Charlie Wear’s Notes

From Warren Buffet’s annual letter to shareholders:

“We tend to let our many subsidiaries operate on their own, without our supervising and monitoring them to any degree. That means we are sometimes late in spotting management problems and that both operating and capital decisions are occasionally made with which Charlie and I would have disagreed had we been consulted. Most of our managers, however, use the independence we grant them magnificently, rewarding our confidence by maintaining an owner- oriented attitude that is invaluable and too seldom found in huge organizations. We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly – or not at all – because of a stifling bureaucracy.

With our acquisition of BNSF, we now have about 257,000 employees and literally hundreds of different operating units. We hope to have many more of each. But we will never allow Berkshire to become some monolith that is overrun with committees, budget presentations and multiple layers of management. Instead, we plan to operate as a collection of separately-managed medium- sized and large businesses, most of whose decision-making occurs at the operating level. Charlie and I will limit ourselves to allocating capital, controlling enterprise risk, choosing managers and setting their compensation.”

How can this possibly work?

Todd Hunter has launched his new homepage, 3 is enough. Be sure to check it out for information on this new ministry.

A few months ago I wrote a short post about a young leader I had run into. He was the pastor of a church that I had attended for a few weeks when it was first starting, author of a discipleship book and heading toward the fifth anniversary of the church with attendance around 500. I thought all of this was pretty good.

Just a couple of weeks ago I got an email about his fall from ministry. I checked the church web site and his name, all of his sermons, his place in the history of the church, had all been expunged. I checked his personal website and it was down. I checked the website for his book and it says "will return shortly."

This just makes me sick at heart. I feel for the members of his church who looked to him for spiritual guidance and find that he didn’t have the character to "make it through." I feel for the members of his own family who have been hurt and damaged. I feel for him, in particular, because I know he is living in a personal hell.

I don’t know how these situations can be handled in any better way. They just point out the fact that pastors and leaders are human beings. I wish this wasn’t true. Because then these issues would never arise. I do know that there is a special place reserved for leaders who have fallen publicly. The road to forgiveness and restoration is longer and harder and less grace-filled than for the rest of us followers of Christ.

I am adding this leader and his church to the people that I pray about, when I remember to pray. I am going to pray for healing and restoration. I am going to pray for repentance and redemption. It’s probably the least I can do.

My good friend Scott Bane wrestles with the question, "Where are all the apostles?"
He writes:

I find myself missing them more and more lately.  Which is interesting because I’m not even sure what I’m missing.  What is it I want an apostle to do for me?  It seems like there must be something.  Is there anyone in the Church today that has the authority to say the kinds of things that Paul did?  We’re drowning in opinions and strategies and "movements" and "we just need to get back tos."  But we don’t seem to have anyone that can stand up and say, "I’m an apostle by the will of God.  All this nonsense has to stop because it’s divisive and it’s fruitless.  And whoever disagrees with me, let’s just see which of us God’s power stands behind!"

His question got me thinking and I thought I might start a list of apostolic qualities or characteristics. Feel free to add to them. An apostle is:

• A person who is interested in the expansion of God’s kingdom by any and all means, but especially through the development of leaders.
• Speaks with authority.
• Is outward focused, not self-centered.
• Is prophetic and futuristic, especially when it comes to seeing the call on another person’s life.
• Is pastoral toward leaders.
• Is strategic for people-groups, regions and nations.
• Is able to mobilize the passion of others.
• Is transparent and authentic concerning their flaws.

I think that is a good enough start, for now.

I serendipitously arrived at an essay by Jay Gary, a PhD candidate in the Regent University program in Organizational Leadership. One of the paragraphs jumped out at me:

Rost claims management is built around authority relationships, while leadership is built around influence relationships. Management concerns managers and subordinates, while leadership deals with leaders and followers. Management exists to produce and sell goods, while "leaders and followers intend real change that reflect their mutual purposes" (p. 102). While Rost is not universally accepted in the field, he helped me realize that leadership was about influence relationships, not merely positional power. Unlike command and control relationships, influence is non-coercive and multidirectional. Leaders and followers influence each other mutually. Leaders persuade followers. In turn, followers persuade leaders. Depending on the situation, they may change places. Teams may even practice self-organizing leadership.

So here’s my question for today: Is it possible to be a good (maybe great) leader and a bad (maybe awful) manager? When I think about some of the experiences I have had in leadership and management in the last 6-7 years and apply this paradigm, so much begins to make sense. Leaders "influence." Ah, yes that explains it. Managers "get the job done." Leaders are declaring: "Let’s move forward." Managers are organizing the parade.

The combination of great leader and great manager in one person, I think, is pretty rare.

When I was learning how to drive a car in the dark ages of 1963 I was taught to take my foot off the accelerator when I applied the brakes. Frequently this was accompanied by pressing down on the clutch while the vehicle’s transmission was shifted. If I wanted to turn up the air conditioning I needed to roll down the windows a little more and push the wind-wing out a little.

So much of organizational leadership revolves around the use of the brake and the accelerator. When senior leaders are "feeling" flush (with money, trusted leaders or managers) they might become more permission-granting, allowing the vehicle to speed up. Of course, speeding sometimes leads to accidents, and especially after an accident it is hard for an organization to "drive" without pressing the brake at the same time as the accelerator. Lots of controls are put in place. Purchase orders, requisitions, and multiple committee meetings are the rule of the day.

The best organizational practices are those that allow the organization to "make good time" with the judicious use of brakes and downshifting when necessary. In my opinion, our American economy suffers from the brake and accelerator syndrome as applied by the Federal Reserve. What Americans don’t realize, I suppose, is that the Federal Reserve intended to burst the real estate bubble. The only way for this to be accomplished was for thousands of Americans to lose their homes, because the brakes had to be applied.

I need time management. No, you didn’t read this incorrectly. I didn’t say I need a time management "system." I have had about elebenty-seven of those over the years.What I need to develop is the ability to say no to all of the good things that others expect me to say yes to. And then I need to learn to say yes to all of the best things that will allow me to be happy and effective in my endeavors.

I need to learn to explore the beauty of procrastination. Huh? Yes, I need to learn to put off until tomorrow those urgent and violently important things that I really don’t need to do. If I can become a better procrastinator I won’t have to redouble my efforts when it appears that I am not living up the the expectations of those around me. I fear that implosion is just around the corner unless I can develop this skill.

When the pile gets too big, I simply start to shut down. I begin to fill my time with fun stuff: reaching out by email to old friends, making long phone calls, scheduling appointments that can easily wait for another time, going to the movies, playing hearts or solitaire, you get the idea. Anything but the important stuff that is at hand. I get so bogged down that malaise can easily set in. So here’s my plan today, I am going to be a better procrastinator and put off everything that is keeping me from accomplishing the vitally important tasks that only I can do.

Wouldn’t it be great to be an all-powerful wizard? Someone like the Wizard of Oz? I think it is amazing how we want to believe that our leaders (read pastors, bosses, professors, governors or candidates) are somehow superhuman. [Of course, Californians do have the Terminator as governor, unfortunately he hasn't been able to prevent the estimated $16 billion dollar budget deficit caused by the housing crunch. Apparently even the Governator is only human.]

I have spent some time in my life working and serving in the "institutional church." You know what I mean. I have seen denominational leadership and mega-church leadership up close. I have been on staff in a large church, and I have been part of the overseeing group in a church network. Here is the good news and the bad news. The good news? All of these leaders are "just ordinary people like you and me." The bad news? All of these leaders are "just ordinary people like you and me."

We want so much more from our leaders. We want their approval and we want them to recognize our contributions to the enterprise. We want them to be kind and calm. We want them to make good decisions and to know what is best for the organization. We want them to place our needs above their own. Unfortunately, like Dorothy, we end up noticing that there is a man behind the curtain pulling the levers that create the image of the larger than life Wizard. And that man behind the curtain usually looks all too much like a run of the mill, life-size human being. He has faults. He has flaws. He is self-centered, and flies off the handle. He misuses his influence and power. He walks all over us, and he doesn’t even know it. He hardly ever encourages us to be all that we can be.

To all of those people who have thought of me as a leader and eventually discovered that I was just a man behind the curtain, I apologize. A leader I admired used to say something like, "I’m just a fat man trying to get to heaven." That seems like a self-deprecating and humble statement. Well I am a lot like that leader, I am just a guy trying to fake it until I can make it like the rest of us, a man behind the curtain.

Two of the key leaders at Willow Creek Church will be moving on in the next few months. It will be interesting to watch and see how this transition is handled. If you are a leadership junkie like me, you will be constantly wondering about the "story behind the story."

A little over 14 years ago I was transitioning from one ministry to another. I had just completed a multi-year stint as a "volunteer" executive pastor of a church of about 1000. I had been the key leader in a move from one location to another. I had also seen the church decline from 1000 to 500. When the move was completed I was getting "strong leadings" from God that one chapter had ended and another was beginning.

Making a long story short, although I am quite sure that God was leading, I am also quite sure that I didn’t handle myself with much dignity as I moved on to pastor a church in a community 10 miles away and over the hill from where I had been working for the previous five years. While there were no "dead bodies" or split congregations, there were some hard feelings and difficult moments. Even the smallest rejection is painful. We all yearn to be celebrated and appreciated, but when we are leaving, and both sides, "the leavor and the leavee" (I don’t think these are actual English words, but they do kind of work, don’t they?) are not in mutual agreement, there are bound to be some hurt feelings.

The worst kind of leaving is when we have been "fired" or forced into resignation. I have experienced this a few times in my life and boy, that is no fun at all. Closure is an impossibility. We can’t help but conduct postmortems in our minds, sometimes ad infinitum, trying to make sense of what happened. I hope to learn from my past mistakes and make my future transitions with dignity and grace.

There was a period in the 90s when I was a John Maxwell acolyte. "Leadership is influence," is Maxwell’s famous quote. I also used to love to hear John Wimber talk about leadership. To paraphrase, he would say, "Look behind you, if there is no one there, then you are not the leader." Maxwell used the metaphor of a "leadership account." I have seen the famous leadership account in action plenty of times, and let me assure you, it is easy to make withdrawals and not so easy to make deposits. Deposits take trustworthy interactions over a long period of time, but one false move and the account can be drained overnight.

In a recent article, my friend Steve Sjogren said:

"No emotionally healthy person can work in any sort of ongoing way with someone who doesn’t respect them.  None of us are stupid.  We can all pick up on clear signals that we are not held in high esteem. Every member of your team is not only due respect.  They are each a gift from God himself.  Celebrate the gift they bring.  Let them shine where they are strong – and they probably will!  Do what it takes to deal with conflict.  See a therapist – whatever.  Great churches have long term employees that become like family over the long haul."

Disrespect, or negative interactions are like a broken sprinkler pipe leaking water. It is only a matter of time before erosion occurs. If the water runs long enough it can cause some severe damage.

This is really a simple equation. Once you begin to disrespect the leader, then, if you have integrity, you must leave. On the other hand, once a leader begins to disrespect a follower, then they must help the person leave. But as the 50s song goes, leaving, or  "breaking up is hard to do."