The Gatekeepers - Part 2

 

Issue No. 362 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (June 21, 2017) spans leadership insights from 10 White House chiefs of staff. The competency continuum runs from Erskine Bowles’ “missionary zeal for management” to Bill Daley who got shingles from stress after serving President Barack Obama.   "You Can't Do a Thousand Things" When Erskine Bowles served as President Bill Clinton’s second chief of staff, he “carried around a card with the president’s top priorities written on it—and rebelled when Clinton tried to go off script. ‘One day the president came out of his office and he had another one of his great ideas,’ he recalls. ‘And believe me, they were unbelievably great ideas. And I turned to him and said, ‘Mr. President, you have got to go right back into that Oval Office, right now!  “‘You’ve got to look at this list of things that you and I agreed you wanted to get done. Not that I wanted to get done, but you wanted to get done. If you will stay focused on those three or four things, I can set up the organization and the structure and the focus to make ‘em real. But you can’t do a thousand things.’” That’s just one of hundreds (really!) leadership and management insights from The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by Chris Whipple. In this “Part 2” review of the book, I’ve included 32 “True or False” questions about the chiefs of staff that served Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. The answers are listed at the end of the quiz. Click here to read my “Part 1” review of The Gatekeepers, covering the 13 chiefs of staff from Nixon (1969-73) to George H.W. Bush (1989-1993). On Dec. 5, 2008, 12 of the 14 living former chiefs of staff to U.S. presidents gathered at the White House to give advice to Rahm Emanuel—soon to become the chief of staff to Barack Obama. They didn’t hold back, as Whipple eloquently describes in this robust page-turner book.  TRUE OR FALSE? MACK McLARTY, 1st Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton (1993-94) [   ] T/F: Mack McLarty “had attended kindergarten with Clinton in Hope, Arkansas.” Robert Reich, “who would become Clinton’s secretary of labor, sensed trouble. ‘The chief of staff cannot be a dear old friend. It’s too difficult to tell the president no.’” [   ] T/F: “Clinton spent an enormous amount of time picking his cabinet,” recalls John Podesta [4th chief]. “And no time picking his White House staff.” [   ] T/F: Wondering if Clinton would be as good at governing as he was at campaigning, one staff “would sum up the frustration of his first year and a half: ‘We went from War Room to Dorm Room.’” LEON PANETTA, 2nd Chief to President Bill Clinton (1994-97) [   ] T/F: “Panetta knew the White House was run informally, but he had no idea how informally.” There was no organizational chart! “That’s when I knew I was in deep trouble! I had to basically organize the White House using little boxes.” [   ] T/F: “When his deputy [see Bowles below] revamped Clinton’s schedule, Panetta took charge as gatekeeper.” [   ] T/F: “Leon had an iron fist in a velvet glove,” said Robert Reich. ERSKINE BOWLES, 3rd Chief to President Bill Clinton (1997-98) and Deputy Chief to Panetta (1994-97) [   ] T/F: “’You have to remember that there are no business people in the White House. So what we had to do was make it simple.’  Mild-mannered and businesslike, the North Carolina-born Bowles had a missionary zeal for management.” [   ] T/F: “His first three commandments were ‘organization, structure, and focus.’” [   ] T/F: “The biggest asset you have is your president’s time.” [   ] T/F: “To figure out how that asset was being used, Bowles conducted a ‘time and motion’ study of the president.” So…they color-coded the president’s daily schedules: foreign policy was red, economic policy was blue, etc. [   ] T/F: “The president wanted to focus on X, Y, and Z. By color-coding just what they had laid out, you could see that he wasn’t focusing on X, Y, and Z.  The color-coding helped show Clinton just how inefficient his schedule was.” JOHN PODESTA, 4th Chief to President Bill Clinton (1998-2001) [   ] T/F: Author Chris Whipple: “On the last night in office (‘exhausted to the point of foolishness,’ as one writer put it), the president signed 177 presidential pardons and commutations of sentence [including the pardon for Marc Rich, financier who had fled the country. Rich’s wife had contributed $450,000 to the Clinton Library and $100,000 to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign]. Clinton’s pardoning spree was a final paroxysm of bad judgment—and no one was around to talk him out of it. Podesta had gone home for the night.” ANDREW CARD, 1st Chief to President George W. Bush (2001-2006) [   ] T/F: “I broke the job down into the care and feeding of the president; policy formulation; and marketing and selling. You have to make sure the president is never hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, and that they’re well prepared to make decisions that they never thought they’d have to make.” [   ] T/F: “And the last category is marketing and selling. If the president makes a decision and nobody knows about it, did the president make a decision?” [   ] T/F: “If people tell you they want to leave the White House, they’re probably lying. Nobody really wants to leave the White House.” Card served longer than James Baker’s modern record—racking up five years and three months. JOSHUA BOLTEN, 2nd Chief to President George W. Bush (2006-09) [   ] T/F: Bolten perceived that the White House was in denial about the Iraq War. “And I took it as one of my roles as chief of staff to say, ‘I am the new guy here—but this looks very bad to me.’” [   ] T/F: Following Bush’s signing of the Oct. 3, 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, Bolten noted that “as shocking a decision as he had just made, he went around after that meeting and physically touched some of the key players, and I saw him giving them reassurance, saying, ‘We’re doing the right thing. We’ll get through this.’ Bush’s calm handling of the financial meltdown, with help from Bolten and his economic team, helped to avert catastrophe.” RAHM EMANUEL, 1st Chief to President Barack Obama (2009-10) [   ] T/F: Bowles giving counsel to Obama on picking his team: “Leave your Chicago friends at home.” He added, “If you look back over history, the people who got most presidents in trouble are their old pals from home.” [   ] T/F: Bowles (again): “What you want are great people around you who are strong where you are not.” [   ] T/F: Jonathan Alter: “Rahm really believed that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” [   ] T/F: Emanuel: “The president had three major initiatives: health care, energy, and financial regulation of Wall Street.” [   ] T/F: “Now that he had his marching orders, Emanuel was obsessed. ‘No distractions!’ he would shout, when someone brought up another subject.” [   ] T/F: “Every afternoon, at about five o’clock, Emanuel and the president would conduct ‘the Wrap’—a walk around the circular driveway on the South Lawn.” Their agenda: family, to-do lists, or projects. “A tough day meant multiple laps.” BILL DALEY, 2nd Chief to President Barack Obama (2011-12) [   ] T/F: “Washington had changed since the Clinton years, and Daley was not up to speed. ‘It honestly seemed like someone held a nationwide competition: ‘Enter a drawing to become White House chief of staff!’ says a former aide. ‘Every day he was amazed by something new—like “I didn’t know the federal government worked like this. I didn’t know that!” He was learning the whole thing as he went.’” [   ] T/F: Daley: “You know, someone once said: ‘In Chicago, if someone’s going to stab you, they’ll stab you in the stomach; in Washington, it’s always in the back.’” [   ] T/F: “After he left the White House, Obama’s Bill Daley came down with shingles—caused, he believes, by the stress.” [   ] T/F: Bowles: “The key to success as chief of staff is being empowered by the president. When people saw that Bill Daley wasn’t empowered, he was dead.” JACK LEW, 3rd Chief to President Barack Obama (2012-13) [   ] T/F: Formerly Obama’s “brainy” OMB director, he was the third budget director to become chief of staff. “Budgets are not about numbers. They’re about values.” DENIS McDONOUGH, 4th Chief to President Barack Obama (2013-17) [   ] T/F: “I have a rule. Every day, I have to touch ten members of Congress. Phone call. Letter. E-mail. Text. And if people can’t at the end of the day get to yes on something, and they need to blame it on us, so be it.” [   ] T/F: McDonough got parenting advice from Obama and “tried to make sure the president was home on time for dinner with Sasha and Malia.” Laughing, he noted, “I get calls if he’s not home at six thirty or so.” [   ] T/F: “The role of the chief of staff has to be the flashing red light when you anticipate that the president may be doing the wrong thing, or that he’s not being well served.” [   ] T/F: In 2013, “the president’s agenda was mired in partisan gridlock. On a Saturday afternoon in July, at an East Wing reception, the president spotted three former chiefs across the room: Duberstein, Bolten, and Podesta. Obama approached them, looking frustrated. ‘No matter what I do in this town, all I get are singles and bunts,’ he complained. ‘Singles and bunts’ would become a favorite metaphor.” REINCE PRIEBUS, 1st Chief to President Donald Trump (2017-present) Author Chris Willard wrote The Gatekeepers before Donald Trump took office. Will Reince Priebus be a long-term chief or, more typically, a short-term chief? Stay tuned to your favorite cable news station.  READ/LISTEN/VIEW: To order the book from Amazon, click on the title for The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by Chris Whipple. To listen to a free three-minute excerpt of the book (or purchase and download the full 11 ½-hour audiobook), visit Libro.fm.  Click on Amazon Video to download and view the four-hour documentary, The Presidents’ Gatekeepers, which aired on the Discovery Channel, or purchase the DVD for late night viewing at your next staff retreat. Leadership lessons abound!   TRUE OR FALSE ANSWERS: You guessed it. They are ALL true. (Yikes!)  Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) “A great president can get away with a mediocre chief; a mediocre president can’t possibly,” said Robert Reich. “If you have a good White House staff—not just the chief, but the complete staff—it can mean the difference between success and failure.” How would we evaluate our staff—on a scale from Mediocre (1) to Great (10)? 2) Upon Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s election, President Harry Truman noted, “Poor Ike! He’ll sit here and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that! And nothing will happen. It won’t be a bit like the Army.” How responsive is our staff to the directives of our CEO—and are the directives clear or fuzzy? "If You Have More Than 5 Goals, You Have None" Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit Erskine Bowles second chief of staff to President Bill Clinton was likely a fan of Peter Drucker who preached, “If you have more than five goals, you have none.”  Pop Quiz! Name the three to five “Annual S.M.A.R.T. Goals” (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-related) of your CEO. If they’re not in writing and followed up with monthly color-coded dashboard reports to the board, then they don’t really exist. For more resources on S.M.A.R.T. Goals, visit the Results Bucket 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 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 Gatekeepers

 

Issue No. 361 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (June 13, 2017) spans almost 50 years of management trials and errors as novices and maestros served as White House chiefs of staff for U.S. presidents. Believe me—there is nothing new under the sun. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for recent book reviews. Pop Quiz on Chief of Staff Competencies The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by Chris Whipple, is a frank, hot-off-the-press book that incidentally addresses, with stunning and humorous detail, a key dilemma for all CEOs—what’s better: a chief of staff or seven or more direct reports? On Dec. 5, 2008, 12 of the 14 living former chiefs of staff to U.S. presidents gathered at the White House to give advice to Rahm Emmanuel—soon to become the chief of staff to Barack Obama. They didn’t hold back, as Whipple eloquently describes in this robust page-turner book. I couldn’t put it down—and I’m quoting from it almost every day. (Ask my wife.) In Part 1 today (watch for Part 2 in my next eNews), I’ve listed 38 “True or False” questions from the book (or not?). The answers are listed at the end of the quiz. TRUE OR FALSE? H.R. (BOB) HALDEMAN, 1st Chief to President Richard Nixon (1969-73) [   ] T/F: “…Haldeman’s successors credit him with creating the model for the modern White House chief. There is no one-size-fits-all template; every president has different needs. But the ‘staff system’ conceived by Haldeman is a model of governance designed to prevent calamity. Time and again, presidencies that have failed to follow it have paid a heavy price.” [   ] T/F: “The executive branch of the U.S. is the largest corporation in the world. It has the most awesome responsibilities of any corporation in the world, the largest budget of any corporation in the world, and the largest number of employees. Yet the entire senior management structure and team have to be formed in a period of 75 days.” [   ] T/F: “The president’s time is his most valuable asset.”  [   ] T/F: Haldeman’s speech to Nixon’s incoming staff noted, “How we decide what is major and what is minor is the key to whether this is a good White House staff or a lousy one.” [   ] T/F: “When asked what books the president was currently reading, he would answer with another question, what books did I recommend the president read?” GEN. ALEXANDER HAIG, 2nd Chief to President Richard Nixon and Interim Chief to President Gerald Ford (1973-74) [   ] T/F: Haig was President Nixon’s last chief of staff and held that role when Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974. He served as Ford’s chief for just 44 days. “Haig, scheming and mercurial, acted as though he was the president, and Ford his understudy.” [   ] T/F: “From the start, Gerald Ford’s White House resembled a kids' soccer game, everyone running toward the ball. Ford had announced that he would govern with eight or nine principal advisers reporting directly to the president—a circle, with Ford at the center. He called it ‘the spokes of the wheel.’ But the result was chaos and dysfunction.” DONALD RUMSFELD, 1st Chief to President Gerald Ford (1974-75) [   ] T/F: Rumsfeld convinced Ford that the “spokes of the wheel” organizational chart didn’t work. Ford noted, “Without a strong decision-maker who could help me set my priorities, I’d be hounded to death by gnats and fleas. I wouldn’t have time to reflect on basic strategy or the fundamental direction of the presidency.” [   ] T/F: “Genial and outgoing, Gerald Ford saw the best in everybody; it was Rumsfeld’s job to suspect the worst.” [   ] T/F: Advice to Rahm Emmanuel: “Immediately pick your successor.” [   ] T/F: “Unflinching, even by Rumsfeld’s standards,” the chief sent a memo to the president, prior to Ford’s re-election campaign, that “must rank as one of the most scathing missives ever sent to a president.” The final section of the memo, “EFFECTIVENESS,” urged Ford to focus on just “three to five big things” that demonstrated his administration had “sensible answers for the questions Americans are asking…” DICK CHENEY, 2nd Chief to President Gerald Ford (1975-77) [   ] T/F: “Back in the 1970s, Cheney [who also served as Vice President to George W. Bush] had taken a job aptitude test. His ideal career match? An undertaker.” PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER (no chief 1977-79) [   ] T/F: This book “is the story of how Carter, the quintessential outsider thought he could act as his own chief, thereby crippling his presidency.” HAMILTON JORDAN, “de facto”1st Chief to President Jimmy Carter (1979-80)  [   ] T/F: “The ‘spokes of the wheel’ approach was not working.” So reluctantly, “two and a half years into his presidency, Carter agreed to give Ham Jordan the duties, and the title, of chief of staff. But it was obvious that Carter had gone all in on a bad bet: He had chosen the wrong person for the job.” [   ] T/F: Author Chris Whipple: “Overconfidence is an occupational hazard for incoming presidents—perhaps especially to Carter.” [   ] T/F: “No detail of government was too trivial for the president’s attention.” [   ] T/F: “We were at a reunion one day,” recalls Arnie Miller, a former White House aide, “and I said to Carter, ‘Thank you for empowering us to do things.’ And he said, ‘I didn’t do anything. I just read your memos.’ I said, ‘You didn’t just read them, you corrected the typos!’ That’s the level of detail he got into, which the chief of staff should have been doing.” The author adds, “Instead, the president personally signed off on everything from typos in memos to requests to play on the White House tennis court.” JACK WATSON, 2nd Chief to President Jimmy Carter (1980-81) [   ] T/F: The role of White House Chief of Staff is that of a “javelin catcher.” JAMES BAKER, 1st Chief to President Ronald Reagan (1981-85) [   ] T/F: “You can very well make the argument that White House chief of staff is the second-most-powerful job in government.” [   ] T/F: “The man considered the gold standard in the job, James Baker, found the experience so emotionally grueling and deeply painful that he went to Ronald Reagan and tried, unsuccessfully, to quit.” [   ] T/F: “As for Reagan, when it came to firing people, he was a marshmallow; the president believed in second, third, and often fourth chances.” DONALD REGAN, 2nd Chief to President Ronald Reagan (1985-87) [   ] T/F: “As chief of staff, Baker had been emphatic: ‘The most important word in the title is staff.’ Regan had other ideas. [   ] T/F: “When Baker heard about the incident, he knew Regan was finished. ‘He hung up on the first lady!’ Baker recalls, still incredulous, 30 years later. ‘That’s not just a firing offense. That may be a hanging offense!” HOWARD BAKER, 3rd Chief to President Ronald Reagan (1987-88) [   ] T/F: “Joy Baker, the wife of Howard Baker Jr., was at their summer home in Florida when the phone rang. ‘It was the president, and he said he’d like to speak to Howard,’ she recalled. ‘I told him that Howard was at the zoo with his grandchildren. And the president said, ‘Well, wait until he sees the zoo I have in mind.’” [   ] T/F: After a spirited one-on-one meeting with Nancy Reagan, Baker told a colleague: “Don’t let anyone tell you that there has never been a woman president of the United States!” KEN DUBERSTEIN, 4th Chief to President Ronald Reagan (1988-89) [   ] T/F: “One of the problems with Don Regan was that he shut the door to the Oval Office. My attitude was, instead of having Reagan read all the material, open the door and let him see people. He’s an actor. He likes to look at people. He learns that way—whether it was congressmen or White House staff or cabinet officers.” [   ] T/F: Two years after Reagan’s historic speech, “…the Berlin Wall would indeed come down, and the Soviet Union would crumble. ‘He knew what he wanted to accomplish and he went and accomplished it,’ says Duberstein. ‘As he would say in his farewell address, not bad, not bad at all for a B-movie actor.’” JOHN SUNUNU, 1st Chief to President George H.W. Bush (1989-91) [   ] T/F: “Sununu was better at managing the boss than the staff, and Bush welcomed his whip-cracking efficiency as a gatekeeper.” [   ] T/F: Per Brent Scowcroft: “Sununu wanted to be the prime minister.” [   ] T/F: “His penchant for playing prime minister led him to screen out policy proposals he didn’t like. Cabinet secretaries complained so bitterly that the president set up a post office box at his home in Kennebunkport—a back channel for messages that would otherwise get spiked by the chief.” [   ] T/F: Sununu: “This was a very involved president, a very agenda-driven president, a very goal-oriented president.” [   ] T/F: “I think being chief of staff was the easiest job I ever had. It’s the job where I had all the resources that were necessary in order to do the job. I was never in doubt as to what the president wanted. And so I was able to go home every night with virtually everything quite tidy.” [   ] T/F: “At a bill-signing ceremony on the White House lawn, he shouted at a Washington Post reporter: ‘You’re a liar. All your stories are lies. Everything you write is a lie!’” [  ] T/F: Some years later, Sununu admits, “…thinking that not talking to the press was a strong plus…I did that out of loyalty to the president. I didn’t realize that maintaining a better relationship with the press would have been of value to the president.” [  ] T/F: When calls for Sununu’s resignation became too loud to ignore, George H.W. Bush asked his son, George W. Bush (then 45-years-old), to inform Sununu. Why? Bush 41 was “allergic to confrontation.” SAM SKINNER, 2nd Chief of Staff to President George H.W. Bush (1991-92) [   ] T/F: “Skinner should have known he was in for a rough year: On his first day as chief of staff, George Bush threw up on the prime minister of Japan.” JAMES BAKER, 3rd Chief to President George H.W. Bush (1992-93) [   ] T/F: “The people who don’t succeed…are people who like the chief part of the job and not the staff part of the job.” Stay tuned for Part Two in the next issue—and see if the chiefs of staff to Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama fared any better! For example: [   ] T/F: Wondering if Clinton would be as good at governing as he was at campaigning, one staff “would sum up the frustration of his first year and a half: ‘We went from War Room to Dorm Room.’” READ/LISTEN/VIEW: To order the book from Amazon, click on the title for The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by Chris Whipple. To listen to a free three-minute excerpt of the book (or purchase and download the full 11 ½-hour audiobook), visit Libro.fm.  Click on Amazon Video to download and view the four-hour documentary, The Presidents’ Gatekeepers, which aired on the Discovery Channel, or purchase the DVD for late night viewing at your next staff retreat. Leadership lessons abound!   TRUE OR FALSE ANSWERS: You guessed it. They are ALL true. (Yikes!)  Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) “Chief of Staff James Baker logged 16-hour days and personally returned every phone call, no matter the hour.” Yet John Sununu noted: “…I was able to go home every night with virtually everything quite tidy.” What’s your comfort level with your current workload—and what would you change, if you could? 2) Jack Watson described the role of White House Chief of Staff as a “javelin catcher.” How would you describe your current position? What Social Style Is President Trump? Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit White House chiefs of staff are more effective when they understand the four social styles of their co-workers (Analyticals, Drivers, Amiables, and Expressives)—and especially the social style of the Oval Office occupant. Click here to read “Social Styles of U.S. Presidents” and view a short video on the four styles. Social styles are also described in the People Bucket (Chapter 7) in Mastering the Management Buckets.   For more resources on social styles, including two overview/worksheets, visit The People Bucket webpage.   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   ECFA BLOG on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations” – Add your thoughts and comments to John Pearson’s 2017 series on Max De Pree's book, Called to Serve. Read the 18th blog, "If No Progress—Skip the 'Progress Report!'”

The Treasure Principle

  

Issue No. 26 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Feb. 26, 2007) is about generous giving. Jesus said in Matthew 6:21 (NIV), “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Randy Alcorn says, “God owns everything. I’m His money manager.” The principles from Randy Alcorn's book are biblical, convicting, and enriching. Read why one pastor gave a copy of The Treasure Principle to every person in his church!   Unlocking the Secret of Joyful Giving More than 600,000 copies of The Treasure Principle have been sold—but have these remarkable biblical principles on stewardship really made a dent? Are you experiencing or hearing take-your-breath-away stories of generous giving? [2026 Update: more than 2 million copies sold in more than 25 languages.] Senior pastors, ministry leaders, development directors and every God-honoring Christian should understand and practice the simple, but radical principles of Randy Alcorn’s book, The Treasure Principle: Unlocking the Secret of Joyful Giving. Principle #2 reads, “My heart always goes where I put God’s money.” Many ministry leaders assume the right direct mail technique or heart-tugging project will move non-donors into the donor circle. But there’s a key spiritual principle at play that is often ignored: generous giving flows when a person truly understands how money affects his or her own heart.  “God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving,” writes Alcorn. Send this book to the top 10 percent of your current donors and test it with an appropriate segment of your non-donors. Then host a prayer meeting and pray that these people will hear from God—not just for your ministry’s financial benefit, but for their own spiritual development. Alcorn’s 31 discussion questions are probing and powerful. TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for The Treasure Principle: Unlocking the Secret of Joyful Giving.   YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) “Five minutes after I die, what will I wish I had given away while I still had the chance?” (See Question #31 in Randy Alcorn’s book.) 2) Are we helping our donors understand these biblical principles of generous giving? Do our fundraising programs feed unhealthy motivations in people? Do we raise givers to a more biblical lifestyle?       Common Excuses for Not Preaching on Giving: Insights from the Management Buckets Workshop Experience Generous Giving once posted a list of 24 “Common Excuses for Not Preaching on Giving.” Here’s one: Excuse: "I have a very generous congregation. Giving isn’t a problem in my church." Response: "A generous congregation is good news, indeed. But we should also pause to ask ourselves: By what standard do we call a church generous? Do they give sufficiently to meet the budget? Or, do they give more than other churches in town? A more important question is: What is the Bible’s standard for generosity?" Generous Giving hosts conferences for major donors. Their robust website also has excellent resources for pastors, ministry leaders and every Christian. In our Management Buckets Workshop Experience, we integrate The Donor Bucket with 19 other buckets to maximize your development efforts. It’s all part of the "20 Critical Competencies Required for Leading and Managing Today’s Nonprofit Organization."   CLICK HERE FOR BOOKS BY JOHN      Read Jerry White’s commentary on Lesson 28, “Slow Down and Wait on God: He does not bestow his gifts on the casual or hasty”—one of 40 guest blogs on the book, Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom (2nd Edition).  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. "There is nothing more beautiful than a dusty worker.” Count Zinzendorf and the Spirit of the Moravians highlights the 100-year prayer meeting that fueled the modern missionary movement. In this fascinating book about Count Zinzendorf, the author excerpts these lines from this spiritual giant’s poem: “Inactivity is not our attractiveness, Working and sweating refreshes and makes you rocklike. Our eyes are clear; our minds are in high spirits. There is nothing more beautiful than a dusty worker.” Read my review at the Pails in Comparison Blog.

The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible

 

Issue No. 384 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (May 8, 2018) recommends a chewable book for your summer reading list on the top 10 leadership conversations in the Bible. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).   Chewable Books Steve Moore, president of nexleader and former president and CEO of Missio Nexus, embarked on a two-year search for leadership gold from Genesis to Revelation. Good news! He struck gold and he’s sharing the loot with us! The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible: Practical Insights From Extensive Research on Over 1,000 Biblical Leaders is amazing. Moore’s book lands in my “chewable book” category. I’ll explain. When Don Parrott recommended Ruth Haley Barton’s book, Strengthening the Leadership of Your Soul, he warned me: “At the end of every chapter, you’ll need to take a long break to pray and reflect on the convicting insights.” He was right. I eventually meditated through the entire book. Whew. I named it my 2009 book-of-the-year. Chewable—but chew slowly. A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness, by Joseph A. Maciariello, is another chewable book. Perhaps you followed along every Monday in 2015, when a Drucker fan/guest writer shared his or her favorite snippet from the week's topic in my blog, Drucker Mondays [2026 note: watch for this blog to be reposted later this year]. My suggestion: don’t rush through The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible. Add it to your chewable list.  Disclosure: I fully read every book I review. I don’t scan, skip, or speed-read. I underline, highlight, and write notes (by page number) on the blank pages—as prep for my reviews. But not this book. I sensed I should slow down—not for the review, but for the chew. Last month, a fellow board member at Christian Community Credit Union, presented our regular lifelong learning segment in the board meeting, “10 Minutes for Governance.” (See Lesson 39 in Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom.) Tom Matlock’s assigned topic was board humility—and he gifted every board member with a copy of Andrew Murray’s 68-page gem, Humility. So when I joined Steve Moore’s trek for leadership gold, wondering what themes made his Top 10 list of leadership conversations in the Bible—I skipped to “Chapter 8: Humility.” Did I mention—chewable? • “Pride hides from the consciousness of leaders behind a mask of overconfidence. Overconfidence isn’t just annoying to followers. It is dangerous for leaders.” • Did you ever read this parenthetical note in Numbers 12:3? “(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth.)”  • “I find it easier to admit my lack of patience than my lack of humility.” There’s more from Moore: • He references Larry Osborne’s insights: “The journey to accidental Phariseeism begins with a blind spot, not a sin spot.” • “Busyness is one of the most common ways to reinforce leadership status, so survival and status become symbiotic, to everyone’s detriment. The leader thinks, I must be important or I wouldn’t be so busy.” •  And this insight from Dallas Willard: “God never gives anyone too much to do. We do that to ourselves or we allow others to do it to us.”  Is Your Board a “Zombie Board?” • “The survival instinct for leaders is automatic. The more our work thrives, the more we want to protect it. That’s why the first expression of groupthink in a nonprofit board is making organizational perpetuity, rather than mission effectiveness, its highest objective. These kinds of nonprofits, even faith-based ones, are like zombies. They can get scary ugly, but they are nearly impossible to revive and hard to kill.” Pages 130-143 on humility are so, so chewable. Warning! The chapter includes five very convicting questions.  But before you skip to the humility chapter—scan the context, “The Reason and the Research Behind This Book.” Moore identified 1,181 leaders in the Bible (including 108 in the New Testament) and mined for gold with six core questions, including: Who is the leader? Who are the followers? And What is the leadership situation? Each chapter includes a helpful diagram of these elements using Moore’s “Leadership Triangle.” Brilliant! Join me in chewing through this special book. I will weigh in from time to time later this year, with reflections and/or reviews of other chapters. For now, it’s on my summer vacation reading list. (And thanks to Steve Moore for sending me a review copy.) To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible: Practical Insights From Extensive Research on Over 1,000 Biblical Leaders, by Steve Moore. P.S. Stock up on summer reading—and delegate your reading—with Eugene Habecker’s hot-off-the-press book (my next review), The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead.   Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:  1) Steve Moore quotes Elizabeth Elliott: “The best way to find out whether you have a servant’s heart is to see what your reaction is when somebody treats you like one.” Why is it so hard to have a servant’s heart? 2) Moore says that leaders who rarely say, “I was wrong,” or “I don’t know,” should make us nervous. Instead of accepting responsibility for mistakes, “…there is always an explanation, a rationalization, or outright blame. It is the adult version of ‘the dog ate my homework,’ but the stakes are higher.” Discuss!           22 Tools and Templates [New in 2019] ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson. Published by ECFAPress, this book with 22 tools and templates has been field-tested by hundreds of CEOs and nonprofit board members. These "add-water-and-stir" practical tools will enhance your board's productivity, mission impact, and joy. Each tool has been tested and then tweaked across North America in boardrooms and meeting rooms. Boards especially appreciate the "CEO's 5/15 Monthly Report" template. CEOs all give a thumbs-up to the "Board Member Annual Affirmation Statement."  The workbook includes access to the downloadable templates including: "Ten Minutes for Governance," the "Board Retreat Trend-Spotting Exercise," the "Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Placemat" and more. When you use all 22 of these time-saving solutions, you'll wonder why you didn't discover them sooner. Plus! Check out the 22 blogs on each of the 22 tools. For more resources, visit the Board Bucket webpage, one of 20 buckets in Mastering the Management Buckets. 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 "Wise People Know When to Quit" is the seventh in a series of blogs on succession planning, from John Pearson, on the ECFA Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations blog. Read it here.

The Prodigal God

  

Issue No. 139 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (May 12, 2009) might just change your thinking about Luke 15. For me, it was “Wow!” and “Yikes!” I review a book every week here. I know you don’t read every book, but read this one. And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.  Tim Keller notes G.K. Chesterton's response to the question, "What's wrong with the world?" Labels That Live On First, let’s cut to the chase: The Prodigal God is a powerful book and maybe one of the most important books I have read in years. After my sister-in-law, Marilyn, sent it to me, I also began hearing about it from others. The book has launched a holy buzz. The lasting power of a book, for me, hinges on whether I can remember the key concepts and labels years later—and if they radically change my thinking.  J. Grant Howard’s 1983 book, Balancing Life’s Demands, says that sequential priorities (God first, family second, church third, work fourth) don’t make sense and, in fact, is not a biblical way of thinking about priorities. It changed my thinking. “God owns everything. I’m His money manager,” is Randy Alcorn’s first concept in The Treasure Principle. That impacts my life every day.  And the three inter-connecting circles in Jim Collin’s hedgehog concept (passion, competence, economic engine), in Good to Great, enable me to help leaders identify the soft spots in their organizations. Likewise Tim Keller’s profound book.  His labels, the younger brother and the elder brother, I predict, will be part of our spiritual formation lexicon for years to come.  How so? Keller reminds us that Jesus didn’t label the parable in Luke 15, “The Prodigal Son.” Jesus simply said, “There was a man who had two sons.”  And so Keller uses each brother’s story to deftly describe the church today. “There are two ways to be your own Savior and Lord. One is by breaking all the moral laws and setting your own course, and one is by keeping all the moral laws and being very, very good,” writes Keller of the younger brother and the elder brother, respectively. The younger brothers have left the church, often because it is the elder brothers who populate the church.  “Though the older son stayed at home, he was actually more distant and alienated from the father than his brother, because he was blind to his true condition.” Keller adds, “Because the elder brother is more blind to what is going on, being an elder-brother Pharisee is a more spiritually desperate condition. ‘How dare you say that?’ is how religious people respond if you suggest their relationship with God isn’t right. ‘I’m there every time the church doors are open.’ Jesus says, in effect, ‘That doesn’t matter.’” Why the book title? The dictionary definition of “prodigal” is not “wayward,” but “recklessly spendthrift.” (I also found “recklessly extravagant.”) And so Keller writes, “God’s reckless grace is our great hope, a life-changing experience, and the subject of this book.”    TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith, by Timothy Keller.    YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) Keller writes, “When a newspaper posed the question, ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response, ‘Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.’”  What do you think he meant—and how might it relate to this week’s book? 2) Peter Drucker says there are five questions every organization must ask.  One is, “Who is our customer?” Does your church (or ministry) really understand these two customers: younger brothers and elder brothers?       The Drucker Deli - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit One of the big ideas in the Drucker Bucket, Chapter 4, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to invite your team to the “Drucker Deli” for lunch once a month. Order deli sandwiches (or bring your own) and meet at a nearby scenic spot. (During my CMA years in San Clemente, Calif., our team sometimes enjoyed carry-out on the T Street bluff, watching dozens of surfers get axed in the Pacific.) The admission price for the “Drucker Deli” is cheap. Bring your underlined copy of a Peter Drucker book and share your favorite insight from the last 30 days of readings. Of course, it goes without saying that once a month you should also host a Bucket Breakfast or Bucket Brunch or Bucket Buffet or…(okay, I’ll stop) and have your team members share their favorite insights from Mastering the Management Buckets. For more resources, a worksheet of Peter Drucker quotations and a list of his books, visit the Drucker Bucket page at my Management Buckets website. CLICK HERE FOR BOOKS BY JOHN      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