Leadership Confessions

What M&M Meetings Can Teach Us About Leadership

Most people know Dr. Sanjay Gupta from his media work as the chief medical correspondent for CNN and a special correspondent for CBS.  He is often called upon to make complex things simple and simple things complex for a global TV audience.  He is also a practicing neurosurgeon, on the faculty of the Emory University School of Medicine (operating Mondays and every other Friday) and in addition to his two best-selling books of health advice, he can add one more thing to his CV: successful novelist.  

Dr. Gupta has just penned his first novel, set at  fictional Chelsea General, where doctors meet for a weekly morbidity and mortality (M&M) meetings.  Drawn from his own notes over 20 years of attending these sessions, he wanted people to realize that doctors need to step back and analyze their own mistakes in order to not make them again.  In a recent interview about the book in Macleans, Dr. Gupta notes the following:

"Medicine moves forward because people learn form their mistakes, that that means that mistakes happen.  But the worst crime of all would be that it continues to happen because no one learned from it.  What I am always struck by is when something has gone wrong and when everyone sort of knows that a mistake has happened but hardly ever does anyone really have a completely candid meeting, not to be punitive, but to hold each other accountable and to say `Look, can we all agree that this was a mistake?  And can we all figure out a way not to let that happen again?'  I think that if we did that, if we applied what we know as surgeons and from M&M's to all sorts of different facets of our society, I just think things would run so much better, and there wouldn't be so much dabbling around the edges with regard to these issues" (Interview, Macleans, Apr 23, 2012, p. 16).

Oftentimes organizations and leaders move with such speed and such a focus on the future, they don't have time for assessment (more on that in another post and forthcoming article).  But the real tragedy occurs when, for fear of looking weak or admitting to doing something foolish or letting others know that they made the wrong call, a leader avoids accountability altogether.  

Avoiding medical malpractice lawsuits is understandable and I am certainly not advocating making the contents of your M&M meetings public knowledge or hanging someone out to dry for an innocent mistake.  What I am advocating, however, is that I believe it is one of the primary jobs of a leader to ensure that they take responsibility for their own actions and the actions of those whom they lead.  If they never present at or worse, never call an M&M meeting, they will miss the learning that can only come with you dissect the cadaver - both metaphorically and sometimes, even physically. 

On Grief and Consolation

Having lost my paternal grandfather at age 91 this past month, quotes about grief and loss are catching my eye these days.  Theologian and poet of the 17th and 18th centuries, Francois Fenelon wrote "We must have faith during the period of our grief.  We think that our afflictions will be greater than we can bear, but we do not know the strength of our hearts, nor the power of God.  He knows all.  He knows every folding of the heart and also the extent of sorrow that he inflicts.  What we think will overwhelm us entirely only subdues and conquers our pride.  Our renewed spirit rises from its subjugation with a celestial strength and consolation" (qtd in Common Prayer, 246).

What are you facing this season of life?  Perhaps you will come to find a new depth and level of strength not only in your own heart, but also in the power and presence of Almighy God. 

What ABC's New TV Show 'GCB' Can Teach Us About Ourselves

Christians are notoriously poor at being able to laugh at ourselves.  When the media portrays us, it usually does so with extreme caricature which we then get all huffy about and then both parties end up missing each other in the conversation.  

That's partially why I was so intrigued to watch the pilot of ABC's new TV show last night "GCB".  Originally named "Good Christian Bitches" (after the book of the same name by author Kim Gatlin), then tamed down after protest to "Good Christian Belles" and then finally truncated to GCB, the show follows the lives of socialites in Dallas and is a mix of Desperate Housewives, the original Dallas (think big hair and lots of plastic surgery jokes), and High School musical - amongst other things.  

The show features a group of girls who went to high school together and who are conspiring to get their revenge on the mean girl who has come back to Dallas from California after her life has fallen apart.  Author Margaret Fienberg makes a compelling observation on CNN's BeliefNet blog:  

“GCB” acts as a mirror as to how Christians are often perceived, which is to say none-too-positively. But the “GCB” caricature doesn't represent the vast majority of Christians, who find themselves in generous, kindhearted congregations that serve their communities, from providing food and shelter for those displaced by recent natural disasters to providing clean water and much-needed aid around the world.

Still, “GCB” challenges every Christian – including me – to consider our own faith journey and if our talk really matches our walk. When do we fall prey to petty, gossipy, vindictive attitudes and actions?"

If GCB can keep it out of the gutter in terms of content (it may already have lost that game) and weave into the plot more deeply nuanced questions of faith and forgiveness, it has the potential to hold a mirror up for Christians to ask good questions about our own lives and how our actions are perceived by our culture.  If it can't walk this fine line, then GCB likely will go the way of Desperate Housewives. 

The Danger of Making Your Experiences Fit Reality

I love the book of Job.  To me, part of the fun in reading it is assessing what part of the various speeches are true and square with God's picture of reality and what parts are vain or idle words (of which all parties are guilty at points).  That's why Job 21 is so intriguing to me.  Job's friends have spent the better part of their speeches to date building a case that the wicked do not proposer and that everything they have will be riped painfully from them as God's judgement on their behaviour.

But good ol' Job looks around and notes that this isn't usually true. He notes that the wicked "spend their days in prosperity, then go down to the grave in peace. And yet they say to God, ‘Go away. We want no part of you and your ways. Who is the Almighty, and why should we obey him? What good will it do us to pray?’" (Job 21:13-15).  Job's assessment of the situation seems fairly realistic and level-headed to me.  People with no regard for God, both then and now, often do fine at business, parenting, finance, marriage and life in general.  The rain falls on the just and the unjust.  The prosperity gospel is alive and well.  

But poor Job's friends can't resist an opportunity to moralize, so they do something that is all to common then and now: they find selective stories that fit their worldview and they pontificate and over-spiritualize them ad nausea.  What they fail to realize, however, is that their selectivity doesn't square with the overall data of experience.  Job reminds them “Look, I know what you’re thinking. I know the schemes you plot against me. You will tell me of rich and wicked people whose houses have vanished because of their sins. But ask those who have been around, and they will tell you the truth. Evil people are spared in times of calamity and are allowed to escape disaster. No one criticizes them openly or pays them back for what they have done." (21:27-31).   His friends have conveniently ignored any examples that don't fit their worldview or make their point effectively.  

So next time you go to tell as story as an illustration of a point you are making, you might want to ask yourself if you have a sneaky habit of finding and sharing only blogs or tweets or experiences that agree with your pre-formed opinions. Or do you genuinely allow the aggregate and long-term data around the issue to speak for itself?  If you don't you might be making your experiences into a reality that doesn't exist!   

Do You Exercise Your Idea Muscle?

In 1975, after a year of intensely hard creative work, a young electrical engineer Steven Sasson was ready presented his new invention.  As history tells is "the device was huge, ugly, and took 23 seconds to record an image with a resolution of only 0.01 megapixels.  When Sasson finally showed the  gadget to his bosses, they were dumbfounded. 'Why would anyone ever want to view his or her pictures on TV?' they wondered, as he wrote in a blog post decades later.  Sasson earned a patent for his trouble but otherwise his project was forgotten." (from "I Want to be in Pictures" by Farhad Manjoo, FastCompany, Dec 2011/Jan 2012).  

The device?  You guessed it - a digital camera.  The company that failed to embrace creativity?  You guessed it, the same on that saw it's stock price plummet 60% on a single day in September of this past year: Kodak.  

So what lessons can you and I glean if your New Year's resolution is to become more creative?  Here's a few suggestions:

1. Get comfortable with failure.  Creativity means you are thinking outside the box, which means that the conventional approaches to the issue(s) you are working on changing do not apply.  And uncharted waters are full of jagged rocks.  Take James Dyson as and example (you know, the vacuum guy).  He tried 5,127 prototypes of his bagless vacuum cleaner before succeeding.  That means he "failed" 5,126 times!  If I was him, I would have given up around the 500 mark, which means I would have given up 10 times faster than him.  If you want to be more creative, settle in for a long-ish season of "non-success" and be prepared to hold the line and defend your experiments against the critics.
2. Exercise Your Idea Muscle.  It seems counter-intuitive to link creativity and discipline but listen to the advice of finance columnist James Altucher: Creativity "is not a talent.  It's a learned ability.  The idea muscle, like any other muscle, atrophies in weeks of non-use.  You start ever day with 10 ideas: people I should talk to, businesses I should start, books I should write.  It has to be a solid, doable next step.  You'll come up with nothing but bad ideas for the first month.  Between one and three months, you'll start coming up with good ideas.  After six months, honestly, life should be completely different.  it's not that your ideas are so good.  It's the sheer quantity and the honing of the muscle so you start to know more and more what ones are actionable and good." (Macleans, Jan 9, 2012, p.16-17).
3. Broader Your Horizon.  The challenge with the execs at Kodak is that they saw their world in very narrow terms: they perceived themselves as a film company.  This prevented them from understanding that in more broadly understood terms in the shift towards digital culture, they were actually a well-positioned company that provided pictures and images to people.  If they had been able to realize that (and they still could), they may be able to resurrect themselves from the doldrums of patent trolling.  The take-away here is to think beyond your traditional definitions or constraints.  What would it look like if you thought of yourself not only as a "youth pastor" but as a community advocate?  What would it look like if you thought of yourself not just as a "stay at home mom" but as a person with creative talents and passion to invest in your kids and school?  

Broadening your categories, generating and acting on as many ideas as you can and being increasingly comfortable when most of them bomb can help unleash some new creative ideas that just might change your thinking and your organization in 2012.  even if not organizationally, it might change you personally.  It sure did for Sasson, who ended up being inducted into the Inbventors Hall of Fame in 2011 and recieving a medal of honour from the US President.  It turns out that exercising your little idea muscle just might have the potential to change the world!       

The Subversive Message of the Prince of Peace: Why Mary's Magnificat was Banned in Guatemala

A few years ago, I was in Guatemala observing a country still reeling from civil conflict, political corruption and abject poverty.  I wondered again this morning how the beautiful people I met there will celebrate Christmas a few days from now.  How will they will read the story of Messiah, God's deliverer sent to bring hope and freedom to the nations?  

I was reminded in my Advent reading this morning that some of the Christmas story is so subversive, so pointed in its critique of power, pride and wealth that Luke 1-2 would read quite differently to my Guatemalan friends.  Listen to Katleen Norris' observations in a reading for the 4th Thursday of Advent: 

Mary utters a song so powerful that its meaning still resonates in profound and disturbing ways.  In the twentieth century Mary's "Magnificat" became a cornerstone of liberation theology, so much so that during the 1980's the government of Guatemala found its message so subversive that it banned its recitation in public worship. 

The Magnificat reminds us that what we most value, all that gives us status - power, pride, strength and wealth - can be a barrier to receiving what God has in store for us.  If we have it all, or think we can buy it all, there will be no Christmas for us.  If we are full of ourselves, there will be no room for God to enter our hearts at Christmas.  Mary's prayer of praise, like many of the psalms, calls us to consider our true condition: God is God, and we are the creatures God formed out of earth.  The nations are but nations, and even the power of a mighty army cannot save us.  We all return to dust. And if we hope to rise in God's new creation, where love and justice will reign triumphant, our responsibility, here and now, is to reject the temptation to employ power and force and oppression against those weaker than ourselves.  We honour the Incarnation best by honouring God's image in all people, and seeking to make this world into a place of welcome for the Prince of Peace." (p. 113-114 in "God With Us").

What kinds of wonderfully subversive actions will you undertake to celebrate Christmas this year? 

Annunciations of One Sort or Another In Most Lives

I came across this poem in my advent reading this morning and have been captivated by the reminder that we are always free to say NO to God, but at what cost?  What might we miss out on?  What would Mary have missed?  What might God be inviting you to participate in today that you won't want to miss?  

Poem: The Annunciation by Denise Levertov

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lecturn, a book; always
the tall lily.

Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whome she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage
The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent. God waited.

She was free
to accept or refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

Aren't there annunciations
of one sort or another in most lives?
Some unwillingly undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.

More often those moments
when roads of light and storm
open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.

God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes..

She had been a child who played, ate, spelt
like any other child - but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumpf.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked

a simple, "How can this be?"
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel's reply,
perceiving instantly
the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power -
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.

Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love -

but who was God.

 

What To Do with Santa Claus?

It was my 6 year old daughter who first piped up...  She had come across a little porcelain figurine of Santa kneeling at the Nativity which caused her to remark very mater-of-factly: "I didn't know that Santa and Jesus were alive at the same time, dad."  

It's been over 100 years since journalist Francis Church wrote a much-reprinted editorial: "Yes, Virgina, There is a Santa Claus" and people of faith and good conscience still wonder what to do with the jolly old fat man in the red suit.  Some shun him completely, feeling that by doing so, they are appropriately rejecting the consumerism that has come to mar the season in the Western world.  Others embrace him whole heartedly, as evidenced by churches hosting Santa Breakfasts and the like.  But like so many other facets of our faith, I am convinced that either end of that spectrum is perhaps less that healthy and I'd like to propose a third way.  This year, why not redeem St. Nick from the myths and caricatures that have come to dominate and return him to his rightful place in history.  

On December 6, the church has historically celebrated the Feast of Saint Nicolas.  He's come a long way "from being a fourth-century Bishop in the distant Roman province of Lycia, through innumerable pious legends, until he became "Sinter Klaas", which is older Dutch for Saint Nicolas; in our day, Americans have turned him into Santa Claus, patron saint of the season commandment to shop until you drop." (from Richard John Neuhaus' The Feast of Saint Nicolas, p. 41, God with Us).  Listen to some of his story to discern what aspects of his life and character can be redeemed:

Very little is known about his life, but he is remembered as a man of great faith and compassion.  He was also a fierce advocate for those who had been unjustly condemned.  But he left behind no writings: the legends surrounding his life are all we have.  Nicolas is most well know is the West as the patron saint of children and gift-giving.  His connection to the American character of Santa Claus is faint, but it can be traced.  According to tradition, Nicholas' parents died when he was young, leaving him a large sum of money.  With his inheritance, Nicolas practiced charity, helping those in need.

One legend in particular illustrates his generosity: a family in his community was desperate; the father had lost all of his money and had been unable to find husbands for his three daughters.  The daughters were in danger of being given over to prostitution or another form of degradation when, one night, Nicholas appeared at their home.  He tossed three bags of gold into the open window (or down the chimney, in some versions) - thereby saving them from a terrible fate.  This tale is probably the source of his eventual connection to the tradition of gift giving at Christmas....

Aside from the obvious disparities between Saint Nicolas and the secular Santa Claus, perhaps the most poignant difference between them can be seen in the nature of the gifts they give.  While Santa has his bundle of toys, the gift that Saint Nicholas gives is nothing short of freedom from poverty and desperation.  The life of Saint Nicholas is an example of faith made flesh in actions of true charity." (ibid, pages 39-40)

So instead of rejecting Saint Nick, I humbly suggest that we re-tell his true story and reclaim the deeper principles and more compelling practice of true Christian charity this Christmas.       

Fat Wallets, No Friends

Christmas is a women's holiday.  There, I said it.  I came to this perhaps illogical conclusion in a strangely back-handed way...  It has nothing to do with whose job it is or isn't to prep for the 25th but rather everything to do with the inordinately high presence of women's Christmas events.  Couple this with the conspicuous absence of anything for us guys and my logic is unassailable (well, OK, almost).  

I'm certainly not complaining or asking for some kind of a craft or caroling night for us guys, I'm simply wondering what it is about the social and communal nature of women's Christmas events that simply doesn't translate well for dudes.  I mean, when was the last time you saw a Christmas event that was specificlaly organzied with men in mind?  

Thomas Joiner, in his book "Lonely at the Top: The High Cost of Men's Success" tells the story of his own father "a successful businessman and family man who committed suicide at age 56.  'My dad had close friendships in early childhood but they faded or failed for whatever reasons...  The problem is not precisely that he lost them, the precise problem is that he did no replenish them - and I believe it killed him, or more accurately led him to kill himself.  His autopsy report should read: male, age 56, cause of suicide: friendlessness.'" (qtd in Macleans, Nov 14, 2011, page 95).

Why this lack of friendship?  Joiner postulates that "men, more than women, focus on attaining wealth and status, neglecting relationships.  'A lucky few can get by on the friendships they made back in the day.  But many can't, and over time, men drift away from friendship and simultaneously earn money and status.  This leaves them puzzled indeed - they spent years achieving money and status, finally got it, and yet they feel lonely and empty.'" (ibid).

The solution?  Get a gang.  "Gangship is essential to men's well being...  Lonely men at home crave a reconstituted gang.  Hence NASCAR and golf, the attraction to and fascination with, for men, represents an attempt to vicariously experience gangship" (ibid).  Another solution Joiner proposes?  An old-fashioned reunion - "it can be as juvenile a time as the guys can muster, and ideally it needs to occur regularly.  The goal of the reunion is to reconnect the man's social connections where they were at their peak" (95).  

So this Christmas, guys, while you spouse is at the ladies Christmas tea, why not pick up the phone and call an old buddy.  Or reach out on Facebook and put a hunting trip together.  Who knows, it just might wave your life. 

The Gift of Receptivity

I love Advent.  The sense of wonder that only grows when you learn to wait.  The excitement of knowing that all around the world, people from multiple streams of Christian tradition are setting their hearts and their hopes on the same thing at the same time.  

So last week I went down to our basement bookshelf where we keep all of our seasonal books (and a few well-loved but long since outgrown kid's books) to select my Advent reader for this year.  Being a person who does not love repetition, I have a few to choose from so that I don't fall into ruts too easily ("Oh, I remember this story from last year!" is not good for me).  I also like to stretch myself outside of my usual reading routines at Advent and so most of my readers are more high church or more global in focus.  I decided that after a few years off from it, I am heading back to one of my favorite Advent readers: "God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas".  I love the poetic passion of Luci Shaw or the deep theological ruminations of Richard John Neuhaus.  It's good food for the soul to get me started on winter mornings.

This morning was a great example.  The First Monday and Advent and already a gem!  Listen to Neuhaus as he describes what it means to have faith:

Faith does not assert claims; faith recieves the gift that is undeserved.  Faith is itself a gift, the gift of receptivity.  Mary received the gifts in saying 'Let it be to me according to your word."  To her, and through her to us, was given the gift of the Child who is nothing less, no one less, than the Saviour of the world.  For us he lived and suffered and died; for us he was raised triumphant that we might, even though we suffer and die,  forever live in his glory.  The gift is already given and forever is now for those who give him permission to let life be a gift in response to a gift.  It really is a matter of giving God permission, as Mary gave God permission.  He will not be the Lord of our life without our permission.  Faith is giving permission." (21)

The greatest gift you or I might recieve this season is the gift that has already been given and simply needs to be embraced: the gift of receptivity.