Principles of Effective Leadership - Lesson 20

Dr. John Johnson
Principles of Effective Leadership
PC506-20
Leadership and Change
Lesson Transcript

Dr. John Johnson [00:00:02] Start us off here. This What is this basically about? It's about a guy who does what he brings change, doesn't he? Brings huge change. So he comes into an organization that could be described. Give me some words to describe this organization. Outdated.

Speaker 2 [00:00:20] Stagnant.

Dr. John Johnson [00:00:21] Stagnant.

Speaker 3 [00:00:22] Not user friendly.

Dr. John Johnson [00:00:24] Not user friendly. Writing Great words. You are. Marcia, you said ancient. Ancient? Yeah. Okay. Out of step.

Speaker 2 [00:00:36] And it's like after that.

Dr. John Johnson [00:00:39] Arthritic? Yeah. What's that?

Speaker 2 [00:00:42] You forget them?

Dr. John Johnson [00:00:44] Yeah. Yeah. You get. Yeah, you get the idea. And so this guy comes in, and generally, when you face that kind of institution, organization, what are you going to face if you try to bring change? Is a resistance, obviously. Right. People are going to resist. So Clifton Walton comes in. This is a big pension, right? Huge pension. Biggest pension of all. They sort of had a monopoly. Once you're in the system, well, they've got your hook because if you leave, you can't leave the system or you lose it all. So you've got to stay in the system. So Clifton Walton comes in here, as he puts it on page one, 54 teachers was ripe for revolution and it was ready for an executive to make it happen. The challenger says when we're 55 in the middle was to transform a major institution from top to bottom and to bring this great company into the 20th century. The institution had frozen in place. I'd like that statement. Now, why are we talking about this here? Why should we pay attention to this chapter? Because most of you will end up working in teachers. It's the almost inevitability of organizations. Young leaders with idealism and youth and passion and energy are often going to go out and face these kind of things, and it will be much more appealing to say, you know, I'm not going there. I'm going to start something new, fresh, make up our own rules as we go along, maybe, and maybe that's where God will lead you. And that's not a bad way to go. And it may be that you're going to have the temptation to go one way or the other. You know, there's something about the security of the existing institution as opposed to starting something completely from scratch. There's a lot more risk in a way. But you may also end up in an existing institution because that's just where you feel called. It's where God maybe has opened the door. When I came out of seminary, had I had the invitation of about 20, 25 people, great, great people that I had actually shepherded before I went to Dallas. Coming back to Portland, finishing my doctoral work that said, okay, let's start this new work in Portland. And they would have been a great foundation to start with. And it was very tempting. But then there was this old institutional church, the one I've talked about, that also extended an invitation. That was a tough decision. Right. You can imagine that was very two very different possibilities. Somehow, I just have felt over the years that God called me to these some of these dying places to breathe new life just. Kind of what I sense God's called me to do. God may call you to be part of starting new works. Statistically, most of us will probably go into existing works, and some of them may not look to this extreme. This is a pretty extreme case. But a lot of the principles will be the same. Long way to say this would be a chapter that would be good for you to read from time to time, especially if you find yourself in this to say, What is it Wharton did? So let's try to unpack that for a moment. What made him so successful? What were some of the keys that stand out and just feel free to take us to a page and tell us we did it, that this was this. As he says at the top of 155 out of step. Self-perpetuating hierarchy. Unresponsive, entrenched. But could it be changed? So what is Clifton Walton? Let's start peeling it away. What does he do? What can we learn from him?

Speaker 2 [00:05:00] I really like page 163.

Dr. John Johnson [00:05:02] 163. Okay.

Speaker 2 [00:05:06] Drinking them particular on that page? Yeah. At the end, in the middle. You listen to what the. Yeah. A couple lines below that. He formed a working group of people who are a diverse team down at the bottom. Yeah, different chairmen. And towards the bottom third of the page, he set forth a stiff timetable. So he took the lead right away and showed them. I'm here to make a change.

Dr. John Johnson [00:05:33] Yeah. And then you notice at the bottom to his favorite expression it means was let's get closure on this thing. Underline that. And remember, we talked about decision making last time that until you get to decision making, you really haven't done anything. We can have all the strategies and everything else. But he was a no nonsense guy, wasn't he? And yet, while he was this sort of clear general, if you will, he was also this relational guy, walked the halls, people saw him as approachable. And remember, we said at the beginning, what defines leadership? It's not necessarily personalities or money. It's not a lot of things. We think the underlying word is tenacity. What all leaders have in common is tenacity. Was he tenacious? Yeah, he was a bulldog, was a let's get closure. Says he meant business. Great. Yeah, you're right. It's a great page. What else do we see him doing?

Speaker 2 [00:06:39] The next page. I wrote the top end value of the customer.

Dr. John Johnson [00:06:44] Okay.

Speaker 2 [00:06:45] So one point he wanted to distribute in his strategic plan, and I guess some of the board members felt that was not such a cool thing to share his ideas with. And he felt that it would validate the sincerity and the worthiness of his changes. And he argued for customer response. So at least we'll find out what they're going to say. And maybe some of the suggestions they will make will alter what we're already going to recommend. Yeah. Value input for that. It might change the vision of what I wrote.

Dr. John Johnson [00:07:27] Right. Good. What else in this section?

Speaker 2 [00:07:32] The next page. That top paragraph I read in the margins 12 7300 because it made me think of Christ. He had 12 disciples. He spoke to the sea and 17 spoke out. And then some weren't and constituted three new groups to guide the enterprise, an executive cabinet of the top seven officials. That met weekly executive council of over seven year offers monthly and a group of 300 managers that I met before.

Dr. John Johnson [00:08:03] Yeah. So what do you see about the way he's structuring? What? And this is a very important section. What things is he teaching us about? Structure?

Speaker 2 [00:08:14] Accountability.

Dr. John Johnson [00:08:15] Well, let's go Piece by piece says he restructured the organization in April. He created two new revolving positions for young high fliers. What is that telling us?

Speaker 2 [00:08:32] Sounds like mentorship.

Dr. John Johnson [00:08:34] Mentorship, valuing youth and energy, not just saying, well, you know, the only people that really have a place at the table are people who have all kinds of experience and age. He wanted to get youth in there. He wanted to get their ideas. The appointments were intended to provide the occupants with the broadening and development experience. Yeah, but the eight month rotation schedule also seeded people throughout the firm. Who knew what really happened inside the executive office and even the boardroom. Isn't that interesting? He intentionally brought these young guys in and had him stay for a short time, then moved to next set in and a next set in so they would seed. It says here the organization. What's that about? What was he accomplishing?

Speaker 3 [00:09:31] And developing the leaders around him.

Dr. John Johnson [00:09:33] So he's doing two things. He's developing his future leaders. But these guys are going to connect with the next generation out there who might have their own maybe cynicism or negative attitudes and go, Oh, no, let me tell you what's really happening on the inside. So he's also building a certain momentum, right, of trust. And he's really smart in what he's doing.

Speaker 2 [00:10:02] And he wants people.

Dr. John Johnson [00:10:05] Yeah, but he's he's bringing people to the table. He's not this guy just giving orders. So as Marcia puts out, he constituted three new groups to guide the Enterprise, an executive cabinet of the top dozen officers, which would meet weekly executive council of the most senior 70 officers who would gather monthly, and an officer group of the top most 300 managers who would convene quarterly. All would serve as notices two way conduits for troubleshooting, intelligence gathering and strategic thinking. So he really valued this whole idea of making sure we got the thinkers together. He listened. And you will need to do the same thing, too. Like Monday night, I gathered, and I've been doing this now for a few months. I gathered some of the top people in our church who are not elders. They don't have any leadership position, but they're thinkers, they're active, they're entrepreneurial type. And I just gathered together and say, What can we do better? And they generate ideas like crazy. And what's great is they have no authority. And that's kind of liberating. But I said to them, ideas are cheap, but I don't want you to share an idea unless you see a pathway, a real plan, that this could maybe work. And after the meeting was over, we came up with three great ideas that has led already to me doing a certain reorganization in my staff. I'm thinking about doing that might actually deal with the problem we've had for years. That's exciting, right? But that comes out of bringing people together. Remember, it's back to teamwork again. If we let the organization be defined around us, it will only take it as far as we go. So he's doing this here. So keep going. What else do you see?

Speaker 2 [00:12:16] By in the. He was the seeds weren't they for this one of the purposes.

Dr. John Johnson [00:12:22] Yeah. I think a lot of it is to establish trust. Probably there was a lot of mistrust between people over here and top over here. So he's trying to establish, I think, a lot of trust.

Speaker 2 [00:12:36] Is that different than mine?

Dr. John Johnson [00:12:39] Well, a buy in eventually will come, but they won't be buy and without trust. Okay, Keep going. What else do you see him doing?

Speaker 2 [00:12:49] 156.

Speaker 3 [00:12:50] Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 [00:12:51] Bottom of that is that first paragraph where he knew his own income tax would depend on the list he would like to. General, I want you all one. Well, so I'm going.

Dr. John Johnson [00:13:06] Yeah. Good observation.

Speaker 2 [00:13:10] Most of the company would simply change most of the payroll to be based on compensation or different levels, different tiers of employees keeping it on the balance sheet.

Dr. John Johnson [00:13:23] Yeah.

Speaker 2 [00:13:24] Based on the results. Compensation was not contingent on.

Dr. John Johnson [00:13:29] He's changing the whole philosophical approach here. Bottom of 166. Above all, Wharton unbundled and modernized what had long been sacrosanct teacher's rigidly constrained options. Over the next several years, he created a diverse menu of investment choices from which an individual could choose. Now, that was just huge. He brought freedom and he was letting people be treated like adults, wasn't he? Instead of We know how to manage things, you just shut up and trust us. He said, You know, that's old school thinking. And actually, if we let people make choices, they might make far better choices than we can make. You know, he transformed and restructured this into an amazing organization. He brought it into the 21st century. 170 top Clifton Ward was not from the George Payton School of Action. He knew he could achieve most when dictating least. He could achieve most when dictating least. He believed that listening could be as important as deciding that a decision without consultation would be worse than no decision at all. That statement that we've kind of made with team building, but 170 towards the about two thirds of the way down. The biggest mistake you can make, he warns, is to assume that all wisdom is concentrated at the apex. Biggest mistake is to assume that all wisdom is concentrated at the apex. Top of 171. After listening for three months, Warden presented his conclusions to the trustees. Many of the institutions and policies policy holders Warden reported, saw teachers as, quote, arrogant, paternalistic, defensive, isolated out of step resistant to change. Bureaucratic without vision, lacked innovativeness, has poor communications and poor service. Teachers had allowed change to pass it by. As a result, its products were out of date and its market was slipping. Now you say, how in the world did that happen? First of all, it's just our natural tendency. Institutions are like people. This is what people look like as they get older, right? They become sclerotic. They become rigid. They fear change. So institutions are reflections of people. They're just a bunch of people instead of one person. So what I'm getting at is when you lead an organization, realize it will take the natural course that people do. If you let it, if you let it go, it's just natural gravitational pull. That's where it's going to go, right? So you have to you just have to. Resist that. Keep working against it. What does that mean? Listening all the time. Learning all the time. Bringing the next fresh generation into the at the table. Watching what's around you. Treating people like adults. All of these things.

Speaker 2 [00:17:15] Have happened once in a while. Yeah, something set in the past. And that was wrong.

Dr. John Johnson [00:17:20] Yeah.

Speaker 2 [00:17:21] You didn't just blast it. You knew that it was not good, but. Yeah.

Dr. John Johnson [00:17:27] Yeah. Criticism of the past is essential to foresee a better future, but honoring the past can be equally important for moving into the future. Those who made the past are now expected to create the future. And without their talents and energies, any blueprint will remain just that. So yeah, it's like a young guy who comes into an older organization or an older church and just marginalizes the people who've been there. It's going to be a new day. We're moving you guys out of the way. It's a stupid mistake, but at the same time, letting them set the agenda and protect the status quo will kill it, too.

Speaker 3 [00:18:13] Yeah. In this case, one can be using many tactics like getting involved in listening to people and a build to them. What about the tactics? But he only got the strategy. Yeah. I mean, the trend of the action of the revolution. You know, because his background is the economy. The main thing of this man can buy businesses because he is development economist and he has a background to see what is important to do in this case generally in economy. He knew that, but he was a tactician to move around the people to manipulate. The main thing for me, the way he got the idea first he and you have a background in the economy very heavily and management, right?

Dr. John Johnson [00:19:12] Yeah, but he did it in a way that made the people feel like they did it with him. Yeah. Yeah. You see 172 Also second full paragraph. If the skeptics were to accept and the doubters to believe consultation would be only half to sell, the other half would be Wharton himself, unless he were visibly, actively, aggressively behind the restructuring. The endemic cynicism on the outside and entrenched resistance on the inside were sure to persist. Now, that's what you will face out there. You will face those two things cynicism and entrenched resistance. So it's going to be a lot of effort. But he worked with teamwork. I like 174. Maybe we'll close with this here. The first full paragraph, even without objective conditions from which to take subjective satisfaction word and look for the affirmative and to shoot the negative. I've always tried to maintain a sense of humor because if you don't, you can become too torn and depressed by the stress. If you're not enjoying it, then get out. What a wonderful balance, huh? I read this and I go, Now there's a leader I'd like to follow. There's a leader that could come into an entrenched church and turn it around. So I want you to just read this chapter from time to time. Its great, great, great principles. What I want to do is go to change, which seems to be a natural sequence. That's what we're talking about. Leadership and change. What we've in a sense been saying all along is that leaders, by their very nature, if you're truly leader, you will bring change. It's just the nature of the beast. Where there's leaders, there's change. Moses brings white brings change, and Nehemiah brings change. And Esther brings change and Jeremiah brings change. And Jesus brought change. Leadership inevitably leads to change. But I've learned over time that it's important that we understand the laws of change, because change is something a lot of people don't like. It's important that we think clearly about these laws. So I'm going to give you just I'm going to go through these fairly quickly here and then we'll talk about it for a few moments. Some of these we already know if you're going to bring change like Wharton coming in, you've got to bring a vision and a new strategy. Vision is what provides the ethos for change. Wharton had to come in and see something out there in the future before he could ever start. Which leads to the second. And that is, you know, a big part of change is questioning the status quo. It's part of the process not to protect, but to question. So why why are we doing this? If somebody says something like this to you and they will, they'll say something like, well, hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's status quo thinking, by the way, Right? That ain't broke. Don't fix it. We need to ask questions of that. Okay. So what you're saying is, because it's not broke, don't tinker with the don't touch anything. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So let me ask you, how does that prepare for the day when it will break? Because it will. And those things operate forever. Could it be? If we abide by your slogan, we're consigning ourself to the present and not preparing us for the future. So you will hear statements like this, but you're going to have to challenge it. You're going to have to question the status quo. That's really important. It's one of the, as I put here, five fundamental practices of leaders, because the nature of leadership is to be restless, looking to experiment. You know, if you don't feel that way anymore, if you're not constantly saying so, what is it we can do different? What is it we can do better? If you get to a point where you go, I really like things as they are. In fact, I get a little bit defensive when people want to bring change. Then I'd say You need to get out of there before you run the organization. So part of it is making a list of every practice that fits the description. That's the way we've always done it and question these things. You know, I was talking to one of our guys at our church who works for Intel in this tough economic time. I would ask him what makes Intel a notch above most corporations. One day we were having lunch and this is what he said, he says. Really smart organization sees the down times to strategically think forward while a lot of other organizations kind of circle the wagons, retrench, help keep our heads down and just get through the storm. Really successful ones say, okay, so what is it we can do in this that we can't do when times are really great? And this is what leaders do. This is part of the question, the status quo. So, okay, this is a tough time. So let's seize that. Getting people out of the ruts, keeping people from just becoming stagnant. Here's a third one. Underscore the need, create the urgency, as Cotter puts it. By far, the biggest mistake people make when trying to change organizations is to plunge ahead without establishing a high sense of urgency. So part of it is you're going to come in, people are going to resist. You're young, you're ready to go. You want to change the world. They're not interested. They're tired. They're going to resist you unless you can begin to help them feel the same passion and urgency. How are you going to do that? That's tough. That doesn't have an easy answer. But maybe, like, let's say the church, for example, when I came to my first church, whom I just hit this wall, it was hard as rock. I was raised, you know, 33, ready to take everything on. And they just kind of wanted to coast their way into heaven. I had to make them feel the same sense of urgency. One way to do that, for example, in a church is to say, Let me ask you something. Is this about creating an environment that you like or create an environment for the next generation? I just want to know, do you want to take the church down with you or do you want this one day to see a place where your sons and your grandsons and your great grandsons say, I want to be part of this? That's part of underscoring need, right? Creating a sense of urgency. If you can tap into that, maybe people start to say, you know what? It's okay to sacrifice my comfort over here if it'll reach my son over here. What we have to do is sort of become voices of discomfort. Leaders are like great blues players. They create this certain dissonance, you know, great jazz, great blues. If you listen to it sometimes. Sometimes I listen to this radio station when I go to bed. That creates this dissonance, kind of a disruptive in a way. And that's okay if it gets you to move to some action. Help people see that change is not the enemy. The status quo is right. I mean, it's what you got to say. Sometimes you might say to people, Look, I know that this is hard for you and I make you uncomfortable, but you ought to be more uncomfortable with the status quo that should bring discomfort. If I came here and said, let's keep everything the same, that's where you should be really disturbed. Because you're saying what? Good grief. It keeps it keeps going this direction. We're going to die. And then begin to define the benefits. And if we do this, just think about what could happen and then involve people through change. That's commandment number four. And we just saw a classic illustration with Wharton. His whole mission was to involve people and get them into it. Building coalitions builds trust, common goals, communication. This is what we want to do giving people time, allowing it all to filter through the system. Then, of course, number five, anticipate resistance. And I list some things that lead to resistance. One of them is fear and fears of big thing. There's the fear of losing control. There's the fear of loss. And there will always be resistance because especially as people I've discovered get older, they start hanging on to securities. Because the world is changing all around them. You know, my dad this week and mom is they moved and they moved out of their home and the moving van came. It was a very difficult, painful journey for my dad driving across the States. He just wasn't himself at all. And part of it is because he was losing these things he's hung on to to give him a sense of stability. And the problem is there's this thing going on, higher change. And as we get older, we want we're become more and more resistant because we start hanging on to these anchors that we have. What we have to learn is to be sensitive to that, to come along older people and say, I know that change in the service time actually disruptive for you. You've come now. You have your seat. You sit in the same place. Everything is all secure. You're hanging on to what security you have left. And I'm probably making your life miserable. But you got to understand, I'm not intentionally trying to make your life miserable. I'm. We're making the necessary changes to reach a next generation. We have to do that. And so, in a sense, part of it is letting them know it's going to be okay. There's really nothing to fear. Part of the resistance is just laziness. Again, we're interrupting routines. I like this statement we're splashing cold water on once complacency and that what change feels like. Sometimes you're just splashing cold water on people's complacency. We're making people think. We're making people who tend to slow down, begin to sense the urgency, and people are going to resist that. And part of it, as I've mentioned here, is confusion, because change is about ideas. People aren't going to see them as clearly as you do. And just people can. They love the familiarity. We're encountering a law of physics. For every action, there's an equal and opposite one. I like this illustration at the top. How many people does it take to change a light bulb for one to change the bulb and three to reminisce how good the old light bulb was? This was going to feel like and you know, we are funny about our past, aren't we? We have this very selective memory. Sometimes I go, Oh man, those days in the Netherlands pasturing were so great. And they were. But then last summer I went back for the first time in ten years, and all of a sudden I realized, Oh, man, I'm glad I don't face that anymore. Oh, I'm glad to put up with that. And I don't miss this about the Dutch food or the Dutch weather or these peculiarities in Dutch culture. But when you move on, you don't remember those things. Part of it is dealing with just a selective memory. I wish things could be like they were. Really? You want to go back there? It's like sometimes going, Oh man, to be back in high school and youth and all of that energy. And it was so much fun, really. You remember all the other stuff, right? You remember all that other stuff you had to deal with that you go, Oh, I'm so glad I'm grown out of that. I'm past that. It's the same thing. We're going to have to help people really remember. Pay attention to the capacity of people to change and pay attention to your own tendency to gravitate to the status quo. Sometimes we can be the resistance if we're not careful. Teach people. We're open systems. Teach people were open systems. We're open to. And then handle the resistors wisely. Now, number six, we just talked about this again with Wharton and respect. The past leaders, especially naive or arrogant ones, have a tendency to be oblivious to this. And they come in and they make all of these huge changes. So be careful. This is that context we talked about in the social sectors, the symbolic glasses, putting those on and seeing what's the story here. Big way to build chips in the bank to migrate change is to find out the story and respect it. So what's the story here? And I think there's a certain truth to this. If you become the chief historian of the organization that you lead, you'll probably become the great futurist sort of that. Remember, what's that effect called? The Janus Effect. What does that say?

Speaker 3 [00:33:45] Further back?

Dr. John Johnson [00:33:47] Further back, you can see the further ahead, the further back you can see I may have used this illustration, but in my first church that was so resistant, that was the teachers organization that was frozen in space and time. If I had studied their history, which I didn't really and could have said something like this, you know, we started in this apartment 12 of you did in 1907, right there on Woodstock, you know, right down there, that apartment building is no longer there. But the memory is those people had a vision for this area and they dreamed and they took a lot of risk. And then five years later, they met over here, or ten years later, they put all their money together and they built this building. They took a huge risk. This is their story and tell the story. And then that's when you watch this, when you say to the people today, do we want to stop that? I mean, these guys were pioneers. Are we just going to settle to be settlers? Shouldn't we still have a pioneering spirit or are we done with the work? See if they can say, Well, yeah, that's us. What are we doing? Then they realize you're really one of us. You get it? You're actually more family than we are, because otherwise they see you. Like, I remember a lady once who said to me in this first church, Well, you're our 13th pastor, and pastors come and go. What she was saying was something like this. We're the owners. You're the renter, We're the landlords. So a way to kind of break through that is to say, well, no, I'm not a renter here. I've bought into in fact, I want to be part of this story. Do you know the story? Because I know the story and I want to perpetuate. I want to continue the story. So that's part of respecting the past and the number seven is and that kind of goes along with it, is to leave some things the same as I put it here. Sometimes in our enthusiasm to change the world, we can carry out a form of scorched earth policy. You know, fresh from the latest seminar, just back from a leadership retreat, we're ready to change the landscape. Newly convinced a small changes to small things is a waste of time. Don't do that. Take it a little bit slow because you're going to be here for a while. I mean, just tell yourself I'm not some short termer. I'm going to be here for the time it takes. I'm going to build trust. I'm going to earn trust. I'm going to build capital in my bank. But we're going to start to see change, but we're not going to try to change everything. So I put here where Wisdom calls for an initial rearranging of the shrubs, a leaving of some things the same, sitting down with the rest of the occupants to layout plans for the park, keeping some continuity to guard against chaos. We come in with our flamethrowers and totally transform the earth. You don't need to do that. Keep some things the same. Number eight, aim for the 80%. And we talked about that Marine. I think they used the 70% model. You remember when you have what, 70% of the people on board and you have 70% of the information, it's time to go. And it's the same here. At some point you have to tell people the train's going to depart and we'd love to have you on board. Our tendency is to wait until everyone gets on board. But here's the real huge risk, and it will happen. If you wait for everyone to get on board, then the people that you really need on board the most will start getting off board. They're only going to wait so long. You're going to come in and you're going to say, look, you're going to plan a vision people, and start to dream again. They're going to get excited. Here are our strategies. Here's our game plan and the people that you need the most who get that are going to be right there with you. And they're going to say, finally, we've been waiting for this voice. We're ready to go. Okay, so let's go. Let's get on the train. But I want to make sure we don't leave anybody behind. So you start working to build, buy and get people with you. And then they're always going to be this few that just are skeptical. And if you're not careful, they'll keep the train from ever getting out of the station. You just have to sit down and say with someone, I really want you to be with us. I really do. I'd love to have you on this journey, but we can't wait for you any longer. The train has to leave. If we leave. And that means that we've left you behind. I really feel bad. Now, the mistake you don't want to make is just get there. Try to pack in. People on the train, take off way too soon, and you just create a lot of alienation. But at some point, you have to go. If we wait for everyone, we may disempower those willing to risk. And that's a hard one, isn't it? You putting on those human resource classes, You're looking at the morale, you're looking at the hearts of people, you're putting on the political classes and saying, Who are my resisters? Who are the people that are just have had this long history of resisting? And you know what? It's just largely about control. They're never happy until they make sure that they're the ones driving the train and they're going to scream and they're going to say all kinds of ugly, awful things. But you need to go now when you go. And some really good things happened. Number nine, the ninth command is really important. Be wise with these early successes. And by that, the second one I put here is let people catch their breath. You get this train going and people are starting to like the ride and they're getting to the destination and they're seeing that they're making headway and they're going to places they've never been and they're really excited. And then you go, Hey, they must really like this. I'm going to increase the speed. No, sometimes you need to stop at a next stop for a minute. Let people get off the train for a minute and catch their breath. Be wise for early success is number nine. Don't read too much into them as well. Don't be too biased with the data. It's not enough to lead change. One must manage change. So worked and could look at this and go, Hey, this is looking pretty good. But you've got to be careful you don't read too much and find that, hey, everybody is with me and get too far out in front of the troops, so to speak, to really pay attention to what's going on around you. Or as I put it, the top of the next page, don't declare victory too soon. It's like that. Back to that illustration of climbing Mt. Hood. There are many false summits. When you climb Mt. Hood, you you're climbing, You go, Hey, we're there. And then you get to that place. And it's it's a it really plays with your mind and your eyes. You realize, oh, we're not there at all. You see, it's way up ahead. And so you trudge along, you're marching up there and you get almost there and you're so excited. And then you realize it's another fall summit. Part of wisdom as a leaders to know where the true summits are and not claim victory too soon, or people just might take off their backpacks and sit down and. And then it's really hard to get people going again. I like what Carter says here. Once home foot soldiers are reluctant to return to the front, so don't stop too soon. Now number ten, anticipate losses. Change is this mixture of addition and subtraction. It may bring new people, but the first loss is the loss of things as they were. Almost every time you bring some change, people will say, I don't like this or I don't like change. I like the old times. I don't know why you change the service times. I miss the old building. I don't like this new building. I like the old staff. I don't like this new staff. I mean, all of that. They're. All I can say after 28 years of pastoring is people will leave. They will. And it will hurt and it will be painful. Last night I was in a really tough meeting. That's why I feel a little tired today because I was there working with people for 2 hours who don't like a change and need a change we've had to make in our church. So dealing with these people at the end, one of them said in closing, Well, you know that if you don't change your decision, people may leave. And I said, Yes. The way it is, it happens. But then I got on my platform and said, But you know what? If people leave over issues like this, it shows how thin their commitment is. You know, there was a day people left a church over sin that's on confessed or heresy in our consumer society. If we don't like this or this product or this here, we leave in a whim. Probably. Maybe it's my years now. I just no longer. I'm interested in coddling to it. Well, you know, we might leave. Okay. There's a great church down the street. Goodbye. I don't say quite like that. I always agonize over it. I really do. But I'm not going to run out in the parking lot anymore, in a sense. So anticipate losses, because if you don't and you don't like that, then you won't make change. I don't want to do that because I'll upset people and people will leave. Well, then you'll end up with a status quo, stagnant organization. You'll end up with teachers who it's not what you want to end up, because then I guarantee you, people will leave. Change inevitably means the loss of some who will leave. That's just the nature of the beast. Now, on the other side, number 11 is really important. It's a great, important 11th commandment of change, and that is be willing to reconsider. Sometimes the most important change is the change we need to make to change. I think maybe we were going to have to pull back and say, I don't think it's the time. It may not be the right people. If we're going to be these voices of change, people have to sometimes see that we're the first willing to change ourselves. It's okay. Be willing to reconsider. Sure the illustration of when we built our new building and the first set of plants, we had to finally say it's not going to work. And I had to stand up and say, You know, we've been preaching change. We're going to have to change. Make changes to our change. In a certain sense, it's just part of his modeling, what you ask people to do. And then number 12, be frantic learners. And this is part of the key to change is that we are ahead of the innovative curve. We keep anticipating the S-curve, Right? We've drawn that on the board. Right. You've seen that. Keep anticipating the new curves. And part of that is just be frantic learners, keep gathering ideas. Never rest on your laurels. This is a place to write in the march. And again, what got you here won't get you there. Okay. Can we say that together? What got you here won't get you there. That's why you have to keep learning. Today's trends are tomorrow's discards. It's just inevitable. I close with the idea? Use 25% of every staff meeting to discover new ideas. Don't just settle for the agenda every now and then. Have to stop and say, So where are we going? What needs to change? What are you reading? Encourage the people you work with to read. Pastors can sometimes get so into a rut of doing ministry. If you don't read, you start to die. You start to become rigid. That's just the way it is. Okay. Questions. Thoughts on any of these? 12. This is a quick overview of of change. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 [00:46:51] Adam So we've talked a lot about just staying ahead. Mm hmm. Trying to keep momentum going, and then you've kind of, you know, been on the track allowing people to address this. And how do you juggle both of those things? Yeah.

Dr. John Johnson [00:47:10] Well, I think part of it is that's where, again, knowing the context, putting on those glasses, a lot of it is just being with people here in their heart, making sure you know where your leaders are at all times because you don't want to get out in front of them. You want to be right alongside with them. If your board says, you know, Adam, I think you're going a little bit too fast for us. That's a real good signal. Or you initiating and saying. So you guys with me? Well, yeah. We're with you. We're waiting for you. What are you hearing? So start with that leadership core and then kind of have these handpicked people out there that, you know, have a pulse to the pulse. Just be checking in with them. Yeah, right. Is this the right direction or are we going at the right pace? What do you see as creating the resistance? Why is this creating such conflict? Know, trying to get at the thing in the bushes. And part of our change here with the staff we've had to make changes with. There's a certain ethnicity in my church that's had a huge problem with it. I've been trying to figure out what's the thing in the bushes. Well, because the staffing we've been dealing with work in the education area, this particular ethnicity, education's everything. At first I thought, What are you so upset about? And I realize for for them, that's their whole world. Part of it is trying to figure out what it is that trips people up. And then asking yourself, what can I do about that? You know, like part of that for me was to say, So are you assuming education is important to me? You know, I am bi vocational. I spent a good chunk of my life in another world called education. Oh, that's right. So you understand more? Of course I understand. Why would I spend my time investing in the next generation of leaders if I didn't understand that? I understand what you're what you want. But what we're doing here is something bigger than you can see. Where we're structuring actually for a better education future. You're just going to have to trust us that we can see where that's going. It's something like that. So try to figure out what it is. Just tripping people up and then ask yourself, okay, what is it that they're not getting? But also, what I want to really underscore is that you begin to have and sometimes it just won't it won't come without years of experience beginning to discern who are the people who just want to hold the church hostage or the organization hostage to the past. I mean, some people just do. And you just have to be strong enough to say, I'm not going to let you hold this hostage. I've learned over the years that I've allowed too many people to keep the church in the station. If I had to make a lot of changes to what I've done today, I would have spent less time on them. Part of it is just knowing. Yep. Tim's on board. And there. Think about the key people you want on that train and when they're on there and you know they're there. And if you begin and you wait a little bit more, but you begin to censor getting restless, that's when you sort of walk down the aisle and say, okay, fasten your seatbelts. We're taking off. Any other questions?

Speaker 2 [00:50:54] I like that comment on page seven about the love for redemption and. Yeah. Mean, they didn't just.

Dr. John Johnson [00:51:05] Yeah. For all for its own reasons. From I just don't like change to. It's not the direction I want to go. You just have to prepare yourself as a leader that. Okay, when I make this decision, there's. There's always going to be resistance. It's just. It's sort of like when the car is moving. Put your head out the window. There's resistance. Right? The nature of movement creates resistance. Why do we need to know that? So we won't get unnerved by it, so that we won't go home and go, Oh, man, did I make a huge mistake? No. You're just dealing with the natural consequences of change. It's okay. Get over the fact that everybody's going to like you. Look, if you want everybody to like you, I say don't be a leader. Leadership is not for those who want to be liked by everybody. There's no easy solution. And for most of us as leaders, there won't be easy solutions. So you went back to this Formula ten on page 11. It's just a formula on aiming for the 80% that I find helpful, and that is change equals dissatisfaction. Plus vision, plus strategy, plus support systems that hopefully overcome resistance.

Speaker 3 [00:52:30] Yeah.

Dr. John Johnson [00:52:31] So it's just a mixture of all of that stuff. But if you had the vision and strategy and support systems in place, it'll overcome the resistance. That's the.

Speaker 2 [00:52:41] Idea. My question.

Dr. John Johnson [00:52:43] Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 [00:52:45] Just inform handling systems wisely. Yeah. Sometimes we move them. I didn't know when you talking about people or stuff.

Dr. John Johnson [00:52:55] That could be both. Sometimes with the layperson, it just may be, you know, I'm going to be here for a long time and you either are going to have to come to grips with that and say, okay, I'm getting on board with the vision and strategies, but if you want to be divisive and resist where we're going, then you need to leave the church. And if they threaten you and can't, that's where. Before you ever do that, you better make sure back to what we were talking about that you're right there, hand in hand with your leadership, who then will come alongside of you and stand with you on that. If you don't have them, then you're in big trouble. So it's 915. Let's take a ten minute break. We'll come back at 925 and we'll wrap up by talking about challenges which we've already started getting into and then transition.