citizens all benefit from living in homogeneous communities.”
“Today the division in the country isn’t about party allegiance. It’s about how we choose to live.”
“Our like-mindedness [has been] a comfort, a shortcut to intimacy.”
Religion
“In 1960, 60 percent of Evangelical Protestants identified themselves as Democrats.”
“American churches today are more culturally and politically segregated than our neighborhoods.”
Bishop’s Closing Quote
“Now more isolated than ever in our private lives, cocooned with our fellows, we approach public life with the sensibility of customers who are always right. ‘Tailor-made’ has worked so well for industry and social networking sites, for subdivisions and churches, we expect it from our government, too. But democracy doesn’t seem to work that way.”
Feb
26
Ahead of the Curve
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“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” —Ghandi
For several years now, I’ve been contemplating the pursuit of an MBA. As much as I love learning, I don’t do very well with formal education. It’s just not my thing. I need that real-world, school-of-hard-knocks kind of experience. I’d rather fail frequently than navigate my way through classrooms and case studies that teach me to minimize risk. In the words of one MBA grad who had prior real-world experience, “sitting through each session of [this class] was like hearing virgins talking about sex.”
However, there is still this intriguing urge to pursue more “formal” education because of the doors it opens up. It’s not about a new career or better pay as much as it’s about a calling card of sorts for where my life is headed. It’s another tool in my tool belt. Like speaking a second language or playing an instrument.
This past weekend I read Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School by Philip Delves Broughton. It’s an insider’s guide to arguably the most prestigious business school in the world. A former bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph, Broughton left his advancing career in journalism to start fresh at Harvard Business School (HBS) in 2004.
The mission of HBS is “to educate leaders who make a difference in the world.” Broughton would continually wrestle with this mission during his two years at HBS, and ultimately suggest a revision. He wondered if leadership could be taught and if business was the right medium through which to teach it. He wondered if business leaders could achieve balance between reason and emotion. “This is why people hated MBAs. Too much cost-benefit analysis, too little humanity.”
It’s clear that Broughton is a great journalist. He knows how to tell a story. The jury is still out on whether Broughton is a “businessman.” He was one of a handful who did not have a job upon graduation and, from what I can gather, he’s still trying to find his stride.
I applaud Broughton for his “capitalist skeptic” approach. He knows there is more to life than money. The work/life balance conversation would pop-up again and again, and Broughton could never quite get his head around it. It was more myth than method in his mind. Late into the book, a familiar classmate summarized Broughton’s dilemma this way:
Your problem is this: You wanted to make all this [money] and you went to Harvard Business School so you’d have the opportunity. But all the time, you couldn’t quiet the voice inside your head telling you that just making money is a ridiculous way to spend your life. I know this is your problem, because I suffered from the same thing, before I got over it.
Broughton does a great job sprinkling in some things he learned at HBS. “To most companies, the idea of people as individuals is terrifying.” “Be a principal or a decision maker, not a service provider.” HBS definition of entrepreneurship: “the relentless pursuit of opportunity beyond resources currently controlled.” He’s packed it with stories from classes, guest speakers and complex business terms he converts to language anyone can understand.
Overall, I was not more or less interested in an MBA after reading Ahead of the Curve. This was extremely frustrating because I had hoped this book would have swayed me in either direction.
My contemplation continues.
Jan
30
The 9-Inch Diet
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The last thing I’d expect to see from ad agency wonder boy Alex Bogusky, of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, is a dieting book. Bogusky and crew are responsible for some of the most notable ad campaigns for brands like Coca-Cola, IKEA, Microsoft and Burger King. Why would he write a book talking about why diets don’t work and that his 9-Inch “diet” is the only real path and plan for success?
Fortunately, The 9-Inch “Diet”: Exposing the Big Conspiracy in America is not your typical diet book. It’s 135 pages are easy-to-read with minimal text, lots of graphics and plenty of humor. It took me an hour to digest.
With colorful illustrations and plenty of sidebar fodder, Alex tells the story of America’s love affair with BIG, and how our plate size is directly responsible for our pant size. The idea and urgency for the book hit him when he bought a quaint 1940s lake house that had never been updated. “The whole place was original, including the kitchen.” After stocking up on all the basic things needed for a kitchen, they quickly learned that the plates would not fit in the cupboards. “What kind of idiot builds a cupboard that doesn’t hold a normal plate?”
Alex’s epiphany was that “there is no idiot.” “What had happened was that ‘normal’ must have changed in the 60 years since that cupboard was built.” Here’s an excerpt that captures a taste of what 9-Inch is about:
Now, before you start bashing McDonald’s you should know that it actually increased its portions reluctantly. The company’s founder, Ray Kroc, didn’t like the image of lowbrow, cheap food in huge portions. If people wanted more French fries, he would say, “They can buy two bags.” Ray made a lot of sense, and we can only wish today he had won that argument back then. But price competition had become so fierce that the only way to keep profits up was to offer bigger and bigger portions. Burger King, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell were all cutting their prices, selling more food, and making bigger profits while doing so. After all, it costs pennies to increase the size of a portion, but customers will pay at least a quarter more to buy it. Those quarters add up. By 1988, McDonald’s had introduced a 32-ounce “super-size” soda and “super-size” fries. To put that in perspective, a classic bottle of Coke is 6.5 ounces. So, we can now order one cup that contains five 1970 Coca-Cola portions. If you saw somebody with a burger and five bottles of Coke you might think it a bit odd, even today. But the big cup makes it “normal.”
This book is perfect for the coffee table. It’s loaded with eye candy and plenty of conversation-starters about how to get America eating off 9-inch plates. Come to think of it, it’s exactly the kind of book you’d expect from an ad agency wonder boy like Alex.
Jan
28
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko
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In addition to his two-year stint as a speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, it was his 2002 book, Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself, that really put Daniel H. Pink on the map.
I became a fan when I read Pink’s 2006 book, A Whole New Mind. I still reference it, and have used its content for many of my speaking engagements. Love it.
I’ll admit I was a little disappointed when I learned of Pink’s latest book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need. I was expecting something with a little more depth, but nonetheless it will have to serve as a tide me over until his next book, rumored to be early 2010.
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko is a quick read. It’s done in the Japanese manga style, much like a comic book.
The six takeaways from Johnny Bunko are regurgitated reminders for everyone:
1. There is no plan.
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses.
3. It’s not about you.
4. Persistence trumps talent.
5. Make excellent mistakes.
6. Leave an imprint.
I’ve ordered a stack of these books for my staff. As the eighteenth-century moralist Samuel Johnson said, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” Here, here.
Dec
15
Outliers, The Story of Success
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“This is a book about the meaning of work.”
I became a Malcolm Gladwell fan after reading his first book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. His second book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, was equally engaging yet more of a shift from the business/marketing angle found in Tipping Point.
In his third book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm continues his journey toward pop-sociologist. Outliers is a fascinating perspective on success, and blows away so many of the myths we have for what success looks like and how we achieve it.
In typical Gladwell fashion, Outliers is packed with stories that bring research to life. A premise of the book suggests, “It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.” Gladwell says that “the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.”
A reoccurring theme throughout the book that Malcolm observes is the “ten thousand hour” rule. Every story of success can point back to a person who has invested at minimum and approximately ten thousand hours of practice. Bill Gates. The Beatles. Lawyers. Immigrants from Europe to America in the early 1900s who brought their experience in making clothes. The list goes on.
The power of the ten thousand hour rule (about 4 hours a day for 10 years) is that you’re ready to “succeed” when the time is right. It’s tempting to pick a trendy thing and attempt to get good at it, but the trend might be over by the time you’ve mastered the craft. Outliers suggests that we should get good at what we’re passionate about. “Practicing isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” Malcolm continues, “And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”
“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.”
There were two phrases in the book that deserve to be unpacked further, and Malcolm merely scratches the surface of their definitions. The idea of “social inheritance” and “concerted cultivation” are powerful allies in the journey of Outliers.
One should be careful when absorbing Outliers because a premise of the book assumes we all measure success in terms of wealth, health, influence and power. “If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.”
The conclusion of Outliers gets personal as Malcolm tells the story of his own life and family background, including generations of slavery in Jamaica. Gladwell goes on to argue that more of us would become Outliers if we lived in a “society that provides opportunity for all.”
“Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”
Nov
18
“The church should consist of communities of loving defiance.” —Ronald J. Sider
Nearly 30 years ago, a bi-partisan U.S. Presidential Commission on World Hunger suggested that “promoting economic development in general, and overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to U.S. national security than most policy makers acknowledge or even believe.” The deepest causes for conflict in the world today, according to former U.N. Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali, are “economic despair, social injustice, and political oppression.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t heard much talk these days about overcoming foreign conflicts with generous giving, extreme kindness and courageous leadership with integrity.
Sider nails it when he says, “The rich often neglect or oppose justice because it demands that they end their oppression and share with the poor.” He continues, “We know that knowing more will make us morally obligated to change.”
So Now What?
“We must develop a theology of enough,” says Sider. “Christians in the United States spent $15.7 billion on new church construction alone in the six years between 1984 and 1989. Would we go on building lavishly furnished expensive church buildings if members of our own congregations were starving?”
“God casts down the wealthy and powerful in two specific situations,” says Sider, “(1) when they become wealthy by oppressing the poor; or (2) when they fail to share with the needy.”
Sider doesn’t mince his words. “Is the church really the church if it does not work to free the oppressed?”
But how much should we give? John Wesley gave a startling answer. One of his frequently repeated sermons was on Matthew 6:19-23 (“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth” KJV). Christians, Wesley said, should give away all but “the plain necessities of life”—that is, plain, wholesome food, clean clothes, and enough to carry on one’s business. One should earn what one can, justly and honestly. Capital need not be given away.” But Wesley wanted all income given to the poor after bare necessities were met. Unfortunately, Wesley discovered, not one person in five hundred in any “Christian city” obeys Jesus’ command. But that simply demonstrates that most professed believers are “living men but dead Christians.” “Any ‘Christian’ who takes for himself anything more than the plain necessaries of life,” Wesley insisted, “lives an open, habitual denial of the Lord.” He has “gained riches and hell-fire!” Wesley lived what he preached. Sales of his books often earned him fourteen hundred pounds annually, but he spent only thirty pounds on himself. The rest he gave away.
John V. Taylor suggests that “the biblical norm for material possessions is ‘sufficiency.’” We see this concept of sufficiency throughout Scripture. Sider says that the “costly generosity of the first church stands as a challenge to Christians of all ages.”
He even goes so far as to dare church institutions to “undertake a comprehensive two-year examination of their programs and activities to answer this question: Is there the same balance and emphasis on justice for the poor and oppressed in our programs as there is in Scripture?”
Rich Christians is another one of those books that is either going to sit on a shelf filled with highlights and tear stains, or become a manifesto for change.
Nov
17
“The rich must live more simply so that the poor may simply live.” —Dr. Charles Birch
It’s no secret for the past few years I have been re-thinking and re-learning what life is all about when it comes to stewarding my resources. From what I get paid and how I live, to how I spend my time and what I give, my worldview has been messed up. In a good way.
Two years ago Jamaica and I downsized to a smaller living space in downtown Los Angeles, four blocks from Skid Row. Earlier this year we became a one-car family. Every year for the past three years we have decreased our spending and increased our giving. Reading books like Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, The Irresistible Revolution, Jesus Wants to Save Christians and Strength to Love haven’t helped much either.
The latest book to make me want to hide in a cave or move to another country and rot to death, is Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ronald J. Sider. It’s a 30-year-old book (with a new edition) that has sold over 400,000 copies. Its 270 pages are a real struggle to get through both for the overwhelming nature of the problem and the sheer amount of data to digest. This ain’t bedtime or beach reading.
I think the biggest statistical takeaway for me was learning that the global hunger problem could be solved solely by the amount of money we in the U.S. spend each year on weight loss. How ironic. Writes Sider, “The National Center for Health Statistics reported that people in the United States spend between $30 and $50 billion each year on diets and related expenditures to reduce their calorie intake.” So while two billion people try to increase their calorie intake every day to survive, here in the U.S. we spend billions trying to reduce our calorie intake for our thighs.
So how did those of us in the developed world get to this state of ridiculous indulgence? Sider points to the Enlightenment.
Theologian Patrick Kearns has argued that commitment to unlimited growth and an ever-increasing “standard of living” is really a sellout to the Enlightenment. During the eighteenth century, many Western thinkers decided that science was the only way to find knowledge. This thinking elevated all things quantitative and devalued all things nonquantitative. Thus intangible values such as community, trust, friendship, and the beauty of creation became less important. It is hard to measure the value of friendship, unspoiled nature, and justice. But Gross National Income (GNI) is easy to measure. The result is our competitive growth economy where economic success and material things are all-important to many people.
Regardless of the reason we’re in this period of huge disparity between the haves and the have nots, we all have some work to do. According to Sider, “Most of the poor want to earn their own way. They have enormous social capital: intact families, a desire to work, pride, and integrity. But they need some help.”
More tomorrow.
Oct
30
Tribes by Seth Godin
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I’ve been a Seth Godin fan for many years and appreciate so much of what he suggests through his books and his blog. As with most things that become increasingly popular and mainstream, my enthusiasm and interest has the tendency to dwindle a bit. I like discovering unknown people and ideas, as Seth was so many years ago. I realize this is a direct result of my own pride and arrogance, but I’m working on those issues. So forgive me if this reflection of Tribes is more a reflection of my temperament.
I had the opportunity to read Seth’s latest little gem, Tribes, this past weekend. The first third of the book is excellent. Fresh, insightful and worth the cost of admission alone. The remainder of the book, as with so many of Godin’s goodies, seems to be redundant and tangent-filled as you progress to the end. This is the case for most books so Seth is not alone. I’m sure it’s that balance between having enough pages to justify a book versus a booklet. I digress. Again.
The big shift for Tribes is that Seth has moved away from his familiar marketing speak to a different conversation about leadership. In his previous books, Seth suggests that “everyone is a marketer.” In Tribes, he suggests that “everyone is now also a leader.”
Being both a member of several tribes and a leader of a couple tribes, I resonate with so much of what Seth writes about. “You can’t have a tribe without a leader, and you can’t have a leader without a tribe.”
Seth’s big call to action is that there are tons of different tribes all waiting to be led and “We need you to lead us.” “It takes only two things to turn a group of people into a tribe: 1) A shared interest and 2) A way to communicate.”
If you’re looking for a fresh take on leadership, this is an easy-breezy read. Tribes will give leaders a game plan for:
- Challenging the status quo
- Creating culture
- Developing your curiosity
- Using charisma to attract followers
- Communicating your vision
- Committing to a vision
- Connecting followers to each other
Go tribes!