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.
His story - along with the stories of six other "famous founders" who have learned important lessons from their mistakes - are told in today's USA Today. Writer Laura Petrecca reports that Wally Amos" opened his first cookie shop in 1975. A decade later, the once-growing company faced severe financial trouble, forcing him to sell the company in pieces to outside investors. A competitor's tastier cookie didn't cause the trouble. He did. 'I thought that I knew more than anybody else,' he says. 'I thought I was the main attraction, and I wasn't listening to other people.' When he later tried to use his name and image for a new product line, he was sued by the new owner of Famous Amos. Now 73, he's trying to use the lessons learned with two new firms, Uncle Wally's, specializing in muffins, and Chip & Cookie, a gourmet cookie producer. 'Teamwork — that is the greatest lesson I learned from losing Famous Amos,' he says. 'It's not about me, Wally Amos. It's about respecting the rest of my team members … giving them access to make suggestions.'" (Read the rest of "Seven Famous Founders Share..." by clicking here.)
Anybody who wants to lead an organization into the emerging future will have to learn this "greatest lesson" that leadership isn't about telling everybody what to do and how to do it; it is about unleashing the extraordinary power, intelligence, creativity, and passion that already dwells within the people you are privileged to work with and serve beside. At ARE we've had our share of lessons learned the hard way. But we have also learned this "greatest lesson" from Jesus who, arguably, is one of the most "famous founders" in history.
Here's an excerpt from one of ARE's brand new books, The Future Starts Now:
"Jesus didn’t create convoluted constitutions constricting [his followers] every movement, manuals to read and follow, or clocks to punch. Jesus gave his disciples a job to do. He gave them the authority to do it, and he set them free to use their intelligence, creativity and passion to make it happen in any way that made sense in their context. The whole story of Jesus and his disciples is one of empowerment and freedom. This is especially evident in the story told by the gospel writer called Luke. After Jesus told them they had the “power and authority” to do what he was asking them to do (Luke 9:1) he said:- You do it! (9:13)
- You confess! (9:20)
- Take up your cross every day (9:24)
- Get ready for my departure (9:31)
- Your hands are my hands! (10:16)
Luke continues the story in the Book of Acts, which describes how the message about Jesus gets from Jerusalem to Rome and beyond. The disciples embrace the freedom they had been given and they do whatever they have to do, take their message to whomever will listen—Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slave and free. They cross borders and ignore every wall somebody tries to build in front of them. They experiment with things. They learn from their mistakes. They get the job done without anybody looking over their shoulder or telling them what to do.
In fact, there is very little continuity between how Jesus did things and how his disciples did them after he was gone. Whereas Jesus’ ministry was spent mostly among the rural poor, the disciples and early church leaders took their work into mostly urban places like Philippi and Corinth and Rome, and their first converts were often the wealthiest people in town (e.g. Lydia). Those earliest Christians even changed-up the message Jesus preached. Whereas he came proclaiming “the kingdom of God,” that’s not a phrase his disciples ever used.
The Holy Spirit was at work, empowering, encouraging, challenging and comforting those first Christians. But they were free. They might not have talked about the kingdom, but they lived like they knew it was true. This decentralized, bottom-up, permission-giving, empowered organization is not just the best example we could ask for in the quest to live and work in a renewable, life-giving way. It has become arguably one of the most successful operations in the history of humankind. You’re reading this book right now because of what those guys did and how they did it.
Make the shift."
(c) 2009, A Renewal Enterprise, Inc.
Click here for a link to the ARE Store and the new book: 19 (or more) Ideas for Using Participative Processes
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