In Tim Elmore’s book, “The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership,” he referenced a study that discovered two different ways of implementing values. The first is to pronounce them and hang them on the wall for everyone to see. This approach takes ten to twelve years to change any culture. The second way is much more effective. For each of your ...
Early in the pandemic my friend, Peter, began to realize that needed supplies for his restaurants were becoming hard to get. He began ordering additional supplies and stockpiling them. The problem, however, kept getting worse. As Peter tried to determine a better solution, he happened to study the story of Joseph in Genesis 41. After God forewarned Joseph of the ...
A Stanford Economics professor, Nicolas Bloom, has been researching remote work for the last several years. Bloom believes that there are three different work options for the future. He believes 50% of workers will be required to work in a workplace setting. These include retail, healthcare, or manufacturing jobs. Option two is hybrid work. He predicts 40% will work at ...
Recently, I met with a 25-year-old entrepreneur who had already had three failed businesses and was working on his fourth. I love the passion of young visionaries, but I hate to see the pain many have experienced due to a lack of discipline. My encouragement to this young man was that I saw tremendous potential for his future, but he ...
Rachel, our operations manager, recently surveyed our team members about their preferred communication methods. As I later told Rachel, when I left banking we only had three communication choices: face-to-face, telephone or by mail. Today, the choices are vast and hard to manage, but the most effective communication approach to move a customer to action is face-to-face. In John 6:3 ...
13,000 people responded to the Faith at Work: An Empirical Study funded by The Lilly Endowment. One question asked was, “Do you agree that skills and habits you have learned from your faith community help you succeed at work?” 58% agree that what they have learned from their church has helped them succeed at work. For evangelicals, that percentage soared ...
When we host events, there are so many moving parts that inevitably we know there will be problems that surface the day of the event. That’s why when the event is over, it can be challenging for us to spend much time dwelling on the successes. Instead, we tend to dwell on our mistakes. Personally, I would like to do ...
Recently, Kathy and I had the opportunity to tour the facilities of Vermeer Corporation in Pella, Iowa. One of the more impressive parts of the tour was witnessing the thought given to developing efficient processes in all parts of this enormous plant. Vermeer’s pursuit of continuous improvement has no bounds. They even chose to analyze the processes around their company ...
Our local business journal will list restaurants that have been cited by the health department for infractions of food safety and health codes. Over time, I’ve noticed that many are repeat offenders. Before long, these repeat offenders are no longer in business. One local restaurant near us had been listed multiple times for rodent infestation. I might have had some ...
Highlighted by Jessica Kennedy’s Harvard Business Review article, a study of over 11,000 participants revealed that job promotions may make it more likely you will be blinded to the unethical behavior within the organization. Their study specifically found that when an organization wanted to lie, 39% of low-ranking employees would dissent. But only 14% of high-ranking employees were willing to ...
Equipping Others to Do Work Differently
