This year, I’m attending The Global Leadership Summit from the satellite location at my home church in Avon, IN. Once again, I’m sharing my notes from this excellent event here on my blog. So, tune in for the next 2 days and catch the notes from each of the speakers.
It’s my hope that these notes will not only add value to you as a leader, but also give you some practical ideas to share the notes with your team. Lastly, head over to my Facebook page to join in on the conversation and let’s share our favorite quotes and take-aways there!
The Global Leadership Summit is a two-day event telecast LIVE in HD from Willow’s campus near Chicago every August to hundreds of locations in North America. Throughout the fall, Summit events take place at an additional 675+ sites in 125 countries and 59 languages.
ANDY STANLEY Leadership Author; Communicator; Pastor
Andy Stanley founded North Point Ministries (NPM) more than 20 years ago. Today, NPM is comprised of six churches in the Atlanta area and a network of 30 churches around the globe, collectively serving nearly 70,000 people weekly. Recently, Outreach Magazine identified Stanley as one of the Top 10 Most Influential Pastors in America. The author of more than 20 books, he is passionate about serving both church and organizational leaders.
- If we had it to do all over again what would we do all over again?
- What really worked?
- We did an autopsy on our success
- Leaders don’t look enough at their success, they only look at their failures
- If you don’t why it’s working when it’s working, it’s challenging to fix it when it breaks
- We asked “Why did our organization grow so fast?” after 20 years
- The answer – we had a uniquely better product
- Nobody was doing church the way we were doing church in our area of the U.S.
- It’s not that we were the best, we had a unique product
- Unique isn’t enough – there are uniquely bad things
- Unique doesn’t create moment
- Unique is better when it does what it’s supposed to do and it’s better than the competition
- We created an engaging church experience for the whole family, especially for men – and we were the only church in town doing that
- We are not unique any more
- All of our churches are the same in the U.S.
- Make it better is one of our staff values
- Somebody somewhere in your industry is messing with the rules to the prevailing model
- Every industry has a prevailing model
- Every industry has shared assumptions – and they can get you in trouble
- Every industry is stuck – not broken, but stuck – and not necessarily in a bad way
- Someone somewhere is pioneering a new model
- Discovering uniquely better is virtually impossible
- Odds are, you aren’t going to be the one that discovers uniquely better
- The odds of you being able to recognize it when it comes along is greater
- Uniquely better is often the by product of circumstances that successful organizations are trying to avoid
- Uniquely better is sometimes so unique that established organizations can’t recognize that it’s actually better
- Our best hope and our responsibility as leaders is to create organizational cultures positioned to recognize rather than resist “uniquely better”
- Be a student, not a critic
- I decided years ago that I will never criticize something that I don’t understand
- We naturally resist things that we don’t understand or can’t control
- The moment you start criticizing, you stop learning and leading
- “The next generation product and idea almost never come from the previous generation.”
- Keep your eyes and mind wide open
- Listen to outsiders
- Outsiders aren’t bound by our assumptions
- Close-minded leaders close minds
- If you shut your eyes and your mind, you will close the minds and eyes of the people around you – including your children
- How do you respond to staff who make suggestions based on what they’ve seen at other organizations? – especially when it’s a competitor
- When was the last time your organization embraced a big idea that wasn’t your idea?
- “We must pay attention to the frontiers of our ignorance.”
- Being the leader and leading are 2 different things
- Replace HOW? with WOW!
- WOW ideas to life, don’t HOW them to death
- We fuel innovation or we shut it down by our response
- Nothing is gained by not knowing what your people are dreaming about
- The world will put enough HOW? in front of our kids, let’s be WOW! parents
- Your greatest contribution may not be something you do, but something you raise
- Ask the uniquely better questions:
- Is this unique?
- What would make it unique?
- Is it better?
- Is it better…really?