Recently in Leadership Category

I've just finished reading Pour Your Heart into it - by Howard Schultz, the guy who built Starbucks (and was most recently heard of being slammed by Peter Mandelson, for his comments on the British economy).Published more than ten years' ago, it was written as Starbucks was poised to spread across the Atlantic to complete its remarkable and meteoric rise from local specialist coffee store to mega-corporation with a coffee shop on every corner of the world, it seems...

I've found it a fascinating read, but rather bitter-sweet.

Given what Starbucks generally stands for in many people's minds today - phrases like: faceless corporation; greedy; low-paid workers; driving out independents... tend to come up in conversation about them - it's tragic to read Schultz's (presumably) heart-felt and passionate words about the vision and values he believes lie behind the company... or perhaps lay?

...the story of Starbucks is not just a record of growth and success. It's also about how a company can be built in a different way. It's about a company completely unlike the ones my father worked for. It's living proof that a company can lead with its heart and nurture its soul and still make money. It shows that a company can provide long-term value for shareholders without sacrificing its core belief in treating its employees with respect and dignity, both because we have a team of leaders who believe it's right and because it's the best way to do business. (p5)

It's rather sad to read such high-sounding ideals and hear them ring rather hollow.

To me it sounds a lot like the history of many churches down the years, especially those who get 'successful'.

The question is how to avoid the same pitfalls - is it simply impossible to grow and be successful without losing your soul?

Gordon MacDonald - a remarkable Christian writer and speaker - writing in the current edition of Leadership magazine:

Walking one day with a wise old man ...I asked what now seems to be a stupid question: "What should be my priority? My family or the Lord's work?"

It seemed an appropriate question then. I'd grown up in a Christian tradition that made it clear that the "Lord's work" always came first.
...
His answer? "Gordon, your family is the Lord's work."

MacDonald's contention is that our "Loved Ones" (whether spouse, kids, closest friends) form the most healthy base environment that stops us "thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought" - when you're with the people that treat you as you - and love you just the same come success or failure - then that's both healthy perspective and life-giving encouragement.

And no less true as a basic human need and safety-harness for those who run their own business, are trying for the top of their career ladder or stride the TV stage - if we can't love and be loved by our 'Loved Ones', what sort of success in the rest of life can we really be?

I'm sitting in Church House - not a surprising place to find a Vicar, I hear you say, but it's for a conference that, on the face of it, has nothing whatsoever to with my day (and night) job...

I've blogged a fair bit about it/him (i.e. about Seth Godin, the speaker/raconteur/guru) so I won't re-say it all (if you've forgotten, here's one for you), but since I'm literally sitting here listening, I thought I'd think out loud about what I'm hearing... and what it might have to say to All Souls, or any church for that matter.

The reason that there's any connection between 'his world' and mine is that he's a superb observer and analyist of human society and behaviour.

Here's a taster of what got talked about today - some big themes...

1. Permission Marketing - if you're trying to spread a message by simply flooding the market with posters, stickers, leaflets, then you're competing with millions of other messages that people are routinely filtering out of their lives everyday... there's little point, for example, All Souls simply adding to the flood of junk mail through people's doors by doing lots of leaflet drops. The key question to ask of a marketing call, leaflet, promotion is "will they miss it if I don't do it?"... if not, don't do it!

2. Story is everything - the alternative to mass marketing is to tell a story so compelling that people who hear it will tell other people in their turn. Isn't it a killer that despite the church of Jesus having (a) the most compelling [and true] story ever told and (b) millions of people in whose lives' the story is lived out every day - despite that, we think the only way the church can get "its message across" is mass advertising, huge stadium events and mailshots... rubbish - it's no more true now than it was in Acts.

3. Being the best is not enough - you may have a better product, but if people don't have a problem that they think needs solving by that better product, they're not going to seek you out. Are you spending the time trying to find customers for your products or products for your customers? For the church, this has to do with whether we've decided on our "product" - which is how we help people to hear, live out and spread the Good News of Jesus - or whether we start with our potential customers?

If that sounds verging on the heretical, let me make the age-old distinction - there's a fundamental difference between changing the Gospel (no point - it's true, because Jesus will always be who he always is and he's done what he's done) and changing how we live out the Good News in a way that connects with the real lives of people around us.

One good example is us looking at starting a second service - not just a duplicate morning one, but a mid-afternoon one for the many people for whom Sunday mornings just don't equal church and for whom it never will equal church.

4. ...but you need to be remarkable - that's the Purple Cow idea (his book of the same name) - no-one takes a second look at cows in a field, but if you saw an honest-to-goodness purple one, then you'd pull over and look, photograph and then call your friends. Church? I had an email just today from someone talking about how bowled over they were by their first experiences of All Souls - being by far the most friendly, child-welcoming church they'd come across and completlly beyond their expectation of church.

...some first thoughts.

Pretty excited (doesn't take much!), because I've just got my tickets to a seminar run by Seth Godin - someone whose blog on marketing, leadership and business gets a regular look-in when I'm blogging (here, for example).

It's going to be, perhaps, an odd event for a vicar to hang out at, given that it's billed as being on: Marketing, Leading and Being Remarkable - Godin will "focus on how marketers must go beyond attracting eyeballs to tightening the interconnection and deepening commitment with their clients and staff alike." Marketing..? Church..? ...but it's the next line that gives the clue as to why I'm so interested.

He'll tell us how to inspire a tribe of enthusiastic followers and lead them toward a common goal.

Tribe, in this case, takes on a semi-technical meaning which lies at the heart of his latest book and the real reason I'm so intrigued to hear him in action.

It's not that I imagine that the book (or any other book for that matter) holds a set of techniques for church life, being a vicar (or anything else!), but that he's such a lively and provoking thinker about what effective leadership-in/of-community actually looks like in today's culture and marketplace.

There's so little original, stimulating, lively thinking out there on this stuff, that I'll go anywhere I'm likely to get stirred and prodded into thinking unexpected stuff about what God's called me to be and do.

Several other Christian leaders have started writing about Godin's thesis - Jonny Baker is one and I like his angle on the book and how it's set him thinking. Go read him here.

I wonder whether I'll be the only vicar there... and I wonder if I'll come away inspired, invigorated or disappointed?

I'll let you know!