Category: Leading at Home

Leaders and PED’s

With the Olympics starting in a couple of weeks, and the ongoing emphasis on sports’ stars who use PEDs-Performance Enhancing Drugs, I thought I’d offer a lighter post about leaders and PED’s. To my knowledge the most commonly used PED’s among America’s leaders is caffeine. Perhaps, I’m supersensitive to the substance at the moment, because I’ve decided to rid myself of it yet again. I’m experiencing the massive headache that always comes when I put myself through withdrawal from it. That after a night of not being able to sleep, which is a common side effect of caffeine withdrawal. (Who would’ve figured since many use caffeine to stay awake.)

The reason I’m eliminating caffeine from my system again is ostensibly because I’ll be leaving for Cambodia in about a month for a mission trip and I don’t want to experience the withdrawal while there, if caffeine isn’t available at any of the places we travel. The likelihood of not having caffeine available in Cambodia isn’t high, since caffeine is a worldwide PED. Whether it’s found in the form of coffee, or soft drinks, or tea, or the amazingly popular energy drinks that pack caffeine and sugar in incredibly high doses, caffeine is a nearly universal substance. I’m also withdrawing from caffeine again, because I don’t want to be dependent on any external substance for my energy.

I’m not telling all of you to stop drinking coffee or to get off caffeine. I’m pointing out that when I use caffeine, or more accurately, when I am not able to use caffeine when I’m using it regularly, I feel miserable. So the question becomes: Is the solution to stop drinking caffeine or just make sure that I always have enough of it? When I put the question to myself that way it sounds a lot like I “need” caffeine to function. I don’t want to need anything external in order to function. Thus, the withdrawal from caffeine AGAIN. I don’t know how many times over the years I’ve withdrawn from caffeine before a mission trip, or during one, or because I want to take better care of my body, but I know this: I’ve withdrawn from it for weeks and even months, but then there’s always that moment when someone offers me a cup of coffee, or I’m at a restaurant and they have Dr. Pepper, and I remember how bland water tastes, and I’m back on the PED’S again.

When I told Nancy yesterday that I was withdrawing from caffeine for the LAST time, she just looked at me and laughed. She’s heard that line before. Right now, I just want to have a cup of coffee and end the pain in my neck and head. As I write those words, it sounds an awful lot like the guys I minister to at the halfway house who are seeking to overcome their reliance on alcohol and other drugs that may or may not enhance their performance. So, at least for today, I’m going to remain off the caffeine and if I make through Thursday it’ll be a matter of daily will power.

As our friend Socrates reminded us millennia ago: The unexamined life is not worth living. You may or may not use caffeine or any other PED, but if you do, I simply encourage you to ask yourself why you do, and whether there is anything to gain by not using it? As leaders we ought to set the example in all areas of our lives, and perhaps being PED free is one of those areas.

Here’s to leading better by examining our use of external substances and considering whether to ban them in our lives–today!

Ch-Ch-Changes!

One of the most important qualities of effective leaders, is the ability to address change. Change is a given in life, and the only things that don’t change are dead. While some personalities are more open to change than others, even those of us who like change, generally are more open to changes we consider positive and under our control.

I’ve decided to make a format change to my blog effective today, to see how you all do with change! It’s a minor change, but one I’ve realized is necessary if I’m going to live by my own leadership advice in the area of margin, and also provide you with quality posts over time. Not too many folks post to their blogs seven days a week, 365 days a year. I thought I was going to be one of them. The challenge is my weekends are the fullest time of the week, and Friday is supposed to be my Sabbath. That means if I’m going to have something of value to offer you in every post, I need to stop writing on the weekends, and focus on making Monday-Friday as helpful as possible for you.

I know my readership isn’t high at this moment, but believe the content will help you be and become better leaders over time. That means you’ll be receiving 25o posts per year: 5 posts each week for 50 weeks each year. We’ll rest on the weekends, and two weeks each year. I’m considering getting guest bloggers for the two weeks off each year, so you won’t come here and find nothing. Maybe some of you would consider writing a guest post once or twice a year?

Back to the importance of being able to change in order to be a great leader. Adaptability is one of the most important assets of a leader. While planning is vital, the challenge is that life tends to change our plans and change them often. I’ve been reading a great book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals LEAD and WIN. The authors make it clear than planning and execution are keys in leading and winning. They also point out that part of planning for them was to anticipate the changes that could happen to their plans. Anticipating change is the best way to lead through change. We can’t always anticipate a particular change, but we can certainly anticipate that there WILL be change.

As noted above, sometimes we see change as positive and at other times as negative. The truth is in a particular moment we can’t always know whether a change is positive or negative. I’ve noticed that many of the changes I would have called negative at the time, have actually defined me as a person. For example, one day many years ago when Kenn, my younger brother and I were at basketball practice at school, he was poked in the eye. The poke resulted in a torn cornea for Kenn. That was certainly a negative and unwelcome change at the moment. Kenn was taken to the hospital and scheduled for surgery the next day.

That night, our pastor and I visited Kenn at the hospital. Before we left, the pastor asked Kenn, “Do you mind if I pray and ask God to heal your eye?” How could you turn down a request like that?

Kenn said, “It couldn’t hurt, right?” More than right! the next morning when the doctor came in and removed the patch from Kenn’s eye to examine it before the operation, the eye was completely healed. The doctor was amazed. Kenn was happy. I was overwhelmed. I didn’t thing God was still in the healing “business.” I thought that was for long ago and far away. I went to our pastor and asked him to explain. After a couple of hours of working our way through the Book of Acts, I was convinced that my perspective of God’s activity through the Holy Spirit being a thing of the past was mistaken. I would soon find how mistaken, as God called me to ministry as an outgrowth of that new-found understanding!

Everyone would agree that Kenn having his cornea torn was a negative experience, and yet as a result of it I ended up discerning God’s call for my entire adult life. That’s amazing. Change is inevitable, and while we may think we know which changes are good for us, being prepared for them when they come, and turning to God in the midst of each one is the best way to discover how He can use any change we experience to advance His work among us.

The next time you experience change whether small or great, consider that God can use it in ways that you may not have considered. Lean into Him and let Him use the change to His glory and your blessing. As you do you will undoubtedly come to see change not only as the inevitable reality it is, but often the door to new opportunities to learn, love and lead in Jesus’ name.

Here’s to leading better by leaning into change–today!

(See you Monday!)

Life Management-Finances/Stewardship

Our final area of life management is finances/stewardship. We already mentioned this area when we talked about margin, but it bears discussing again. As many have pointed out, the Bible speaks about money more than 2,000 times, which would be enough for us to consider it fairly often. That Jesus told us money is the chief rival god in our lives to loving and serving the one, true and living God makes it all the more important for us to address. The key truth about money and every other material resource is everything belongs to God. He created it and He owns it. That’s why we speak of stewardship in the first place when we talk about money. A steward is one who is entrusted to manage another’s resources. In our case, God has entrusted us to manage His assets.

This is a hard reality for many of us to accept. After all, we work hard to earn the money and other assets we have. They sure seem as if they belong to us. When someone tells me everything is theirs and they just can’t understand how it is really God’s, I ask a simple question: Whose will it be in a 100 years? That puts it into perspective for most of us. We get to use the money and other resources we earn for the time we’re here on the planet and then someone else will use them. The Bible reminds us that even the ability to work is a gift from God, so once again we see that everything goes back to God when we look at the matter closely enough.

The key, then, if we’re stewards is to be effective ones. Particularly if we are leaders, we need to set an example in this area for others to follow. The best stewards are generous, faithful, and diligent. You might be thinking, “How does generosity come first, if we’re going to be good stewards? Wouldn’t a good steward preserve as much of the resources as possible?” That would be a good process if God intended for us to keep as much as possible in order to be faithful to Him, but His desire is that we use what He entrusts to us to advance His work in the world, and His eternal Kingdom. When we give first, which is what generous stewards do, it reminds us to hold loosely to “our” resources since they aren’t ours in the first place. After we have given the first portion of what we’ve earned or received to God’s work in the world through the church and other good causes, the Bible teaches us that we are to use the remainder faithfully and diligently to meet our own needs, to provide for our families, to provide a reasonable amount for the future, and to always look for opportunities to do good to others.

Some of us have more natural skill in the areas of diligence when it comes to money and material resources, and the Apostle Paul tells us that some of us have the spiritual gift of giving. All of us are called to faithfulness, though, regardless of our natural inclinations or our spiritual giftedness. In order to be effective stewards we must keep track of what we earn, give, save and spend. As John Maxwell has said, “If you don’t tell your money where to go, you’ll wonder where it went.” A budget or spending plan is crucial to being diligent and faithful stewards of God’s blessings, and even of being generous. After all, if we don’t keep track of how much we earn and spend, we will almost surely have nothing to save or give.

Always remember that money is a dissatisfier, that means it can never bring us satisfaction. We can certainly be dissatisfied if we don’t have enough money to meet our needs, but no amount of money or other material possessions will ever make us truly happy. The sooner we learn these lessons of faithful stewardship, the sooner we will be able to use money as a tool in our lives and our leadership. As it has been said, “Money is a great servant, but a terrible master.”

If you have misused your finances to this point, and find yourself in a great deal of debt, many effective programs are available to help you recover from that. Whether you use Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, or Joseph Sangl’s I Was Broke, Now I’m Not, or Crown Financial Ministries, the key is to remember that God’s principles regarding money always work, whether you are follower of Jesus or not. It may take more or less time to see them impact your financial bottom line, depending on where you are when you start applying them, but being a generous, faithful and diligent steward is something every person can attain, and a reality that each of us must attain if we are going to be leaders worthy of following.

Here’s to leading better, by becoming better stewards of all that God has entrusted to us–today!

Life Management–Study

Perhaps one of my favorite areas of Life Management as a leader is study. I have always loved to learn. Whether it was trying to figure out how to put a puzzle together, how a toy worked, or reading my latest Dr. Seuss book as a child, I wanted more information, and I wanted to know what I could do with it. Perhaps that’s why as an adult I developed these formulas: Information – Application = Information, but Information + Application = Transformation! The end goal of study is not to be the best informed leader around, but to see ourselves and our teams grow and change. The Apostle Paul reminded us not to be conformed or molded to the patterns of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Therefore, if we’re going to lead we must always be gaining the transformation that comes from the renewing of our minds.

As leaders we must be intentional about the process of study, which as Rick Warren once said is reading with a notebook in hand. While reading is important, reflection is the key to turning our reading (or watching or listening) into transformation. For example, right now I’m reading the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win. The book is ideally structured for study and learning, because each section contains a real-life situation from the authors’ time of serving as active duty Navy SEALs in Iraq. Then they draw a principle from the situation as well as a business application for the principle. Typically, they also offer examples from their lives as business consultants for how the principle was applied or NOT applied by businesses with whom they worked. I often use the front and back “white spaces” in books for my initial study notes as I read, noting key quotes and page numbers. Then I return to them after I’ve read the book, and transfer those notes to notes I will use for applying in my own life, teaching other leaders, or as fodder for a leadership post, or book I’m writing.

I’ve found that studying for the sake of personal growth is one of the most important quadrant II activities of my life. Many of us miss out on this opportunity because we “don’t have the time.” As with all quadrant II activities–those that are important, but not urgent–it doesn’t seem that we have the time to do them. After all, they don’t scream for our attention when we don’t. What I’ve found over the years, though, is when I don’t schedule time in my calendar to read and reflect (or watch/listen and reflect) I lose my edge as a leader. While most of the deepest and most profound leadership truths come from the Bible and are simply repeated in different ways in the books we read, podcasts we hear, and videos we watch, I find that the old adage, “repetition is the mother of learning,” to be true in my life. While I read the Bible daily and return to it often for the leadership principles that last, the other input I receive from books, podcasts and videos helps me to see everyday life applications as well.

In reading Extreme Ownership, I have been reminded of one of the most important truths of all by their statement: It isn’t what you preach. It’s what you tolerate. I’m a preacher so that statement caught my attention immediately and really hit home. It’s a succinct way of saying that we can talk all we want about principles and standards, but the behavior we accept is the level of behavior we’re going to get. We can say our company’s motto is excellence, but if we accept any effort an employee puts forward whether strong or weak, weak becomes the standard and excellence goes out the window. As we study whether in books, videos, podcasts, or by life observation, the key is to reflect so we can draw out the principles, the standards, and the repeatable processes that will make us and those we lead people of greater integrity and effectiveness across the spectrum of life management and across the spectrum of culture and behavior, whether in our families, workplaces, or whatever environment it is that we are leading at the time.

Study is a building block for every area of life management, as well as for every growing leader. Unless we are learning and growing ourselves we can’t expect our teams to be growing, because it isn’t what we preach. It’s what we tolerate! We must set the standard of lifelong study and learning AND application in order to continue to be transformed ourselves, and in order to see those around us continue to grow and develop. As Bill Hybels has often said, “The speed of the leader, the speed of the team.” Nowhere is this truer than when it comes to study and application in our lives.

Here’s to leading better, but study consistently and effectively–today and into the future!

 

Life Management–Relationships

A leader’s relationships are one of the most significant and important areas of his or her life. As you would expect, I believe the most significant and important relationship any of us have is our relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Since I follow Jesus that relationship must be solid and growing in order for me to lead anyone else. As that relationship is solid and growing, I become more filled with the Holy Spirit and demonstrate the “fruit” He gives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control more fully and more effectively. Those traits are vital for effective leadership. When I am impatient, or undisciplined that impacts my leadership in negative ways. When I demonstrate the nine aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, my relationships, and thus my leadership with those around me, grows more and more effective. I could say much more about that, but let that suffice for this post.

Once my relationship with God is on solid ground, I must make certain that I am on solid footing with–myself. You may not have expected me to write that, but Jesus told us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. If you and I are going to have healthy and effective relationships with others, we must have healthy self-love. I am not talking about self-esteem, or thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought. I am talking about understanding that we are infinitely valuable to God, which makes us infinitely valuable. It means knowing that despite our hurts, hang-ups and habits that tend to derail us from living healthy and growing relationships with God and others, we are moving forward as human beings, because we know our worth. We all have our deficiencies, and that is why our relationship with God is so important: Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins and to overcome all our deficiencies. If we do not have appropriate self-love, we will not build deep, healthy and meaningful relationships with others.

Building deep, healthy and meaningful relationship with others takes time, effort and a belief that such relationships are a major priority in our lives. While nearly everyone would say that relationships are important, building relationships is primarily a quadrant II activity, that is an activity that is important but not urgent. Yesterday, Nancy and I invested the afternoon and early evening with a couple with whom we want to build a deeper relationship. We were together for nearly seven hours. The four of us could have spent or invested those hours far differently, but because we invested them together our relationship grew significantly. All relationships need both a QUANTIFY of time and QUALITY time in order to grow. We have fostered the myth of quality time in this culture, which contends that if we spend small snippets of quality time we can foster deep, abiding, healthy relationships. The truth is quality time is a product of quantities of time. Woody Allen once said, “90% of life is just showing up.” I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, but I take it to mean that when we “keep showing up,” whether at work or in our relationships life grows and develops. Consistency and persistence are vital in developing relationships.

Another key truth about relationships is: I cannot be everyone’s best friend. Some contend that we need to be “fair” in our relationships and invest equal amounts of time with others. Jesus is our example when it comes to relationship building and “sharing” time. He invested time in thousands of people during His brief ministry, but He focused time in a 100 or so of them, devoted time to twelve “disciples”, and invested particularly in three of them. If we’re married, we need to invest more time with our spouses than with anyone else in relationship development. Many assume that if we’re in love our relationships will grow “automatically.” They don’t. Every relationship needs investments of time, love, truth, grace and more in order to grow. If we have children who are still under our influence we must invest time in them. Then come our work or school relationships, our friendships, those we have made conscience choices to mentor or receive mentorship from, and even acquaintances. We will not spend and invest the same amount of time with each, nor ought we to do so. As with all matters of life management we must decide and then make commitments in order to grow.

I would encourage you to take some time today to sit down and ask this question: Who are the most important people in my life right now? As you respond, write down their names. Then ask yourself: How much time am I investing in growing these relationships? Is it enough? How can I be intentional about growing these relationships? As you respond to these questions it may well raise more questions. After all, leading isn’t always about having all the answers, but about raising the right questions, then addressing them with increasing intentionality. The time you invest in deepening your relationships with God and others will increase your capacity for leading in ways that few other things you can do will.

Here’s to leading better by investing time in people–today!

Life Management–Physical Care

When I first developed the seven areas of life management, I decided to list physical care third, not because it is more important than relationships or study, but because it is so often disregarded by Americans, whether we’re leaders or not. Perhaps nothing is more discussed and less done than caring for our bodies through diet and exercise. When I first commented on physical care, diet and exercise were the sole focus. I have since added addictive behaviors and television viewing as part of physical care, because so many of us have challenges in those areas as well when it comes to taking care our bodies. Let’s take a look at each of those areas now.

Americans talk a great deal about exercise. In fact if we exercised as much as we talked about it, we’d all be in great physical condition. Every January  we buy gym memberships, exercise equipment and videos and some of us even start exercising as part of New Year’s resolutions to get in shape. For some, that’s as far as the physical conditioning goes. For others, we start the program, but for most it never becomes a habit. We work out for a while, and then we give up, or we get bored, or we get injured, and that’s that. We gave it a try, but that’s it.

The key when it comes to every area of physical care is to move beyond trying to training. The Apostle Paul reminded Timothy 2,000 years ago that physical TRAINING is of some benefit. Training is an ongoing, intentional process that gives us the ability to accomplish something over time that we can’t do today. Trying is making an attempt, giving it the “old college try.” An extreme example of the difference between trying and training is: if you and I decided to try to run a marathon–twenty-six miles, 385 yards–right now, most of us wouldn’t make it a mile. Some would get two, or four, or perhaps six and that would be it. But, if we would train for twenty weeks, any of us who are in average physical health could start and complete a marathon. I know, because I did that.

Over the years I have gone thorough cycles of training and then getting bored. During the cycles of training I got ready for and ran a marathon, swam a mile a day six days a week, completed P90X twice, PR0X2, and P90X3. Consistency over time is the key to training in every area of life, but particularly when it comes to exercise. Depending on our age, interests and general health, the type and amount of exercise we need will vary, but the key is to train rather than try.

When it comes to diet the challenge is to be consistent in eating what is good for us. There are many types of eating plans on the market today. Each tells us they are more “natural,” more “healthy,” and gain better results than the others. We live in a culture that can market anything to seem like it’s good for us, and one that offers INSTANT results for just about everything. There is no instant eating plan or pill that will bring us health. As with exercise, consistency over time is the key to good health in the area of physical care. At the end of the day eating well and exercising regularly contribute to good overall health and weight. I’m not a medical doctor, but I know from decades of personal experience that eating well and exercising regularly lead to the most lasting results. If you’re 50 years old or older I recommend a book titled Younger Next Year as a great practical guide for taking better care of yourself and feeling better into your sixties, seventies and eighties. It was written by a lawyer and a medical doctor who have discovered what I have said: exercise and eating well, combined with positive relationships and pursuing meaning goals contribute to better overall health.

Addictive behaviors disrupt the physical, social, emotional and spiritual arenas of many people’s lives. In particular, addition to alcohol and other drugs derails countless people’s lives. Having led a Bible study at a halfway house for those in recovery from such addictions for the past six years, I have realized that while many factors contribute to these addictions one factor is prominent: a desire to feel good in the moment. People consume alcohol and other drugs because they work–until they don’t. Whether the drug is consumed to fit in, feel good, forget pain, or because it was part of one’s upbringing, at first it does what it was intended to do. Then over time the drug takes over the physical and emotional systems of the drug taker.

While the debate about whether abstinence or moderation is the solution to such addictions, this much is sure: one cannot become addicted to a substance one never ingests into one’s body. I have found that abstinence is the better option for me, because I am an “all in” kind of personality. You may find that moderation is a viable option for you. The key is not to let alcohol or any other drug become the “solution” to your problems, because they are NOT the solution.

Finally, I list television watching as a part of physical care, because so many of us “numb out” in front of a tv set at the end of our days or at other times. Television isn’t evil any more than alcohol or food is evil. Each has its place. The challenge with television for many is that it becomes a default mode for free time. The more time we spend in front of a television set, the less time we invest in quadrant II activities: reading, prayer, exercise, relationship-building, etc… Nancy and I have found that the less time we spend watching television the more effective the other areas of our lives become. We have only had cable for a couple of years in our entire married life, because we know that the more options we have, the more likely we are to mindlessly surf through the channels to find something to watch–and not having cable helps in the area of finances, too.

Physical is so crucial to our overall well-being, because when we are physically healthy we are more likely to pursue the other six areas more effectively. I haven’t been emphasizing this area as much as I need to over the past couple of months and I ‘m feeling it in every area of my life. I know the solution is INTENTIONALITY. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” I urge you to take some time today to reflect on where you are in each of these areas of physical care and then determine what you are going to do to TRAIN to improve in each area if you need to make changes. Remember that nothing happens instantly in this area, but over several months you can establish new patterns, or reestablish healthy habits, and doing so will pay dividends for the rest of your life!

Here’s to leading better, by taking better care of yourself–today and for the rest of the days ahead!

The First Hour Of The Day

What do you do with the first waking hour of your day? Do you just try to get awake? Do you pray? Study (God’s word or anything else)? Exercise? Plan? If you study the lives of folks who have lead or are leading well in any area of life: business, politics, faith, or relationships, you find a common thread among most of them: they start the day strong. That start includes planning, prayer, and physical care. (I’m not generally an alliteration person, but it seemed to fit in this case.)

Planning first gives us the opportunity to consider what is most important in the short term: today and this week, and in the long term: this month and beyond. Steven Covey referred to it as “sharpening the saw.” I like this image, because I saw it put into action literally during my years working as a carpenter. Frank Fairman, my immediate boss during that time, always sat down at the start of each day and sharpened the blades on the circular saws we would be using that day. It would take about fifteen minutes, and he would always say that we would save much more than that during the day as we cut boards, because the saws would cut cleaner, faster and straighter. Without a doubt, when we start the day with planning, our days will be more effective. Even when those unexpected interruptions come, and perhaps particularly when they come, having taken the time to plan–and include margin–will make a major difference in our ability to handle and overcome them, and in living days that seem “cleaner, faster and straighter.”

Whether we plan then pray or pray then plan, the two actions go together for those of us who lead by following Jesus first. Prayer either guides our planning, or it takes what we’ve planned and filters it through the lens of God’s perspective. Either way it confirms or modifies what is truly important in our lives, and reminds us that if what we are planning to do is going to have ultimate significance it needs to flow from God’s guidance in our lives, rather than simply our own wisdom. When my life seems to be frazzled or disorganized, or just not as effective as I know it can be, I always pause and ask, “Am I praying and planning?” Generally, either one or both of those aspects of my life is out of alignment at those moments, and I need to put them back into the first hour of my days.

Physical care is one of those aspects of life that many consider a “luxury,” for which they don’t have time.  We say, “I’d exercise if I had time, but who has time for that?” Or “I know I need to eat better, but I don’t have time to PLAN what I eat.” Most of us have heard the saying, “Why is there never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over?” The question applies both to the matter of what we do with the first hour of the day, and with whether we exercise physical care in our lives or we don’t. Planning and prayer ensure not only that we will be more likely to do things right, but that we do the right things in the first place. The aspects of physical care I mentioned: exercise and eating well, are things we either do right, or we will eventually “do over” in the sense of needing to lose weight, take medication, etc… In my experience, when I invest time at the start of the day to exercise (either before or after I plan and pray), and at the start of the week to plan what I’m going to eat (and do this with Nancy) my overall life is much healthier.

You may be thinking: That all sounds like a lot of work! Yes, it is. But as we’ve been saying all along leading is work. It’s hard to be effective leaders and will cost us making great efforts to be get there. But the cost of being ineffective leaders is far great for our families, our businesses, our churches, or whatever area of life we lead. Self-leadership is the beginning of all effective leadership. That’s why the first hour of the day is so important!

Here’s to leading better, starting with the first hour of the day–today!

Margin…

I’ve already mentioned margin in a couple of previous posts, but today and tomorrow I want to devote the entire posts to this important concept. Margin at its simplest means leaving extra room when we budget our time and money, so we’ll have some extra when we need it. Most Americans are all too aware of what it’s like to have margin in neither–to live paycheck to paycheck, and day to day without much of a plan for how to provide margin in either bank accounts or calendars. By definition if we are going to lead we must be different than most Americans when it comes to margin. We must budget both our time and our money intentionally, because if we don’t plan our time someone else will, and as John Maxwell has said, “If you don’t tell your money where to go, you’ll wonder where it went. Leaders need margin if for no other reason than to have more time to think and more resources to apply to leadership opportunities.

I want to be extremely practical with these posts, and not just theorize about what it might look like to put some margin into our calendars and bank accounts. While I learned a long time ago that there is no one “right” way to do most things, particularly when it comes to something as individualized as planning the use of one’s time and money, so I will provide examples today and tomorrow describing what has worked for me. These will not be prescriptions of what will necessarily work for you. I have found quite often that when I read another’s examples of how he or she does something, while it might not fit me exactly, it’s a helpful place to start, rather than totally reinventing the wheel.

For the remainder of this post, let’s consider budgeting money. While I have studied just about every financial planning process out there with a Christian slant, Nancy and I have found that Joseph Sangl’s simple formula I-O=EZ proves quite helpful. The letters in the formula stand for I=Income; O=Outflow; EZ=Exactly Zero. In other words if you add up all your sources of income over a specific period: a week, every two weeks, each month, or whatever your pay periods happen to be, and then subtract all of your outflows over the same period, they need to EQUAL exactly zero. Remember that the outflows include giving and saving, along with all of the typical expenditures and commitments you have made with your money. I like the 10/10/80 “rule” as a guideline for how to disburse our income. The first 10 represents the percentage we give, the second 10 represents the percentage we save, and the 80 represents the percentage devoted to paying all the rest of the bills.

The first time Nancy and I put a budget together and got serious about following it we were surprised by two things: 1) John Maxwell was right! We didn’t realize how much money we were spending that we didn’t know we were spending. 2) Including EVERYTHING in the Outflow area is both crucial and challenging. It’s crucial, because if you don’t know exactly how much you are spending, you won’t be able to balance your budget (or spending plan, as I like to call it!). It’s challenging because the first several months we put together our spending plan, we had to keep adjusting the totals, because we forgot things. We forgot what we call the “1/12 items.” 1/12 items are bills that come due once a year. If you put aside 1/12 of the amount each month, then when the annual bill comes due, you will have the amount you need. A couple examples of 1/12 bills in our lives are life insurance and Christmas presents. Nancy and I each have a life insurance policy that comes due once a year. We simply divide the total cost by 12 and put that amount in a special checking account each month. Then when it comes due, we write a check from that account. We have a Christmas savings account, because we want to have money to buy Christmas presents, and since Christmas is always on December 25th, we start saving the first week of November the year BEFORE the Christmas for which we’re saving. We put $50 in the bank every two weeks (now that we get paid every other week), and then at the end of October we have $1,200 to spend on Christmas. We usually don’t spend that much, so we donate the rest to a charity such as Samaritan’s Purse. We remembered the Christmas 1/12 expenditure several years ago, and it’s been fun to look forward to buying Christmas presents and knowing we won’t be paying for Christmas into the following year.

Nancy and I also found out that our original outflow number was larger than our income. When that happens there are only two ways to balance the equation: add more income or subtract expenses. It’s simpler (not necessarily easier) to subtract expenses. Nancy and I found that we had some “fat” in our spending plan so we started cutting there. We also realized that our savings in various areas are the MARGIN that we’ve been talking about in this post. When we have an emergency fund, (which we do, now!) and an emergency comes up, such as an expensive car repair, or a root canal, or any true emergency, we have money to pay for it. That way we don’t find ourselves using a credit card to pay for emergencies, putting us back into a cycle of debt.

At this time we’ve been working our budget for years, so we’ve been able to eliminate all debt with the exception of the remainder of our home mortgage, and we have developed several additional “margin” accounts. We have an appliance replacement fund, a car replacement fund, and a major repair fund to which we contribute every month. That way when the stove stops working, or the roof needs to be replaced down the road, or we want to buy a new couch, or replace a car we have the money to do so. What we have found is that by putting $25 or $50 away each month in these various funds, the margin increases fairly quickly. Thankfully, a roof only needs to be replaced every thirty years, and a stove every 10-15 years. If you put these replacement funds in the Outflow portion of your budget the money will be there when those eventualities become realities.

If you’re thinking: I could never do all that! The truth is all of us can take a next step from where we are. Nancy and I didn’t realize that we would ever be at place to consider all these eventualities when we first started using the I-O=EZ formula, but what we noticed within a few months was we started to have a little margin. It wasn’t much, but it was there. Over the years the margin has grown. We still don’t have a great deal of day-to-day margin, but we know that a blown transmission, or a broken dishwasher is no longer going to blow our budget. We also know that when a giving opportunity comes up and we believe God is calling us to give to it, we are able to say, “Yes!” far more often than we used to be able to do. That’s a great blessing.

The key is: the younger you are when you start to develop margin in your finances, by developing a workable spending plan and sticking with it over time, the sooner you will have margin and the more margin you will have. As the old saying goes, “The best time to plant an oak tree is fifty years ago. The second best time is today.”

Here’s to leading better by creating or using a spending plan to create or increase margin in our finances–today!

Timing…Closer To Home

In yesterday’s post, I introduced John Maxwell’s four possible scenarios when it comes to timing and a leader introducing new ideas: a wrong idea at the wrong time equals disaster; a wrong idea at the right time is a mistake; a right idea at the wrong time equals non-acceptance; and a right idea at the right time equals success. Today, let’s take a look at that paradigm in our lives when it comes to something as simple as the timing of taking a vacation. Nancy and I got home on Monday evening after five days away on vacation. While the timing had been good for taking five days away from work, when I went out to the yard to check on the strawberries and the weeds–yes, to check on the weeds–I realized that our timing had not been the best for going away for five days from home. When we left last Wednesday afternoon, I knew the strawberries were getting ripe and that the weed situation needed attention in our blueberry enclosure and more so in our raspberry patch, in fact the raspberry patch had been next on my weeding schedule.

You may be thinking what does this have to do with leadership and timing? Everything! In last Saturday’s post titled The Importance of Rest, I noted the importance of taking time away on a regular basis for rest and renewal. Vacation is definitely part of that. While everyone receives differing amounts of vacation from their employers, it’s important to use whatever time we have available in our overall plan of rest and renewal, and to do so when the timing is the best for us. Nancy and I needed to visit our daughters, and we needed some time away. Since June 8-13 included Abby’s birthday (Abby is our older daughter) and Emmy (Emmy is our younger daughter) had recently moved to South Carolina, we thought it would be a good time to visit them, and since it was a good time for us to be away from our work at the church we went.

As I walked out to the strawberry, raspberry and blueberry patches I realized that our timing may NOT have been the best overall timing for a vacation. Nancy and I gave up on growing a big vegetable garden a couple of years ago, because I tend to take mission trips in the middle of the summer and when I come back the weeds have usually taken over the garden. Even at other times throughout the summer, we just can’t commit the time necessary to keep a garden doing well. Since then we have focused on our fruit bushes and a few apple trees. For example, I built a blueberry enclosure a couple summers ago and we were amazed to see the increase in the yield of the blueberry bushes once the birds couldn’t eat most of the berries. We planted strawberries outside the perimeter of the enclosure, and a handful of raspberry bushes given to us by some friends eight years ago have multiplied into a sizable raspberry patch.

When I walked out to take a look at each of them on Monday evening, the weeds were taller than the raspberry bushes. (Obviously, that didn’t happen in five days, since the raspberry bushes are three to four feet tall!) We have weeds about 6-10 inches tall throughout the blueberry enclosure. (No big deal, since I can clear those in about an hour.) But the strawberries had mostly ripened past the point of being useable or were bug infested. (That could have been avoided had we been home.) I told Nancy that June 8-13 is NOT the best timing for going on vacation from a standpoint of our fruit trees and bushes. I have been going out in the mornings on Mondays through Saturdays to pull weeds (in lieu of working out) and listen to my Bible on YouVersion, and then books on Audible for about an hour to an hour and a half at sunrise. By being away from June 8-13, I missed out on five to ten hours of pulling weeds. Had I been home the raspberry patch would have been weed free, since it was next on my list to weed when we left, as would the blueberries. In addition, I had staked up one of our apple trees, which has a weaker root system for some reason, and one of the stakes had broken while we were away, so the apple tree was leaning at a 45 degree angle. I would’ve caught that sooner had I been home. AND Nancy and I would have had fresh strawberries to eat at least three days during that time!

So what am I saying, that it was a bad idea to go on vacation? No, I’m saying it wasn’t the best timing to go on vacation. Had we gone a couple of weeks sooner, the strawberries would not have been ready to eat while we were gone, since that is a short window of time–basically the first two to three weeks in June. The weeds would still have been growing, but I would’ve just cleared the blueberry area of weeds, and the weeds around the raspberries would have been small, because of my “schedule” for weeding. I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I am extroverted, intuitive and spontaneous, so good timing isn’t a natural strength for me. In order to be better at it I need help from others AND I need to take better notes. Vacations and retreats are important–I would say vital–to a leader’s overall health and well-being. Good timing for taking them means more effective leadership over the long haul. While my goal is not to turn us all into obsessive-compulsive maniacs when it comes to timing in life, I am finally realizing at the age of 59 that good timing is a vital part of good leadership. Whether it’s when to go on vacation, or how to plan my work schedule, or how often I need to invest time in being with Nancy, knowing the best times to carry out each will mean better timing and good ideas carried out at the right time equal success!

Here’s to planning better so our timing will be better, so we will lead better–today!

Timing…

Many years ago I heard John Maxwell talk about timing as a key in whether our leadership succeeds or fails. He spoke about how the timing of a particular idea or action makes all the difference. He said that the wrong idea at the wrong time brings disaster. The wrong idea at the right time is a mistake. The right idea at the wrong time leads to non-acceptances, but the right idea at the right time leads to success. I have always remembered those four possibilities:  wrong idea-wrong time; wrong idea-right time; right idea-wrong time; and right idea-wrong time, and have lived through their reality again and again.

Thankfully, I have avoided making a ton of wrong idea-wrong time decisions over the years, but a couple come to mind, and Maxwell was 100% correct. One time I introduced contemporary worship at both of the worship services in a church that had been worshipping in a traditional style for nearly 200 years. One week we had two traditional services. The next week we had two contemporary services. It was the wrong idea at the wrong time. Talk about a disaster. I lived to regroup and move forward, but not without losing a tremendous amount of leadership credibility for a period of time. Had that been one of my first leadership decisions in that church it could have been my last. Wrong decision +Wrong time = Disaster!

I have made many wrong decisions at the right time over the years at home, at church, and in other organizations with whom I have volunteered or worked. By that I mean I had been in the leadership situation for long enough and had made enough right decisions at the right time to have developed leadership capital, which John Maxwell refers to as having “change in your pocket.” That meant the wrong decision was at the right time, because I used up some of the “change,” and still had plenty left.so did not end my leadership tenure. An example of a wrong idea at the right time in my home, was the time I decided we ought to buy a time-share vacation plan a few years after we got married. It was the wrong decision for Nancy and me, but it was at the right time, because we hadn’t yet started our family, and Nancy and I were both working. That meant we had the disposable income to pay for the time share. After a few years we realized that we were not going to be able to afford to use the time share, so we sold it for less than we paid for it.  Wrong decision + Right time = Mistake.

I have made so many right decisions at the wrong time over the years, that I could write a book about it. Since I am extremely extroverted, intuitive and spontaneous, I tend to adopt and implement new ideas quickly. I am often right about the need to adopt the new ideas. The problem is I don’t always think through the process necessary to implement the idea, or the consequences of adopting the new idea on the overall system involved, whether our family, the church I serve, or a volunteer organization of which I’m a part. For example, I have often heard about a new program for children, youth, evangelism or you name it, and I can see right away that it is going to be helpful and impact people for God’s glory. But sometimes I haven’t thought about the financial impact, or the number of volunteers needed to implement it, or its long-term sustainability. If I had a dollar for every time I have rolled out a new idea, which was a GOOD, new idea to a leadership team, or a church board, or my family and heard, “Are you crazy?” Or at least, “There’s no way! I would be a much wealthier man. Right idea + Wrong time = Non-Acceptance.

Finally, I have experienced the joy of coming up with the right idea at the right time and experienced success often enough to have been given the opportunity to continue to lead when I have made the other three types of decisions! The thing I would say that has happened over the years, as I have matured is that I have come to realize the importance of not only having the right idea, but also the right timing to implement it more and more. I have also learned that it is so much easier to come up with the right idea and the right timing collaboratively than it is on my own. One of the greatest joys of my life at work right now is working with the “Lead Team” at New Life. The Lead Team consists of four of us who are on staff at New Life. We meet every two weeks to consider what God is leading us to do in the big picture of New Life. We evaluate what we’re already doing, and consider what we need to do that we’re not doing effectively or at all right now. The biggest blessing of being part of the team is that together we come up with much better ideas AND better timing for implementation that I was ever able to do on my own. For example, New Life has been growing at a rather rapid rate for the past several years, so last year the Lead Team talked and prayed about adding a fourth worship service at some point. Various ideas were set forward, but we eventually decided to add the service on the first weekend in 2016. This gave us time to let the church family know, to promote it through our Christmas Eve worship services which are always heavily attended. We even had the time to order better chairs for the worship center. The result? Within a few weeks we were seeing an additional 150 people per week in overall worship attendance. Right idea + Right time = Success!

I hope as you consider your “great” ideas, that even when they truly are GREAT ideas, whether at home, work, in the church or in a community group of which you are a part, that you will also consider the timing. Consider when is the best time to present the idea. Consider the response folks are likely to have to it. Anticipate the objections and be ready to respond to them. Consider the timing. Is it too soon or too late to implement your idea. Sometimes we miss windows of opportunity and they don’t reopen. At other times, the window hasn’t opened yet, and it’s a bit messy to break the window in order to get it open!

Remember, that just because you’re a leader doesn’t mean that your ideas are automatically right, or that that timing is. If you have the opportunity to run the idea past a group of trusted folks whether family members, co-workers, or others whom you trust, the end result will often be better. I’m not saying never to champion an idea that no one else sees being right, but you. I’m just saying be really sure that you’re right and then do everything you can to help others see not only that the idea is right, but that now is also the time. Because Right Idea + Right Time = SUCCESS!

Here’s to leading better by implementing the right ideas at the right time – today! (or tomorrow if the timing will be better!)