Vision

Side by Side Leadership

by Andy Wood on May 18, 2011

in Exploring the Possibilities, Leadership, Life Currency

If your paychecks came from Ford Motor Company in the 1970s, you lived in an ugly time.  Morale was low.  Sales were taking a beating.  Quality was “job none.”  And the company operated from an entrenched system of rules and regulations.  Into that demoralized environment, Donald Peterson became Ford’s CEO in 1980.

Peterson showed up tossing words around like “teamwork” and “upward communication.”  But words mean nothing to entrenched bureaucracies.  So Peterson tried something radical – he left his office.  He would walk into the offices of designers and ask simple questions like:

  • Do you like these cars?
  • Do you feel proud of them?
  • Would you park one in your driveway?

I think you can guess the answer he received.

Your job, Peterson said, is to come up with the cars you think will sell – cars you can be proud of.  The results were stunning and quick, by auto industry standards.  The first significant product was the 1983 Thunderbird, followed quickly by the wildly successful Taurus, which became the best-selling midsized car in America.

That was just for starters.  During the 1980s, Ford reversed its dismal previous performance to record then-record-breaking profits.  Peterson was chosen by his fellow CEOs as the nation’s most effective leader, surpassing even Lee Iacocca.

What made the difference?  Donald Peterson was a Side-by-Side Leader.   In the words of Robert Richardson and Katherine Thayer, “Peterson didn’t accomplish all this by sitting behind a desk and telling people what he wanted done.  He rolled up his shirt sleeves and jumped in.  He provided a direction and goal and then participated in making them reality.”

Your Worst Skydiving Fear

Imagine you are an inexperienced skydiver.  You’ve been on a few jumps, but still think of yourself as a rookie.  It’s a beautiful day for flying and jumping out of airplanes, so up you go.  You reach the point where it’s time to pull the ripcord, and it malfunctions.  To your horror, so does the backup chute.

Suddenly it’s not such a good day for jumping out of airplanes. [click to continue…]

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Building and Leading a Steadfast Team

by Andy Wood on May 6, 2011

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Pleasers

Does your team have what it takes to go the distance?

Something happens when people get together to forge a team.  Unfortunately, that “something” isn’t always what you’re looking for.  See if you recognize any of these teams from your experience:

Team Fritter. Talk about potential.  It seems as though whenever they’re on the ropes, somehow the miraculous happens and they live to see another day. On the other hand, every time it seems they have the chance for that big breakthrough they flounder.  Never fully realizing their potential, they choke every time they get ahead.

Team Glitter. This bunch has success written all over it.  Smart, good-looking, and well-liked, things came fast and easy for Team Glitter.  Too fast.  And too easy.  Before you know it, what appears to shimmer is anything but gold.  And the team comes caving in under the load of its own scandal(s), greed, and dishonesty.

Team Bitter.  Another story of lost potential, this team doesn’t have an integrity problem.  It has an anger problem.  A big anger problem.  Sucked in by jealousy and dispirited by feelings of rejection or failure, this team sabotages its own enormous potential by holding onto the bitterness, anger, or mistrust. [click to continue…]

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The Life Shaper You Can Become

by Andy Wood on February 7, 2011

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle

In the previous post, we explored the idea of Life Shapers – the people who help make you more than you naturally would be in specific areas.  Some people influence you to be stronger, wiser, funnier or more committed to excellence.  Others may influence you to be fearful, suspicious, negative, or angry – all by the ways they interact with you.

This may explain why you’re drawn to the friends you have.  Maybe you like them, or maybe you like the person you are when you’re with them.

It may also suggest some people you need to avoid.  What your Mama (and the Bible) told you about bad company rings true in many cases.  But I’m not just talking about party animals or thieves.  If they constantly leave you feeling shamed, rejected, angry or afraid, maybe it’s time to choose a new set of influences.

Quoting from the last post…

You are who you are largely because of the people who believe in you, have you in their hearts, and expect the best (or worst) from you.  This may be a good time to say “thank you” to the ones who are building you up, and “good-bye” to the ones who tear you down.

And for those who still answer when you call or read what you write, maybe it’s time to wise up – and rise up – to the life-shaper you can be.

Bringing Out the Best in Others

Do you realize the potential you have to be a life shaper?  You are just as much a potential influence on others as they are on you.  And while your nonverbal communication is still much stronger, there are some intentional things you can do to bring out the best in others. [click to continue…]

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Conversation: The Leader’s Secret Weapon of Influence

by Andy Wood on December 1, 2010

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Executing Your Plan, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Words

Make a list of the most important qualities needed for effective leadership, and let me hazard a guess as to what won’t be on it:  Conversation. 

Oh, I’m sure you’ll mention communication, but in most people’s imagination, this refers to the ability to move a crowd with speeches, lead a meeting with clarity, and/or write powerfully.  And let me hasten to say, I’m for all three of those.

In each of these, a position holder is talking to people in other positions.  And that has its place.  But the best leaders have a secret weapon that “primes the pump” of their influence:  they know how to engage their constituents in ongoing, life-shaping, direction-setting conversations. 

They disarm by listening differently. 

They empower by asking questions out of sincere curiosity. 

They enflame the imagination by telling stories – theirs or somebody else’s. 

They forge “joint ventures of the heart” by demonstrating understanding and an ability to be influenced themselves. 

And they mobilize by sharing their vision interpersonally, with passion.

And all of this can be done in a few minutes at a time, standing at the water cooler, waiting for the “real” meeting to start, or riding on a bus to the company picnic. [click to continue…]

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The Awakened Spirit

by Andy Wood on October 27, 2010

in Ability, Exploring the Possibilities, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Abundance

I hate sleep.  I’m afraid I may miss something. 

Yeah, yeah, I know.  I “get it” and I get it.

I know that, too.  God’s design and all that.  It just chaps me a little that somebody who lives to be 90 will spend 30 years of their lives physically unconscious… and then talk about “sleeping in” as if it’s a life goal.

What’s even more disturbing, though, is how easy it is to be asleep when our eyes are open.  Spiritually oblivious to a world of life and movement and transformation and possibilities – all ready and waiting… for the awakened spirit.

Snapshots of Awakening

February 3, 1970.  In a small Kentucky Christian college, students showed up for what they thought was a routine chapel service.  It was anything but.  What was supposed to be an hour-long service lasted for 185 hours round the clock.  And the lights never went off in the chapel until Ju [click to continue…]

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Do You See What He Sees?

by Andy Wood on October 1, 2010

in Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Eternity

“There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”(Milan Kundera) 

+++++++

Ever read about the double-pump miracle Jesus performed?  Fascinating story, about a blind man in Bethsaida.  Jesus led him outside the village and spit on his eyes.

“Do you see anything”? He asked.

He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

So Jesus double-clutched.  Once more, he put his hands on the man’s eyes. This time he saw everything clearly.

It doesn’t bother me that it took two rounds with the Son of God for a blind man to see clearly again.  It does bother me that many believers, myself included, have gone many rounds with Jesus, and we still don’t see clearly at times.

He saw people that looked like trees.  We see people that look like other things – jobs, economic status, social labels, racial stereotypes, gender.  Jesus saw something else entirely.  You can too, but it doesn’t come naturally. 

“I see people; they look like trees.” 

What do you see?  Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?  Hot babe, geek, hero, freak? 

They may as well be Klingons, unless we learn to see from Jesus’ perspective.  We talk a lot about pursuing our own passions, but you can never fulfill your deepest passion unless you first embrace his.  Take a look: [click to continue…]

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The Buoyant Heart

by Andy Wood on August 23, 2010

in Ability, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Waiting

“Sure I may be tuckered, and I may give out, but I won’t give IN!”  (Molly Brown, from “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”) 

We spend a lot of time thinking about sinking. 

In the mental and spiritual circles I travel in, we focus a lot on discouragement, sadness, grief and such.  The most-read article I have written this year is titled, “The Sinking Soul.”

And for good reason.  We live in a broken world.  Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted.  A significant part of the New Testament was written to people who face severe, mind-numbing hostility and pain.  And left to our own devices, the devil has sinking souls for breakfast.

But maybe it’s time for a different look.  [click to continue…]

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To Feed the Hungry and Heal the Brokenhearted

by Andy Wood on August 18, 2010

in Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Life Currency, Love, LV Cycle, LV Stories, Photos, Principle of Increase

What turned my head was the sign for Aunt Beaut’s pan-fried chicken. 

Why is it when God wants to get my attention, the easiest way to do it involves chicken?  My belt really is a leather fence around a chicken graveyard.

Anyway, last week we were in downtown Charlotte on vacation.  And there on the corner of West Trade and Tryon Street was the King’s Kitchen.  Open for lunch or dinner, the restaurant trumpets “New Local Southern Cuisine.”

They had me at “Southern.”

True, I can get fried chicken anywhere.  But when was the last time you went into a restaurant that had collard greens, cream corn, and butter beans all on the menu for lunch?

So I staked the place out, and the next day my wife and I walked the block from our hotel to sample the King’s Kitchen for lunch.

I immediately knew something was different about this place when I read the quotation on the wall just inside the door [click to continue…]

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Waiting on Your Harvest

by Andy Wood on June 7, 2010

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, LV Cycle, Principle of Freedom, Protecting Your Investment, Waiting

News flash!  As a culture, we don’t wait well. 

That’s why, in the previous post, I mentioned that it’s easy to get into trouble when we’re in those waiting seasons.  (In theory, of course… not that I have ever actually gotten so impatient that somebody in a uniform decided it was time to have a little chat… but I’m sure you know somebody like that.)

One of the problems we have with waiting is that we don’t know how.  We think of waiting as the kind of thing you do in a bureaucrat’s line or a doctor’s office (now you know why they call them “patients”).

In the Bible, James offers a different idea.  And when I read this during a particularly hard waiting season, it really got my attention: 

“The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts…” (James 5:7-8). 

I happen to live in the middle of the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world.  My neighbors know a thing or two about waiting on a harvest.  Their livelihood depends on it.  And believe me, you won’t find a busier bunch. [click to continue…]

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Leading and Loving “Bent Nail” People

by Andy Wood on March 21, 2010

in Ability, Enlarging Your Capacity, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Pleasers

(The Law of the Nail, Part 2)

In the previous post I introduced you to The Law of the Nail.  A corollary to the Law of the Hammer (“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”), the Law of the Nail says,

If you are a nail, and especially if you’ve been pounded a time or two, everything (and everybody) looks like a hammer.

That’s even true when you’re a light bulb, not a hammer.  Just watch the video:

Everybody gets banged up by people or by life sooner or later.  But sometimes we are faced with situations in which we must work with, lead, or love people who, in nail terminology, are really bent up.

Because you are on the same planet, much less in the same building or  room, they don’t trust you.  Doesn’t matter whether you have earned their mistrust or not.  They perceive, speak, and reason through their woundedness.  And as far as they’re concerned, you’re just another hammer, waiting for your chance to pound away at them.

So what do you do with these people?  Make their fears come true?  Write them off?  Get offended?  Ignore them?

I’d like to suggest that you have an opportunity to both get the job done (whatever “the job” is) and be an instrument of healing.  Here are some ideas: [click to continue…]

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