ARE:A Renewal Enterprise

Leading Through (Any) Crisis

How do leaders lead through times of trouble, uncertainty, and crisis? We have five suggestions that can help leaders in any organization. But we were sparked to make this list because several of us on the ARE team are members of a religious denomination that has been rocked by a recent change in policy. In the aftermath, some people in the denomination are rejoicing; some are frustrated and angry. A few have left the denomination and/or are considering leaving. What concerns us is that so many of our leaders are allowing this latest crisis to knock them off track. Some of them are running around like fire fighters without a chief, madly trying to put out every flame they see without aim or effect.

Notice we said "this latest crisis." 

This isn't the first. It won't be the last. It may not even be the worst.  AP religion writer Rachel Zoll reports that The Great Recession has made things even harder than they were before for financially strapped faith-based organizations and communities across the religious spectrum (both liberals and conservatives) --- and that it doesn't look like things will improve even after the economy begins to turn around.   (Read the rest of Rachel's article here.) 

The fact is, if you're a leader - in any organization - you're going to face all types and sizes of crises, some caused by things beyond your control and others of your own making. Here are five suggestions to help leaders in any organization lead through troubled times and unexpected circumstances:

The Trouble At Hyatt (could be your trouble, too)

In our new book, The Future Starts Now, we argue that something important has changed in the way people think about themselves --- and that means leaders (even the church kind) have to rethink the way they lead. No more bossing people around, keeping people in the dark, assuming they'll be happy just to have a job (even if it's sucking the life out of them), taking for granted that people will listen to you just because you have the title and the corner office (or the clerical collar), or wasting their gifts and passions. Leaders in this emerging future will have to learn to live and work with people in new - renewable - ways.

Don't believe us? Ask the executives at the hotel chain, Hyatt, these days.

Make The Shift

Making the shift from a consumable to a renewable way of living and working together includes moving away from top-down, command-and-control leadership toward decentralization, collaboration, and empowerment. Our new book, The Future Starts Now, has been written especially to help leaders in faith-based communities and organizations make this shift (see an excerpt below). But it identifies seven practices leaders in every organization can use. One of these practices - Using Participative Processes - includes learning how to listen to and learn from the people you're working beside and creating healthy space for them to listen to and learn from each other. The creator of Famous Amos Cookie Co. discovered the importance of this practice the hard way.

A Radical Shift

One of the things we hope will come out of the current economic crisis is for leaders across every industry to rethink how they do life and work. Obviously, the way business has been done lately isn't working so well. Whatever business you're in, it's time for a change.

In our new book, The Future Starts Now, we argue that the future of life and work is renewable. And we believe the basic principles, practices, and process strategies of The Renewable Organization^TM can help you make the shift from a consumable to a renewable way of living and working together --- no matter what kind of business you're in. But the intended audience for this particular book includes pastors and congregational leaders, judicatory and denominational executives, and leaders of all kinds of faith-based organizations. 

If you're a church leader who thinks you know us and have seen everything we've got to offer, you need to take another look. For at least a decade, we have been moving in a couple of exciting new directions, both theologically and theoretically. In this new book, The Future Starts Now, we make both a post-missional and a post-modern move. This is a radical - and important - shift that has the potential of changing everything about the way church is done today. It will mean shifting: 

•  from trying to "fix" the world to being on the lookout for what God is already up to in the world 

•  from a centralized, hierarchical approach to leadership and organization to the holy chaos of decentralization 

•  from The Great Excuse of scarcity to The Great Surprise of emergence as a way of doing what matters

•  from the strait-jacket of strategic planning to the freedom of strategic thinking 

[Come learn more at a Treasure in Clay Jars workshop --- coming to nine cities in North America beginning October 8th! Click here for more information.]

The Future Starts Now

"How often do you hear the people you work with play the ‘fill-in-the-blank’ game? For those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about, it goes something like this: 

You’re in a meeting and people are brainstorming and there’s pretty good energy but it’s starting to fade because somebody in the room keeps coming up with reasons why one idea after another just won’t work. And the worst thing is he’s right. 

Then someone else says, wistfully:

If we only had _________________, we could do (whatever it is we want to do/need to do/think we’re supposed to do). 

And the conversation is over. 

ARE Launches ARE Books(TM)!

You may wonder what we've been up to and think that it must not include writing. But if you think we've taken a vacation from writing you'd be very, very wrong.

The team at A Renewal Enterprise has been furiously writing in order to get as many of the new books in our Renewable Organization for Faith Based Groups series ready for our fall tour. It has been a team effort where the team has discussed, outlined and written in collaborative ways - using Google docs as a collaborative platform to let several people work on the same book at the same time. It has been a dynamic and creative time for the team and we've discovered an excitement for our work that is amazing!

It looks like we'll have 7 new books out in print by early October including the overview book for our work, called The Future Starts Now: The Renewable Organization^TM for Faith-Based Groups. Watch for it because if you think that what God is up to in the world matters and that an effective church will want to be involved out there, you'll discover that this book genuinely breaks some new ground.

We have also decided that in order to release these books, ARE needs a publishing imprint. Today we filed to register ARE Books^TM as an imprint for A Renewal Enterprise. We're a publisher now! And the first set of resources to come off the press will be ready by early October in time for our Fall Tour of the US and Canada.

We are pumped about what we've developed and think we have some things to share that are cutting edge and different than anything else out there. If you live near one of the cities in our Fall Tour, you may want to check out the Treasure in Clay Jars: Renewable Organizations^TM for Faith-based Groups workshops and look for our materials. We'll be launching our new resources, opening our online store, and be a publisher - all in the next few weeks! Whew!