But love in this context, was powerful and ferocious.  It was the necessary force that needed to be applied.  It was the nuclear option, but in a whole different way.  It didn’t end the conversation, it started it.  It was offered as the ultimate weapon…the one that could cut through steel and any other barrier that stood in its’ way.

Another barometer for me, is writing these posts.  They have been posted weekly for over five years and twice-weekly for almost one.  I am often weeks or even months ahead.  So many complete in excess of the posting schedule, that I often can’t remember what a particular post was about when someone references a “current” one that I actually wrote weeks before.

But when I checked the gauge on this barometer this morning, I didn’t like the reading I found.  Not only was I out of posts, the last time I had written anything was a week and a half ago.  

Time to practice what I preach and not only honor the time in my weekly calendar for one-on-one meetings, but for writing as well.  

Yvon Chouinard, founder and sole owner of the private Patagonia company wrote a book about his journey with that company, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. He named his company after the beautiful and untamed Patagonia he experienced on an epic journey in the ’70s. His company was actually created to provide him and his friends the requisite gear to experience what he found in Patagonia (in the picture above) and other beautiful places…

But, if they prove to their team that they are most interested in their lives, hopes, and dreams (and they are the right kind of people), they will treat each customer with great interest in their lives, hopes, and dreams.  If we teach them that our primary objective is to serve them (and serving was first our intellectual property as Christians), they will, in kind, serve.  

And if each employee sees that working for their restaurant is helping them become the kind of person they want to be, I bet you can guess what turnover looks like and how nearly impossible it is to get a job there.  There is a long line to get in and no one wants to leave.

This got me thinking about the average small business.  It seems like there is often one area (sales, engineering, etc.) that gets a disproportionate amount of our resources and focus.  I could even make the argument that this is rightly so, but Sally’s thoughts on weak-link phenomena challenges us to think more broadly.

Our companies are likely constrained by our weakest links.

I think the guy in Adidas commercial understands that. I am assuming many of you understand that as well. It is rare that I meet someone who has risen to any level of authority that didn’t have to risk, put things on the line, and muster the courage it took to breakthrough.

But, there is a truth far deeper than these German students are referencing. It is something that they are likely completely unaware of. The most profound concept being addressed in their commercial is restoration. The older gentleman is reaching back into his former story....

The 30x rule says that you should spend up to 150 minutes (2.5 hours) to teach the task.  Sounds crazy, but if you were to spend that 2.5 hours to teach that task, it will save you 1,250 minutes a year or almost 21 hours.  You likely won’t have to spend 150 minutes to teach a 5 minute task, but you get the point.

Giving others the permission to be imperfect and learn to do a task or make simple decisions on their own, is the path to the margin of time, strategic bandwidth, and freedom as a leader.  Interestingly enough, this works just the same at home.  How many Saturday hours of freedom will teaching one of my kids to mow the lawn buy me?

My hope is being renewed through these young men.  They are neither misusing their faith as I did or merging into the cultural stream like many of their contemporaries.  They are instead trying to paddle in the opposite direction.  And while they may not be examining their faith and exploring new understandings of the reality of God like I did through guys like David Crowder or Oswald Chambers, they’re finding the same in the words of Tim Keller and Chance the Rapper:

“I don't make songs for free, I make 'em for freedom
Don't believe in kings, believe in the Kingdom…

Said you the man of the house now, look out for your family
He has ordered my steps, gave me a sword with a crest”

Chance the Rapper

In other words, 3/10 of the average organization’s team is rowing forward, 5/10 are along for the ride, and 2/10 are actually rowing in the opposite direction.  It was the same with my precious daughter.

The silent rebellion of the actively disengaged in our organizations, however, is completely intolerable.  The journey that some people will take from rebellion to sacrificial should have happened before you hired them.

That discontent and unsettledness you feel is about something more than your work life not being quite what you would want.  It is about something bigger than not having enough saved for retirement, there not being as much passion in your marriage as you would like, or the kids not seeming to be headed in the right direction.

Is the beckoning of a loving and merciful God.  Not for you to abandon everything for nothing, but to be willing to risk nothing to receive his everything.  To live an intended and possibly unknown life, that you would likely risk everything for if you understood and believed.

I heard a recent podcast where an executive says he fires himself every year.  If someone were to walk in his office at the end of the year and fire him, what are the reasons they would likely point to for his dismissal.  Someone who isn’t very self aware will really struggle with this, but most of us could likely come up with a list of a few things.  For the leader in the podcast, this list becomes the things he wants to work on in the coming year.

“I am aware that I am surrounded by people who feel that they could do the job better.  Strong people with powerful characters.  But for better or for worse, the crown has landed on my head.”

Elizabeth II (from “The Crown”)

Some time after my father’s death, I was able to get on his calendar for lunch.  After doing a pretty deep check-in with me on how I was feeling about and processing my father’s death and some of the other big events surrounding my life, he sort of gave me the thumbs up on how I was doing.  While that was very affirming to me, I still had to ask him the biggest question on my mind.

“Why don’t you seem to have much time for me anymore?”

As a lifetime spiritual orphan, I have aggressively pursued father figures and mentors and he had been a significant one.  After I questioned his availability, he paused for a moment before he spoke.  He said, 

“You don’t need me.”

Living into the powerful reality of “rescuer” in his story will change his life and the lives of many others.  When what you are simply gifted and inspired to do gets identified as the clear intention of the Father…the specific and unique way that you bear His image…you become formidable and dangerous, dangerous for good.

Are you the proverbial “Debbie Downer” in your tribe?  Or are the purveyor of hope and an expectation of a better future?  What is value or cost to your family, business, or the organization you lead, of being so confident or fearful?  What does all that fear say about the reality of your faith?  One is the opposite of the other.

There is a correlation between the depth of love I offer to my children and the directness of my leadership of them.  It is the same with anyone that you lead.  There is an “earning the right” to say the direct, challenging, and difficult things.  The degree to which I show that I am “for” someone is related to the degree to which I can lead them in strength and integrity.

All of us need someone who we trust that will speak the truth about what they see.  Someone interested enough in us to care more about saying the right thing than the way we might respond.

Reality is that we are the ambassadors of change.  We are the curators of transformation.  We have been given the privilege and honor of offering all the hope and glory of the Kingdom to a world desperate for change.  At the end of the day, the one great hope is not that we would become something new, but that we would become what we were ultimately intended to be…something far more glorious that we’ve believed.