Used Twitter search to explore a few tweets related to my favorite topics. Hope you find them helpful!
Corporate Leadership Development: Roles and Goals http://bit.ly/8mG23i
Kelly Gutierres
kellygutierres
RT @rflectionldrshp Leadership Development: Just in Case or Just in Time http://ow.ly/1qtRcJ
Akira Sasabe
akirasasabe
Check this video out -- Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010: Eric Ries, "The Lean Startup: Innovation Through ... http://bit.ly/d2NFgK
tanomsak
tanomsak
When you create more value than you capture, you do create value for yourself - Tim O'Reilly
NexPeople
NexPeople
This post complements an earlier one on how to diagnose whether your ministry is too big or small.
This diagram ranks popular tech companies by revenue per employee:
I've been following this closely because I have seen more young leaders concerned about their efficiency rather than their hours. In ministry I have seen a focus on "more"--more money, more students, more time spent, more strategies, more planning.
But isn't "more" worthless if your team or ministry is inefficient?
One more thought related to "more": the thing that are most valuable in ministry require a tremendous amount of faith, and engender a significant amount of internal and external resistance.
If we are really being efficient ministers than shouldn't we be "working" a lot less, but on extremely significant things?
I'd appreciate hearing your experience with determining you or your ministry's efficiency!
You can read the context of this diagram and lots of good comments here.
"Companies won’t experiment to find
evidence of the right way forward."--Dan Ariely, from his blog Predictably Irrational.
Dan is a Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight--he knows what he is talking about.
Have you ever been in a meeting where there are two or three strong opinions with little to no evidence to support any of them? Have you been guilty (like me) of picking one out of frustration, convenience, or fatigue?
Dan goes on to share this:
"Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants with overdeveloped confidence in their own intuition. Managers rely on focus groups—a dozen people riffing on something they know little about—to set strategies."
The equivalent of focus groups in my ministry is what we have done or what some other ministry has done in the past. This is a great place to start but unfortunately most of the time teams make small adjustments on what's been done before instead of using it as a launch-pad for thinking creatively.
...final quote from Dan:
"We tend to value answers over questions because answers allow us to take action, while questions mean that we need to keep thinking. Never mind that asking good questions and gathering evidence usually guides us to better answers."
How are you doing at asking good questions and gathering hard evidence? I could use some work!
photo courtesy of mgdtgd
...went through this diagram with my student interns and it seemed to make sense to them; wanted to pass it on and share it as a complement to the last post.
Observations:
Your corporate leader is the easiest person from whom to receive development because of relational frequency and geographic proximity.
A corporate and non-corporate mentor are difficult to receive development from because they can be both relationally and geographically distant.
Insights
Corporate leaders, although geographically close, can/usually are much different than you in terms of strengths, giftings, life-stage, weaknesses. The proximity often deludes people into thinking that their leader is "God's best" or even "God's gift" to their development.
Corporate and Non-Corporate mentors represent the greatest opportunity to develop and steward the strengths and giftings that God gave us because WE get to choose/pursue them.
The people in ministry that I have seen thrive have had a VARIETY and ABUNDANCE of mentors. Emphasis on thrive--it's easy to float along in ministry and move "up" mostly due to attrition.
Social Media has made it SIGNIFICANTLY easier to have mentors who are geographically distant.
I connect with five people that I would call mentors--only one is in my town. I connect with the rest through email, skype, and phone.
It's not pretty to find mentors but it's definitely worth it. Unless you want to skim the surface.
"Rather, we must change–or even more importantly be changed by
Christ–from the inside out."--Justin Irving, Professor of Ministry Leadership at Bethel.
This year's CCC Blogference challenged my thinking in many ways. I enjoyed the category self-directed leadership development because I am recovering "self-development complainer."
In the past I have placed too many expectations on my corporate superior and failed to pursue developmental experiences and people outside of my team.
Justin goes on to explain why this is so significant:
When we are transformed at the deep level of personhood, then the attitudinal and behavioral dimensions of our leadership can follow along–the behaviors of serving others as leaders becomes a natural outgrowth of who we are as servants first.
Had a couple questions for you: