This book challenges some of the conventional thinking about leadership, be it in corporations, government, social service institutions, academia, or even, the Church.
For one thing, Collins demonstrates the deadly effects that charismatic leaders (by that he means leaders with outsized personalities and sometimes, outsized egos, not adherents to neo-Pentecostalism) can have on organizations. When organizations become focused on pleasing a hero at the top of the organizational flow chart, rather than doing its work, the mission becomes blurred, the organization gets mired in mediocrity, and there is no smooth transition of leadership.
Collins' book is filled with research that questions many other conventional wisdom about leadership.
I highly recommend this book. No summary, particularly one by me, can possibly do it justice. I believe that Good to Great will come to be regarded as a seminal book.
Below is what I've shared with our leadership in summarizing the next portion of Good to Great:
Chapter 6 of Collins' book is titled, 'A Culture of Discipline.' He opens with a quote from the psychotherapist Viktor E. Frankl. Frankl, you probably remember is someone I myself have quoted many times. A Jew, he was taken prisoner by the Nazis during World War Two and survived life in a concentration camp. He lost most of his family, including his wife. But like Admiral Stockdale, he survived his brutal incarceration and during the experience, learned much about human beings.
The Frankl quote with which Collins leads the chapter is this: "Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth...That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast."
Collins then tells the story of George Rathmann, who in 1980 cofounded a biotechnology company called Amgen. His experience and that of Amgen is particularly relevant to Friendship and to other recently-planted congregations. That's because this start-up company avoided the pitfalls into which many of their ilk fall...pitfalls into which I've seen many start-up churches also fall.
As Collins puts it: "Few successful start-ups become great companies, in large part because they respond to growth and success in the wrong way. Entrepreneurial success is fueled by creativity, imagination, bold moves into uncharted waters, and visionary zeal. [The very things, I might add, that were clearly characteristic of Friendship in our early years.] As a company grows and becomes more complex, it begins to trip over its own success---too many new people, too many new customers, too many new orders, too many new products. [In the case of Friendship, while growth has not been explosive, it has been steady. Established members are virtually unaware of the news members' presence and because of this, don't think to invite them to participate in various ministries. Furthermore, expectations of the congregation spike and a connection to the particular vision and mission of the church dissipate.] What was once great fun becomes an unwieldy ball of disorganized stuff. Lack of planning, lack of accounting, lack of systems, and lack of hiring constraints create friction. Problems surface---with customers, with cash flow, with schedules."
So, Collins says, someone on the board says that it's time for the company to grow up and bring in professional management. But that can bring stagnating changes as well. Various processes and chains of command are introduced. "What was once an egalitarian environment gets replaced with hierarchy...'We' and 'they' segmentations appear--just like in a real company." Order is created, but "members of the founding team begin to grumble, 'This isn't fun anymore...' The creative magic begins to wane...The cancer of mediocrity begins to grow in earnest."
I have seen similar things happen in scores of start-up congregations. (Another wrong reaction I've seen in them is that they simply give up, feeling that there is nothing they can do to forge ahead faithfully and adventurously. They forget that "with God all things are possible.")
Rathmann, says Collins, avoided "this entrepreneurial death spiral." Instead of establishing stifling rules and regulations, he put disciplined people in positions of responsibility. Collins explains Rathmann's formula as follows: "Avoid bureaucracy and hierarchy and instead create a culture of discipline [through the placement of the right people in the right slots]. When you put these two complementary forces together--a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship--you get a magical alchemy of superior performance and sustained results."
Of course, a church is not a company. The church doesn't control who becomes part of its fellowship, except insofar as members subscribe to the same faith. But the leadership of a congregation should work hard to bring to leadership positions the right people--people willing to take the risks to which faith in Christ calls us and who exercise internal discipline in the pursuit of the congregation's mission and vision.
As part of a culture of discipline, Collins says, back in 1968, a man named Bernard Semler became CFO of Abbott Labs. It was Semler who introduced "Responsibility Accounting," the very concept with which I hope we will operate at Friendship. (Although I had never heard of the term until reading it in Collins' book.) As Collins explains Responsibility Accounting, it's a system "wherein every item of cost, income, and investment...[is] clearly identified with a single individual responsible for that item." This approach liberated the entrepreneurial spirit, tempered by a culture of discipline, and the impact on Abbott Labs was sustained greatness.
In Friendship terms, Responsibility Accounting, means assigning each program area chair complete freedom and the expectations of responsible stewardship over their piece of the annual budget. (It would also mean assigning such responsibility to sub-set program areas.)
The result of this approach, according to Collins, is that you foster both financial discipline and creativity, a conclusion that only makes sense.
There is one other point from this fantastic chapter that I want to display...
Says Collins: "The good-to-great companies at their best followed a simple mantra: 'Anything that does not fit with our Hedgehog Concept, we will not do. We will not launch unrelated businesses. We will not make unrelated acquisitions. We will not do unrelated joint ventures. If it doesn't fit, we don't do it. Period."
In other words, great organizations--as my study of History shows to also be true of great people--learn how to say, "No" to those things not central to their identities or that will help them become great in the one area they've identified as the place of their potential for greatness. (Collins says that great companies have "Not to do" lists!)
Applying this insight to Friendship, it means that there may be some perfectly wonderful ministries in which we could involve ourselves, but if they don't fit our identity as a church, we shouldn't do them.
This is a particularly tough discipline to introduce in a congregation. Often church members and church leaders see themselves as citizens of what I call "the kingdom of nice," rather than "the kingdom of Christ." When we're focused on being nice, we placate people who have good ideas, even if they don't seem consistent with our identity or mission. Church leadership focused on being nice, like marriage partners who focus on that rather than being genuinely loving, authentic people, say, "Yes" to everything. The result: dissipated efforts and resources, failures, mass mediocrity.
Even Jesus commended a focused mission. He told His disciples during His time on earth that for as long as He was around, they were only to go to "the lost sheep of Israel," His fellow Jews who were in need of His Good News.
This is a lesson which the disciples appear to have learned well. After Jesus had died, risen, and ascended, each of the early proclaimers of the Gospel adopted different mission fields. James, Jesus' brother, focused his efforts solely on his fellow Jews. Stephen appears to have been exclusively focused on Greek-speaking Jews. Peter had a ministry that included Jews and Gentiles, but which was more centered on Jerusalem and Asia Minor. Paul was an emissary to the Gentiles, who formed the churches he started around the fellowship of Jews and Gentiles who believed in the Hebrew God whom he found at area synagogues and places of worship. They each knew what to say "No" to, this maximizing their effectiveness in their defined mission areas. That may be one reason why the early Church went from good to great in a generation!
More thoughts spawned by Collins' book later.
No comments:
Post a Comment