Leasership Summit (notes) #2

A few more thoughts from my summit notes... (more to come another day)

Bill Hybels
- best leaders around have an incredible bandwidth in who and where they learn from
- a quick and unilaterally created and discovered vision is usually a fantasy
- good vision requires and necessitates a process
- how can people own a vision they have never had a conversation about or discussed
- what does God want our church to look like 5 years from now?
- what kind of people are we becoming?
- what kind of actions will we take in the near future b/c of the kind of people we’re becoming?
- am I willing to sacrifice – die if it comes to it – for the vision God gave me?
- am I a hired hand or this my life?

Carly Fiorina
- learned from logic classes: there’s power in the right question
- good questions force people to focus on the question and the problem, not the superficial answer
- every time to you stare down fear and overcome, you become stronger
- prejudice (of opposite sex, race, or status) is based on fear
- you can fin common ground in the problem you’re working on
- if you can’t motivate people in a certain direction, you’ll never get anything done
- vision + reality = buy in (you can’t just paint the vision, you must define the obstacles and sacrifices in pursuing that vision
- you need enough passion to pursue a vision, but enough dispassion to see things objectively and make tough decisions
- fame disconnects people from you b/c they stop seeing you and start labeling you

Marcus Buckingham
- build on your strengths, manage around your weaknesses
- what % of the day do you play to your strengths?
POINTS:
1. identify your strengths
2. change something every week to move you towards focusing on your strengths
3. talk about strengths without bragging

Michael Porter
- how do you de well and doing good?
- i.e. we want to do good, but are we doing well at doing good, or wasting lots of time
- sometimes the best thing we can do for the homeless is not build a shelter but support the one that’s already doing well at doing good
- don’t confuse goals with strategy
- think sustainable: sustainable is long term good
- do you have the ability to stop something

(most challenging quote)
“GIRLS IN AFRICA ARE TRADING IN THEIR VIRGINITY FOR A SIT DOWN MEAL AT MCDONALD'S”

Colin Powell (this guy had tons of nuggets popping out of his conversation)
- promote a clash of ideas; there’s no point in working with people and not listen to their ideas
- create a noisy system where people feel they can speak
- only people get things done; not charts or systems; leaders need to realize that people make things happen not theories
- leader’s time: 1/3 plan, 2/3 working with people to make things happen
- leader’s often disappoint
- separate your ego and your position: don’t let criticism hurt you personally, allow it to help you do a better job at what you’re doing – i.e. listen to the truth
- HAVE FUN; I loved this one, b/c too often we feel like the world rests on our shoulders and we can’t stop for a minute; Powell found himself fixing Volvo's (his hobby) on several nights during desert storm; it settled his mind and gave him strength for the next day
- he was known as the reluctant general; never wanting to go to war for war’s sake; BEST LINE of his conversation was his perspective of soldiers on the enemy side: “the creator put them all on the earth” (referring to both sides of the war)
- good instinct: develop wisdom