Making Common Sense a Common Practice

Johnny was a really good dancer. In fact, he was the best dancer in our high school. He learned the latest dances, taught them to the rest of us, and was always the star of the school socials. Apparently he caused quite a stir among our friends. One commented, “Johnny’s good. And he knows it!” Let’s think about this comment. Wouldn’t it be a shame if you were good and DID NOT know it! It would be awful to go through life not realizing that you were competent, capable, able and effective. Obviously, Johnny knew he could dance. He was confident enough to learn new dances and to “perform” them. He possessed one other trait: he believed he was good! He believed in himself. He was not cocky nor was he conceited. (Conceit is a strange disease that makes everyone sick except the one who has it!) He believed in what he did; he believed he did it well; he enjoyed doing it.

Here’s a question for you: could you be good and NOT know it? If you knew you were good, wouldn’t you feel better, have more confidence, enjoy your life and your work more? (The answer is yes. I’ll help with the hard ones.) If you believed in yourself and in your abilities, wouldn’t you be a better spouse, parent, friend, salesperson?

We tell our children they are capable and competent. We tell them they can make the team, pass the test, be selected. We encourage our friends that they can get that promotion, close that deal, overcome that hurdle.

It is common sense to believe in others. Why then, is it so difficult to believe in ourselves? Shouldn’t it be common sense to believe in ourselves? Our parents do, our best friends do, our spouse does. God does. He made it clear in Psalms 56:9, “This I know. God is for me.” He also made is clear in John 3:16. If He believes in us, why shouldn’t we? After all, His knowledge is certainly greater than ours!

Perhaps we need to make this a common practice. Ralph Watts certainly did. Ralph was the type who would give you the shirt off his back and then call you that evening and ask if it fit properly. Yet, Ralph had a tough go of it. He had health challenges, he lost his parents before he finished school, and three teachers and a college professor told him that he wasn’t smart enough. Yet, he didn’t believe in what they said. Ralph believed in Ralph! This belief led him to attain two masters degrees. This belief led him to become president and CEO of a multi-million dollar health care organization. This led him to the top 15 in earnings for all CEO’s in his state. This led him to a wonderful family with a beautiful wife and daughter. Ralph did not believe in the opinions of others. He believed himself to be competent, capable, and effective.

You are probably very good in several areas of your personal and professional lives. You could be more fulfilled if you only recognized that you are good. Just like Johnny and Ralph, if you believe in yourself, you may be able to do more and actually enjoy doing it.

You only need two votes to believe in yourself. Each morning, you must cast a vote for yourself. That is the big vote. Only you can mark your choice. The other vote has already been cast. God has already voted for you. He believes in you and wants you to do the same.

It is common sense, now let’s make it a common practice.

Who Are You Shooting At?

There’s the old saying, that if you don’t know what you’re aiming at, you’ll hit it every time.  Do you know who your customers really are? A few weeks back, I wrote about one of four foundational growth elements - you can find the prior blog (part one) here. As a quick reminder... - Know “who” your business is - Describe your target customer well - Ensure the pictures match the words - Define a simply understood strategy

After knowing “who" your business is, the next key element is knowing who you are trying to serve.  While it’s nice to be able to say demographic or geographic information (income, gender, age range, etc.), that isn’t “who” they are.  That’s like saying the I’m a set of molecules, or organs, or even that I’m a complete map that you got from a series of medical scans and x-rays.  Or I am the sum total of the Census data of my zip code.

Most companies, at best, talk about their customers as if they had a picture of them on their desk.  Yep, there’s your customer - right there. In a frame - 45 year old female, blond hair, blue eyes, three kids, drives a mini-van…you get the idea.

But people have dimensions, they have a soul, they have beliefs and values and….they have a story.

To describe your customer well, you need to know what stories they have in common, what values they hold, what challenges they face, what they believe about themselves, about others, and about the world.  After all, isn’t that how you would want people to know you?

Don’t get me wrong - demographics aren’t bad.  They do help in the efficient purchase of advertising, in the placement of store locations, and in other decisions.  But how do your employees know how to treat a statistic?  Wouldn’t they have a better feel for the customer service they deliver, the web site they design, the type of invoices they should send, if they knew, really knew, the types of customers you target?

So rather than the mom in a mini-van, could it instead be sentences about the hurried life that Susan might lead?  Instead of the franchisee that fits a geographic hole in your coverage, could Joe be a person that values owning a place where his community gathers for a particular purpose?

Don’t shoot at a statistic...reach for a connection.  Learn and tell their aggregated stories so that you can see how your company fits…so that your employees can see them as they connect with them.  And maybe, through you and what your company does, they may ultimately see how they fit in His story.

MICHAEL POWERS - Before chairing a Nashville Convene team and becoming Convene’s Chief Marketing officer, Michael helped Asurion, the leading provider of device insurance, and Des-Case, a small manufacturing company, each more than quadruple in revenue (Asurion was over $1 billion when he left).

Michael loves to help businesses and the people that lead them determine “the next best step upward.” Admittedly, he’s a bit of a strange combination of left and right brain thinking, with degrees and experience in engineering and marketing. His blend of creative and analytical skills enables him to assess complicated, multi-disciplinary issues, create the right plan, and lead others to success.

Michael and his wife have four children, and have developed an additional passion for Haiti. He feels fortunate to have had great mentors along the way, and hopes to pass along a bit of what he’s learned to others to help them in their journey.

Just One View from the Convene Leadership Summit 2015

  I’ve spent a few days in Southern California with a bunch of really smart people...a few hundred Christian CEO’s from places near and far. It was a wonderful combination of deep spirituality, world class humor, inspiring business performance, and unique perspectives.

Here’s gems I pulled away from just 5 of the sessions - so hard to choose just 5...

1. “(On earth)...there are only two things that are eternal: God’s Word and man’s soul”. He showed his passion for both by letting us know that the Bible museum is the real deal, scheduled to open in late 2017. - Steve Green - President, Hobby Lobby

2. One way to share the Gospel in a corporate setting “Speak in scripture, but don’ t quote chapter and verse”. Also challenged us to Dare To Serve - Cheryl Bachelder - CEO, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen

3. Remain mission true by 1) Believing the Gospel matters, 2) Believing that drift happens, 3) Differentiating the mission from the means, and 4) Hiring for heart and head - Peter Greer, President and CEO of Hope International

4. "You can’t be anywhere but where you are right now” - Chris McCluskey, President, Professional Christian Coaching Institute

5. “We should have calloused hands and a soft heart...not the other way around” - Johnnie Moore, Chief of Staff / VP, LightWorkers Media

And one for fun…from the stage to a guy in the audience that had said he was a hunter...

“You’re a dove hunter? Really? Good thing you weren’t around during Jesus’ time...when the Spirit came like a dove…” Comedian Nazareth

Sage Innovation: Apple Watches, Tesla Batteries, and Roast Pig

  I so loved Charles Lamb’s A Dissertation upon Roast Pig (ref. 1) that I once commissioned a never-performed operetta based on it. I still have the lyrics somewhere. The essence of this great tale is that of a pyromanic son of a swineherd in ancient China named Bo-bo who invented pork BBQ by unintentionally burning down his father Ho-ti's hut with a litter of pigs inside. The overwhelming aroma of roasted pork overcame both his fear of being punished as well as his father’s intention to punish him. They feasted on this newfound delicacy and promptly built another hut so they could burn it down and have roast pig again.

The villagers around them observed that every time new pigs were born, Ho-ti’s hut burned down. Watching and catching them in this act of intentional destruction, they arrested and transported them to Peking to stand trial. The judge sampled the still warm pork and promptly pronounced them innocent. He rushed home to burn his house with pigs inside in order to enjoy such delicacy. Soon homes were burning all over China, only to be rebuilt and then torched again so that roasted pork could be enjoyed.

The housing industry boomed until there was little timber to be found. Insurance companies went bankrupt. Pork producers enjoyed great success initially but couldn’t meet demand. An economic crisis loomed over the high societal costs of this BBQ craze. Finally, an innovative sage introduced the disruptive technology of a spit over a much smaller fire. Sanity and stability returned. The cost to participate steeply declined.

With such great affection for this story, I couldn’t help but think of it when reading Tesla’s recent announcement of a deeper move into localized and distributed power (ref. 2). The technology behind their car batteries can interface with solar panels mounted on household rooftops, creating a renewable and storable energy supply—in Tesla batteries, of course.

The idea holds great appeal. However, purchasing and installing the technology does not yet create savings for most consumers. It is just too expensive at the current, experimental and early adopter scale. Without major utilities embracing the distribution of this equipment to the individual consumer instead of building and maintaining large power plants built on fossil fuel consumption, the costs remain too high for the average person to unhook utility wires. A lot of economic wobbliness looms until sagely innovators find a way.

Let’s bring the Apple watch into this muse. With the announcement that approximately $83 (US) in parts is being sold for $349-$10,000, depending on the type one purchases, there will be a lot of room for innovation and disruptive technology to bring down the price, and without long delay. However, the market for wearable technology is finicky and not well-defined. Best Buy and other merchandisers are changing their displays almost daily as new and updated products are being rolled out. A lot of resources will be wasted (invested?) by manufacturers, merchandisers and consumers until this market stabilizes. It wasn’t that long ago that PCs and then Laptops, office suite software and large screen television went through similar convulsions until price stabilized and the product became ubiquitous. Apple might make a lot of money initially in wearable technology, but it is far from certain that they are a lock on being the dominant player forever.

Someone, somewhere is going to innovate, drive the price down and improve the way the world works. Resources will be wasted while figuring it out. Fortunes will be made and lost. The sage innovator does not participate just to make money. They do it to reduce suffering and heighten hope, doing it in such a way as to sustain their enterprise next year too.

If anybody holds a commitment to sage innovation, it is the Christ follower called to a business vocation.

Ref. 1. in The Essays of Elia, New York:  The F.M. Lupton Publishing Co, 1823, pp. 193-202.

Ref. 2. Wall Street Journal, 2-3 May 2015, p. B1

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Mark L. Vincent, PhD, CCNL is a Convene Chair and CEO of Design Group International, an organizational development company providing wise guidance for enterprise, nonprofits, and ministry organizations. Out of a life spent building an enterprise and dealing with a prolonged health battle, Mark and his wife Lorie pared and honed and answered the question, “if there is just one thing to which you could give your life, what would it be?” The answer for Mark is to love leaders as they claim their life vocation as stewards of enterprise.

Different Coaching

By most standards, I had a very good athletic career. In high school, I was one of our state’s top runners in the one mile, and I later set my college's record for 1500 meters. But I wonder if I could have done even better with different coaching. I had a good coach, but I also had a problem. I was the best on our college team (at the time) at 1500 meters, but I didn't have enough speed to be the best in our conference. The next longer race, the 5000 meters, was never my favorite to run, plus I had two teammates who were All-Americans at that distance. Perhaps a different coach with more specialized workouts could have improved my speed, or would have pushed me toward the 5000. I'll never know.

What I do know is that leaders need to constantly grow and improve, and doing so is often facilitated or accelerated with someone else's help. That someone might be a wise mentor, a trusted peer, or a professional coach. The label is less important than the benefit that you're receiving.

Can you articulate the top area(s) where you need to grow as a leader? Perhaps you need to improve at managing people or articulating a clear vision or dealing with criticism. How could that growth help you move to the next level? How could it help the organization that you lead?

If you’re not growing, don’t expect growth from those that you’re leading. And if you’re not sure how to grow, it may be time to seek the help of a coach. Even if you have a coach, it’s fair to assess whether he or she is the right person to help with your current needs.

Looking back, I can see how my running career might have benefitted from different coaching. Of course, switching wasn’t easy once I committed to a college, but you don’t face the same constraints. So what kind of coaching do you need, and where will you find it?

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Mike Bonem is a Convene Chair who began his business career as a consultant with McKinsey & Co. and subsequently served in senior leadership roles for two mid-sized environmental service companies. He also served for over a decade as the executive pastor of his church, and has continued to serve Kingdom-minded organizations as a strategy and organization consultant and coach.