What the Best Restaurants Can Teach You and Your Organization About Success
You may not know this, but for a season I helped my wife run anywhere from one to three restaurants. The season was just long enough to convince me, if I needed any convincing, that running restaurants was not my calling. That said, I have new respect for anybody who has to cook, serve, or make a profit from folks like – well, me. I never worked harder physically, or encountered more of a call to real, practical servanthood in my life.
In our culture we eat 21 meals a week, give or take. To create an environment that would motivate somebody to return again and again, and to talk about your place to their friends, and get to the end of the month with money in the bank… this is no easy task.
So when somebody does it well, I believe it can teach us some things about succeeding in the organizations, businesses, and yes, congregations we all relate to.
Lately I’ve heard of three remarkable places – none of which I have experienced personally. But I will, if given the chance! What intrigues me is what these eateries suggest to me as a pastor and someone who’s spent a lot of time studying successful organizations and teams. Later, if this “whets your appetite” (sorry, it’s Monday – that’s as close to funny as I can get), there are other transferable lessons we can explore. [click to continue…]
Five days of creation. Five days to speak a universe and earth into being. But for the first five days, as God created the stars and planets, the sea and land, and its teeming life, there was no one to speak back.
True, the angels brought Him praise, and creation tacitly spoke of his glory. But a voice was missing. A voice of intimacy, of image reflected. A voice of will – of determined love. A voice of faith and surrendered strength.
Day six. The climax of it all came when God breathed into the man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.
Imagine the Father’s delight as He introduced Adam to a universe of discovery. To show him the bumblebee or the giraffe, the caterpillar or the butterfly, the lion and the lamb. To see the childlike wonder in the grown man’s eyes as he witnessed this living Artist’s canvas for the first time. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on March 17, 2009
in Enlarging Your Capacity, Exploring the Possibilities, Five LV Laws, Insight, Leadership, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, LV Stories, Principle of Freedom, Principle of Legacy
Maewyn Succat. Bet you never thought to hang that name on your son. But Maewyn wasn’t from around these parts, and his name apparently suited him as he grew up in his native Wales.
Maewyn had a pretty respectable upbringing. His granddaddy was a preacher, and his dad was a deacon – though rumor had it that Dad’s religious affiliations had more to do with tax deductions than spiritual passion.
In most ways, I suppose, Maewyn was your typical teenager. Times were tough, but youth is a time to dream of something better. No doubt this teenager had dreams, hopes, and plans to get there.
But all of that came crashing down when Maewyn’s family estate was attacked and he was abducted, placed in chains, and hauled off into slavery, far away from his home and his family.
What do you do when all you’ve ever known is ripped away from you? How do you respond when your dreams, your hopes, your family, and your heritage become distant memories or painful reminders of a life that once was?
Some children encounter such things at very early ages, and never remember their heritage or parents. Not Maewyn. He’d seen too much. Known too much. Missed too much. [click to continue…]
Jan is a mother of four, two each from two failed marriages. This morning, her 19-year-old lost his temper and verbally crushed his mother with a flurry of profanity and rage. Jan wanted to die, literally. I got the call.
Last year, at the tender age of 44, Bruce became a husband for the first time. Less than a month later, his bride, this time blushing with anger, ordered Bruce out of the house. Their divorce was final last week.
Larry introduced himself to me by telling me how he was betrayed and fired by his corporate board. Then he faced the most insidious wound of all – the church wound. After months of being ostracized, the victim of church politics, Larry finally realized the need for a change. “When your wife has to take a tranquilizer on Sunday mornings just to go to church,” he said, “it’s time to do something different.”
All these people share two things in common. First, they’re living in the Land of Nod (see the previous post). The age that’s given us instant gratification, disposable everything, and technology-on-demand has elevated revolving door relationships to an art form. The people I just introduced you to are Exhibit A.
Second, on Sundays they’re in our church. [click to continue…]
Tense Truth: There are no solutions to problems that do not require some kind of change. And there is no change that doesn’t create problems of its own. The solution is not to avoid change or eliminate problems. Rather, it is to anticipate future challenges with a solution-based mindset, even while we attack the problems of today.
John Miller, in his book, QBQ, The Question Behind the Question, tells the following story:
When Stacey was 12 years old, she and her father, a pilot, took off on a Sunday afternoon joyride in their single engine Cessna. Not long into the flight, and about a mile up over Lake Michigan, the joy of their father-daughter adventure came to an abrupt halt. Stacey’s father turned to her and in a calm, reassuring tone he said, “Honey, the engine has quit. I’m going to need to fly the plane differently.”
Like Miller, I love the phrase, “fly the plane differently.” It speaks of how problem solvers (read “leaders” here) approach changing conditions and frame crisis situations. He didn’t look for somebody to blame, bail out of the plane, or give up on the laws of aerodynamics. He also didn’t magnify the fear of the situation. He didn’t try to fix the engine! And most importantly, he didn’t stop flying.
He simply changed in response to a new set of information and a new horizon of challenges.
Tony Robbins on Problems
On a recent video blog, Tony Robbins said: [click to continue…]
From a sign in Chicago.
I’m fairly certain more people turn right looking for North Avenue than they stay straight or turn left.
Why?
Because the mind can’t focus on the opposite of an idea.
People tend to go in the direction of your arrows (your example), not the direction of your words.
They gravitate toward what you tell them to avoid, unless you actually point them in a better direction.
They become what you criticize or fear or hate or warn against or dread.
What you say is communication; that’s important.
Where you point is leadership. That is vital.
(Photo by Andy Sernovitz)
(A spiritual leadership fable.)
Hi, I’m Josh. Pleased to meet you.
Hi, Josh. I’m Andy. So tell me about yourself.
I’m a poker.
A what?
A poker.
You mean, like a poker player?
No. I mean, like a poker in your fireplace.
You’re a poker?
Yep. Poker.
Okay, I’m steppin’ out a little here, Josh. What does a poker do?
Pokes.
(Should’ve seen that coming.) Okaaay. Pokes what?
I poke people.
Seriously?
Yep.
You just walk up to them and poke them with your finger?
Naw, not like that. That’s creepy.
Ya think?
I do for people what a poker does for your fireplace. [click to continue…]
null
In spite of all her lamentable weaknesses, appalling failures and indefensible shortcomings, the Church is the mightiest force for civilization and enlightened social consciousness in the world today. The only force in the world that is contesting Satan’s total rule in human affairs is the church of the living God. -Paul Billheimer
What does it take to rouse a sleeping giant?
Whatever it takes, I think now is the time.
One of the biggest clichés and repeated experiences in history is that of unrealized potential. It’s one of the reasons I believe heaven will be a place in which God wipes every tear from our eyes. When we see what was in light of what could have been – with our lives, and with our corporate potential – we will have no alternative but to weep.
For years, as a global body, the Western church has been asleep at the wheel or, worse, awakened to fight the wrong battles, the wrong enemy, or with the wrong weapons of warfare. We’ve made an art form of “trivial pursuit,” and the world is worse off because of it.
The first Century Church didn’t keep up with its time, didn’t spend its energy keeping up with its time. The first Century Church changed time. It rewrote history. It radically impacted culture. The church was the forerunner, not the runner up. – Erwin McManus
If you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, I’m referring to you. I’m referring to me. But the news isn’t all bad. We serve a God who is wonderfully capable of waking sleeping giants. He did it on a national scale, both with His own nation and at times even with foreign, pagan countries. And I believe He’s doing it today. [click to continue…]
Nobody will ever name their boy Zerubbabel. There are still plenty of Davids and Samuels, Joshuas and Calebs left for the hallways at the hospital. Zerubbabel? Not a chance.
Here was a guy who is never quoted in the Bible. He never wrote a book that bears his name. Yet he occupied a position of great importance, hope, strategic necessity in Israel’s history – enough that he held the attention of two Old Testament prophets.
He led an emerging nation, but would doubtless never be hip enough to lead an emerging church.
If Zerubbabel lived in the last 200 years and somehow been elected president of the United States, I figure he’d be a Calvin Coolidge or Warren G. Harding – somebody we know was there, but never talk about.
If he were a tree, he’d be one of those types that was nameless – big and strong, and I guess some expert knows what type it is, but most of us would just look and say, “It’s just a tree.”
If he were a piece of chicken, he would be the thigh. Strong, muscular, flavorful. But at the bottom of everybody’s list of preferences.
Somehow in the wisdom and providence of God, this silent champion was chosen to head a dangerous and deliriously exciting project: [click to continue…]
“We have a problem,” Perry said. Thus began the conversation the led to my first senior pastorate. The problem he alluded to was an open church conflict that led to a lot of angry words at a time when the church Perry attended was without a pastor.
He was asking me to come and preach (I was the associate pastor at a nearby church). I did, and the rest, as they say….
As long as businesses, churches, and other types of organizations are comprised of humans, they will eventually experience setbacks, upsets, dysfunction, and problems. Nobody gets it right all the time, and even healthy organizations must confront serious problems.
Broken organizations, however, are different. [click to continue…]
