In taking responsibility.

In giving credit to others.

In asking for forgiveness.

In prayer.

By example.

In caring for others.

In admitting mistakes.

In solving problems.

In setting trends.

By Inspiring others.

In Honesty.

Leaders lead. Its not rocket surgery. Its simple, profound, mind blowing, humbling, and exhilarating. Leaders also have to have followers or else they are by definition not leaders. Having followers who also have the same characteristics above make organizations effective and create solutions that win. It turns out that leading and following both require permission and effort. Stop doing any of the above and you lose permission and are not putting forth your best effort.

In our business, we’ve decided to not be the kind that joins others in the race to the bottom of the price war. Our services are expensive, we choose our clients carefully, instead of serving all 175 practices in a city we choose to serve the 1 or 2 really exceptional ones. We choose to give more than we take. We give our clients what they need rather than just what they want. We emphasize client education not to pave the way to sell more services to them but as a way to help them understand their advertising tools and data better thus sharpening their business strategy. Its not a losing strategy but a winning one. When a client wins a case, or gains a patient because of the insights we discovered together, or they succeed in a marketing push because of a brainstorming session we held in their office, our business wins. It creates the trust needed to develop a deeper relationship and allows us to introduce better products. Being one-of-a-kind is hard but rewarding, financially and personally. Being one of many alternatives isn’t as deeply rewarding.

In the non-profit sector, the temptation to be one of many alternative choices is intense. It is definitely the safer strategy. Safer, because it doesn’t take too much effort to differentiate your organization from the competition. You just have to be one or two rungs higher on the value offerings. Instead of competing against yourself and constantly innovating and improving your organization now just needs to be slightly better than the others. It takes a lot more energy to out innovate another organization, to invest deeply in individuals or members and develop a culture that welcomes competing and complimentary points of view.

If Jesus had designed that his Church would be just another alternative to the Pharisees and the Romans, then it wouldn’t have won converts and spread like it did. It spread because his followers chose to be ‘one of a kind’ and have an organization that was ‘one of a kind’ built on mutual respect and openness and thoroughly committed to radically transforming individuals. They created ‘one of a kind’ individuals who gave their lives for the Cause day in and day out. And they also gave the fullest and last measure of devotion to God in a ‘one of kind’ way on their last day on earth on the big stage at the Coliseum or in obscurity in the execution chamber of a dungeon. The alternative then is to be like the Pharisees who just needed to be one notch better than those around them whose perfection fell far short of God’s ideal for them. Are you one-of-a-kind? Or are you more of the same? Is your organization one-of-a kind or does Christ find it needing to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees?

Just yesterday on my way back to the hotel, I was well dressed and enjoying my walk and then I heared the plainitive plea, “Excuse me sir…”. I wasn’t in the mood to excuse any one. “Excuse me sir…”. I kept walking away. I usually do not carry cash just my debit cards. But this time I had cash…yet I continued to walk away thoroughly disgusted with myself. Peter and John when accosted by the crippled man at the gate of the temple at least had the decency to acknowledge the man.

My love for Christ has not diminished and neither has the fervor of my prayers. But clearly my love for fellow man is lacking. I would like to be tender hearted and give of my resources and of my life without reservation to others.

Carlos paid for a full tank of gas for the lady that day…

On Facebook:

Active Worldwide Users: 500,000,000 +
Pieces of Content Shared per Month: 45,000,000,000
Time Spent on Facebook: 1,330 years in time is spent daily
If Facebook was a country based on users: Rank 3rd largest after China and India

On Wikipedia:

Studies show it’s as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.
If you were paid $1 for every article posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour.

On Twitter:

Registered Users: 156,000,000 +

Updates per Month: 54,000,000 +

On Flickr:

4 Billion Images hosted on Flickr: That is 13x more than the National Library.

Do the math:
Average SDA Church size: 250
Per Person Contribution/month: $10
Total per church/month: $2500
$2500 x 12 mos. = $30,000.

Have a group of 12 local churches join together.

12 x 30,000 = $360,000 per year.

Take $360,000 and go overseas where the dollar value jumps. Honduras fx rate is $1= 18. Pakistan $1= 84.37.

18 x 360,000 = 6,480,000 in Honduras.

84.37 x 360,000 = 30,373,200 in Pakistan.

$10 x 12 = $120 per year = 120/365 = .32 cents per day.

What could your local church do for God with 30,000 or 30 million in the mission field?

The Tea Partier’s hold up the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence forgetting that those documents were forged through compromise and willingness to work together. Compromise has become a dirty word to some. Ben Franklin was rumored to have said right after the signing of the Declaration of the Independence, “we must hang together now or we will hang separately later.”

We are in this together, we need leaders who can put their name on a bill, a project, a ministry, or an idea and take ownership, for better or for worse, because we are all in this journey together. Is your name on anything significant?

Our job is have a good net and be ready to fish where Jesus wants us to. Don’t let cultural barriers prevent you from seeing the fields white with the harvest.

Steven Covey in his book The 8^th Habit, which I highly recommend, quoted the results of a Harris Poll of 23,000 U.S. residents employed full time within key industries and in key functional areas as follows:

• Only 37 percent of those polled, said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why.
• Only 1 in 5 was enthusiastic about their team’s and organization’s goals.
• Only 1 in 5 workers said they have a clear”line of sight” between their tasks and their team’s and organizational goals.
• Only half were satisfied with the work they have accomplished at the end of the week.
• Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals.
• Only 15 percent felt they worked in a high-trust environment.
• Only 17 percent felt their organization fosters open communication and better ideas
• Only 10 percent felt that their organization holds people accountable for results.
• Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for.
• Only 13 percent have high-trust, highly cooperative working relationships with other groups or departments.

Covey goes on to compare these results to a soccer team by describing the team as having only four of the eleven players on the field knowing which goal was theirs. Only two of the eleven would care. Only two of the eleven would know what position they play and know exactly what they are suppose to do. And all but two players would, in some way, be competing against their own team rather than the opponent.

It is easy to put your head in the sand and say this is not true in my organization. I’m not saying that every person needs to memorize the vision and mission statement and regurgitate it on demand. Just simple awareness of the big picture can go a long way to keep your team from getting bogged down in minutia.