Where the Light Divides

 

Issue No. 419 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Nov. 29, 2019) lists both good news and bad news from Fred Smith’s new book—another must-read. (I know. I know. I say that a lot.) And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my summary of ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance. Fred Smith on Flaws and Foibles—With a Twist! Good News! Fred Smith and a friend both left very generous tips for their waitress, a single-parent mom/student working two jobs. Bad News! I read Chapter 36 (the big tip chapter) in Fred’s book at my favorite breakfast restaurant—having just reflected on “the divine moment is the present moment.” I had no choice—my waiter got a generous tip! So…caution all readers! Fred Smith’s 50 short chapters in Where the Light Divides will sneak up on you and—if you have any measure of a spiritual pulse—you’ll get hammered. But it’s a good hammering. He’s provocative, but also patient with us. And just when you turn the page for a new chapter (“Ah! Yes! I know this biblical account…”), Fred will twist your pre-conceived and often ill-conceived understanding—and grab you by the spiritual throat.  Good News! Here are your add-water-and-stir discussion topics for your next 50 weekly staff meetings or small group gatherings. Each chapter is just three to four pages—and there are no wasted words. Bad News! If you don’t like disruption, self-assessment, or biblical gut checks—then don’t read or recommend this book. Yikes. Good News! While there are ample doses of biblical characters and their alarming flaws and foibles—Fred twists the commonly understood narrative with both wisdom and wit, as he does with the bronze snake (Numbers 21) in Chapter 37, “Snakes on a Plain.” Bad News! “What the people of Israel did with the serpent, we do the same in many ways. We make good things into icons and then into idols.” He adds, “Some have made an idol of the church for their own benefit.” Good News! I read over a dozen short chapters to my wife, Joanne. (I easily could have read every chapter out loud to her—they are that good.) Bad News! I read over a dozen short chapters to my wife, Joanne. (And—GULP!—she turned the convicting insights back to me. Yikes.) Good News! Fred probes and pokes about calling and careers and our tendencies to sometimes park and take “the wheels off the mobile home.” It’s good to read uncomfortable stuff—especially when we notice our priorities have subtly shifted towards comfort, not commitment. Bad News! Chapter 3’s narrative on Abram’s calling, “End of the Line,” notes this: “Haran is any place we park along the way. It’s not disobedience like Babel. It’s simply settling instead of going on.” (It reminded me of Henry Cloud’s wisdom in Necessary Endings.) Good News! Many of your favorite people headline each chapter: Leonard Cohen, Mary, Moses, Steve Jobs, Gideon, Joseph (as Doc Martin!), Malcolm Gladwell, C.S. Lewis, Naomi, and N.T. Wright. Bad News! Fred’s grandfather, a Baptist pastor, “had an uncomfortable habit of telling the whole truth about the departed at funerals.” (Chapter 24 is a must-read about Fred’s father’s love/hate affair with Jaguars, once he could afford owning one.) Good News! And speaking of Fred’s father, Fred Smith, Sr., I was reminded of Fred, Sr.’s axiom, “I learned to write to burn the fuzz off my thinking.” (See Breakfast With Fred.) Gratefully this wisdom didn’t skip a generation. Bad News! Many of us zip through life—and books—thinking “Yada, yada, yada.” But Fred challenges us to put the brakes on our I-already-know-that smug wisdom—and instead think and ponder—as we slowly read and discern. Where the Light Divides (read his prism metaphor in the intro) offers this challenge:  “It may give someone permission to think about their world with a twist, and, like me, wonder if there is more to the story than I see the first time—or the hundredth. If there is a theme, it is this angle from which I see things. It is my slant. Looking both ways. “I did not come to trust this slant early in life. It felt odd or out of place many times. It’s probably time to grow up and say, deliberately, what I am thinking and take responsibility for it.” Good News! Fresh thinking oozes off almost every page. Example: when you’re seemingly “stuck” (Chapter 42), you’ll be encouraged with wisdom from Dr. Paul Brand and Henri Nouwen.  Bad News! Why is Dr. Brand’s example so rare? When the doctor spoke “to a handful of leprosy patients in the hospital’s Protestant chapel . . . He spoke as an act of worship, as one who truly believed that God shows up when two or three are gathered in God’s name.”  Good News! This is the perfect gift book for family, friends, colleagues, board members, staff members, and neighbors (like my 25-year friend, Pastor Mac, next door). Bad News! You'll think of at least five friends who should read this—and it will cost you, but buy five books anyway. And one more reminder—don’t read Chapter 36 in a restaurant (or Chapter 39 in a hotel lobby)! To order from Amazon, click on the title for Where the Light Divides, by Fred Smith.   Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Fred Smith leaves no career unturned. To professional fundraisers, he urges: “Stop Ministering to Donors” (Chapter 41). He suggests that major donors just might have healthier lives than those who are after their money. Yikes! What can we learn from this chapter? 2) Smith, president emeritus of The Gathering, knows something about wealth—and he writes in Chapter 42, that the oft-trusted statement, “Leaving children wealth is like leaving them a case of psychological cancer”—is absolutely misguided. It only leads “to mistrusting our children.” Wow! What else do we believe that is misguided because we have not stretched our hearts and minds to hear contrarian wisdom? Drucker: You’ll Make 2 Big Mistakes Per Year! Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook  One of the big ideas in the Drucker Bucket, Chapter 4, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is what Peter Drucker (1909-2005), the father of modern management, preached: you must practice, practice, practice the art of management. Drucker wrote 39 books (published in 36 languages)—so he also preached lifelong learning. I was amazingly blessed in 1986, when Fred Smith and Bob Buford invited me—along with 30 other Christian leaders—to sit at the feet of Peter Drucker for four days in Estes Park, Colo. It was certainly one of my top-10 life experiences. Thanks to Fred, I became a lifelong learner—and here’s just one of the many Druckerisms I often mention: “People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.  People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.” For more help on being a lifelong learner, visit the Drucker Bucket here and (my suggestion) read at least one Drucker book per year.                   JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). The “No!” book, reviewed in the last issue, was designed by Pearpod Media. Call Jason to discern if a book in your future would move you closer to your mission. (He does say “yes” occasionally!)   ECFA TOOLS AND TEMPLATES Click here to order the new book, ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson. ECFA Tools and Templates Blog Click here to read John's new blog series on 22 downloadable tools and templates for effective board governance, including this post on a simple two-page checklist, "Tool #6: The Board's Financial Management Audit."

Stories of Sheer Pure Grace

 

Issue No. 392 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Oct. 6, 2018) asks—should you write a book? Read how Nancy Nelson answered that question. Powerful!  And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).   You Should Write a Book! “You should write a book!” As my clients, friends, and family know—I’ve repeated that mandate to colleagues hundreds of times over the years. It’s often in response to my hearing a truly original leadership thought, a management nugget, or a poignant story.  Another favorite line: “That would make a great chapter title in your book!” Several years ago Nancy Nelson shared a personal story during a brief conversation with Makoto Fujimura, the noted artist and author, who asked her, “Have you ever thought of writing a book?” Nancy admitted she had been praying about it, but was reluctant, so Fujimura inspired her with this: “…these stories are a sacred trust from God. They are not to be kept to yourself but have been given to you to be shared.” Thus Stories of Sheer Pure Grace was born—and trust me—heaven came down and emboldened Nancy to share 50 stories (50!) of remarkable insights into God at work in her life and the lives of others. This book is now on my Top-10 Book List for 2018. Nancy (a long-time friend and fellow presenter in a board governance training program), writes “This collection is the result of sitting at the keyboard each morning for two months and praying, ‘Holy Spirit, wordsmith through me these stories so they bring honor and glory to God.’” He did and they do. “…these Stories of Sheer Pure Grace are all framed by someone praying,” notes Nancy. Whew! Just a few chapters in, I confessed to being a spiritual midget. Nancy prays! Friends pray! Co-workers prayed! The board prayed! Her children prayed! Her grandchildren prayed! The results—stunning! Nancy headlines each story of sheer pure grace with a unique characteristic of God: The Revealing Wordsmith, The Master Planner, The “Wooer,” The Hijacker, The King of Hoopla, Prazable, The Territory Enlarger, The Strategic J.J., The Dog Catcher, The Culture Changer, and The Promise Keeper. (There are 39 more!) These powerful three- and four-page narratives of God’s grace will touch your soul—and your tear ducts—as you walk through this humble and gifted woman’s span of numerous professional careers, including nearly 40 years at Warm Beach Camp and Conference Center in Washington State. Nancy has the chops to be a CEO, but she opted for making other CEOs look good as the key leader in food service, HR, and fund development.  When reading books, I read with a pen (to slow me down) and make notes in the front of each book—noting memorable phrases and page numbers. I made 25 notes—but I could have made 200. Some of my favorites:    • Nancy’s favorite name for God: Abba. Read why.    • Quoting Dutch Sheets, “We humans are into microwaving and God is into marinating.”    • Hosting a charitable foundation staff for lunch at Warm Beach Camp, Nancy directed them to the downstairs restrooms—sadly in need of renovation and relocating upstairs. (The grant proposal followed!)    • How Mrs. Lemke (second grade teacher to Nancy’s son) responded to Thad’s appreciative comments four years later. “Don’t thank me, Thad, thank God. You don’t know how many times I sat in your chair before and after school and prayed for God to help you learn how to read.”     • When Warm Beach Camp agreed to serve children of incarcerated parents, Nancy noted, “…I found myself crowded into a tiny living room with a handful of plain, ordinary people who seemed to have dreams out of proportion to their means.” (Surprise: God answered their prayers.)    • After the camp staff read The Prayer of Jabez, Nancy realized: “God funds what HE wants done!” (Read Amos 5:22-24 in The Message. It begins, “I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes…” Yikes!) One More:    • To complete her master’s degree at UCLA in dietetic/nutrition, Nancy conducted a research project with expectant mothers in Tijuana, Mexico. Enjoy this must-read story on God as “The Stage Director,” and LOL when you read the response of the faculty committee when they learned Nancy’s research had been published in the Mexican Journal of Nutrition! They say you can’t tell a book by its cover—but I disagree. Makoto Fujimura’s striking work, Charis-Kairos (The Tears of Christ, 2017), graces Stories of Sheer Pure Grace. Amazing—on two levels: 1) That this artist would gift his work for a paperback cover (the original is Japanese Nihonga art—mineral pigments and gold on Belgium linen), and 2) That Nancy would have the chutzpah to ask for the gift. (Attention Fundraisers: This book is a short course in the art of asking.) Example: In Chapter 23, “The Rescuer,” Nancy notes that King Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20) called for a nationwide time of fasting and prayer. That inspired the Warm Beach team to truthfully alert donors to a financial crisis. The donor appeal came to be known as the “Jehoshaphat Letter” and Nancy notes, “It was the kind of crisis letter an organization can only send out once in its history.” On the back cover is a nickel-sized head shot of Eugene Peterson, along with his endorsement of this special, special book. Wow! The candid photo captures Peterson laughing his head off—and Nancy explains their connection and her deep appreciation for The Message. She quotes from Eugene Peterson’s introduction to 1st and 2nd Samuel in the Old Testament, “…as we submit our lives to what we read, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but to see our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.” Then Nancy adds, “And like 1st and 2nd Samuel, these Stories of Sheer Pure Grace are all framed by someone praying.” And here’s a gut check: Eugene Peterson notes in his introduction to 1st and 2nd Samuel, “We do violence to the biblical revelation when we ‘use’ it for what we can get out of it or what we think will provide color and spice to our otherwise bland lives. That results in a kind of ‘boutique spirituality’—God as decoration, God as enhancement. The Samuel narrative will not allow that.”  Oh, my. I wish I had space to chronicle another dozen bullet points of powerful answers to prayers—but that would require a holy spoiler alert! Order two books and inspire a friend or colleague to experience sheer pure grace.  To order from Amazon, click on the title for Stories of Sheer Pure Grace, by Nancy L. Nelson.                (back cover)   Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:  1) Nancy is so, so transparent. She credits the TrueFace team (Bruce McNicol, Bill Thrall, and John Lynch) and their book, The Cure, for helping her understand deep insights. Nancy writes, “…it’s love, usually applied by others, that is the solvent that helps us remove our masks so that our faces can become radiant.” Have you read The Cure? 2) So...should we write a book? Should you write a book? Is there a creative way (per Nancy Nelson’s approach) to tell our organization’s story—yet infuse the narrative with page-turning drama, vulnerable stories, powerful answers to prayer, and inspirational insights? If you’re in—we’ll meet at Starbucks tomorrow to map out the plan.     Don't Be Like Brian's Grandpa! Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) The Book Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets encourages leaders to be readers and to avoid “Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome” and to mentor your team members with niche books (like Stories of Sheer Pure Grace, by Nancy Nelson). Brian Ogne, one of the most enthusiastic camp and conference center directors I’ve ever met, once asked his grandfather if he’d like a special book for Christmas. His granddad replied, “Why would I need another book? I already have one!” Don’t be like Brian’s grandpa! Once you've written your organization's stories, you may need a sales plan. If so, click here for a free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson.               JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click 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 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. What are your favorite books on board governance?  Check out this new series from John Pearson, on the ECFA Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations blog--and read more about The Nonprofit Board Answer Book with 85 questions and answers. Click here.

18 Best Board Books

 

Issue No. 681 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (May 27, 2026) responds to a reader’s question about the best book on board governance. Plus, click here for back issues posted at the new location for John Pearson’s Buckets Blog, including my recent review of The Imperfect CEO. Also, check out the resources in the Board Bucket. PICK ONE of these “18 Best Board Books” and deputize your “Leaders Are Readers Champion”—who will coordinate your “10 Minutes for Governance” lifelong learning segment at every board meeting. (Graphic: ChatGPT)   18 Best Board Books!  From a reader: “Hey, Pearson! What’s the best book for our senior team and board members to read on board governance best practices?” Me: “Pick one from my list of 18 best board books!” In 2018 and 2019, I blogged a series on “18 Good Governance Stimulators” for ECFA’s Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations Blog. (The list is below and here’s the original list—with links to short reviews of each book.) Here’s what I wrote back then: Last week, a board chair emailed me that he’s following the “10 Minutes for Governance” practice suggested in Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom (see Lesson 39). Using a governance book that fits their board’s culture and season, each board meeting will feature a 10-minute segment to inspire board members in God-honoring governance. He’s already assigned board members to lead the next four segments. “Great Boards Delegate Their Reading” is the title of Lesson 38 in Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom. It’s true! So…select one book, appoint an avid reader as your “Leaders Are Readers Champion” and watch boardroom engagement soar. PICK ONE: [  ] Book #1: 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 - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #2: The Imperfect Board Member: Discovering the Seven Disciplines of Governance Excellence, by Jim Brown - Order from Amazon. Read my review. (Plus, see Brown's new book: The Imperfect CEO.) [  ] Book #3: Best Practices for Effective Boards, by E. LeBron Fairbanks, Dwight M. Gunter II, and James R. Cauchenour - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #4: Stewards of a Sacred Trust: CEO Selection, Transition and Development for Boards of Christ-centered Organizations, by David L. McKenna - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #5: Owning Up: The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs to Ask, by Ram Charan - Order from Amazon. Read my review. (See 14 blogs on 14 questions.) [  ] Book #6: Serving as a Board Member: Practical Guidance for Directors of Christian Ministries, by John Pellowe - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #7: The Nonprofit Board Answer Book: A Practical Guide for Board Members and Chief Executives (3rd Edition), published by BoardSource - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #8: The Practitioner's Guide to Governance as Leadership: Building High-Performing Nonprofit Boards, by Cathy A. Trower - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #9: Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board, by Max De Pree (Check out the 30-blog series here.) - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #10: Good Governance for Nonprofits: Developing Principles and Policies for an Effective Board, by Fredric L. Laughlin and Robert C. Andringa - Order from Amazon. Read my review.   [  ] Book #11: Boards That Make a Difference: A New Design for Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations, by John Carver - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #12: Call of the Chair: Leading the Board of the Christ-centered Ministry, by David L. McKenna - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #13: Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability, by Jeanne Bell, Jan Masaoka and Steve Zimmerman - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #14: Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t – Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 2.0, by Verne Harnish - Order from Amazon. Read my review (my 2018 book-of-the-year). [  ] Book #15: Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: 40 Insights for Better Board Meetings, (Second Edition), by Dan Busby and John Pearson - Order from Amazon. Read my review. (Bonus: 40 blogs on 40 lessons.) [  ] Book #16: The Council: A Biblical Perspective on Board Governance, by Gary G. Hoag, Wesley K. Willmer, and Gregory J. Henson - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #17: Lessons From the Church Boardroom: 40 Insights for Exceptional Governance, by Dan Busby and John Pearson - Order from Amazon. Read my review. (Bonus: 40 blogs on 40 lessons.) [  ] Book #18: Humility, by Andrew Murray - Order from Amazon. Read my review. Bonus Books! [  ] Book #19: The Board and the CEO: Seven Practices to Protect Your Organization's Most Important Relationship, by Peter Greer and David Weekley - Order from Amazon. Read my review. [  ] Book #20:  More Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: Effectiveness, Excellence, Elephants! by Dan Busby and John Pearson - Order from Amazon. Read my review. (Bonus: 40 blogs on 40 lessons.) [  ] Book #21: ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson - Order from Amazon. Read my review. Note: Here’s the index to 22 blogs on the 22 tools and templates. [  ] Book #22: A Board Prayer: Explore Seven God-Honoring Board Practices, by Dan Bolin. Read my review. [  ] Book #23: The Culturally Conscious Board: Setting the Boardroom Table for Impact, by Jennifer M. Jukanovich and Russell W. West. Read my review.   YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) Toss this C.S. Lewis zinger to your board—and discern if your ministry is on the right road. In The Council (Book #16), the authors quote Lewis’ insight from Mere Christianity:      “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”        QUESTION: How would we discern if we’re on the wrong road? 2) Kent Stroman, guest blogger for Lesson 38 in Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, notes this from the U.S. Navy Seals, “Under pressure you don't rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. That's why we train so hard.” Check out the “40 Blogs. 40 Wednesdays.” color commentaries on Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, by Dan Busby and John Pearson, including Lesson 38, “Great Boards Delegate Their Reading.” QUESTION: What book should our board read next?       SECOND READS: Fresh Solutions From Classic Books You have changed—and your problems have changed—since you read this the first time! Book #49 of 99: Eat That Frog! For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by featuring Book #49 of 99 in our series, “Second Reads.” The big idea: REREAD TO LEAD! Discover how your favorite books (and articles) still have more to teach you and the people you’re coaching and mentoring. Eat That Frog!  21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating  and Get More Done in Less Time  Brian Tracy (2007)    Stop whining about your overwhelming workload—and listen up! Author Brian Tracy has good news and bad news for you. “…the fact is that you are never going to get caught up. You will never get on top of your tasks. You will never get far enough ahead to be able to get to all those books, magazines, and leisure time activities that you dream of.”    • Read my review in Issue No. 241 (Jan. 19, 2012).    • Order book from Amazon (4th Edition, July 29, 2025).    • Management Bucket #9 of 20: The Team Bucket. The good news? Frogs! The author quotes Mark Twain’s wit and wisdom, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” So Tracy serves up two frog rules and 21 ways to stop procrastinating and accomplish more in less time.    • Frog Rule #1. “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.”    • Frog Rule #2. “If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.” BONUS! Read my blog, “Inspire Your Team to Read a Book-a-Month on Time Management!” at the Pails in Comparison Blog. (See the 13 time management books.)   CLICK HERE FOR BOOKS BY JOHN      Read why Gen. Stanley McChrystal writes, “Although I recognized its necessity, the mental transition from heroic leader to humble gardener was not a comfortable one.” See page 95 in the Team Bucket chapter of Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook. Lifelong Governance Learning in 10-Minute Chunks! Delegate your reading and inspire a board member—at every board meeting—to present a “10 Minutes for Governance” topic, such as a book review. See Tool #19 with tips on lifelong learning: five minutes of content and five minutes of Q&A. Read my blog post at ECFA’s “Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations” blog. 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 Read a "Book-a-Month" on Time Management! Read how my wife’s discovery of the book, How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day, prompted my reading (or re-reading) a “book-a-month” on time management. Click here for the list of 12 books.  See more reviews at the Pails in Comparison Blog. 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.

Eat That Frog!

 

Issue No. 241 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Jan. 19, 2012) highlights a best-selling book for your weekly Procrastinators Anonymous self-help group.  And in my bucket commentary this issue: why you should stop describing your workplace as a “family.” Plus, this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

Procrastination Smorgasbord Antidotes

Stop whining about your overwhelming workload—and listen up! Author Brian Tracy has good news and bad news for you. “…the fact is that you are never going to get caught up. You will never get on top of your tasks. You will never get far enough ahead to be able to get to all those books, magazines, and leisure time activities that you dream of.”

The good news? Frogs!

He quotes Mark Twain’s wit and wisdom, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

So Tracy serves up two frog rules and 21 ways to stop procrastinating and accomplish more in less time.

Frog Rule #1. “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.” 

Frog Rule #2. “If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.”

Time management books are a dime a dozen.  So what’s different about this one—and why should you read it?

Instead of tasting the frogs, taste these chapter titles:

   --Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything
   --Practice Creative Procrastination
   --Focus on Key Result Areas
   --Upgrade Your Key Skills

I recommend books that align with my 20 buckets (core competencies). They must also have alignment with the best leadership and management writers. The author references Peter Drucker, Stephen Covey and others whose works complement this must-read procrastination fix-it book.

I’ve mentioned before that my friend and mentor, George Duff, reads Drucker’s The Effective Executive (“know your time”) once a year.  Covey’s four quadrant diagram in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is mentally tattooed on my forehead. A look in the mirror reminds me: Am I focused on the correct quadrant? Several clients report that Getting Things Done, by David Allen, has dramatically changed their daily productivity.

So…what do you read every year, especially in January, to keep yourself and your team members focused on Priority #1? Try Tracy’s book. You can read it in about 90 minutes (117 pages)—and the 21 short chapters with two “Eat That Frog!” next steps are perfect for a weekly “Procrastinators Anonymous” self-help meeting. 

“Hi. My name is John and I’m a procrastinator. Please pass the donuts.”

If you’ve conquered procrastination, you will still find the 21 strategies valuable—especially as you coach others. “One strategy might be effective in one situation and another might apply to another task. All together, these 21 ideas represent a smorgasbord of personal effectiveness techniques that you can use at any time, in any order or sequence that makes sense to you at the moment.”

The one-liners are memorable—and poster-worthy:

   --“Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.”
   --“Just find out what other successful people do and do the same things until you get the same results. Learn from the experts.”
   --“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.”
   --“Before you begin scrambling up the ladder of success, make sure it is leaning against the right building.” (Stephen Covey)
   --“It only takes about 10 to 12 minutes for you to plan out your day, but this small investment of time will save you up to two hours (100 to 120 minutes) in wasted time and diffused effort throughout the day.”
   --“Resist the temptation to clear up small things first.”
   --“Time management is really life management, personal management. It is really taking control of the sequence of events.”

Idea: buy a dozen books to share with your team members. Delegate to a point person who will recruit people for five-minute chapter summaries at each of your next 21 staff meetings.

To order this book directly from Amazon, click on the title for Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, by Brian Tracy. (And thanks to Bob Neill for this excellent recommendation!)

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:

1) Somehow, we always get payroll out on time!  Brian Tracy’s Law of Forced Efficiency says, “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.” How effectively do you manage your time?

2) Myth-buster! The author writes, “Under the pressure of deadlines, often self-created through procrastination, people suffer greater stress, make more mistakes, and have to redo more tasks than under any other conditions.” Have you believed the myth that you’re more productive under deadline pressures?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

We Are NOT a Family! - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in my book, Mastering the Management Buckets, is that leadership and management is complicated—and you need to balance all three legs of the three-legged stool: Cause, Community and Corporation.

I noticed an organization’s website recently that described their staff and board as a “family.”  Oops! That works for a while (and wouldn’t it be wonderful?), until someone in the family (Community) gets fired (Corporation) because the team member, for example, was activity-driven versus results-driven (Cause). 

Effective leaders maintain a delicate balance of all three legs on the stool—not just the family (Community) leg—and to ignore the other two legs invites more complicated problems sooner or later.

Here's Your Lifelong-Learning Filing System! For a list of the 20 buckets (core competencies) grouped under the three legs of Cause, Community and Corporation, visit the website to download a 14-page PDF with the 20 buckets and 82 balls (action steps.)

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

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 Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom

 

Issue No. 421 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting  (Dec. 9, 2019) suggests a Christmas gift for your board members, CEO, and senior team members—and just in time—since Dan Busby and John Pearson, apparently, can’t stop writing books!  And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies). Two Things You Should Never Joke About! Looking for a Christmas gift for your organization’s board members, CEO, or senior team members? We’re a tad biased, but co-author Dan Busby and I recommend our latest book, More Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: Effectiveness, Excellence, Elephants! More Lessons features 40 short insights for enriching effectiveness and excellence in the boardroom—and practical wisdom for addressing those elephants in the boardroom that no one wants to talk about! While all 40 lessons, we believe, are worthy of your time and reflection, we do have some favorite chapters. My top-two picks would be the wisdom we passed along from Olan Hendrix: • Lesson 32: There Are Two Things You Should Never Joke About—#1: Prayer • Lesson 33: There Are Two Things You Should Never Joke About—#2: Fundraising On fundraising, Olan Hendrix recounts a time he accompanied a client on a donor call. “This Christian leader had a worthwhile cause and many friends, but wasn’t raising any money. I wanted to find out why. “After exchanging pleasantries with the donor, he began making jokes about the fact that he was there to ask for money. I had discovered his problem! Perhaps he was covering up his nervousness about asking for money, but flippancy is never a good substitute for sincerity.” Hendrix, who served as the first president of ECFA, concluded, “I want a part of my legacy to be that I helped God’s servants to see fundraising not as something to joke about or apologize for, but as a noble and vital part of ministry.” No Joke! You’ve likely been at a meal when someone announces, “the last one with your thumb up says grace.” Hendrix shares another lesson learned when a search committee rejected a candidate who “made light of prayer.” When I first heard Olan share this with a group of young leaders—it immediately changed my thinking and my behavior. Yikes. You’ll find that More Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom will challenge and change board member thinking about dozens of boardroom behaviors and elephants: • Lesson 1: Two Stories—The Board and the Bachelor Farmer and $1.5 Billion Worth of Burger Blessings • Lesson 4: Guarding Your CEO’s Soul • Lesson 5: Dashboards Are Not a Secret Sauce for Sound Governance • Lesson 8: What If Your CEO Is Hit by a Bus? You’ll appreciate the short lessons in 10 major categories, including: Nominees for the Board Member Hall of Fame, Boardroom Bloopers, Boardroom Time-Wasters, Trouble-Makers and Truth-Tellers, and Boardroom Worst Practices. Examples: • Lesson 9: Just Do One Thing a Month • Lesson 13: Caution! Understand the Governance Pendulum Principle • Lesson 16: Looking for Consensus But Finding Division • Lesson 17: Botched Executive Sessions Are Not Pretty • Lesson 18: Warning! Résumé-Builders Make Lousy Board Members In our first book in this series, Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: 40 Insights for Better Board Meetings, we encouraged boards to allocate a “10 Minutes for Governance” slot at every board meeting—to fan the flame of lifelong learning. Many boards are now doing that—and these short lessons are perfect for 10-minute segments (five minutes of content and five minutes of discussion): • Lesson 24: Should Most Standing Committees Stand Down? • Lesson 27: Address Absentee Board Member Syndrome • Lesson 35: Leverage the 80/20 Rule in the Boardroom • Lesson 39: Identify Your Key Assumptions In Lesson 39, we quote Donald Rumsfeld, “Meetings are a good place to discover whether an organization might be suffering from groupthink. If everyone in the room seems convinced of the brilliance of an idea, it may be a sign that the organization would benefit from more dissent and debate.” The Boardroom Lesson: “Identify your key assumptions so your inaccurate premises don’t lead to inaccurate conclusions and colossal flops! Invest time in assessing the validity of your assumptions—and asking for advice and counsel from others. Expect God to lead you to colleagues, acquaintances, and even experts who will give you feedback on your ministry’s important plans and your assumptions about those plans.” We encourage you to order copies for your board members, CEO, and senior team members and consider how to leverage one lesson at every board meeting and/or 10 or more lessons at your next board retreat. Watch for the “40 Blogs. 40 Wednesdays.” posts by 40 guest bloggers beginning on January 8, 2020. Visit the “More Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom Blog” here to subscribe. To order from Amazon, click on the title for More Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: Effectiveness, Excellence, Elephants! by Dan Busby and John Pearson.    Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) “Defending Risks Everywhere Is Not a Strategic Plan,” Lesson 28 in More Lessons, warns that you must discuss the “risk elephant in the boardroom.” How effectively do our board, CEO, and senior team encourage “elephant discussions?” Is dissent and debate a value—or is conformity a boardroom value? 2) Lesson 26 cautions that “Ministry boards have a natural gravitational pull towards issues that should be reserved for the staff.” Does our board understand the “Big Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand” metaphor for keeping discussion at high levels? Should we invest 10 minutes for governance on Lesson 26 at our next board meeting?  Invest “10 Minutes for Governance” at Every Board Meeting Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook  One of the big ideas in the Board Bucket, Chapter 14, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to continue “dating” board members after you’ve recruited them to the board. Inspire board members to be lifelong learners. After all, we do appreciate airline pilots and surgeons who are also lifelong learners! “Tool #19: Ten Minutes for Governance” in the new resource, ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board (also by Busby and Pearson), provides a template and ideas for reminding board members that “good governance does not happen by osmosis. It happens only with intentionality, training, and keeping critical governance topics (like focusing on policy, not operations) on everyone’s radar.” The book provides access to 22 Word documents you can customize for your board’s unique needs. (Follow the blog on the 22 tools here.) For more resources in the Board Bucket, and links to the four governance books by Dan Busby and John Pearson, click here.                    JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). And watch for John’s review of the new book by Doug Fields and Jason Pearson, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love.   40 SHORT LESSONS Click here to order the first book in the Lessons series, Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: 40 Insights for Better Board Meetings (2nd Edition),  by Dan Busby and John Pearson. 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. ECFA Tools and Templates Blog Click here to read John's new blog series on 22 downloadable tools and templates for effective board governance, including this post on a simple two-page checklist, "Tool #7: The Board's Annual Legal Audit." 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