A brief summary of the 2010 Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit

To be considered a sustainable success, organisations must stand for something more than the product or service they provide.  This is my prevailing take-away among many key points for organisations and their leaders from the 2010 Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit.

The Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit is distinctive as being unapologetically underwritten from a faith-based perspective while drawing upon solid principles and stories of commercial leaders.  The 2009 summit appeared to focus on the social good and the nature of the church as an organisation.  This year took a hard hitting approach at how people are developed within those organisations.

Jeff Manion, Christine Caine and T. D. Jakes were relevant and spoke to critical aspects of personal development.  The interview with Blake Mycoskie from Tom’s Shoes, a company that gives away a pair of shoes for every pair sold,was inspirational and something I will definitely be involved in for April’s One Day Without Shoes campaign.

The remaining five speakers outlined below focused on core aspects of organisational development that I will be working into my approach over the next several months.  I respect that it is never the same as being there, but hopefully you can take away some nuggets of organisational truth:

Bill Hybels

• Leadership is moving people from here to there, with the objective not to show how good there is but how bad here is.
• Getting from here to there takes fantastic people, defined by their character, competence, chemistry, and cultural fit.
• You test if you have these people by your reaction on hearing of their resignation, being 1) “Whew” to be rid of them; 2) “Ugh” based on having to replace them; and 3) Vomit due to not being able to live without them.
• Celebrations and mile markers are critical in the long middle stretch between here and there.
• You never get from here to there in a straight line, being guided and prompted along the way.

Jim Collins

• Organisations experience 5 stages of decline
• Stage 1. Hubris born of success (Outrageous arrogance of those who believe that out success has not derived at least in part from luck or blessings that are not entirely of our doing.  The signature that separates level 4 and level 5 leaders is their humility)
• Stage 2. Undisciplined pursuit of more (If you let growth exceed your ability to have people execute on that growth, you will fail.  Regulate growth and reach by ensuring you have all seats filled with fantastic people, and resist growth until you have them)
• Stage 3. Denial of risk and peril (Never confuse faith with facts.)
• Stage 4. Grasping for salvation (90% of good to great companies obtained their CEO from within.  Greatness is never a single event, but a cumulative process developed over time.)
• Stage 5. Capitulation (You give up)
• Great companies are driven by something beyond money and success, a purpose rooted in core values.
• The signature of mediocrity is inconsistency.
• Persistent individuals do not give up, even at stage 4.  It is one thing to suffer a staggering defeat; it is another to give up on your values and purpose.  Leadership takes disciplined people taking disciplined action in things you are passionate about and keep pushing.

Andy Stanley

• All great and well led organisations have tensions, such as innovation and security, expansion and stability, flexibility and consistency, excellence and cost savings, work and home life.
• Tensions are not to be resolved or solved, but managed to leverage the dynamics for progress and growth.
•  Define a tension by answering: 1) Does it keep resurfacing; 2) Are there mature advocates on both sides?; and 3) Are the two sides interdependent?
• Manage the tensions by: 1) identifying the tensions; 2) creating common terminology to discuss the tensions; 3) Inform your core about the tensions; 4) Continually give value to both sides; 5) Don’t weigh too heavily based on your personal bias; 6) Don’t allow strong personalities to win the day; and 7) Don’t think in terms of balance or fairness, but in terms of rhythm.

Dan Pink

• We have three motivational drives: 1) a biological drive; 2) a reward and punishment drive; and 3) a drive to do things because they are interesting or make a difference.
• The third drive is a powerful part of being human and routinely neglected in organisations.
• If/then rewards work well only for simple and straightforward tasks, for more complex tasks they give you tunnel vision.
• Once a task required more than rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward results in lower performance.
• In normal organisational personal development, when the punishment or reward fails, we often simply increase the punishment or reward.
• Two false assumptions exist in organisations: 1) humans are machines; and 2) humans are blobs.
• Three key elements for enduring motivation:
• 1. Autonomy (We do not want compliance, we want engagement. Management does not lead to engagement. Self-direction leads to engagement.)
• 2. Mastery (Provide feedback on tasks that make us feel fulfilled.  The workplace is one of the most feedback-deprived places.  Performance reviews are too infrequent, not authentic conversations.)
• 3. Purpose (We are seeing the limits of the profit motive as the lines between profit and social sector.  When the profit motive becomes unmoored from the purpose motive, unethical, mediocre, and uninspiring things happen)

Jack Welch

• Leaders must be authentic, comfortable in their own skin, not portraying themselves as someone they are not.
• Leaders must have energy to energise and excite those around them.
• The job of the leader is to raise the intellectual bar on the conversation to draw out those people in the room who are smarter.
• Do not tell people the mission, as much as you let them discover it for themselves.
• Demand candour, speaking the truth and not mincing words.  Fight desperately to get what people feel about things on the table.
• Do not have a meeting about what to say, have a meeting about what you believe and feel.
• Within his company, Jack differentiated visibly to all the top 20%, the vital 70%, and the bottom 10% of staff.  People already know who is there, the approach just legitimises it.
• The top 20% are filled with energy, have good values, generous, have a gene that says “I love to see people grow, I love to reward people”
• With performance appraisals, do not write a new one each time, keep writing over the old one.  Do not make it a new conversation.
• You cannot reward your top 20% enough.
• Jack’s biggest failure was moving too slowly.  You can never move fast enough.  You might make mistakes, but go, act, do.
• Celebrate small victories.