First, my boss gave me a book to read titled Gung Ho! by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. We have been having some turbulence at work personnel wise and I'm not sure why he handed me this book to read the other day--but I'm glad he did. It is the leadership style that I try to emulate and believe in.
The book is not new--it was written in 1998, but the focus is upon the people of an organization. Simply--make sure people:
1. Have worthwhile work,
2. Are in control of achieving the goal and
3. Are committed to cheering each other on.
The Native American approach the book uses appeals to me a lot.
There is a great quote in the book: "Running a business from numbers is like playing basketball while watching the scoreboard instead of the ball. Look after the basics if you want success, and the first basic is the team."
OK--so what was the second source?
That would be the sermon on Sunday in church on Jonah 4.
We have been going through the book of Jonah learning about our relationship with God and how we are much more like Jonah than we would really like to believe. This week was the last in the series--which has really been fascinating and full of awesome teaching.
One point that was made on Sunday though was about the difference in perspective of God and Jonah.
In Chapter 4, God causes a plant to grow one day and shade Jonah while he is mad at God and then die the next day. Jonah is furious.
And then God lays it out for him: Jonah is more concerned about the plant for which Jonah did nothing than the 120,000 people in Nineveh. Jonah is more concerned about process than people. God is more concerned about the people and even the cattle. Read it!
So this is the take away. As people and especially as leaders and managers, we need to be more concerned about people than the process. Processes are important, yes--but without people we really don't need any processes.
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