I concluded yesterday’s post by asking what a leader ought to do when he or she has gone first in developing or using a new tool or process and it turns out that the innovation really wasn’t effective. The short answer is go back to what you were doing, or do something different. One of the greatest roadblocks to leadership is a failure to admit when we’ve made a bad or at least a non-helpful decision or commitment. No one likes saying, “I was wrong,” but until we learn to do that as leaders we’ll never be as effective as we could be. Because we’re human beings, we make mistakes. Those of us who go first make more mistakes, because we don’t always have the benefit of other people’s experience to guide us. While certain base-level truths guide our general decisions and actions, we all face opportunities to innovate in our lives, whether at home, work, school, or play. As I said yesterday what separates leaders from the rest of folks is leaders go first.
When we have gone first and been correct often enough, people recognize us as leaders. The challenge then becomes our tendency to move toward one of two extremes. Those who have been successful in inventing or choosing the latest innovations often enough may go to the extreme of thinking they will always make the right choice. They become reckless in their approach to leadership. At the other extreme are those who have attained a certain level of success by going first, and then say, “I don’t want to lose what I’ve built. Therefore, I’m going to maintain what I have. No more innovations.” While people seldom move to the absolute end of either extreme along the spectrum of innovation and maintenance, we do face the danger as leaders that we will tend toward one extreme or the other.
I’m the kind of leader who likes to try new things. Thankfully, I’ve learned over time that “trying” new things all the time is a sure way to lose focus and eventually to lose my effectiveness as a leader. Thanks to John Ortberg, I learned the difference between trying and training a number of years ago. Training is any concerted effort continued over time that will empower us to do something we cannot do now at a point in the future. Trying, on the other hand may be nothing more than a half-hearted effort to do something new or different. As leaders, we cannot afford the luxury of trying every new idea that comes along. I did that too often in years past. Thankfully, I ordinarily saw the idea, process, tool or whatever wasn’t working, and was willing to say, “Enough of that.” While that was an important ability, it still frustrated those around me to no end. After all, who wants to follow a leader who is charging off in four different directions at once?
The key for all of us when it comes to innovation and adopting new ideas, models, and technologies is to consider the implications of the change before we “pull the trigger.” I’m one of those folks whose tendency when it comes to pulling the trigger is to follow the sequence: fire, ready, aim. As we all know the most effective sequence is ready, aim, fire. Over the years, I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by other leaders at New Life who were better at getting ready and aiming. They have helped me to see some of my great ideas, or more properly other people’s great ideas that I wanted to adopt, were indeed, great ideas but the timing wasn’t right for us to implement them. When I’ve listened, the results have been quite effective. At times, when I’ve pushed us forward, the results were also quite effective, because the idea was right for us, and God is gracious.
Far more often, though, when I have not listened to the counsel of those around me who are good at getting ready and aiming, I’ve found myself in the position of having to say, “That didn’t work. We need to go back to what we were doing.” Or “That didn’t work. We need to try something else.” Or “That didn’t work. Let’s just bag it.” None of those are good options, because they demonstrate an initial lack of leadership. The key in those moments is not to compound an initial lack of leadership with an ongoing lack of leadership by riding a dead horse, as my Dad would have put it.
Great leaders will surround themselves with people who fill in the areas where they are deficient. My deficiency is rarely an unwillingness to adopt an innovation that will improve our effectiveness. My deficiency is “firing” before I’ve taken time to get ready and aim. Thirty years of leading has given me more than enough evidence that such an approach is seldom effective. Thankfully, as I’ve grown older, I’ve matured and God has brought a team around me that has helped me become far better in preparing before firing.
While I could offer dozens of examples of how firing on a new idea or adopting someone else’s innovation backfired and led to my having to say, “Time out. That was a bad idea,” we had a recent victory at New Life that shows what happens when the team works together to make one of my “go first” ideas a major success. As I’ve mentioned in a couple of previous posts, this is the 15th anniversary year of New Life. Back in January, I told the staff we needed to take time to celebrate this milestone, because I’ve never been good at taking time to celebrate. I said that April, which is our actual anniversary would not be a good time to celebrate, because it’s too close to Easter, and if we wanted to do anything outside the weather would be iffy.
My idea was to have the celebration coincide with Independence Day weekend, and to have fireworks as the grand finale of the weekend. Fireworks are not new. In fact, they are ancient. What would be new, was a community fireworks display had not been done in Saxonburg for decades, if ever. Eventually, the weekend planning came together, and we thought of virtually every detail, and distributed responsibilities for each detail to a particular staff member and his or her team. (When I say “we” I mean our leadership team at New Life.) The result of months of getting ready and aiming on the part of many creative and dedicated people is that Independence Day weekend was an incredible celebration. More than 1,000 people participated on our property and around the community with the fireworks finale. People left that night saying, “Wow! That was great.” The key was we had several good ideas, that were different than we had done before, and we planned them over a period of six months. Attention to detail was left to those who love attending to details, and we even added a last minute mission dinner, which was my idea, that had enough planning to be effective, and the weekend was amazing.
If you are a leader who tends to fire before you get ready and aim, know that you will find it necessary to pull the plug on many of your ideas. In those instances, please, pull the plug. It will save you and everyone else a lot of additional grief. Better yet, build a team of people who will help you get ready and aim before you fire, a team who will help you see that not all of your great ideas are. Listen to them, but also listen to God for that rare time when your “crazy” idea is His idea. In those moments do everything you can to ensure that you have gotten ready and aimed, then fire. The principle that leaders go first is valid all the time. The better prepared we are before we go first, the less we will have to go first in saying, “I was wrong.” This is a time when I hope you will learn from my mistakes and successes, rather than having to make all the mistakes yourself.
Here’s to leading better by admitting when our ideas aren’t great, and by developing a team to ensure that our ideas are great before we implement them–today!