I loved Hybels’ message kicking off the Summit today. I’m seeking to avoid my standard inclination to write down everything that is said in the sessions, and instead am just going to hit one core point from each session. (We’ll see how that goes…)

Here’s my main take-away from Hybels: One of the most critical skills required in leadership also seems very basic. But don’t let how basic it is fool you—it is very hard. That skill is courage.

Whatever vision God gives you is going to put your courage to the test. Every time a leader seeks to move people from here to there, a certain percentage of people are going to resist going. Another group will have a wait and see attitude and will need persuasion over time. And another group knows how ugly it would be to move people half way and not be able to finish the job, and fear grips them.

Lots of incredible initiatives die for lack of courage. What do a lot of leaders do when they receive a vision from God? They abort the mission secretly. They kill it off without telling anyone about it—because fear grips them.

“God has sent millions life-enhancing visions to leaders all over the world, only to have those visions snuffed out because the potential for failure seemed to great.” “These deaths occur behind a veil of secrecy and silence” because the leaders don’t tell anyone of what God has put in their heart.

Don’t do this! Don’t let your vision die for lack of courage. Be willing to step out, take a risk, and take bold action to do the right thing.

I’m at Willow Creek today blogging the Global Leadership Summit. Once again, it should be an exciting time with lots of excellent content.

In previous years I basically took notes over each session, writing down everything I thought was interesting. This year, I think I might try to do a 500 word summary after each session with 1-2 application points. We’ll see if I’m able to do that!

Here’s the schedule.

I’ll also be posting some core take-aways on twitter.

The Global Leadership Summit is next Thursday and Friday, August 8-9. Speakers this year include Colin Powell, Mark Burnett (executive producer of The Apprentice, Survivor, and the recent Bible series on the History Channel), Patrick Lencioni, Liz Wiseman, and many more.

In case you aren’t familiar with the Summit, here’s a summary:

The Global Leadership Summit is a two-day, world-class leadership event experienced by more than 170,000 leaders around the world, representing more than 14,000 churches. It’s telecast LIVE from Willow’s campus (near Chicago) every August. Throughout the fall, Summit events take place in an additional 300+ cities, 92 countries—and translated into 42 languages. This event is crafted to infuse vision, skill development and inspiration for the sake of local church transformation.

I recommend the Summit for every leader. The on-site campus is sold out, but you can still attend through a host site (and there is likely one in your area).

I’ll also be blogging the Summit again this year, and am looking forward to it!

Some notes from John Ortberg’s message on the influence Jesus has had on history. Ortberg gave probably around 100 facts. This is just a small sample.

We are stewards of a movement that has reshaped history more than any other.

Jesus is not just the greatest king among kings, but is the King of kings.

Every world leader and king now has their birth and death marked in relation to Jesus’ birth.

Things did not change by accident.

Wherever you have an institution of self-giving for the lowly, whose recipients will never be able to repay, it probably has its roots in the movement started by Jesus.

92% of all colleges and universities started before the Civil War were started in Christ’s name.

Jesus revolutionized the arts. Dante, Bach, Luther’s hymns, Mozart, all did their work to the glory of God. Modern musical notation an invention of monks.

Separation of church and state, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” This is perhaps the most influential political statement ever made. It had been assumed in the ancient world that religion was the prerogative of the ruler. Jesus separated the realms.

Jesus changed how we think of human rights and dignity. The notion of individual rights, where did this come from? It was not self-evident in the ancient world. Today almost everyone says “I believe in a God of love.” Where did that come from? It was rare in the ancient world. Jesus brought a new way of thinking about God.

Jesus uniquely taught love your enemies. In the ancient world it was admired to help your friends, but harm your enemies.

The real question is not who was this man but who is this man?

His work is not done yet.

At the core of leadership is trust. Do people trust you? Do they trust who you have empowered to lead in your organizations?

To the extent that you are trusted, you are free to lead. To dream great dreams and go from here to there. When you lose trust, it’s game over. You can no longer lead. It all comes to a grinding halt.

Integrity = trustworthiness.

How are you doing? Is there anywhere in your leadership and your life where you are not fully trustworthy?

Is there anyone in your organization with whom you think you need to have a conversation about their trustworthiness? “One of the biggest regrets in my organization is knowing some people are off track and not going and talking to them right away. And then by the time I have talked to them, lots of damage has been done.”

Or maybe you’ve already had the conversation, and it’s time to take them out. They hurt too many people, they don’t tell the truth. Give first warnings, give second warnings. At some point, you have to take action.

Ury is one of the leading world experts on negotiation and conflict. He is the co-author of the best selling Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In and a faculty member at Harvard Business School. Here are my notes on Jim Mellado’s interview with him. 

Jim: How did you get started in this?

William: I grew up during the cold war under the shadow of the bomb, and I could never understand why we were willing to put all of humanity at risk. The question I’ve devoted my life to is how do we live with our deepest differences?

Jim: Why is this relevant to everyone?

William: I see negotiation very broadly. Think of your own lives and who you negotiate with in the course of your day. Your kids, your spouse, your employees, your co-workers, your board. You spend a lot of time each day in the act of back and forth communication, trying to reach agreement on various issues. We are negotiating from the time we get up to the time we go to bed at night. Many of our decisions are made through a process of shared decision making. This is why negotiation is so central. It is a core competence for leadership.

William: Conflict isn’t necessarily bad because no injustice or anything gets resolved without conflict. We need to hear lots of different views that are very different. The question is can we deal with conflict in a constructive way, or are we going to handle it through destruction?

Jim: What is the biggest obstacle to negotiation?

William: It is not what we think it is. It’s not that difficult person out there. It’s us. We are the biggest barrier to us achieving success. It is an all too human characteristic to simply react — to act without thinking. The key foundation of successful negotiation is to get up on the balcony — a place where you can get a larger perspective. A place of clarity where you can see the ultimate goal. That’s key.

One of the greatest powers we have in negotiation is the power not to react.

Jim: What are the most significant skills we need to get good at to negotiate well?

William: You need to focus on underlying needs. You need to be creative. And you need to rely on objective criteria.

So the first is to separate the person from the problem. We often end up being soft on the people and soft on the problem. Or we make the opposite mistake, being hard on the problem and hard on the people. But you find successful negotiators drawing a line between people and the problem. They remain soft on the people while dealing hard on the problem. The harder the problem, the softer you need to be on the people. Soft on the people means listening, putting yourselves in the shoes of the other side, understanding how they feel (how could you change someone’s mind unless you know what it is?), and respect. It costs you nothing to give someone basic respect, and it means everything to them.

Jim: When I first read your book, I thought that was especially significant because one of the fruit of the Spirit is kindness.

William: Yes, this changes the game from face-to-face confrontation. You ought to see yourselves on the same side of the table, side by side, tackling the same problem together.

Jim: Unpack the second principle, focusing on interest, not position.

William: There is often a difference between interest and position. The key is to probe behind the specific position a person has to the underlying aims they have. Sometimes the aim can be accomplished in a different way. So the key is to always ask the question “why?”

Jim: Talk about the importance of developing multiple options.

William: What we bring to negotiation is our ability to be inventive. Once we see the interests, rather than just position, we can see that there are many ways of doing that. Creative options that meet the interests of all sides.

Jim: How about the power of objective criteria and fair process.

William: Often people think in terms of a fixed pie. But in the inventing process, you’ve asked “how do we expand the pie?” But now that’s say you’ve done that, and it is time to divide up the pie. How do you deal with that? In a merely positional process, this tends to be a question of will and ego. The alternative is to use standards that are independent of will and ego, objective criteria. You don’t have to “give in to the other side,” but defer to an independent standard of fairness that is objective.

Jim: What do you do if you aren’t able to reach an agreement?

William: We should go in to negotiations with what we call a BATNA — a “best alternative to a negotiated agreement.” This isn’t negative thinking, but positive alternative thinking. If you have an alternative, you are going to have more confidence. And this also gives you a way to measure the value of your agreement. Many times, people reach an agreement that is worse than their alternative.

“Organizational health is the single greatest competitive advantage in business. It is virtually free and accessible to any leader who wants it, and yet it is virtually untapped in most organizations.”

The reason? “Too many leaders think it’s beneath them.”

What is organizational health?

The best way to understand it is to contrast it with something we are more familiar with?

In order for any organization to be effective, there are two requirements for success. First, it must be smart. Strategy, marketing, finance, technology, etc. This stuff is important. Nobody should ever tell you it’s not important. The problem is it’s only half the equation, yet it gets 80% of the attention. If we are going to maximize our organizations, we also need to make them  healthy. A healthy organization has minimal politics and confusion, high morale, high productivity, and low turnover.

“When I show most CEOs this slide, they say ‘I’d give my left leg to have the right side of that slide — organizational health. But I don’t know how to do that. They didn’t really teach us that in business school. Let’s go to the left side of that slide and tweak some stuff.'”

Many leaders are more comfortable in strategy and finance than organizational health. But if we want to change our organizations, we have to make them healthier.

“Every organization I work with has enough domain expertise to be wildly successful, but few tap into it because they aren’t healthy. There are politics and confusion.”

Southwest Airlines is an excellent company, but it’s not because they’re smarter. They are great because they are so healthy as an organization. As a result, they use every bit of knowledge that they have.

So, how do we make our organizations healthy? There are four organizations you have to master. They are simple, but hard.

1. Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team

Trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, results. Leadership teams must be cohesive. [See his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.]

2. Create organizational clarity

Many people this is just about mission statements. But many mission statements don’t work because they try to do too many things. Here’s an example: [Wait, it’s too long and boring — I’m not going to type it! Just imagine the most boring, hard to grasp sentence you’ve ever seen. It’s from . . . Dunder Mifflin! And yet it’s surprising how close to reality it is for many organizations.]

What you need to do is answer six critical questions. If you can answer these six questions, you can create clarity in your organization and the result is true empowerment.

1. Why do we exist?

This is your core purpose. This is not just a restatement of what you do. For example, the purpose of Southwest Airlines is to democratize travel — making it cheap and possible for everyone to fly. Your core purpose helps you make all your decisions. For example, in the issue of whether to charge fees for checked luggage, Southwest asked “would this help democratize air travel?” The answer was no, so they don’t charge.

2. How do we behave?

These are  core values. You can’t list every positive value here, however. That is too much and overwhelming. Get down to the one, two, or maybe truly endemic behaviors. So we need to distinguish different types of values. For example, there are aspirational values. These are things you aspire to, but which aren’t true of your organization right now. When you make these core values, you lose credibility. One of Enron’s core values, for example, was integrity! That was not a true core value for them. A core value is something you are willing to be punished for. You will hold to it even if it would be to your detriment.

When someone asks you to violate a core value, you lovingly recognize that this is not the place for them. This is how you know you believe in something — if you will hold to it even if it wouldn’t benefit you (externally).

Churches really struggle here. This is because they confuse core values with permission to play values. These are the minimum standards. For example: telling the truth. This is more of a minimum standard. Of course you won’t hire people who lie. Minimum standards are critical. But this isn’t what we’re talking about when we talk about core values. Here, one church is often very different from another. Everyone should be able to worship at your church, but this doesn’t mean anybody should be able to work there. There must be a core value fit.

“To work in a church, you should never do it because you have to have the job.” It should be only because you are able to contribute to the mission. [If you are there just to have a job, please leave as fast as you can! I know some people like this and there is no faster way to ruin a church!]

3. What do we do?

Many executives actually aren’t on the same page here.

4. How will we succeed?

This is the issue of strategy. Strategy boils down to three anchors, which become the filter for every decision you make. Every organization can do this. For example, at Southwest: make the customers fanatically loyal, don’t make the plane late, and keep fares low. They tell everyone in the organization these three things, and say: “As long as you do these three things, you can make whatever decision you need.” This empowers employees.

Most employees’ strategy boils down to this: I’m just going to try to avoid getting in trouble. This is why most customer service is so bad.

5. What is most important, right now?

6. Who must do what?

3. Over-communicate clarity

You need to hear something 7 times in most organizations before people believe it.

4. Reinforce clarity through human systems

Do things in creative ways that reinforce and demonstrate the values.

I hope that someday organizational health will become standard in organizations. That will change the world. Until that happens, this represents an incredible opportunity for competitive advantage.

Craig Groeschel is up now, pastor of Lifechurch.tv, one of the largest churches in the nation. Here is my summary.

Sometimes people say to me, “Craig, how did you come into ministry?” I would not be doing what I am doing today if it had been for my pastor who took a risk on me at 23 and said “I believe God can do something special with your life.”

Tragically, there is not enough of this today. I want to talk to the older generation, and then the younger generation. I think I can maybe do this for a bit because I’m about in the middle right now.

How do you know if you are in the older generation? Let’s just say if you have to ask that question, you probably are.

To the Older Generation

Don’t look down on the next generation, don’t resent them, don’t look down on them. Believe in them because they need you.

Know that even though some in our society don’t always value maturity, God values maturity. If you’re not dead, you’re not done.

If you’ve got breath, keep going. I’d dare to say your best days are before you.

One of the most innovative and impacting ideas he’s learned came from a guy who was 75.

How can you hand ministry over to the next generation? The key is in delegating. Don’t just delegate tasks to the next generation. If you do this, you create followers. People who simply do what they’re told. Delegate authority, because then you create leaders. And that’s exactly what my pastor did to me.

Embrace the season you are in. Don’t try to be something you aren’t. The younger generation can smell a fake from a million miles away. Be yourself. With the younger generation, authenticity trumps cool every single time. “There’s nothing worse than some fat, fifty year old preacher wearing skinny jeans. Just say no.”

You can be a spiritual father to those who come behind you.

To the Younger Generation

You need those who have gone before you more than you can imagine.

A characteristic of the younger generation is the sense of entitlement. This is not your fault necessarily — you were coddled. One result of entitlement is over estimating what you can do. But most people over estimate what they can do in a short time and under estimate what they can do in a long time.

Showing honor publicly results in influence privately. The younger generation, however, often doesn’t show honor, and this is hurting churches and ministries.

One reason we have failed to honor people because we have failed to honor God for who he is. When we honor God for who he is, we will more naturally honor those around us.

Honor builds up; dishonor tears down. Honor values others; dishonor tears down. I would argue that in our churches and organizations, because of a lack of honor and love, we are limiting what we are able to do.

Some people say “if my pastor (or boss or etc.) was honorable, I’d show honor to them.” But it’s respect that is earned; honor is given. Treating people with honor is often what leads to them becoming honorable. Some of you in the younger generation need to repent of how you have treated those above you, because you have dishonored them. If you want to learn to be over, you need to learn to be under with integrity.

How Do We Do This?

Both generations must be intentional about this.

1. Create ongoing feedback loops. For example, each week I go over my message with a group that has people from the older generation and from the younger generation. Then after teaching the first one on Saturday night, I go back into a room and have it critiqued by those older and younger. You need to create intentional opportunities to get feedback. And think what it says to your church when a senior leader says to a 23 year-old “I value your opinion.”

2. Create specific mentoring moments. For example, yesterday I had a chance to sit with one of the major business leaders in our country. I was taking notes and writing as fast as I can. Recently we had a gathering in our church of the older and younger meeting together. These meetings do not happen by accident. You have to plan for them. This is one of the most important things you can do to develop strength in your organization. If you are younger, ask someone older, “will you mentor me?” Then ask them questions like crazy. Don’t try to copy what they do. Learn how they think.

3. Create opportunities for significant leadership development. For example, at our church we had a developmental weekend where we wanted to help develop new speakers. In a single weekend, we trained 38 new speakers to proclaim God’s word, and sent a resounding message that we are a church that values the next generation.

My Thoughts

This was a truly fantastic message. Review this. Learn from this.

This is my paraphrase/summary of Jim Collins’ excellent message on his latest book, Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All.

Why do some enterprises thrive in uncertainty and chaos and others do not? Why do some leaders prevail in the most difficult circumstances, while other leaders fail to achieve greatness, or maybe even fail outright, in those same circumstances?

We have captured the differences in a triangle. At the center is that they are Level 5 Leaders. What separates an exceptional leader from an ordinary leader is not personality, but humility. Combined with will. We have spoken about this before. Acknowledging that this is the center, I want to focus on what else you need. There are three distinctive leadership behaviors that sit on top of that:

1. Fanatic discipline
2. Empirical creativity
3. Productive paranoia

Fanatic Discipline

How do you exert control in a world of chaos? Imagine you are marching across the country. Some march only on the days when the wind is at their back. Others do 20 miles every day, no matter what, no matter how they feel or what the conditions are.

Fanatic discipline also means not stretching too far, not leaving yourself exposed when unforeseen things hit you.

All of our 10X companies had a standard of performance to hit and marching philosophy they would hold to even in the harshest conditions.

If you were to read just one chapter in his new book, he says it should be the chapter “The 20 Mile March.”

You have to manage yourself well in good times so you can do well in bad.

The 20 mile march is all about consecutive performance. Hit your mark not as an average, but as consistent, consecutive performance.

The biggest levers of change in the world are those who are enormously consistent in their approach.

The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change (though you will fall if you are unwilling to change). The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.

Still, discipline alone is not enough. We must also create. We must find new ways of doing things. We must make big creative bets and do new things.

How do the 10Xers create different from those who are mediocre?

Empirical Creativity

You bet on something you know is going to work. Validate things based on reality. We came to call this “fire bullets, then fire cannonballs.” If you fire a cannonball first, and it misses, you are out of gunpowder. But if you fire bullets first, refine your line of site, and then fire a cannonball, you will hit your target.

Comparison leaders didn’t fire enough bullets — enough little things — to identify what will really work. Had a tremendous penchant for firing big, uncalibrated cannonballs.

At critical junctures in its history, Intel did not have the most innovative chip. But Intel beat it’s industry by a factor of 46. I’m not saying stop innovating. It’s a genius of the and. What these folks have is the ability to blend creativity and discipline. And it turns out creativity is not the hard thing.

Creativity is natural. Discipline is not. The challenge is not how to become creative, but how to get rid of the stuff that’s in the way of your creativity.

The really rare skill is the ability to marry creativity to discipline such that discipline amplifies your creativity rather than kills it. And how do you do that? 20 mile march and firing bullets, then cannonballs.

Productive Paranoia

Be optimistic, and realize the world is full of danger. Take that paranoia and turn it in to buffer. It is what you do before you are in trouble, before difficult times come, that determines how strong you are when people most need you.

If you are only strong when conditions are good, that is called malpractice.

You have to keep yourself strong so when people need you, you are there.

The SMaC Recipe

Every company had a set of concrete practices they implemented consistently. Never forget Burlanmanson’s Law: “The greatest danger is not failure, but being successful without realizing why you were successful.”

You have the discipline to follow your practices, the productive paranoia to always be evaluating to make sure they are still working, and change things — but only based on empirical evidence of what works.

Always remember to preserve the core and stimulate progress. If you lose your values, you lose everything. But you must distinguish practices from values. Practices you need to change and develop. Your values should never change.

The Twist

I’d like each of you to think of an event that hit you or your church or enterprise that meets three tests:

1. You didn’t cause it
2. It had a potentially significant consequence (good or bad)
3. It was in some way a surprise

This is, of course, life. As a leader, how well did you perform in the face of that event? Would you give yourself an A? a B? a C?

What is the role of luck? Is the difference between 2X companies and 10X companies luck?

I realize the concept of luck may not resonate in the faith world! Stick with me for a sec here, though. Translating this to the faith world: the key is to see luck as a specific event that meets three tests — the three tests above. “When I was working on the research I had a conversation with Bill Hybels, and he said, ‘you know, Jim, not to upset your research, but did you realize your definition also applies to a miracle?'”

We asked two key questions: Are the 10X winners the recipients of luck? And second, what if anything did they do differently about it. What we found, using secular language, was that the great leaders were not luckier. Didn’t have better spikes, better timing. We asked the question, though, what was their return on luck? The question is not whether you get those events, but what you do with them when they come. The underperforming companies had an amazing tendency to squander them.

For example, Bill Grates was in a great position in the 70s. But weren’t many others also in those conditions? But who dropped out of college, worked 20 hours a day, and got the first PC out? That’s the return on “luck.” Thousands could have. He did.

The comparison companies had an amazing opportunity to fail to recognize and squander the good opportunities, and to be unprepared for the bad ones.

My wife had cancer ten years ago. You can’t say in the end “cancer is good.” But out of that experience we came away with a life mantra: “Life is people, and time with people you love.” And the more we began to try to remember and live idea, that life is about love and people, time with people you love, we got a high return on what was undeniably a bad event. It was a defining event that made us better. That’s what these leaders do.

You can replace the world luck with miracle, good event, bad event. What we find is that it’s this genius of the and. You pursue what you want to get done, AND when the big unexpected events happen, you ask “what is my responsibility to get the very most of this unexepcted event?”

When the leader steps up and makes the most of it, rather than squandering it, that is a very special brand of leadership. How to use a bad event as a defining moment, that forever transforms things.

If you were granted a miracle, or a blessed event, would it not be the height of your responsibility not to squander it? [Compare Ephesians 5:15-17: “make the most of the time“]

Are our lives mainly a result of what we do, or what happens to us?

It’s not what happens to you. It’s the things you do. We are always finding pairs of companies in the same circumstances, where one excels and the other falls. The great challenge is to accept, from all our research, that greatness is not a function of circumstance, but is first and foremost a function of conscious choice and discipline.

At the end of the day, what is a great enterprise? All that we’ve talked about before from Good to Great and Built to Last still applies. What’s new?

A great organization is:

1. Superior performance. “Good intentions are not an excuse for incompetence.”
2. Distinctive impact. Who would really miss you if you went away and why? That’s your distinctive impact. You don’t have to be big to be irreplaceable.
3. Lasting endurance.

An organization is not truly great if it cannot be great without you. And if it cannot be great through shocks and storms and upheaval. These times we are going through right now are a call to lead at a higher level so people are there when they need you. They are counting on you to be there.

“Bill Hybels has always extended to me a hand of friendship and character. He has always made me feel welcome. There may be no better definition of great friendship, than to be always here for you so that you are never alone. That is what great friends are, no matter what and always. In that spirit, I extend a great thank you to Bill Hybels and to all of you. I hope each of you will connect somewhere in your life to be part of building something enduring and great. Perhaps in your church life or business life or non-profit or even a class you teach, or even building an enduring great family, or being an enduring great friend. But getting involved in something you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you can get but because it must be done, is something we all need to do. It is impossible to have a great life without having a meaningful life, and it is impossible to have a meaningful life without having meaningful work, doing it with people you love doing it with.”