Good to Great?

I've just finished--this morning--the business book by Jim Collins (my cover says 3 million copies have been sold, so I suppose many of you may have read it as well) entitled Good to Great.

It was an interesting book for a guy from Churchworld to read. Certainly not my first business book, but it was perhaps one of the most enlightening. I learned a good bit about business, had some leadership lessons confirmed, and had a couple of specific insights about leading a worship ministry.

I was introduced to this first thought by my friend George Yates, who gave abundant credit to Collins: "Good is the enemy of great."

Ponder that when it comes to our Sunday morning gatherings. If it is good, and we feel good about it being good, we will seldom be compelled to make it great. On the other hand, if we relentlessly pursue greatness, good will be a nice place to stop along the way. (I blogged about this a bit in my series "Should Worship Be Great" back in October.)

And here's where leadership comes in: the leader has to continually cast vision, model doing things "greatly," and create a culture where greatness is the goal. Like I wrote about in the above mentioned series, we don't do this because it is a business model, but because it is a Biblical model.

I do find it very just interesting that I was confronted by it in a business model more than in the churches I've been around.

A second helpful concept was what Collins and his team call the Flywheel effect. Bottom line, moving the same direction for a long time develops and increases momentum. In our church culture, where we seem to be re-inventing our core beliefs or our purpose statement or our mission every few years, it makes it terribly difficult to build momentum. Be careful, though, momentum in the wrong direction is just as hard to break as is momentum in the right one. My takeaway: we need greater stability in staffing, in common understanding of our purpose, and in everyone pushing the same direction. We need less attachment to the systems than the core values.

Example? Love God. Love others. Those are core values. But carpet color, musical style, and committee structure are supposed to be the means toward fulfilling our values, not the values themselves. That seems particularly relevant to the church in our day.

I highlighted very, very little in this book. That surprised me. I typically find things to quote/reference in whatever I'm reading. This is one of those passages: "Yes, turning good into great takes energy, but the building of momentum adds more energy back into the pool than it takes out. Conversely, perpetuating mediocrity is an inherently depressing process and drains much more energy out of the pool than it puts back in." 

I was also challenged by learning about the Level 5 leader, the Hedgehog Concept, and very deeply challenged by A Culture of Discipline. If you have an interest in business (especially leadership) I would encourage you to check out the book.

And if you would like some help moving your worship ministry from good to great, I would be honored to come partner with you in whatever way would serve your church best! My cell is 502.229.0114 and my email is RodEEllis@aol.com.