People are quick to point out that leaders are role models, and that employees or team members pick up great leadership traits from the top man or woman. But the uncomfortable truth is, they also pick up bad habits as well. There's a CEO that we've worked with from time who time who's arrogant, always late for meetings, and extremely impressed with himself. We had a conference call recently with ... read more

Have you lost the ability to keep people's attention? Are you noticing that no one is paying much attention to what you have to say anymore? Because of the barrage of media messages we're subjected to each day, the pacing of normal conversations has increased. Check it out - most of the people you speak to on a daily basis talk much faster than they did a few years ago, and it seems like the younger generation is talking faster than ever. But along with that, comes the ... read more

"Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure."
-- Thomas J. Watson - Former President of IBM

The secret to overcoming failure is to divide your circumstances into two groups: situations you can change and situations you can't. I believe nearly everything can be changed or at least approached in a different way, but sometimes they can't be changed right now. Start with the situations that you ... read more

One of the focal points of the play "This Beautiful City" was the issue of how evangelicals used political power over the last 20-30 years. I mentioned that at the after-the-play-talk-back that we're really on the tail end of that strategy and it's almost a non-issue anymore. Certainly Christians should vote, run for government office, and exercise our rights just like any citizen. But the last generation of Christian leaders made a strategic error in my opinion in the thinking that they could actually change culture through the legislative process. I understand it. After all - ... read more

There are two issues that I've been thinking a lot about recently, that in my opinion are moving the church backwards - in a positive way. First - what I'm calling "The Open Media Revolution." I just turned in a new book manuscript on the subject, and there are two things worth thinking about. First - technology has given us the ability to interact with each other, and have a two way conversation - think Instant Messaging, email, PDA's, Twitter, texts, and more. I grew up with media being one-way as in network television. Whatever they showed, we watched - no questions asked. Today, it's different. Second, ... read more