Live Blog From ReThink Conference – 37 Leadership Quotes From Les McKeown

For the next three days, I will be live blogging from the ReThink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, GA.  ReThink, open exclusively to senior pastors, campus pastors and executive pastors, is a unique gathering of church leaders who are committed to solving the biggest challenges facing your church and the Church.

Injoy Stewardship Solutions has dispatched me to attend this amazing event as a way to invest in your growth.  They also want to invest in your leadership by offering you our latest FREE ebook How To Raise Big Money For Big Projects by clicking HERE for your complimentary copy.

The afternoon’s first speaker was Les McKeown.  Les is the world famous business consultant and author of Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On The Growth Track…And Keeping It.  The following are 37 leadership quotes I captured during his session on Predictable Success along with additional interviews:

Jon Acuff

1. As leaders it’s our job to learn how to criticize the right way.
2. Feedback from nobody is worth nothing. Handle anonymous feedback in context.

Frank Bealer – Executive Director of Leadership Development at Orange

1. In ministry, the opportunities come in the exceptions.
2. We spend too many times operating as if ministry is filled with surprises. We need to stop being surprised and start having a friend.

Nicole Fulgham Baker – founder and president of The Expectations Project

1. You cannot tell me every child God put on this planet can’t achieve and reach their full potential.
2. We all want kids to get out of poverty and the quickest path is education.
3. Schools are about helping kids find their purpose.
4. If your schools are doing great, then drive 25 minutes and you’ll some who aren’t.
5. God is in public schools everyday.
6. People know when we don’t show up and they know when you do.

Les McKeown

1. You get to start something and you have struggle.
2. If you don’t have people, you don’t have a church.
3. Early Struggle is dominated by The Visionary. They’re not risk averse. They get the big picture. They’re charismatic. They’re often great communicators.
4. Visionaries are incredibly passionate. They’re fantastic starters. They get uptight when they have to grind out the details.
5. To get out of Early Struggle, the Visionary hires an Operator.
6. The first growth stage is called Fun.
7. It is in Fun when we build the myths and legends of the church. In Fun, the church is its most organically evangelical.
8. When we have Fun we grow.
9. The complexity of running our church then overwhelms your ability to move forward.
10. The Visionary and Operator are then joined by a Processor. They create processes so you don’t have to reinvent them every week.
11. Processors are risk averse and say ‘No” a lot.
12. In Predictable Success, you need the Visionary, Operator and Processor to work together really well.
13. The worst time to encounter a visionary leader is right after an event like this.
14. Because processes were so good, you then over-emphasize processes. You become too bureaucratic. This is Treadmill. Instead of Predictable Success, we are just predictable.
15. If the visionary doesn’t get heard, they may likely leave here.
16. If the don’t get heard, the church will enter The Big Rut. This is the long, slow ride into irrelevancy. With the visionary gone, we are left with operators and processors. They get things done but there’s no vision.
17. The operators then leave to start all over again.
18. Processors are then left making sure the empty services are starting on time.
19. There’s no coming back from The Big Rut. You’ve lost the power to self-diagnose. You actually like it like this.
20. You then hit Death Rattle. This can take generations because you have built a lot of assets.
21. You want to choose to be in Fun (organic and deep in intensity but not looking to grow) or you can be looking to grow.
22. You often don’t have a choice. You fall into Whitewater because you have grown.
23. In Fun the visionary leader can get to do whatever he wants. If you want Predictable Success, authority flattens out because you make team-based decisions to scale.
24. If you are in the Big Rut or Death Rattle, there’s no point staying.
25. You can only invoke change up to Treadmill.
26. A bean counter is a Processor who has no ability to relate to the Visionary or Operator.
27. A Visionary who has no Operator or Processor is an arsonist.
28. A visionary leader in Predictable Success has to institutionalize your vision.
29. You must not empower power without overall alignment. You must have the overall vision institutionalized.
30. Most Processes, their allegiance is not to your past success. They want to hold you accountable to current success.
31. When your people say, ‘Back in the day…’, you’re in Whitewater.
32. When in a group discussion, put the interest of the enterprise ahead of your own.
33. Getting quality team-based decisions means invoking the enterprise commitment.
34. There’s a need for ruthlessness in the early stage. You need a ruthless focus to gain traction.
35. Why do most early churches fail, they run out of resources before they run out of vision. You’ve got to keep a focus on viability.
36. I’m all for trial and error, but when you get traction, you have to go through it.
37. Learn to build a muscle of being ruthlessly constructive.

What an incredible way to start the afternoon.  Up next is a breakout session with Dan Reiland.

As previously mentioned, INJOY Stewardship Solutions would like to offer you the FREE resource How To Raise Big Money For Big Projects.  Click HERE or on the image to the left for your complimentary copy.