• Everyone wins when a leader gets better
• Pastors and business leaders humble themselves to learn from each other- it’s about learning

Parable of the Sower:  Seeds fall on hard, rocky, thorny, and good soil

• Good soil- people receptive to the message of Christ, in business it could represent more wins = healthy trees
• Seed rejection ratio was 75% in the story by Jesus
• “I believe everyone’s life would be better if Christ would be at the center
• To get more trees, we need to plant more seeds- people as close as a few neighborhoods away from Willow Creek did not even know they were a church!
• What are you experimenting with to sow more seeds?  (Marketing, messaging, communications)
• Leaders:  Your whole organization takes it’s seed sower ques from you.  If you keep trying to grow the same type of seeds, you’ll get the same type of results
• As leaders, we need to always be experimenting, trying new things, avoid entropy- helps keep staff engaged, growing, tinkering
• Leaders, we must take on the focus of always getting better
• 360 degree leader, we lead up, down, left, and right- we are in the middle of that circle
• You are the most difficult person you will ever lead- our own work habits
• A leader’s most important asset is their energy- to energize team, initiatives, etc.
• “What are the 6 most important contributions I can make between now and the end of the year to my team and organization?”
• 6 x 6: ”I’m going to focus on these six things for the next 6 weeks”- not what we want to do but what is needed most
• We can’t sprint for 6 months but we can sprint for 6 weeks
• Bill arranged his schedule around his 6 x 6 schedule- huge strides for productivity for him
• What system of management of initiatives do you use?  Are job descriptions and responsibilities aligned to those?  How do you stay focused as a leader and team?
• “God didn’t make you a leader to “respond” to stuff all day, he made you a leader to move stuff forward”
• Succession planning… Bill is 60- probably in a 5-10 year process to hand off his role as leader of Willow
• Succession planning should be lead by someone with high emotional intelligence
• “Here to there”- you need to build the case we cannot stay “here”… we need to get to “there”
• Vision in 3 stages, the start, the middle, and near the end- visions are most vulnerable in the middle- people are fired up when we start, and they can be excited when the end is near…  the toughest is in that middle stage- the grind
• Walking with God closely is more important than ever when you’re in the middle of the vision- it can be the toughest, you’re most exposed, you learn your weaknesses, and some of the most difficult curveballs come along
• Leadership is an incredible privilege, to see other people grow, to solve great challenges…. Have you thanked God recently for the privilege to lead something? 
• The worst days of leadership still beat the best days of sitting on the bench

Matthew 13

The Parable of the Sower

1 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake.2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore.3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed.4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

Wess Stafford- CEO/President Compassion International

Momma Maggie - Stephen’s Children- Cairo, Egypt

• If you were called to a business, ministry, or organization that would be limited in scope, without the success of growth of up and to the right, and little to no financial reward, would you step into that role as a leader?
• In our culture, we can get addicted to the drug of growth, it becomes our only measure of success, and we evaluate our own leadership based on that alone.  Sometimes we’re asked to lead “tough callings”.
• In Ethiopia we pray all day long but in America things are so easy that Christians don’t pray all week long at times?  Is that true. (Yes.)
• We need prayer for America- with our vast blessings we have massive complacency, our actions communicate as if we don’t need God- lack of prayer, no urgency in our Faith, and no study of the Bible
• Personal note:  It’s far to easy to drift into “leaning on my own understanding”- the pace of business, the delusion of success, and can settle for mere human results.
• We have a choice, we’ll either be sinners or saints.  If you want to be a saint, do what God has called you to do. 
• Elegance comes from within, elegance is wrapped in love and forgiveness- not external style or image
• Millions of children not only are hungry and naked, they are naked without dignity
• Among the children and hungry, the Creator is hidden
• Tough calling:  Read the Word, sell everything, and have a pure heart
• To be in silence is to be fully inside one’s self- but it’s in that place where we find the treasures of the Kingdom
• What I’ve learned, silence your body to listen to the Words, silence your tongue to listen to your thoughts, silent your thoughts to listen to your heart beating, silence your heart to listen to your spirit, and silence your spirit to listen to His Spirit…. In silence you leave “many” to be with the One.- Momma Maggie
• Jeremiah said: “You deceived me, God!”- curses everyone….
• Jeremiah was torn between his calling and is aching to be successful in the eyes of the world
• Frustration…. things should be better with God!  Jeremiah writes his disappoints in the book of Lamentations.
• Despite all this, he wrote, “God’s mercies were fresh and new to me every morning… great is thy faithfulness…”
• “I’ve had an easy calling in an affluent community- it’s been up and to the right… I’m no Jeremiah… I’ve had very little true hardship in doing what God has called me to do…”- Bill Hybels
• God is looking for some strong shoulder leaders to take on the tough calling to address the pain in our world
• Courage is facing real struggles, without resources, giving up successful careers, to take on real tough callings.
• Business leaders, what calling can you take on to bring leadership to some local organization and take on that calling?  It may not be giving up your business, but it’s leading a real need in your community.
• The problem with leaders is that they can see in the future and the danger that’s ahead.

What is your tough calling or have you been riding the easy street?  It’s time to step up.

• Everybody wins when a leader gets better
• #1 Big Question:  What is your current leadership challenge level at work?  (Underchallenged?  Appropriately challenged?  Dangerously overchallenged?)  Where in this spectrum are you?
• Where do you think you do your best work in that spectrum?  Where do you come up with your innovation?  Research says it’s just over the line of appropriately challenged and creeping into overchallenged.
• Think about building muscle, you need to stress it a bit to grow but overstress it and you can tear your muscle- but you need some stress.
• If you’re underchallenged and stay there, your leadership strengths will atrophy and diminish
• If you’re dangerously overchallenged, you will break down physically and mentally.  If you stay there too long, you’ll break down in ways you don’t want to break down.
• If you’re modeling being dangerously overchallenged- you risk your team doing the same thing and burning them out.
• Stress improves productivity in short spurts, it flattens out in town, but continued stress will cause you to crash.  What is the pace you’re running in?
• How do you refuel your leadership bucket?  How and when do you take your foot off the pedal?
• Underchallenged people leave your organization.  Are you challenging your team appropriately?
• #2 Big Question:  What is your plan for dealing with challenging people in your organization?
• If you lost 50% of your revenue, how would you decide who would have to go?  If you have a team of 10, who are the five that would have to go?  They can be great people but as an exercise, it gives you clarity on your “challenging people” list
• The future of your organization is critically tied to the quality of your team moving into the future.  How is your ability in keeping and attracting the best people?
• How much time are you going to give those who have an attitude issue roaming in your organization?  A day?  A year?  Leaders have to have a point of view on this.
• Have a conversation quickly, “Fred, why are you walking around the organization with a pitch fork?  What can we do to help?  But you need to know, this is going to need to be resolved in the next 30 days.”
• The damage someone with a bad attitude can do in your organization can be breathtaking if left alone
• What is your plan for underperformers?  You need to have a plan.  Willow addresses immediately but gives them 90 days to get it resolved.
• The hardest is when the organization outgrows a team member’s capacity or talent.  They’re a great person but they become a lid to your organization.  Willow works to give them 6-12 months to transition, move to another seat, or make sure they treat them well in their exit/severance.
• If you don’t deal with the worst attitudes, you demotivate the best people and you risk losing them.
• Challenging people deep down are typically not happy people.
• #3 Big Question:  Are you naming, facing, and resolving the problems that exist in your organization?
• You’ve seen it…. organizations that push issues under the rug and eventually die.
• Every idea you have has a life cycle:  Accelerating, Booming, Decelerating, Tanking
• “Nothing rocks forever- there is a season for everything and every new idea….”
• Part of your job as a leader is to look problems straight in the eye and not be intimidated by them.  Work to move tired ideas back to a refreshed accelerating mode before they deplete or “tank”
• #4 Big Question;  When is the last time you examined the “core” of what your organization is all about?
• Reevaluate…. what business are we in?  Are we clear about our core?
• Re-thinking your core can help bring new messaging to your market
• The Church is about the people transformation business- real life change through the Gospel
• With a circle, in 5 words, explain or summarize the central message of Christianity….  do the same for your organization or business.  5 words.
• Christianity 5 words:  Love, Evil, Rescue, Choice, Restore   When you identify that, we bring clarity to our message, we’ve simplified a message.
• #5 Big Question:  Have you had your leadership bell rung recently?
• When is the last time we’ve cast a bold vision to our team…. Do you need your boldness back?
• If you’re sick enough of being stuck, you would do whatever it took to create action…. Are you sick enough?  Are you willing to do whatever it takes to be “un-stuck” or are you making excuses?
• Your God-given job as a leader is to move an organization from here to “there”.  Whatever it takes, wherever it takes.  If you’ve lost this vision, step aside and let someone push the vision.
• There’s too much at stake in this world not to take action and lead.
• Why not challenge yourself and your team to make the next five years the best five years of your leadership?  The people following you deserve to have your next 5 years be your best.