GLS 2017 - Andy Stanley - Uniquely Better
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Returning for his fifth time to the
Summit, we're thrilled to welcome back
one of America's best leaders
and beloved pastors, Andy Stanley.
He is the founder and senior pastor
of North Point Ministries,
now comprised
of six churches in the Atlanta area
and a network of 30 churches
around the globe,
collectively serving
70,000 people weekly.
He is the author of more than 20 books
and he's passionate about serving
both church and organizational leaders.
Let's welcome back
to the Summit Andy Stanley.
Our churches in Atlanta
this October will be 22 years old.
It's real exciting - because I grew up
in Southern Baptist culture -
so when our church hit 21, we were finally
able to start using wine in communion,
which was so exciting for us.
And I know we're way behind most
of the rest of you, but it's a big deal.
I'm just kidding. Anyway,
we're about to be 22 years old in October.
When we hit year 20 almost two years ago,
we did some serious evaluation
and so I asked our leadership team
and some of our other staff this question.
It kind of teases us up
for what I want to talk about.
I asked this question. I said,
"If we had it to
do all over again,
what would we do
all over again?"
If we had it to
do all over again,
if we were
gonna start over,
based on everything
we've learned
in 20 years
of doing this -
and many of us have been
in ministry longer than that -
if we had it to
do all over again,
what would we do
all over again?
In other words,
what really worked?
Like you, we'd read the articles,
read the books,
got the journals, been to the conferences,
back then passed around the DVDs and CDs,
we're all listening to podcasts.
But of all the stuff we read,
off all the stuff we tried,
of all the speakers that we had come in,
of all the fads that we chased,
what really worked?
If we had it to do all over again,
what would we do all over again?
Essentially, we did an autopsy
on our success.
We've been very successful and very
blessed and I'm so extremely grateful.
And oftentimes as leaders
we don't do an autopsy on our success,
we only critique and do an autopsy
on our what? Our failure, yeah.
But if you do an autopsy on your success,
you'll oftentimes learn
how to avoid failures.
If you just do an autopsy on failure,
you may never discover
how to be a success.
So it's extraordinarily important
to be able to answer the question,
"Why is this working?"
Because if you don't know
why it's working when it's working,
you will not be able to fix it
when it breaks.
If you don't know why it's working
when it's working,
it's difficult or more challenging
to fix it when it breaks.
So I'm like, "Things are great.
We've been going 20 years, I'm with
basically the same team I started with.
A couple folks have gone on
to do bigger and better things,
but they're still a part
of our network of friends and leaders."
If we had it to do all over again,
what would we do all over again?
We narrowed it down to four things.
So after that I thought I should start
talking about these four things.
But three of the four are kind of typical
and you can probably almost guess those.
So today in the time that I have allotted
I only want to talk about one of those.
It's not because I have a book to sell
that will tell you the other three
and if you wanna know the other three,
you've got to buy my book. That's not it.
But if you are curious about the other
three, it's for free on a podcast.
I have a podcast
that somebody else named for me,
it's called - how original -
The Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast.
I didn't name that myself.
Anyway, if you'll go back to -
I wrote this down -
"Lessons from the First 20 Years",
you just go back a couple of years.
You can find all four of these.
But I wanna just talk about one.
And the reason is,
this is a very sophisticated audience.
If you're a part of this global gathering,
you are somebody
who really cares about leadership.
You may be a non-religious person
and you've dipped into
this somewhat religious environment
because that's how much you care
about leadership.
You may be a very religious person
and you've dipped into this environment
that has all kinds of speakers
from all kinds of backgrounds
and that doesn't bother you, because
you have such an appetite for leadership.
I decided to talk about
the one of the four
that's the most difficult to talk about.
I don't even know if I do a very good job.
But of the four things
that we looked back on and said,
"If we had it to do all over again,
what would we do all over again?",
this was the one that was most intriguing,
the most difficult to talk about
and the one that's not simple.
And yet of the four for us I think
it might actually be the most important.
Let me tell you how we got to it.
Part of this evaluation
we did after 20 years,
we asked the question,
"Why did our organization
grow so fast?"
Because our organization
grew so fast.
It was like a
rocket ship.
And it was exhilarating, it was
exciting, there was chaos,
we couldn't
hire enough people,
couldn't create enough
space on our campus.
So when we
asked the question
in a 20-year-old
evaluation -
I promise, I'm gonna
get to something practical
in just a minute,
bear with me.
I am bragging but it goes
somewhere. Just bear with me.
When we asked
the question,
"Why did our organization
grow so fast?"
I stayed on that.
Because we're not
growing that fast anymore.
It is not the
way it used to be.
But I kept asking,
"But what was the thing,
what was the thing?"
Come on, we need to know
the answer to the question
because if we had it
to do all over again,
we would certainly want
to do that all over again.
So what was that?
And after lots and
lots of discussions
we decided that the
answer to the question
was we had a uniquely
better product.
We had a uniquely
better product.
We had a uniquely
better product.
That's what I want to talk about
for the next few minutes.
And the fact that it's a
uniquely better product
is what makes it
so difficult to talk about.
Because finding
the uniquely better product
or creating a uniquely better product,
as we're gonna see in a few minutes,
is just about impossible.
It was a uniquely better product
in this sense:
nobody was doing church
the way that we were doing church
in the Southeast United States,
nobody else was doing it.
The way I say this sometimes is this -
if you have the only
hot dog stand in town,
your hot dogs don't
have to be that good.
So we had the only one
of these kinds of churches.
If you wanted this kind of church,
we were the only show in town.
We were the only church doing this.
I realize this is an international
conference, so let me put this in context.
If you have the only pasta stand in town,
the only sushi stand in town,
the only taco stand in town, the only
sticky toffee pudding stand in town,
or the only ugali stand in town,
your ugali doesn't have to be that good.
How was that?
That was my international thing.
How many even know what ugali is?
Right, yes.
How many have eaten it before?
It's something.
There's all different kinds of ugali.
The point being it's not that we were
the best at what we were doing,
but we had a uniquely better product.
Let me break it down a little bit.
When I say unique,
I don't mean a Segway.
Remember the first
time you saw a Segway?
Segway is not
a unique thing.
Segway is a
one-of-a-kind thing.
It's not like, "Oh, there
is one of those..."
It just is what it is.
When I say unique, I don't mean that.
When I say unique, people knew
what it was, but that's a unique one.
People know, "Oh, that's a church."
They knew it was a church.
Nobody is going like, "A church, a what?"
Everybody knew it was a church
but it was a unique one.
So when I say "uniquely better",
it is not like you're creating a category.
But instead it's that, you've taken a category
and you are doing something so unique with it
that it gets people's attention.
But unique isn't enough.
There are some uniquely bad things, right?
Unique isn't necessarily magnetic
and unique doesn't necessarily create
any momentum.
But "uniquely better" -
by "better" I mean this:
it does what it's supposed
to do better than the competition.
That's what
"better" means.
It does what it
is supposed to do,
it does what
it's designed to do
but it does it better
than the competition.
When you stumble upon,
or when you create, or when you discover,
when you recognize uniquely better,
that's a big, big deal.
It can't just be unique, it can be better
but if it is uniquely better,
people will show up for your product.
It's strange to talk about a church
being a uniquely better product.
Here is what I mean by that.
We, thanks to the smart people around me
and thanks to the inspiration that we had
gotten here and - really just here,
we essentially created
an engaging church experience
for the entire family,
especially for men.
That was our niche. We created
an engaging church experience.
Churches, especially then,
weren't known for being engaging.
You went to church because it's Sunday.
But an engaging church experience
for the whole family,
that is, we segment it to family,
especially for men.
We were basically the only church in town
that was doing it the way we were doing it
and consequently people came like crazy.
Here is the challenge for us
and this is why I just stayed on this
and stayed on this with our team.
We are not unique anymore.
When you go on Instagram
or you go on social media,
people are bragging about their churches -
#Ilovemychurch, #ilmc.
All of our churches look the same in
the U.S., the ones that are on Instagram.
You don't see anybody like,
"Oh, my church is so awesome
and there is a choir loft,
a pulpit and a guy in a suit."
A lot of churches do that.
The social media world
that lights up around church,
all of our churches
look like music venues.
It is not unique anymore.
We're all trying to continue
to make it better
and in our environment we're constantly
trying to make it better.
"Make It Better" is one of our staff
values. We talk about it all the time.
Make it better, make it better.
But we're not unique anymore.
Which means we're not uniquely better
anymore.
The question I had for our leadership team
is, "What is there to learn from that?"
These other three out of four things
we can continue to do.
We can continue to be vision-driven
and have a learning organization
and all the kinds of things that
you constantly do to stay in the game.
But what is there to learn
and what is the takeaway from the fact
that we grew like crazy because
we had a uniquely better product?
What is the takeaway?
So that's what I want to talk about
for the next few minutes. Here's why.
Because somebody in your industry,
somebody somewhere in your industry,
somebody somewhere
is messing with the rules
to the prevailing model.
In your industry,
whether it's
church industry,
or the construction,
whether you sell things,
produce things,
manufacture things,
whatever you are doing
- profit, not-for-profit -
here is what we
know for sure.
You are some
of those people.
Somebody somewhere
is messing with the rules
to the prevailing model.
Every industry has
a prevailing model
which means...
You're gonna spend time with your
leadership team, dig around on this.
Every industry has shared assumptions.
And shared assumptions
get you in trouble.
They're the assumptions we're aware of
and the assumptions we're not aware of
that drive our decisions.
We think we know why we're doing
what we're doing
and we don't know
why we're doing what we're doing.
Because we've never,
under certain assumptions,
your industry, your organization,
in fact, your specific organization,
but your industry for sure,
whatever you're in,
has a set of specific assumptions,
which means every industry is stuck.
It's not broken, it's stuck.
And it's not even stuck
in a bad way, but it's stuck
because there are shared assumptions
that drive our decisions
and cause us to do the same things
that we do the same way over and over
and oftentimes those are good things
and things work,
and it is not a problem to fix,
so we don't try to fix it.
The point is this, there's a prevailing
model, there is a prevailing church model,
prevailing real estate model, prevailing
sales model, whatever it might be,
there are shared assumptions
and consequently things continue on
the way they've always gone on.
But somewhere somebody
is messing with those assumptions.
Somewhere somebody
is pioneering new approaches.
In fact, it's possible in your industry
or in my industry,
if I can think of church as an industry,
it's possible that somebody has
already stumbled upon uniquely better
and you just don't know about it yet
and I just don't know about it yet.
The thing that makes this
so difficult to talk about
is that discovering
uniquely better
is virtually impossible.
Discovering, being the person
that discovers the aha moment,
"My gosh, this is gonna
revolutionize sales,
it's gonna revolutionize
construction,
it's gonna revolutionize
education..."
That discovery is
virtually impossible.
I mean "virtually impossible" in
this way just to encourage you.
Odds are you are
not gonna be the one
that discovers
uniquely better.
But recognizing uniquely better
is a whole another thing.
The odds of you being the one that
creates or discovers, or manufactures
the uniquely better approach to something
or the uniquely better product,
the odds of that are slim.
But the odds of you being able
to recognize it when it comes along
are much, much greater - and here is why.
I'm gonna get to some practical stuff.
There's so much to unpack with this,
but I'll just keep moving.
Uniquely better is often -
this is the problem -
uniquely better is often
the byproduct of circumstances,
uniquely better is often the byproduct
of circumstances that successful
organizations are trying to avoid.
Let me explain this. Uniquely better
is often a solution to a problem.
But successful organizations
that aren't having that problem
aren't looking for a solution.
Uniquely better
is often a solution to a problem
and a successful organization that's not
struggling with that particular problem
is not looking
for that particular solution.
And what makes it even more difficult
for those of us
in successful organizations is this.
Uniquely better is often so unique
that successful organizations
can't imagine that it's actually better.
That the uniquely better thing
oftentimes is so unique,
it's like, "Wow, I know what
one of those is, but that's just so..."
It's so unique that established
organizations can't even begin to imagine,
"Okay, it's unique
but that can't really be better, can it?"
I'll tell you a good example.
You're sitting in a church
that totally gets this.
Multi-site is this.
Because doing multi-site church for us -
when we started doing multi-site church
all those years ago
was a solution to a problem.
We had too many people and not enough
seats and not enough building.
What are we gonna do?
So multi-site was a solution to a problem.
There were many, many churches
in America that were successful churches
and they were able to get everybody in
and they weren't dealing
with the problems we were dealing with.
Consequently they weren't trying
to solve that problem.
Now multi-site isn't a solution
to a problem.
Now multi-site
is a church-planting strategy.
But it began as a solution to a problem
that only certain churches had
and consequently only a handful of people
were looking for the solution.
It is a uniquely better approach.
Again, the odds of you
or your organization
being the one to stumble on it are slim
but you certainly have the opportunity
to recognize it when it comes along.
That's what I'm gonna talk about
in just a few minutes.
And the bad news is this.
The more successful you are and
the more successful your organization is,
the less likely it is
that when it comes along,
you'll recognize it,
or recognize it as better.
Because it will play off
different assumptions,
it will play by different rules
and you probably
aren't necessarily going to like it.
I'll tell you who could
stand up here right now
and talk for 30 minutes
about this very point - it's Bill Hybels.
Because when Willow Creek Church started,
do you remember how all the churches all
over America just heralded your success
and they just thought you were
the greatest thing in the world?
Actually, no, there are still arrows
in your back from those years ago
because everybody knew what a church was
but Willow Creek's approach
to church was so unique,
all the successful, all the established
churches couldn't imagine
that it was actually better.
But it was. And eventually it became
the way most of us do church.
So here is the thing.
"Our best hope..."
I'm just gonna read this sentence to you.
"Our best hope since chances are
we're not gonna be the ones
to manufacture or discover
or pioneer the next thing,
our best hope and our responsibility,
I think, as leaders,
regardless of what you lead,
our best hope
and our responsibility as leaders
is to create organizational cultures
positioned to recognize
rather than resist uniquely better."
That my responsibility
in my organization,
your responsibility
in your organization
is to create a culture
- this is a culture thing,
not an individual thing.
It's a culture that regardless
of how successful you are,
the way that you are
doing whatever you do
the way that
you're doing it now
to create the culture
that naturally recognizes
rather than resists
uniquely better.
And so for the rest of my time
I wanna tell you how we do that.
Not how it's necessarily done.
You may come up with
a much better answer to the question,
"How do we create a culture
that recognizes rather than resists?"
How do we create a culture
that recognizes rather than resists?
You need to have an answer to
that question and your responsibility,
if I were to stop talking at this point,
is to make sure your culture is wide open
because, again, you may not create it
but you better recognize it.
And the earlier you recognize it
and the less you resist it,
the more successful you'll be
in whatever you do.
By God's grace, we recognized something
and we embraced it and we ran with it,
and we grew like crazy.
We had a uniquely better product.
So, four statements.
The first one
and the second one sound identical
but they're not.
Four statements.
How to create a culture
that will look for it and recognize it
rather than resist it
when it comes along?
Number one. You have to
be a student, not a critic.
Be a student, not a critic.
I would like for all of
us at all of the sites
to say that
out loud together
in whatever language you prefer.
Be a student, not a critic.
One more time.
Be a student, not a critic.
The amazing thing -
again,
Bill could tell
his own stories -
when we started off and we were
growing like crazy, growing like crazy,
I would be preaching and I would look up
and in the back of the room
I would see pastors from other churches
in our city standing.
They didn't sit down. They weren't
gonna stay for the whole service.
They would stand in the back with their
arms crossed and they were thinking,
"This can't be of God.
Look at all these people."
I knew that's what they were thinking.
"They didn't do an invitation,"
and they were critical.
They stayed just long enough to assure
themselves that this wasn't of God
and it wasn't gonna work and it wasn't
gonna last. And then they would leave.
They wouldn't even stay for the whole
service. It was unbelievable.
Because they were just critics.
They were critics rather than students.
It's amazing. During those days
of this fast-paced growth,
nobody in our city -
not one single pastor in our city -
Bill, I bet this is the case with you
as well, and many of you -
nobody in our city ever called me
to take me to lunch, breakfast or dinner
and say, "How in the heck
are you doing that?"
They weren't even curious.
They were just sure
it could not possibly be better.
It was certainly unique.
But how in the world could this be better?
I made a decision all those years ago
that I have stuck by ever since
and every once in a while
emotionally I feel myself
tugging in a different direction and I
remind myself, so I love teaching on this.
I decided all those years ago
that I will never criticize something
I don't understand.
I will never criticize something
I don't understand.
And when I find my emotions going that way
or when I feel like it's about to come out
of my mouth, I'm gonna stop and say "no."
Here is why. This is true of you
and whether you've been paying attention,
you should pay attention for this
little nugget. This is true of you.
We naturally - and "we" will be "you" -
we naturally resist things that
we don't understand or we can't control.
We naturally resist anything that we don't
immediately understand or can't control.
If you don't understand it,
you can't control it,
your natural tendency is to resist it.
As a leader
you must overcome that tendency.
You must decide,
"I'm gonna be a student, not a critic.
I will never, ever, ever criticize
something I don't understand."
Because the moment you start criticizing,
you stop learning.
And when you stop learning,
eventually you stop leading.
And when you stop leading,
the leaders that are in your organization
are going to go somewhere else.
They would rather make less money
and have more running room
than to stay underneath a leader
who thinks they have all the answers
and they aren't open
to learning anything new.
You have to be a student.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, be a student, not a critic.
I look at this next quote
almost every single day of my life.
This quote sits in two different places
in my office, in my study.
It's from Al Ries' book "Focus."
Here's what he said.
"The next generation
product and idea
almost never comes from
the previous generation."
"The next generation
product and idea
almost never comes from
the previous generation."
I am the previous
generation.
I am. And I hate to break it to you.
Most of you are, too.
That's why I said,
"You're not gonna discover it."
If uniquely better
is right around the corner,
maybe uniquely better is
right down the street from you,
uniquely better may be in your backyard,
hey, you may be raising
the uniquely better idea, who knows,
but chances are
you're not gonna come up with it,
but you have to create a culture,
and I have to create a culture
that is designed and geared
to recognizing when it comes,
which means those of us
who are lead pastors,
and if you're a lead pastor of a church
or a multi-site or whatever,
you've got to pay attention
to student ministry.
You've got to pay attention
to what's happening
with middle schoolers and high schoolers.
You've got to pay attention
to family ministry.
You've got to pay attention
to college students.
In other words,
what's happening there is the future,
and you know that,
because once upon a time that was you.
Once upon a time you were
the middle school director.
Now, you're leading a church.
You're thinking how did this happen?
In your middle school ministry
and your high school ministry
and the interns that you're hiring in your
business, that is the next generation,
and somebody in that next generation will
come up with the next generation product.
And you will have either created
a culture that is conducive to those ideas
or one that resists it.
And your charge as a leader
is to make sure
that you are geared
to recognize and not resist.
I wrote in my notes, "I won't come up
with it, but I sure better recognize it."
You won't come up with it,
but you sure better recognize it.
Number two sounds like the same
as number one,
but it's a little different,
and the second thing is this.
You've got to keep your eyes
and your mind wide open.
You got to keep your eyes
and your mind wide open.
The way we say this
in our organization is this:
"Listen to outsiders.
Listen to outsiders.
Listen to outsiders.
Listen to outsiders."
That is, listen to people
who aren't in our industry.
Listen to people who don't
know how to do what we do.
And our natural tendency
is when somebody
starts talking with
any kind of authority
about what you do that they
don't know anything about,
the tendency is like, "They
don't understand what I do.
They don't
understand sales.
They don't understand
education.
They don't understand church."
Listen to outsiders.
Keep your eyes and
your mind wide open.
Outsiders - this
is so important -
outsiders aren't bound
by our assumptions.
Outsiders aren't bound.
This is why,
as soon as you have this thought,
"That won't work, because..." -
you are about to leverage an assumption.
"That won't work, because..." -
assumption.
"That won't work, because..." -
assumption based on my experience.
As soon as that starts,
you've got to be careful,
because you may have clicked over
into critic instead of being a student.
Outsiders aren't bound by our assumptions.
They're ignorant.
And their ignorance
may be your ticket to the next thing.
Listen to outsiders.
Close-minded
leaders - come on,
close minds,
that's what they do.
Close-minded
leaders close minds.
The reason you are looking
for a new job, perhaps,
is you work for a
close-minded leader.
They're smart.
They've got good ethics.
They've got a great marriage.
They got great kids.
But they are not a student.
Close-minded leaders close minds.
If you shut your eyes and if you shut
your mind - please don't miss this -
if you shut your eyes
and if you shut your mind,
you will close the minds and the eyes
of the people around you,
including your children.
If you are a leader who leads
with closed eyes and a closed mind -
you got it all figured out,
this is the way we do it here -
you will close the eyes and the minds
of the people around you.
They will stop having new ideas.
They will stop having good ideas.
And when they have them,
they aren't bringing them to you,
because close-minded leaders close minds.
Your innovators will leave and take
their next generation idea with them.
Your status-quo folks
will stay and protect the status quo.
And consequently, it'll come,
and it'll go,
and you'll miss it - for a while.
And then, when it's a little bit too late,
you'll finally wake up
and realize, "You know what?
That might be a better idea after all."
There are several things
that we can't see in the mirror.
For example, greed.
You can't see greed in the mirror.
You've never met a person that says,
"I think my problem is I'm just greedy."
Greedy people say,
"No, I'm careful. I'm careful.
I'm a good... I live on a budget."
You can't see greed in the mirror.
It's hard to see jealousy in the mirror.
The other thing you can't see
in the mirror is a closed mind.
Anybody who is listening to what I just
said, you're able to track along with me,
it's late in the day, and maybe
this isn't even all that interesting,
but I can promise you,
there's nobody listening that thinks,
"He is talking to me.
I am one close-minded leader.
Aren't I a close-minded leader?"
"You are a closed mind."
"I know. I'm just so closed-minded.
I don't even want
to listen to the rest of this."
It's very difficult. Real quickly,
I just want to ask you a few questions.
Here's what I want you to pay attention to
when I ask you these questions.
I don't want you to pay attention
so much to your answer.
I want you to pay attention to your
emotions when I ask you these questions.
First one is really this:
How do you respond to staff?
How do you respond to staff
who make suggestions
based on what
they've observed
in other
organizations?
How do you
respond to staff
who make
suggestions to you
based on what
they've observed
in other
organizations,
especially when
it's a competitor?
How do you respond?
I'll tell you how
you initially respond,
because you're human,
so that's okay.
There's something in
you that's just kind of like...
"Ugh, I don't even want to hear that."
"They're not us. They're not us.
They're not us."
What does that even mean,
"They're not us"?
Of course they're not us.
There's only one "us." "They're not us."
But... As soon as... If that thing in you,
that's in all of us...
I mean there's pride of authorship,
it's ego. Stuff that's not gonna go away.
If that thing in you and that thing in me
gets past about right here
and then if it starts coming out
of our mouth, we're critics.
We begin to close minds
and we begin to close hearts.
So, when somebody in your organization
gets back from a conference
or gets back from whatever
or gets back from a competitor's store
or comes and says,
"You got to watch this YouTube video.
Look how they do it there!
I think we should do it that way here."
If that thing in you wants to shut
that down, you just got to shut that down.
Otherwise, you will be the critic
that shuts down all the students,
and the students will either quit learning
or they'll just quit working for you
and go somewhere else.
A second question.
When was the last
time your organization
embraced a big idea
that wasn't your idea?
When's the last time that
your organization,
or maybe
your division,
or maybe your
department,
maybe you're a
division manager,
you run a franchise,
or maybe you're
the student pastor,
so you're not over
the whole organization,
but even within
your immediate context,
when is the last idea
that your division
or department embraced -
a really big idea,
and it wasn't your idea?
Somebody came up with something,
and you looked at them and said,
"That is a great idea.
We are going to do that."
Third question,
when is the last time
you weren't sure
about an initiative,
but you gave the
go-ahead anyway?
Those are the
three questions.
And then here's one
of my favorite quotes.
It's from Sam Harris.
Sam Harris is a neuroscientist.
He's known primarily because of his books.
He's one of the "new atheists."
And I listen to Sam Harris podcast.
And the reason I listen
to Sam Harris podcast
is because I want to be a student,
not a critic.
Thank you. Is Sam here?
Is that you, Sam? Oh, okay.
So, I'm listening to
the Sam Harris podcast. He's brilliant!
And after 9/11, he wrote
this book that trashed religion.
And he's brilliant.
If you're trying to speak
to a secular culture,
these are important things to know.
One day I'm listening
to the Sam Harris podcast,
and he made this statement -
it was in the middle of a paragraph.
I don't know
if it's even written down anywhere.
And I wrote it down. He said this,
"We must pay attention
to the frontiers of
our ignorance." Wow!
That is like the most
non-Christian thing to do,
because especially
those of us
who are Christian
leaders,
our temptation oftentimes is
to turn our back to our ignorance
and just play in the sand pile
of everything that we already know
and that we're already so certain about.
And the minute you do that in business,
the minute you do that in ministry,
if you really are about
changing your city or your community,
it's almost lights out and game over.
I love this. You must pay attention
to the frontiers of your ignorance.
And most of us
have vast frontiers, don't we?
Right? You must pay attention
to the frontiers of your ignorance.
Are you paying attention to the frontiers?
In other words, are you willing to turn
your back on everything you know,
not because you don't believe it anymore,
but because you are more curious
about what there is yet to learn
than what you already know?
And the older you get and the older
we get, the more difficult that is,
but the more successful we are,
the more difficult that is to do.
Uniquely better. Uniquely better
dwells on the frontier of your ignorance.
That's where it is. You go, "Where it is?"
It is on the frontier.
You don't know what it is yet.
You haven't discovered it yet.
You haven't stumbled upon it yet.
You haven't recognized it yet.
In fact, it may not even be yet.
It is on the frontiers of my ignorance
and your ignorance.
When we quit learning, we quit growing,
and when we quit growing,
we've probably quit leading.
I wrote in my notes:
"Being the leader and leading
are two entirely different things."
We can talk about that someday.
Number three, here's the big one.
In your culture,
in your organization,
in your staff meetings,
in your one-on-ones,
number three, replace
"how" with "wow."
Together, I want
us to just say "wow"
with an exclamation
mark. Ready?
"Wow!" Now,
this time let it be
a little bit of a
whisper in your voice.
Let me do it first. "Wow!"
Ready?
Everybody, "Wow!" Yeah.
Next time you go to your supervisor
with a good idea,
isn't that what you want to hear?
You want her to lean in and go, "Wow!"
Because when she leans in and goes "wow",
you're gonna just keep talking.
But the moment
somebody says the H word,
all the creative juices go away.
The idea dies at the H word.
"But how? How are we gonna pay for it,
how are we gonna do that?
How, how, how, how, how, how, how?
Now, I don't live in fairy land.
We have budgets,
and there are limitations.
But look, come on, come on,
come on, come on.
If somebody has an idea, how much does it
cost you to lean in and to say "wow"?
How much does that cost?
That would be nothing.
You lose nothing by saying "wow."
You may lose the next generation idea
by saying, "But how?"
On the screen.
"Wow" ideas to life,
don't "how" them to death!
"Wow" ideas to life,
don't "how" them to death!
We fuel innovation
or we shut it down
by our response.
Don't miss this.
We fuel innovation
or we shut it down
by our response
to new, untried, expensive,
unorthodox ideas.
Worse, you can "how" an idea
right out the door of your organization.
Some of you are more prone
to "wow" than "how."
For some of you it's hard
to even say it when I asked you to.
It's like,
"No, I can't say "ho...", "wow."
I can't say "wow." I'm a "how" person.
I'm a numbers person.
I'm an accountant."
Everybody needs to get used,
when somebody comes
with an idea, to say "wow."
Nothing is gained by not knowing
what your people are dreaming about.
Nothing is gained by not knowing
what your people are dreaming about.
Nothing is gained if you don't know
what your people are dreaming about.
Not too long ago, I had a group
of our young communicators
that I meet with from time to time,
and before we started our little thing,
I was gonna take them through,
I said, "Hey, what do you want to do?"
We were gonna go around the room and
I wanted to know about their future.
Do they want to pastor churches,
do they want to work for us?
The sky's the limit.
I get to Justin, and I said,
"What do you want to do?"
He said, "I want your job."
And the guys kind of looked at me
nervously.
I said, "I'm so glad to know that.
You're fired!"
No, I said, "I'm so glad to know that.
I want to know
what you're dreaming about."
What do I gain by not knowing the ideas
and the dreams of the people around me?
Nothing, I gain nothing.
What do I lose by not knowing?
I may lose, you may lose uniquely better.
Real quickly
to the married women in the room.
This has nothing to do with the talk,
but to the married women in the room,
the married women everywhere,
this is a big deal.
This "wow"/ "how" thing is a big deal,
because, ladies, you know this.
About every week or so, your husband
comes home with a new idea.
Right, doesn't he?
He's like, "Honey, we're gonna
buy this. Honey, we're gonna move!
Honey, I'm gonna build. Honey, we're
gonna, I'm gonna..." And this is just...
And women do this, too,
but typically guys got all these ideas.
And ladies, somehow you think
that God put you in our lives
to "how" all of our good ideas to death.
He didn't! Let me explain to you.
I know why. I know why. "Now, honey,
how..." I know why you do that.
I know why you do that. It's fear.
Okay, fear not.
We... Wait.
Fear not. We almost never
follow through with anything.
Right?
So, you just say...
Ladies, you just say "wow."
Right. And then you say,
"Did you come up
with that all by yourself?"
Then you can say,
"Would you clean out the dishwasher?"
"Yes, ma'am, I'll clean out the dishwasher
and take out the trash. Yeah, whatever."
"You came up with that all by yourself?"
And then you just hand us the remote,
and we'll never think about it again.
Wow, isn't that good? Yeah.
You say, "I'm glad I stayed
for that last session. Saved my marriage."
Seriously, parents,
let's be careful, okay?
Let's just be careful with our kids.
The world will put enough "how's"
in front of them.
They don't need us to do that.
Let's just be "wow" parents,
because who knows? Listen, listen.
Your greatest contribution to the world
may not be something you do
but someone you raise.
Your greatest contribution to the world
may not be something you do
but someone you raise.
And you need to raise "wow" kids.
And what does it cost you?
It costs you nothing.
But to discourage something that God
maybe is stirring around in a kid's heart,
even a middle school kid,
a high school kid,
a dream that unfortunately for you is
not your will or your plan for their life,
but maybe it's God's will or God's plan
for their life, don't "how" that to death.
Close-minded leaders close minds,
and they close hearts.
And that's true wherever they are.
Last thing is
we're trying to create a culture
that recognizes rather than resists,
recognize rather than resist.
It's to ask the
uniquely better questions.
I'm gonna give
these to you real quick.
Before launching...
And this comes down
to creating the habit
within your organization
of thinking
uniquely better,
uniquely better.
Here's why. If you are in the habit
or should I say, if you are pursuing,
if you are actively pursuing
at whatever level -
this doesn't have to be the macro level,
this could be something small -
as long as you're thinking,
"I'm on the lookout
for uniquely better, uniquely better,"
it will predispose you toward recognizing
it, even if you don't discover it.
So, these uniquely better questions
are questions you can be,
again, asking immediately
about what you're currently doing.
And here they are.
First one is this.
Is this unique?
In other words, next time
you launch a new environment,
the next time you
launch a new program,
the next time you
look at a new design,
at least stop and
ask the question,
not "Will it work?",
not "Does it work?",
not "Have we
done this before",
but "Is this unique?"
Everybody already knows
what one of these is,
but is there anything
unique about this?
"Well, no, we
did this last year,
and people came.
" Okay, yeah, okay.
And then the second
question is this.
What would
make this unique?
What does it cost to ask
this question? Nothing.
And you may just
need to go ahead
with the plans as
they've been designed.
But at least stop
and ask the question,
"Okay, is this unique?
Is there something
that we could do
to make this unique?"
Because unique
attracts attention.
Unique is unique,
and people like unique.
Is there something
we could do
to make this unique?
You're not trying
to create a new category.
You're just trying
to take something
you're already
familiar with,
something you already do,
and you're just asking,
"How do we and is there a
way to make this unique?"
It's so interesting
that Apple Computers
did not create
portable music.
Do you know who
created portable music?
I bet you know.
Who created portable music
for the most part? Sony, yeah.
You know what Apple came along and did?
They took something
that was already a category,
and they made it unique,
and they stole it.
It wasn't their idea,
but they just ran off
with this extraordinary thing
of portable music,
because they did
something unique with it.
Is it unique?
What could we do to make it unique?
And then the third question
is this - is it better?
"Is this better?"
"No. It's kind of
what we did last year."
"Is this better?" "No. We've
been making it this way
since I got here."
Is this better? Is this better
than what we've normally done?
Fourth question,
is it better, really?
You know why I say that?
"Oh, it's better, it's better.
Oh, it's better."
"Okay, let's do it.
" No, no, come on.
Is it better, really?
Is it really better?
It's not really better. Why are these
questions important? Here's why.
Because you, as a leader, I as a leader,
in your industry, whatever it is,
we're on the hunt.
We're on the search.
We're looking, looking, looking.
We are wide open, and we're busy Monday
through Friday, or to Monday, or to...
I don't know when you work -
whether you're Monday through Friday,
Tuesday through Sunday, whatever it is,
we're busy people.
We're raising kids. We got grandkids.
We got stuff going on.
But if in our day-to-day,
if in the rhythm of our organization,
if in the rhythm of our critique,
if in the rhythm of our evaluation
we're at least thinking "uniquely better,
uniquely better, uniquely better",
then we will be more prone to see it
when it comes along,
and it will keep us from creating an
organization that closes hearts and minds,
because our hearts and minds
are so closed.
So, here's the questions
or here's the four things.
Be a student, not a critic.
Keep your eyes
and minds wide open.
Replace "how"
with "wow."
And ask the uniquely
better questions.
Somebody out
there somewhere
is already working on it.
It may be your
organization
or it may be someone in your organization.
And whether we discover it first
or whether we pioneer it first
is not really the issue, so much as it is
will we be positioned to recognize it.
And you will, if you keep your eyes,
and your heart,
and your mind,
and your hands wide open.
I'm a pastor, and like Bill,
I just so love the local church.
And I pray all the time.
I do. I pray all the time.
"God, I don't know what you have for me,
and I don't know if we're gonna
be a part of the next iteration
of whatever You decide to do in the world,
wherever You decide to do it in the world,
and as much as I love my churches
and as much as I love the way
that we do what we do,
God, I want to be, if nothing else,
I would like to think
that we could be wind
in somebody else's sails.
When some 25-year-old, or 35-year-old,
or 75-year-old stumbles upon, discovers,
and creates whatever
that uniquely better thing is
that's gonna draw people
to Your kingdom."
And if you're a Christian,
I know you feel the very same way.
So, let's be people of "wow"
rather than "how",
and let's keep our eyes wide open for
that thing that God may be willing to do,
that God may have already started doing,
and by His grace,
perhaps we can be a part of it.
Thank you so very much.