Leadership is in crisis the world over ~ 2
Your leadership matters now more than ever before.
The world today has all the hallmarks of living through an International Conflict, and when we emerge on the other side, we’ll not simply find a new normal, we will be living in a new era; never have leadership skills been in greater demand, and yet seemingly in such short supply.
Effective Leadership can be defined as seeing beyond the horizon, plotting a course to get there, and inspiring people to 'want-to' go there with you. So, what can we see as we start to look beyond the horizon? Here are some more thoughts.
Working from Home
It seems that increasingly, people are taking up the option to stay with remote working, at least for a few days a week, since they have been able to redeem the time spent commuting for other activities, and many people are reluctant to give that up. For example, here’s a graphic for the UK from iNews showing time spent in the workplace and public transport usage.
In the church world, there is some evidence that people are moving increasingly to prefer smaller gatherings; it seems to me that maybe the days of the mega-church are numbered in the new era. I was chatting with the leader of a mega-church recently, and he said that recently he had realised that he had never been to the same church as his children; although they went to the same campus, the children went to kid’s church, and he went to "grown-up" church. He said that post-pandemic, their family now wanted for them all to go together to the same church. Here's an interesting thought: Life.Church has 35 campuses and none can hold over 1,500; typically, they hold 500 - 750 people. All their campuses are used several times a weekend, together delivering over 200 services every weekend.
Community around content
It was in my time with the Life.Church Online ministry team that I encountered the phrase "Community Around Content". Since we ran a 60-minute service repeated every 90 minutes we could have 112 services every week. However, we ONLY ran a service when we had a Host Team available who could interact and engage with our visitors and guests. We need to consider the question: What behaviours do we want to encourage?
In our GLS22 video (see below) I’ve used this phrase: "At the Global Leadership Network, our Mission is about Igniting Transformation, and Transformation happens one step at a time, so I'd like to invite you to join us, and let's walk together on this journey". I went on to explain that "I never had my best ideas"; transformation happens one step at a time with people taking measurable steps, making a noticeable difference to their world. At the GLN, we want to engage with Christians, Charities and Companies, with those in Business, Education and Government ... with to all who want to engage with the kingdom principles of effective leadership, to bring a measurable change to their world, to ignite transformation.
https://youtu.be/WKWaHOdrjcU
Making a measurable difference
We have embraced the idea that the behaviour we want to encourage is helping difference-makers to "make a measurable difference" and we recognise that is done through "community around content". In the light of the ongoing challenges presented by COVID, and despite the desire to gather on a large scale, people are reluctant to commit financially to that in the current climate, so we are pursuing the GLS-Local & GLS-Online model for 2022.
We also recognise that when GLS was brought to the international stage 15 or more years ago, world-class content was scarce; if people wanted to obtain world-class content they had to travel or purchase tapes, CDs or DVDs. The GLS brought video-cast to the world on a massive scale through churches, where many of their AV departments consisted of an OHP and shouting, so, Quality Control in the use of projectors, screens and audio was essential. Today, however, most churches have all that sorted, and what we most urgently need is to help leaders to ignite transformation by bringing measurable change to their world.
So, this year we've offered more content than ever before by including 6 speakers in the one-day autumn conference, and another 7 in one-hour monthly “lunchtime learning” webinars from Jan through July 2022, and we've also included copies of all these videos to access right throughout the year after they've been broadcast.
We have then created a "Value Stack" to help people see the value that they'll be getting by signing up for GLS22 at the in-conference rate.
Blue Ocean Strategy
We have concentrated on exploring the Blue Ocean (see Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim) and worked on avoiding the red ocean of competing with other Christian Leadership organisations, focusing instead on collaborations with other Christian organisations for the events that we’ll be running during 2022 and beyond.
Finally, consider this: People are grumbling
Num 13:1-4 ~ 1 That night all the members of the community raised their voices and wept aloud. 2 All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness! 3 Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” 4 And they said to each other, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
Invitation to the Global Leadership Summit 2021
Here’s a link to find out more about the Global Leadership Summit events that are being held through October and November this year, and please join me at one of these events; I’d love to see you there and say “hi”.
