The Time of Our Lives

 

Issue No. 350 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Sept. 11, 2016) features one of my favorite columnists. Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal columns touch your head, your heart, and your funny bone (though her word would be wittier). Example: She says we get our news at what we still call the water cooler “and mean as the line at Starbucks.” And this reminder: click here to check out my 20 management buckets (core competencies). Photo by Jason Pearson on 9/11 Poignant Peggy Noonan Just 350 issues ago, on Aug. 28, 2006, I launched this crazy idea of a book review and a bucket commentary in each issue of Your Weekly Staff Meeting. Thanks for being a reader. Thus, weighted with the responsibility (one of my top strengths) to make this a truly commemorative issue—I took 10 months to read a truly remarkable book. (I know. I say that about most of these books.)  With dark roast coffee fumes satisfying my Saturday mornings, I frequently begin the day with Peggy Noonan’s weekly column in The Wall Street Journal. She rarely disappoints. While she was an acclaimed speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, she’s writes with an old-style reporter’s honesty and balance about all things that matter in our nation and on our globe—including what matters now about September 11. It’s been 15 years, this morning, since we experienced those sad, jarring images of 9/11. (More on that in a minute.) Not surprisingly, Peggy Noonan’s thoughts on 9/11 are poignantly integrated into this amazing collection of the 82 columns and reports she selected for this book. (She started with three piles: the yes pile, the no pile, and the maybe pile. She re-read every column she’d written. Whew.) Over these past 10 months, The Time of Our Lives has become the plumb line for my political worldviews. Noonan writes with integrity, care, richness, and wisdom. Her wordcraft—exquisite! Two examples from the 44-page introduction (don’t skip this—it’s memorable): “I think columnists—probably all writers but certainly columnists—are like baseball players in that they have good seasons and bad. They have hot streaks where they can’t not hit the ball. They have cold streaks: whiff, whiff, whiff. But baseball players know they’re in a streak when it’s happening, because of the stats. Writers only know in retrospect.” “There are writers who believe their impenetrability and lack of liveliness is proof of their gravity. ‘I’m boring because I’m serious.’ No, you’re boring because you’re boring. If you were serious you’d be interesting.” Noonan’s arresting choice of words require pen-in-hand underlining: Commenting on the “over the top” ending of a president’s Inauguration Day speech: “It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past ‘mission inebriation.’”  Then she adds, “The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.” In the five-column section on “People I Miss” (Tim Russert, Joan Rivers, and others), she contrasts Margaret Thatcher’s farewell to a U.S. version: “No funeral of an American leader would ever be like that: The dead American would be the star, with God in the position of yet another mourner who’d miss his leadership.” If I were a pastor, next Sunday I’d read her April 2011 column, “What the World Sees in America.” That’s it. Then this congregational assignment: Listen. Discuss with three people sitting near you. Pray. Then exit and do something today. Noonan’s poignant point: “Remember during the riots of the 1960s when they said, ‘the whole world is watching?’ Well, now the whole world really is.” She adds, “The whole world [visitors to the U.S. and those on the web overseas] is in the Hilton, channel-surfing. The whole world is on the train, in the airport, judging what it sees and likely, in some serious ways, finding us wanting.” The chapters—neatly packed into 15 sections—are dressed in irresistible titles with potent phrasing you’ll borrow: • The Nightmare and the Dreams: How has September 11 affected our unconscious? She said that Sidney Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner “had a lovely kind of sweet intelligence.” • Snow Day. “It wasn’t obnoxious, just comic, a pure moment of the inevitable solipsism of a modern mayor in the media age.” That was Noonan’s line about watching NYC’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg use the occasion of his first big snowstorm as his “first big test.” Noonan: “We thought this was about the storm—we forgot it’s about you!” (“Solipsism” will now be making regular appearances in coming issues.) • Miracle on Fulton Street (Dec. 14, 2001). Noonan writes 93 days after 9/11: “My friends, this is the kind of column I used to do now and then before the world changed.” Oh, my. You will read this chapter to your loved ones. Being a 3-ring binder guy, this also caught my eye: “When the Towers tumbled, it created a reverse vacuum and papers were sucked up into the gathering cloud and dispersed all over downtown, the rivers, Brooklyn and Queens. But the binders the papers were in—the legal binders, the metal rings inside them—they didn’t survive.” She mentions a telephone repairman. “He had been working on a telephone pole in Queens. He heard the explosions, the lines went down on him and everyone else. A piece of paper fluttered down and he caught it. It was a business card. A few days later he called the number on the card and asked for the name. A young woman answered. Yes, she said, she was alive, she had made it out of the building. No, she didn’t know her business cards had made it to Queens.” Noonan then adds (her wit fills the book), “Hollywood: Use this. In your version they fall in love.” • What I Told the Bishops. “I quoted this dialogue [from The Passion of the Christ] to the bishops and the cardinal. And when I said the words Christ spoke in the film my voice broke, and I couldn’t continue speaking. I was embarrassed by this, but at the same time I thought, Well, OK.” • Old Jersey Real: The greatness of The Sopranos. Noting the “masterpiece” final episode, she paints this picture: “The drama of Tony, the great post-9/11 drama of him, is that he is trying to hold on in a world he thinks is breaking to pieces.” Then this: “His bluster, his desperate desire to re-create order with the rough tools of his disordered heart and brain, are comic, poignant, ridiculous, human.” Oh, dear—this is way too long. No space left to talk about Reagan as artist: “And the thing about artists is they try to see the picture whole.” Just a few more:    • Reflecting on 9/11 after hearing Os Guinness speak, Noonan writes, “So: The firemen were rough repositories of grace.”    • December 2005 column: “What Does It Mean That Your First Act on Entering a Country Is Breaking Its Law?”    • November 2014 column: “The Loneliest President Since Nixon”    • On Iraq: “When you have been catastrophically wrong, you have to bring a certain humility to the table.”    • June 2014: “Pundits and pollsters have been talking about a quickening of the populist spirit, and the possibility of a populist rise, for at least a quarter century. But they’re doing it more often now.”    • Flight 93: “No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor.” So…on this sad day, 15 years since Sept. 11, 2001, let me share an equally poignant link to some thoughts written by my son, Jason, who at 6:50 a.m. EDT on 9/11, stepped off a red-eye flight at JFK in New York. He remembers, “Not long after, I was standing in Manhattan at the corner of Franklin and West Broadway, just 12 blocks away from the on-fire World Trade Center.” [2026 note]: To read Jason Pearson’s journal from 9/11: “Where Is God in This Tragedy? He Is Very Present in the Lives of His People,” and Jason’s photos from that day, see pages 151-155 in Mastering Mistake-Making. Be safe! To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Time of Our Lives, by Peggy Noonan.  Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Where were you on 9/11? 2)  What Bible verse comforts you when you experience dark or sad days? What person is your trusted “plumb line” for informing your worldview? NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon. Read Viewpoints That Challenge Your Worldview Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit The Book Bucket, Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets, highlights this core competency: “We believe leaders are readers! We create a culture that embraces a healthy appetite for leadership and management books, journals, articles and audio resources. We mentor team members with thoughtfully selected titles and chapters to help them leverage their strengths, grow in their faith and serve others with passion. We don’t just talk about books—we actually read them!” Over the last 10 years of this eNews, I’ve tried to balance my infrequent political book reviews with a range of interesting specimens. Check them out! • The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington, by Robert D. Novak (662 pages) • The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli (translated by Peter Constantine) • Life’s a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation and Success, by Chris Matthews • Barack, Inc. – Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign, by Barry Libert and Rick Faulk • Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis—Suez and the Brink of War, by David A. Nichols. • The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity, by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duff • Churchill, by Paul Johnson Visit the Book Bucket webpage for more resources, including a template for creating your own Top-100 books list.   MORE RESOURCES • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCAST: John Pearson's Buckets Podcast ECFA BLOG on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations” – Add your thoughts and comments to John Pearson’s recent blog, "4 Tips When Board Members Dip Into Operational Areas."

Team of Teams

Issue No. 345 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (June 28, 2016) notes that when he faced Al Qaeda in Iraq, Gen. Stanley McChrystal quickly discerned that “efficiency was no longer enough” against the “networked mayhem of the 21st century.” And this reminder: click here to check out my  20 management buckets. And listen to this "explainer" video. Maps to Whiteboards: The 21st Century Metaphor  “When musician Dave Carroll's guitar was broken by United Airlines baggage handlers, he spent nine months navigating the company's telephone-directory maze of customer service representatives to no avail, so he wrote a song called ‘United Breaks Guitars’ and posted the video on YouTube.  “Within one day the video had racked up 150,000 hits and Carroll received a phone call from an abashed director of customer solutions at United. Within three days the video had more than a million hits and United's stock price fell 10 percent, costing shareholders $180 million in value—600,000 times the value of the guitar."  Within a week, the song peaked as the number one download on iTunes, and the company made a public show of donating $3,000 (the cost of a new guitar) to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at Carroll’s request (the makers of his broken instrument, Taylor Guitars, sent him two for free after watching his video). Click here to watch the entertaining 4-minute video, "United Breaks Guitars." Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Army, Retired, shares this story on page 63 of his amazing/terrifying/trend-bending book, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World.  Amazing…because the airline customer service debacle is just one of dozens and dozens of memorable stories that you’ll talk about with your team for months and years to come. “United Breaks Guitars,” by the way, now has almost 16 million YouTube views, a website, a book, a case study, and more entertaining videos—all focused on “how social media has changed customer service forever.” Terrifying...because Gen. McChrystal’s war on Al Qaeda (AQI) was unlike any the U.S. military had fought before. Any!  He writes, “When we first established our Task Force headquarters at Balad [in Iraq], we hung maps on almost every wall. Maps are sacred to a soldier. In military headquarters, maps are mounted and maintained with almost religious reverence. A well-marked map can, at a glance, reveal the current friendly and enemy situations, as well as the plan of future operations. Orders can be conveyed using a marked map and a few terse words.” But to out-think and out-gun Al Qaeda, everything had to change. “For most of history, war was a bout terrain, territory held, and geographic goals, and a map was the quintessential tool for seeing the problem and creating solutions,” the general notes. “But the maps in Balad could not depict a battlefield in which the enemy could be uploading video to an audience of millions from any house in any neighborhood, or driving a bomb around in any car on any street.” Then… (and here’s my favorite metaphor for all organizations that must move from “complicated to complex”): “In place of maps, whiteboards began to appear in our headquarters. Soon they were everywhere. Standing around them, markers in hand, we thought out loud, diagramming what we knew, what we suspected, and what we did not know. We covered the bright white surfaces with multi-colored words and drawings, erased, and then covered again. We did not draw static geographical features; we drew mutable relationships—the connections between things rather than the things themselves.” The lack of hierarchy and “adroit use of information technology” was a game-changer. McChrystal quotes military analyst John Arquilla, “We killed about 20 of Al Qaeda’s ‘number threes’ over the past decade, but everyone in a network is number three.” The old organizational charts (“what we were designed for”) mandated new strategies and new solutions because of “what we were facing.” The chart on page 25 is terrifying—both for the U.S. military and for our outdated management approaches: Trend-bending…because this book will rock your comfortable foundation. McChrystal writes, “When we realized that AQI was outrunning us, we did what most large organizations do when they find themselves falling behind the competition: we worked harder. We deployed more resources, we put more people to work, and we strove to create ever-greater efficiency within the existing operating model. “Like obnoxious tourists trying to make themselves understood in a foreign country by continuing to speak their native tongue louder and louder, we were raising the volume to no good end.” So as you and your team are facing uphill battles on multiple fronts and the myriad issues in the military acronym VUCA…    • volatility    • uncertainty    • complexity    • and ambiguity …what’s your plan? McChrystal has some solutions for you. In his chapter, “Leading Like a Gardener," the general messes with my favorite movie, The Hunt for Red October, starring Sean Connery as Capt. Marko Ramius, the cool-headed CEO of a new Soviet nuclear submarine. McChrystal says we must reject our love affair with “heroic leaders.” Not easy for a four-star general, who led the Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq during the Persian Gulf Wars, and retired in 2010 after serving as commander of all American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Confessing to his own struggles, he writes: “Although I recognized its necessity, the mental transition from heroic leader to humble gardener was not a comfortable one.”  In the chapter recap (three succinct bullet points summarize each chapter), he cautions,  “The temptation to lead as a chess master, controlling each move of the organization, must give way to an approach as a gardener, enabling rather than directing.” Maybe my most compelling endorsement would be this: I’ll be at board planning retreat next month and all of us are reading Team of Teams and sharing the implications for our roles as board members, such as why moving from “complicated to complex” will require a “robust and resilient” response, per McChrystal. We’ll address this year’s book within the context of the last two books we’ve read:    • The Attacker's Advantage: Turning Uncertainty Into Breakthrough Opportunities, by Ram Charan    • Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way, by Ram Charan, Dennis Carey and Michael Useem. Sorry—but if you still want to be the leader of your organization (or department) next year, this is a must-read book this year. To order from Amazon, click on the title for  Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World,  by Gen. Stanley McChrystal with Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell.   Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Gen. McChrystal said the “map was the quintessential tool for seeing the problem and creating solutions,” yet everything changed. What “quintessential tool for seeing the problem and creating solutions” are you still relying on—even though everything has changed? 2) Like “United Breaks Guitars,” you may be one video, one blogpost, or one Yelp comment away from immense and harmful social media. What’s your crisis plan—and when is the last time you’ve reviewed it? Who has authority to respond when senior leaders are all on vacation? (Visit The Crisis Bucket.)   "Team" in Name Only? Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit Would “team” describe your culture—or are you a “team” in name only? Or are you a “team of teams,” as Gen. McChrystal describes the opportunity in his book (per above).  Here’s a question: “If your organization or department were on trial for having a ‘team-based culture’ (per Gen. McChrystal, Patrick Lencioni, and others), would there be enough evidence to convict you?” For more resources from “The Team Bucket,” Chapter 9, in Mastering the Management Buckets, visit this webpage, plus check out another leadership/team book and my review of Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, by Simon Sinek. The review includes a powerful excerpt of a former Under Secretary of Defense’s speech—with his own humbling confession. NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

MORE RESOURCES • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCAST: John Pearson's Buckets Podcast ECFA BLOG on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations” – Add your thoughts and comments to John Pearson’s recent blog, "Criteria for the Nominating Committee’s Pipeline."

The Ideal Team Player

 

Issue No. 344 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (June 20, 2016) quotes Patrick Lencioni: "If no one is leaving or being asked to leave, then we're probably not truly living these values." And this reminder: click here to check out my 20 management buckets (core competencies). "No Jackasses Allowed!"  If I were still a CEO, here's The One Thing I would do this week: Step 1. Order four copies of Patrick Lencioni's new book, The Ideal Team Player. Step 2. Hand-deliver the book, along with a Starbucks card, to each of my direct reports, with this assignment: "Invest up to four hours at Starbucks this week—and read this important book. It's likely the most team-transforming exercise we’ll do together this year." Step 3. Schedule a half-day off-site team meeting (for next week) to discuss "How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues” (the book’s sub-title). Step 4. Facilitate the senior team meeting (or invite a facilitator to do the honors) and get buy-in and commitment (a la Lencioni's pyramid). Assign next steps.  Step 5. Step back and watch your culture transform as you articulate three virtues: Humble, Hungry, and People Smart.  Wow! Patrick Lencioni has done it again! This is one powerful book--and maybe his funniest. In his classic "leadership fable" format (example: Death by Meeting), Lencioni delivers a page-turning business story.  New CEO. Two direct reports. Massive dysfunction. New hires needed yesterday. (Sound familiar?) But there's another problem: the top three leaders cannot define the "ideal team player” qualities. (Can you?) Half of the people they hire either quit or are terminated.  Finally…finally, they agree on one virtue: "Maybe our new slogan should be  'no jackasses allowed.'  That would make a great poster." So, in search of more acceptable lingo and meaning, the leadership triad lands on Humble, Hungry, and Smart. Lencioni defines these virtues in the final 60 pages (The Model and application), worth the price of the book. HUMBLE: "Great team players lack excessive ego or concerns about status." He adds, "Humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player." HUNGRY: "Hungry people almost never have to be pushed by a manager to work harder because they are self-motivated and diligent." SMART: "Smart simply refers to a person's common sense about people." Caution #1: What if you settle for just one out of three? Or, if you're fortunate, two out of three virtues? After all, no one's perfect.  Lencioni: "What makes humble, hungry, and smart powerful and unique is not the individual attributes themselves, but rather the required combination of all three."  His memorable labels for the "one out of three" prospects are caution enough: Humble Only: The Pawn Hungry Only: The Bulldozer Smart Only: The Charmer What About 2 Out of 3? “The next three categories that we'll explore represent people who are more difficult to identify because the strengths associated with them often camouflage their weaknesses.  “Team members who fit into these categories lack only one of the three traits and thus have a little higher likelihood of overcoming their challenges and becoming ideal team players. Still, lacking even one in a serious way can impede the team building process.” Caution #2: Don’t use the following labels at work—but they are perfect descriptors for your “2 out of 3” team members: Hungry and Humble, but Not Smart: The Accidental Mess-Maker Humble and Smart, but Not Hungry: The Lovable Slacker Hungry and Smart, but Not Humble: The Skillful Politician Watch out for the banana peel when you’re interviewing a candidate without humility. "Unfortunately, because they are so smart, Skillful Politicians are very adept at portraying themselves at being humble, making it hard for leaders to identify them and address their destructive behaviors." Lencioni urges: Don't hire unless you and your team members can positively affirm a three-for-three person.  I know. It's not easy, but read the book, and you'll be absolutely convinced. Lencioni packs the last 60 pages with highly practical insights, warnings, and next steps.  He lists very pragmatic ways to assess your current team members and what to do with the 0-for-3, 1-for-3, and 2-for-3 people already on your team. He gives solutions, including a helpful self-assessment with 18 questions. See you at Starbucks! To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues, by Patrick Lencioni. Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Lencioni quotes C.S. Lewis, "Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less." What's your definition of humility—and who models that on our team? 2) Lencioni says that "the most important part of the development process, and the part that is so often missing, is the leader's commitment to constantly 'reminding' an employee if she is not yet doing what is needed.  Without this, improvement will not occur." When is the last time you've "reminded" a team member—and what was the result? Avoid Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit Scott Vandeventer introduced me to the term, “management-by-bestseller”—the tendency to take the latest, greatest book and foist it on your team—without explaining how it aligns with previous books you’ve read.  Scott adds, “Some organizations get dangerously close to Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome due to a kind of corporate attention deficit disorder, probably systemic to its leadership." In the “Book Bucket,” Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets, I urge leaders and managers to focus on books that align with your leadership philosophy and theology. Patrick Lencioni’s latest book, The Ideal Team Player, integrates beautifully with other books I’ve recommended, such as Humility, by Andrew Murray, The One Minute Manager, by Ken Blanchard (re: reminders), and (speaking of “people smart”) last issue’s book on the four social styles. By the way, Andrew Murray’s insights on humility will whack you between your selfies (in just 59 pages): “Humility is the only soil in which the graces root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure.” For more resources from the Book Bucket, including a list of book recommendations for all 20 buckets, visit the webpage. MORE RESOURCES • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCAST: John Pearson's Buckets Podcast ECFA BLOG on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations” – Add your thoughts and comments to John Pearson’s recent blog, "Your Board's ONE Thing." NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

The Church & the Parachurch

 

Issue No. 148 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (July 21, 2009) highlights an oldie, but goodie book on how churches view parachurches and vice versa. Order it today—or used copies will be hard to find. And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.  I'VE NOTICED THIS: You’ll get a prompt donor receipt, thank you letter, and ministry update (eNews, etc.) from your parachurch giving.  But...what personal response do you get from your local church giving? Usually not much, except an annual record of giving from the church treasurer (usually with typos). (Graphic: ChatGPT)   Church & Parachurch When I’ve loaned out my only two copies of an old book—and had to find another one online, it tells me it’s an important book. Jerry White, now international president emeritus of The Navigators, published The Church & the Parachurch, “A Critical Concern Book” for Multnomah Press in 1983.  It’s still very relevant—maybe more so in 2009. Today, many megachurches often look more like parachurches than “local churches.”  And in many “parachurches” today, I find that they are functioning more in tune with a biblical model of “church” than do many local churches.  Yet there are excesses on both sides, some sad and some even hilarious.  Many pastors still distrust parachurches—and block the doors. “All they want are my best volunteers and their money.”  Parachurch leaders, on the other hand, often compete with other parachurches for local church dollars, volunteers and loyalties. Yet pastors display their arrogance and their ignorance when they naively believe they can control the giving and the engagement of their church members. But no church can support and encourage hundreds of parachurch causes. What’s the solution? Jerry White, with fear and trepidation, took on this volatile subject in the 1980s. No one has done it better since. He traces the history of parachurches, gives thoughtful insight on the theological issues (you may change your own thinking) and offers solutions to this “uneasy marriage.” Has anything changed over the last 25 years?  My opinion: yes and no.  If anything, some pastors of larger churches have built higher walls. Parachurches, though, have increasingly found clever ways to go around the institutional church and go directly to the people.  And—in most cases—they do it better.  Example: you’ll get a prompt donor receipt, thank you letter and ministry update (eNews, etc.) from your parachurch giving.  What personal response do you get from your local church giving? Usually not much, except an annual record of giving from the church treasurer (usually with typos). White nets it out for us. “Struggles over structure, authority, and organizational rights can do nothing but repulse the onlooking world and diminish the effectiveness of the body of Christ.  I believe this proposed solution [chapter 6] can be fulfilled without a wave of watered-down ecumenicity or the forsaking of doctrinal distinctives and beliefs. But to do so, both the local church and the para-local church structures must publicly make specific efforts to encourage and help one another.”  Get the book—and help bless both the church and the parachurch. To order this week’s book from Amazon (used copies from resellers are still available), click on this title: The Church & the Parachurch: An Uneasy Marriage, by Jerry White. Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) What’s your biggest beef about local churches and parachurches? 2)  What is one specific thing we could do in the next 90 days to help a local church and a parachurch understand each other’s roles more effectively? The One Predictable Thing - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit One of the big ideas in the Crisis Bucket, Chapter 13, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to build an organization that is battle-ready. Peter Drucker said, “Fortunately or unfortunately, the one predictable thing in any organization is the crisis. That always comes. That’s when you do depend on the leader.” He said that the job of the leader is to build an organization that is “battle-ready, that has high morale, that knows how to behave, that trusts itself, and where people trust one another.” Is your team or organization ready for the next crisis? It’s coming. For more help, go to our website and download Worksheet #13.1: "Plan Now for Your Next Crisis." MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCAST: John Pearson's Buckets Podcast NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

Called to Serve

 

Issue No. 352 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Dec. 7, 2016) features two thin books on board governance—the perfect size to inspire your board and educate your staff. And for the record—this is NOT fake news! Plus, this reminder: click here to check out my 20 management buckets (core competencies). A Contrarian's Wisdom: Called to Serve I tilt towards books that lean towards the contrarian quadrant.Example: former USC President Steven Sample's book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership. Before buying a book, he prefers a five-minute conversation with someone who has already read it.   So when I had a five-minute conversation with consultant and author Dave Coleman about Max De Pree’s 91-page contrarian gem, it fed my board governance book-addicted soul. I love this book and the title: Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board.  Contrarian Max De Pree writes: • “There is a reason why this is a small book. We want it to be useful, but not a burden.” • “We believe good people need reminders and an occasional nudge, not a sermon.” • “A good board will measure the appropriate inputs as well as the outputs. Failure to measure what matters damages our future.” • “My friend Jim Beré…once told me that he would serve only on boards that had hard-working executive committees.” Commenting on board committees, De Pree notes the story of the English visitor who watched his first American football game and observed, “The game combines the two worst elements of American culture—violence and committee meetings.” Rather than penning a 300-page snoozer, De Pree crafts a coaching conversation (a series of letters) with a young leader and his first CEO/board relationship. It’s easy reading and the short epistles are extraordinary. Board service, writes De Pree, should be “demanding in the best sense of the word.” He lists three other characteristics of great boards:    • Lively    • Effective    • Fun to serve on CEOs will appreciate every page: “…the chief responsibility of boards is to be effective on behalf of the organization.” He adds, “Effective boards, in a nutshell:     • remember the long view,    • remember that the president and staff are human,    • and do the work of the board…”    • Plus this: “Most of the work of the board takes place through the implementation of an agenda.” More contrarian pokes-in-the-ribs: • “Many high-priced consultants will tell you to have the shortest possible mission statement. I don’t happen to think that is such a great idea.” • “I feel that the closer an organization comes to being defined as a movement, the closer it will come to fulfilling its potential.” • “I’m a great believer that management should be invited into the board’s world but that the board should not go into management’s area.” • “The chairperson should not permit anyone to read to the board.” Max De Pree served as board chair of Fuller Seminary—and get this—the seminary honored him with the establishment of the Max De Pree Center for Leadership in 1996. His day job was with Herman Miller, the office furniture company, where he served as president from 1980 to 1987 (and as a board member until 1995). His book, Leadership Is an Art, has sold more than 800,000 copies. (See also Leading Without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community.) Effective boards do very good planning, says De Pree. He lists three planning questions and then suggests who must be involved in the planning. “…some people need to be involved, to be blunt, because they are going to pay the bill.” He balances the CFO’s involvement in planning with this: “Planning by the board ought always to include the chief financial officer, a bringer of necessary reality to the process. Of course, the chief financial officer should never have a role that stymies the vision. Some realities have priority over numbers.” Oh, my—I could fill a year’s worth of eNewsletters with his contrarian coaching! • “Loyalty by itself is never sufficient. You always have to link loyalty and competence.” • “When an organization demands true leadership and the results justify the time and energy, good boards respond with gusto.” • “Another crime, it seems to me, is to give really good people poor leadership.” Trust me—this book will not disappoint. All 91 pages are packed with power. Perfect snippets for your “10 Minutes for Governance” segment at every board meeting. (You do that, right?) I’ll close with a story. Addressing the importance of creating time in the agenda for board reflection, he writes, “I remember the story, perhaps apocryphal, about President Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. Dulles was an inveterate traveler. He seemed to be on the go continuously. At one point during the discussion of a serious problem, President Eisenhower said to him,  ‘Don’t just do something, stand there.’  Sometimes it’s easier to be busy than to take the time to be reflective.” To order from Amazon, click on the title for Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board, by Max De Pree. Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Max De Pree writes, “…a board can be only as good as management will help it become.” So how effective is your organization’s CEO and senior team in helping the board be effective—without inappropriately doing the board’s work? 2) De Pree recommends that “Key proposals and issues like building programs or fund drives should always come to the board through its committees at least twice.” Think back for three years—has this been your practice?  “A Nonprofit Board Is Not a Family!” Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit The Board Bucket, Chapter 14, in Mastering the Management Buckets, reminds you that board service can be joyful—but it’s often hard, hard work. This year Eugene H. Fram (with Vicki Brown) added another tool to the governance toolbox with a very helpful (yet thin) book, Going for Impact: The Nonprofit Director’s Essential Guidebook.  Chapter 1, “Be Aware of Rose-Colored Glasses,” will get your attention! Fram writes, “When you hear any of these commonly voiced assertions, look beyond surface realities.” His favorite five:    1. “Our board is doing a great job!    2. We have no worries—we have (or just hired) a great CEO!    3. When push comes to shove, our board can raise big $$!    4. Our programs are superior to other similar nonprofits!    5. Our board of directors is like a family!” On “family,” he adds: “Remind yourself that families don't typically meet once a month, serve specific terms, or weigh whether to resign when faced with over-whelming work/personal pressures. A nonprofit board is not a family and shouldn't aspire to be one.”   Delegate your board reading and invite several board members to read Called to Serve and/or Going for Impact and give 5-minute reviews at your next meeting. Going for Impact (just 121 pages) is a helpful companion to Fram’s 2011 book, Policy vs. Paper Clips: How Using the Corporate Model Makes a Nonprofit Board More Efficient & Effective (3rd Edition). If your board has already read the above governance books, more options are listed on the Board Bucket webpage and more insight at the ECFA governance blog here.   Short Enrichment Videos for Your Board Meetings ECFA'S Toolbox topics include: Recruiting Board Members, Balancing Board Roles (The 3 Hats), and Conflicts of Interest. Order here. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations • PODCAST: John Pearson's Buckets Podcast 1 BOOK: 30 BLOGS! ECFA BLOG on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations” – Really! John wrote 30 blogs on Max De Pree's book, Called to Serve. Here's the index to the 31 blogs. Enjoy! NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.