Span of Care by Mac Lake

Mac Lake is the Leadership Development Pastor at Seacoast Church.

I've appreciated his blog and will no doubt be posting a lot of his material here but i thought i'd start with this little video teaching he did on what he called span of care - which is essentially an attempt to address the questions, "just how many people should one leader be overseeing?"

would love your thoughts.


What Is A Good Span Of Care For Leaders? from Seacoast Church on Vimeo.

Drive

Check out this video.



Can't wait to see this guy at the Leadership Summit!

Goaaaaaaaal

Benefit #47 of having a sister who teaches business management and organizational behaviour is that when i call with a question she always has oodles of info and sometimes class handouts on what i'm looking for.

Love you pam.

Biased

We're at a critical season at Redwood these last few months.

We've entered into a significant time of recruiting a new generation of leaders. As we have been looking for these key people we have been talking as a staff team about the traits that we are looking for.

A term that we have heard recently (by Bill Hybels) is the trait of a bias for action. Hybels was using to describe initiative and the idea of overcoming delays by going to extra distance (Hybels would rather take the stairs instead of take a slow elevator).

This discussion has had me quite interested so i've been researching the idea of a Bias for action a bit.

The Business Dictionary defines Bias for Action as the Propensity to act or decide without customary analysis or sufficient information 'just do it' and contemplate later. This definition comes from Tom Peter's Search for Excellence.

Don Sull writes an interesting post here on Peter's idea of a Bias for action

I found helpful his cautions regarding a dysfunctional bia.

Managers often invoke a bias for action to bypass sense-making and dive into the concrete details of execution. A dysfunctional bias for action is endemic among “take-charge” or “gung-ho” executives who excel at getting things done, but dread the open-ended discussions required to understand situations where complexity, ambiguity, and incomplete data preclude easy answers. To avoid this discomfort, they bypass discussions to make sense and dive right into making choices or working out the details of implementation. By jumping too quickly to discussions on how to take the hill, however, these teams often end up attacking the wrong hill.

In my exploration of this i also stumbled upon a book called Bias for Action by Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal that takes a bit of a different spin. The book is about willpower--how to develop it in your individual work life and how to push your organization to develop collective willpower so that action, not complacency, is the standard. The Authors do make a critical distinction in Bias for Action, which is to differentiate between real action and the busy idleness which characterizes so many managers. Purposeful action is limited to those actions that actually (and perhaps obviously) get you closer to the goals of the organization.

All of this thinking has been helpful for me because i'm continually being reminded of my personal tendencies.

I love to think Big picture - often at the expense of the details.
I love to explore new ideas -often at the expense of finishing present projects.
I have recently come out of an environment where i had through years of hard work and development worked myself into a position where i could really focus on my strengths - I had a team of awesome people who worked around me on those things that i'm not strong at but which coincidentally they were.

I haven't figured out when my bias for action conflicts with my bias for people
I haven't figured out when my bias for action keeps someone else in our organization from doing what they are passionate about
I haven't figured out when my bias for action should take a back seat to careful and thoughtful consideration before it is released from the gate.

But this i hear clearly.

I want to be a man who produces real fruit.
I want my days to be filled with the kind of action that produces real fruit.
I want to take as many people with me as possible.

I've got a lot to learn, and i'm so thankful for the people striving to build these things in me.

A second look at an unknown commodity

Through twitter i stumbled on the Harvard Business Review. Not sure why it hasn't been on my reading list in the past, but it is now.

Today i read an article about "confirmation bias" which is the human predisposition to look for ways it is right. In other words, I am always looking for the evidence that i'm right and i don't seem to see the evidence when i'm wrong.

The article was talking about how expectations affect behaviour and outlook.

It got me thinking about all of the teams that need to be built and invested in around the church that I work at.

I've only been here for 3 or 4 months but i'm already subconsciously putting people into categories with regards to what I can expect from them.

I should also tell you that already, there have been a number of occasions when someone has approached me and demonstrated capacities and aspirations that far exceeded what I had expected or more truthfully predicted.

I'm not embarrassed to say that I make predictions about people. We all do. All of our experience in leadership and teams, added to our history, however brief, with people shapes our predictions as to how people will perform in a given area.

But all of our experience in leadership and history with people can also negatively skew our expectations as well.

I'm going to work more on inspiring aspiration and developing people instead of simply predicting outcomes.

Predictions will no doubt take us down a shorter road, and we can expect to see all sorts of signage confirming our choice of paths but I can't help but wonder where that other road might lead.

Slow

Something I need to think about constantly in my new role at Redwoodpark.org is how to navigate urgent needs - when something needs to get done fast, with a more critical need - that things need to get done right.

Often these two needs collide and i am forced to choose. This video reminded me that i need to relearn how to drive stick.

Three kinds of people

Was talking about message prep with the staff today. Love that churches are starting to work cooperatively on messages and sermon prep.

It reminded me that i love team sports and i love being part of a team.

It's great sharing wins with others and seeing your team members score goals.

Read a great little post about some of the kinds of players that you need on your team.

What is the role God has you playing right now?

And how can you help others play their role better?

Need to fire someone?

Becoming a missional church can be a long, difficult process. Like any change, you can expect pain of various kinds, especially the relationship variety.

One of the hardest lessons for many leaders to learn is that following a vision will pretty much always mean leaving behind those who aren't interesting in going with you.

I read a post today that took this hard truth to a new level.

Listen to what he said, "Here are four of the many reasons why I passionately believe you need to review your customer list, and tell some of them that you “have to let them go.”

read more from Scott McKain