Today I am attending the Chick-Fil-A Leadercast along with the entire Rocket Company team. The following series of posts will be the leadership learnings from the day. The first speaker was Andy Stanley, the great pastor of North Point Community Church in Atlanta, GA. There is no better communicator of leadership than Andy.
The following are his thoughts:
- The only I know how to succeed is to focus on where I add value. – Michael Hyatt
- I’m never the smartest person in the world. I’m just the leader.
- We always know there are smarter people in the room.
- The only way for me to move forward was to take complicated things and make them simple.
- All the smart people taught themselves not to try things.
- One of the most important things you can do is surround yourself with smarter people.
- “Level 5 leaders have the humility to aspire to be the dumbest person in the room.” – Jim Collins
- If you are in a growing organization, whether there is growth or expansion comes complexity. It is unavoidable.
- Complexity is the enemy of clarity.
- Clarity is the most important thing.
- We knew we were going to be a big church because if you have the only hot dog stand in town, your hot dogs don’t have to be that good.
- As a leader in a complex organization, you need a place you can retreat to.
- What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Where do I fit in?
- There is extraordinary power when you can reduce the organization down to answering what is the one thing we are doing?
- You are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. – Ritz
- The mist in your mind will become a fog in an organization is you are not able to communicate your mission with clarity.
- If you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, you are going to have a hard time doing it.
- Once upon a time your company didn’t exist. Once upon a time your company was an idea…Why are doing this? Why are you willing to waste your capital to do this?
- Somewhere in the midst of all the complexity is the reason you why are doing this.
- There is a reason you are harnessing the hearts of people as to why you are doing this.
- People who can answer this feel like team members. If you don’t, they feel like employees.
- What is your unique contribution? What are you doing that if you don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.
- You need to create for you and for your direct reports a one-sentence job description.
- In my industry if you can’t keep people awake for 35 minutes, they put you in charge.
- To inspire our staff and congregations to remain fully engaged in our mission and strategy. – Andy’s job description
- To keep Andy’s path clear of nonessential tasks and decisions so that he can do what only he can do. – Andy’s Administrative Assistance one sentence-job description
- You’re a leader so things are going to grow. Growth creates complexity. Complexity requires simplicity.
- We create churches unchurched people love to attend.
Would you like to hear how Andy Stanley, Steven Furtick, Louie Giglio, and Mark Driscoll prepare their messages?
All of this happens on Wednesday, May 16 at 4pm EDT. And best of all, it’s 100% free. Preach Better Sermons is a free, four-hour, online conference focused on helping communicators prepare and deliver messages that matter. Some of the best communicators in the world will unpack preaching principles you can use right away.
It’s 100% free and since it happens online, there are no travel costs. Click here to register for the event now.
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