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Planning

Leading Your Organization Through Conflict

by Andy Wood on November 18, 2011

in Five LV Laws,Insight,Life Currency,LV Cycle,Principle of Increase,Protecting Your Investment

The call or opportunity to lead is a call or opportunity for conflict.  I doubt if I’m the first to tell you that, but if so, well, sorry.  That’s certainly true on an interpersonal or team level.   It’s also true organization-wide.  Whether you’re leading a church or a business, a nonprofit or an institution, a state or a nation, the bigger they are, the harder they brawl.  Or squall.

If your goal is to avoid conflict at all costs, let somebody else take the leadership roles, because what you’re saying is that you don’t want to influence anybody.

Assuming you’re still reading, let’s assume that the idea of conflict hasn’t scared you off – at least not yet.  I have good news.  Some of the greatest demonstrations of leadership in history took place when someone rose to face the challenge of seemingly impossible conflicts.  So if your organization is facing competing values and visions, wise leadership can help make it stronger and more successful than ever.  If it’s true that conflict is the moment of truth in any relationship (and I think it is), then the way you lead your organization to face those conflicts sets the course of the organization, sometimes for years.

It’s important to remember that the people in your organization have brains, hearts, and feelings, just as you do.  Resistance to your or the organization’s direction is a way of saying you haven’t communicated the vision clearly.  Or maybe you haven’t anticipated their objections or their priorities.  Maybe you have yet to earn the trust of the people.  Or maybe they are insecure in the roles in which you are asking them to perform.

Here are five ways to work with – not against – the members of your organization to turn conflicts into jumping off points. [click to continue…]

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What You Can Learn From a Ghost House

by Andy Wood on October 31, 2011

in Five LV Laws,Leadership,Life Currency,LV Cycle,Principle of Legacy,Protecting Your Investment

I don’t know what else to call them.  But if they were all in the same vicinity or neighborhood, they’d be part of a ghost town.  They’re usually uninhabitable, with windows and doors gone or broken, and the roof letting in morning sunshine.

There’s at least one near you somewhere, but it may not be as easy to see as the hundreds that dot the wide open landscape near where I live.

Abandoned, but never empty.  For lack of a better term, I call them ghost houses.

Not haunted houses, though I’d rather not wander into one of these things after dark.  Broad open daylight either, for that matter.

Once upon a time these places provided a home for families.  Now they sit empty.  Sometimes the reason is obvious; sometimes it doesn’t make sense at all. Just in the last week I’ve seen several once-lovely and spacious homes now left to the elements, vandals, and critters.

Maybe someone died, and left no heir.  Maybe business dried up or sold out and forced a move.  Maybe the place got tied up in some sort of disagreement in court or with a bank.

Regardless, the end result is the same – empty, eroding testaments to lost usefulness and life.

Oh, if they could talk!  Oh, if they could teach us!

Call me weird (okay, who said that?).  But what started as a years-long fascination has led me to visit and photograph over 200 of these old places over the last week.  Most were houses.  But there are also old stores, gas stations, barns, schools, and even a few abandoned churches.

Some are part of the three certifiable ghost towns I’ve visited (a story for another day).  Most stand alone on the edge of town or in the middle of nowhere.

Nobody built one of these planning for them to sit desolate.  But sit they do.  And while the ghost houses have lost their primary purpose because nobody can actually live or work in them anymore, they being dead still speak.

And no, they’re not hollering, “Boo!”

They’re teaching some powerful lessons that speak to us as individuals and leaders, churches and organizations. [click to continue…]

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Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

by Andy Wood on August 3, 2011

in Exploring the Possibilities,Five LV Laws,LV Cycle

You probably never knew Lillian Hearst.  But she sent you a gift, and I wanted to share it with you.  It won’t be necessary to send a thank-you note – just pay it forward by sharing her gift with someone else.  Oh, and of course, use the gift yourself.

Lillian lived to be 92 years old.  I was honored to serve for a time as her pastor.  She was highly respected in our community – a “lady of the old school,” with a heart for people and a love for the Lord.

A few days after her funeral, I was visiting at the Magnolia Retirement Center, where Lillian lived.  There someone told me that for as long as they had known her, up until the time of the stroke that ultimately took her life, Mrs. Hearst always had something planned to do the next day.  There was always tomorrow – something to look forward to, something to prepare for, a reason to get out of bed in the morning.  It sounds rather simple, but it struck me as very profound.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons Mrs. Hearst lived so long.

Tomorrow.  What a charming word! [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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Building a Championship Team: What You Can Learn from the Big Leagues

by Andy Wood on March 23, 2010

in Ability,Allocating Your Resources,Enlarging Your Capacity,Leadership,Life Currency,LV Cycle

The boys of summer are back.  You’ll find them hanging out in Florida and Arizona ballparks, getting those winter cobwebs cleared out, and setting out to prove they’re worth all that money (or should be paid all that money). 

But while it still has to be worked out on the field, and the first word to start the proceedings is still, “Play,” make no mistake about it.  The 2010 version of this game got started as soon as Mark Teixeira caught the last out of the ’09 World Series.  And it was all business.  That game is played by General Managers on telephones and at conference hotels and in corporate offices throughout North America and, in some cases, in island Caribbean nations or the Pacific Rim.

They were about the business of building a team.  And not just for 2010.

Your payroll may be slightly less and your personnel decision may not involve as many people.  But wherever you connect with others to get things done, you or somebody is building a team.  And the decisions you make today can affect the quality of your team(s) for years to come.

Just ask Bobby Cox, who is retiring this year after 50 years in the game.  Cox has the distinction of hiring his own boss as the GM of the Atlanta Braves and “demoting” himself back to the field manager in 1991.  Between him and John Schuerholz, the Braves reeled off 14 consecutive division titles – a feat unmatched in professional sports anywhere.

So what can we learn from the likes of Cox/Schuerholz, or the New York Yankees, who won their 27th World Series title last year? [click to continue…]

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Barney Fife is Alive and Well

by Andy Wood on October 9, 2009

in 100 Words

sidewalkThis is what government does.

The distant sidewalk:  built to code when the dentists built their exquisite office next door.

The near sidewalk: also built to code two years later on our site.

I’m sure to somebody in an office somewhere, the changes made sense at the time.

I’m also sure that somebody in that office will decide that one of us (probably us) has to fix the problem. 

At our expense, of course.

Multiply this times trillions, and you’ll understand why some people are wary of the Federal government.

Not sure that’s what they meant by “promoting domestic tranquility.”

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The Underground Project

by Andy Wood on September 25, 2009

in Turning Points

PoliceLights2You up for a little side trip?  This one rolls down Memory Lane in a church bus with papered-up windows, wide-eyed teenagers, and me in handcuffs in the back of a police car.  This is the (true) story of what happens when non-planning randomizers like me actually take the time to plan something.  This is the story of The Underground Project.

Once upon a time (hey, I said it was a story), I was a youth pastor in Lumberton, Mississippi.  I was fairly new, and school had just let out for summer.  For the folks at First Baptist Church, that meant one thing:  Vacation Bible School.  And I was expected to have something each night for the youth group.  So I planned to do something unique and special each evening.  Can’t remember which night it was for sure – I think it was Tuesday.  But on the promotional information, I said very little.  I just said come later – at 8:30 – for The Underground Project.

Use your imagination.  Be an energetic teenager in a small, south Mississippi town in the early summer.  You arrive at the church to see a painted sign attached to the chain link fence that says, Closed by Order of the State.  (What’s funny about that is that the old church building actually had a bad flood/mold problem and had been ordered closed within a year or so.)

Ex-pec-tant and excited, you enter the fellowship hall, where you are asked to have a seat and wait for instructions.  Then in groups of 6 or 7, you are invited into a room.  There I explain that I have some important information for you. [click to continue…]

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It Takes a Lot More Than a List of Wishes

by Andy Wood on July 24, 2009

in Executing Your Plan,Five LV Laws,LV Cycle,Principle of Increase

wishful thinking“I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!” -1 Corinthians 9:22-23, The Message

I’ve devoted a lot of time to a life powered by wishful thinking.  With that came a lot of declaring about what I was going to do, and by when.  Those lists I referred to in the last post even contain a pretty crazy collection of audacious plans.  Just one problem.  Some of them are lifetime pursuits, and I still haven’t started the chase.

Setting goals or writing down wish lists is a bit like writing a check.  [click to continue…]

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The Grasshopper’s Dilemma

by Andy Wood on April 17, 2009

in Allocating Your Resources,Consumers,Enlarging Your Capacity,Executing Your Plan,Exploring the Possibilities,Five LV Laws,Following Your Passion,Gamblers,Hoarders,Life Currency,Love,LV Alter-egos,LV Cycle,Money,Pleasers,Principle of Abundance,Protecting Your Investment,Waiting

grasshopperThis week a friend sent me a poignant and compelling image that describes what it’s like to live in a climate or with a spirit of fear.  But the image is so strong, I think it describes anybody who feels as though they are in a no-win situation.

I feel like a grasshopper on the ocean hanging onto a leaf.  I cling to the leaf to keep from drowning.  If I eat the leaf to keep from starving, I lose my life preserver, and drown.

I’ll tell you later what he learned in the process.  But can you relate? [click to continue…]

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Vision – More Than Just Hope

by Andy Wood on January 6, 2009

in 100 Words,Exploring the Possibilities,LV Cycle

There’s more to vision than hopeful daydreaming about a desired future.

Yes, vision sees the goal, but it is aware of much more than that.

Vision sees the path from here to there.

Vision recognizes the need for decisive action.  It has a bias toward making the jump.

Vision also recognizes the risks and potential dangers that lurk on all sides, and prepares accordingly for them.

Vision then sees beyond the goal.  It recognizes the larger community, and the visionary’s place in the larger world.

Yes, vision sees the goal.  But true visionaries recognize that success is more than the perfect landing.

(This extraordinary picture of Oberstdorf, Germany as reflected in the goggles of Japanese ski jumper Noriaki Kasai is one of many that can be found here.  PHOTO:  Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach)

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