Building Passport

I have dozens of passports, and I need to renew them constantly. No, I’m not James Bond or Jason Bourne. I don’t fly from country to country using alternative identities to evade the NSA, CIA, or MI6.

I just love people. I enjoy meeting, understanding, encouraging, and working with them. And for that I need a lot of passports.

One for my wife, two for my children, over thirty for my relatives and close friends, and dozens more for coworkers, clients, and the other people I engage every week.

A passport is an authorization to go someplace you have no inherent right to be. In relational terms, it is the permission that people give to others to enter into their lives, to learn their secrets, to know their struggles, to offer advice and correction.

If you want others to allow you into their lives—including your employees and customers—you must earn a relational passport from each person you engage. The best way to do so is to relate to others in such a way that they would answer “yes” to three key questions, each of which encompasses a variety of sub-questions that roll around in people’s minds when they are thinking of opening up to you:

• Can I trust you? Will you keep your word and follow through on your commitments? Will you guard confidential information? Will you continue to respect and value me if I allow you to see my mistakes? Can I trust you with the “fine china” of my life?

• Do you really care about me? Will you look out for my interests as well as your own? Will you take time to listen to me? Do you sincerely want to serve me? Why? Do you care enough to push past my outer defenses and patiently help me sort out things I myself don’t yet understand?

• Can you actually help me? Are you able to deal with my concerns and needs? How are you doing with your own challenges and struggles? What kind of experience do you have? Do you have a track record of successfully solving relational and business problems? If this problem is beyond the two of us, do you have the humility and wisdom to help me find another person who has the experience I need?

Let these questions echo in the back of your mind as you relate to others. Ask God to enable you to answer them by engaging others with his humility, patience, compassion, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, honesty, and wisdom (Col. 3:12; James 3:17). If you do so, you’ll be well on your way to having more passports than you ever dreamed.

Ken Sande is the founder of Peacemaker Ministries and Relational Wisdom 360 and the author of numerous books on biblical conflict resolution, including The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict.

Saving Money and Culture

A regular practice at Convene Forum Day is for members to bring business issues—we call them Opportunity/Challenges—to their CEO peers to gain wisdom and insight from multiple perspectives and experience. Convene uses a standard format and process for the subject member to present the issue and for fellow members to gain understanding and provide guidance. A member recently presented his challenge in consolidating two manufacturing plants into one location. Although only a mile apart, they could achieve production efficiencies and cost savings by combining under one roof. This would involve selling two buildings and finding another in the same area that could accommodate the operations—a monumental task in the midst of sustaining a vigorous enterprise—so daunting that it created paralysis of action. Through the Opportunity/Challenge process, the group helped him quantify a potential $30,000 per month savings should he make this change.

Perhaps more significant was the member’s confession that a drastically different culture had prevailed at the satellite location, a result of its isolation from the ownership and management team located in the main facility. He felt discontent at them not sharing the values and practices that he so earnestly strove to maintain at the headquarters. Through inquiry and advice, the Convene team helped him realize that the cultural costs were as important as the monetary costs.

One of the questions of the Opportunity/Challenge process asks for the “intensity level” of the issue on a scale of 1-10. The member came into the meeting rating this a 3 to 4 intensity—fairly low on the scale. After an hour of discussion among his Convene peers, he moved this initiative up to a 9 to 10. That was three months ago; since that time he’s announced the decision to his management team and staff, has engaged a realtor to sell or lease both buildings, and began a search for a single building to accommodate the entire operation. The thought of saving at least $360,000 a year and unifying the culture of his staff motivated his action on this initiative.

Functioning as a virtual Board of Advisors, the Convene Team will continue to advise and hold the member accountable to a plan that is manageable and attainable.

What could a peer advisory group like Convene help you realize and achieve?

The R.O.I. Thing

We use the Return on Investment (ROI) calculation to make investment decisions in our personal lives and businesses weekly, but we don’t typically think of ROI relating to our spiritual life.

In fact, a certain amount of dissonance exists between our ears when thinking about, on one hand, competing, building, investing and growing a company in the marketplace and, on the other, what our eulogist will say about our life on the day of our funeral and what eternity will be like in Heaven.

Jesus wants there to be resonance & complete alignment , not dissonance, with these areas of our thinking and within our lives.

If you take Him at His word, literally, as I do, then you have to read Mathew 19:29 to mean that the amount of money we allocate from our business’ profits to (1) loving our neighbors as ourselves (think funding your local Christian homeless shelter/rescue mission), and, (2) making disciples of all nations (think funding missionaries who take the Word to people groups  who have never even heard of Jesus throughout their existence), will yield us a 100x ROI of economic value in Heaven, forever, literally.

I submit that there’s no other way to read and interpret it.  Jesus wired we five talent and ten talent guys and gals to compete, grow and build a business, so that we can fund his Kingdom here on earth. 

If you feel this dissonance, commit a percentage of your profits to Kingdom investing today and see if it changes how you feel Sunday relates to Monday through Friday.  I’ll be curious to hear how your business performs during that period, too.

Four Agreements

One of my Perfect Year intentions is to reread a handful of books that were (and still are) very meaningful and significant to me. The one I just finished reading is The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz. The lessons from this book are amazingly insightful and powerful. The following is an overview of the meaning of each of The Four Agreements based on the book. File under “how to live unfettered.”

Be Impeccable with Your Word

Speak with integrity.  Say only what you mean.  Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others.  Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Impeccable means not speaking against yourself, to yourself or to others.  It means not rejecting yourself.  To be impeccable means to take responsibility for yourself, to not participate in “the blame game.” What you put out energetically in your word will return to you.

Don’t Take Anything Personally

Nothing others do is because of you.  What others say and do is a projection of their own thoughts.  When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

We take things personally when we agree with what others have said.  If we didn’t agree, the things that others say would not affect us emotionally.  If we did not care about what others think about us, their words or behavior could not affect us. Remember — it is not about you!  Others’ actions and words are based on what they believe and their belief system.

Don’t Make Assumptions

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want.  Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama.  With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

When we make assumptions it is because we believe we know what others are thinking and feeling.  We believe we know their point of view, their story.  We forget that our beliefs are just our point of view based on our belief system and personal experiences and have nothing to do with what others think and feel. Stop expecting the people around you to know what is in your head.

Always Do Your Best

Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick.  Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret. 

Doing your best means enjoying the action without expecting a reward.  Enjoy the path traveled and the destination will take care of itself. Live in the moment, be fully alive right now. If you do your best always, transformation will happen as a natural outcome.

THE STEWARDSHIP OF TALENT MANAGEMENT

THE ANNUAL PEOPLE PLAN: A LEADERSHIP TOOL Talent Management: Why? Because it focuses on the most important asset – people – and can be the single most impactful factor for organizations in achieving their goals. Leadership must be able to develop its people to successfully achieve its goals.

Growing and successful organizations spend some leadership and management time on strategic planning: where they want to go, and how they plan to get there. They also spend a significant amount of time on their annual operating plan (AOP) or budget: how much will we need; where will we get it; how will we expend it. But few spend an equivalent amount of time on planning the best ways to manage and utilize their talent – even given that it is their talent that will be the key management factor to achieving the strategic objectives. My premise is that organizational leadership should emphasize an Annual People Plan (APP) as a necessary and equal adjunct to the AOP and to the business objectives.

Successful organization leadership practices stewardship: it is a biblical standard (I Cor. 4:2 ). That stewardship should also be evident in the managing of the organization’s talent: it is often the largest single expenditure in the annual financial plan and merits that level of attention. It is also true that talent can be the catalyst to maximize the leverage of other resources and plans most effectively and efficiently. Today’s workforce is asking of prospective employers, ‘what will you do to help me grow and develop professionally?’ It is an awesome responsibility to be encouraging and coaching employees to develop to their God – given potential. It requires leadership and support at the senior executive level. Leadership’s single most important responsibility may be ‘who do we let in the front door?’ The hiring process is key because the talent we hire will be the tipping factor in how well the organization achieves it goals. In addition, when we employ someone we as an organization have the responsibility for the professional – and related personal – growth and development of that person. It is ineffective to hire and then not to develop and nurture talent.

Performance management is already practiced by many organizations; it is, however, not talent management, though there is overlap. In the former we focus on job performance compared to job expectations over the past year; in the latter we look forward to identify the talent needed to achieve the organization’s goals and then build a plan to be certain we have that talent available and that we develop its potential.

The initial construction and implementation of an APP requires significant thought, work and energy. For most organizations it will be a major cultural change because its focus is new. Dealing with employee talent in a significant and new manner may be uncomfortable for many managers.

First, senior executive and human resource personnel must be the champions of the APP. They must believe in and be committed to the stewardship activity, participate in it and hold participants accountable for implementation and follow through. Depending on the size of the organization the APP may be led by only the CEO or by the CEO and one or two other executive managers. (Note that the CEO, too, must be a participant in the APP as it relates to his/her responsibilities and direct reports. In fact, because of the direct link between talent management and succession planning the board of directors – who are responsible for the CEO portion of any succession plan – should be strong encouragers of any talent management initiative).

The APP will have its best contribution to an organization’s growth and success if it becomes an integral part of the organization’s culture and DNA. That means continued support from senior executive management - the first 2 or 3 years are critical. It means integrity and involvement towards everyone touched by the process. It means using the APP results and plans whenever a new talent placement is considered. It should mean involvement by the board of the organization to assure proper talent at the senior level.

Many organizations recite the phrase, ‘our employees are our most important asset’; many do not know how to maximize the talent resident in those employees. The introduction of an Annual People Plan will be a significant beginning to grow the talent for the organization’s goals and to contribute to the personal and professional career growth of those employees.

All organizations want – need – leadership talent in place to face well the shifts in the world’s mission fields so that the mission effort can move forth successfully.