Some highlights so far:

Bill Hybels was excellent as usual. He hit four biggies.

1. Leaders move people from Here to There. Vision means painting a picture of a preferable future that creates passion in people. But it also requires the leader create dissatisfaction with te way things are now.

2. Leaders gather fantastic people to get the job done. Look for A. Character
B. Competence
C. Chemistry
D. Culture

3. Make a big deal of Milemarkers and Celebrations. How do you keep people on the journey? A. Refill their vision bucket. Everyone’s vision bucket leaks.
B. Celebrate every mile marker along the way. What keeps people on the journey is the sense of hope that they’re going to get there one day.

4. Listen to Whispers from God. Web God speaks to your heart. Pay attention.

JIM COLLINS

Good is the enemy of great. The good and the great companies were both in the same circumstances. Circumstance is not the most predictor of greatness. Greatness is a matter of decision and discipline.

How the mighty fall: Anyone can fall. You can be sick on the outside and still look strong on the outside.

Five stages of decline, largely self-inflicted:

1. Hubris borne of success. Outrageous arrogance that inflicts suffering on the innocent. Acknowledge that your success is due in part to luck. The signature we found that separated level 4 let’s from level 5 leaders is their signature if humility. Not soft humility but a hot burning passion to do what ever it takes.

2. Undisciplined pursuit of more. Over reaching is what brings down the mighty. If you allow growth to exceed your ability to have the right people, fantastic people you will crater. Regulate growth and reach by the question: Do we have all the right people in all the right seats? Get the right people on the bus, in the right seats.

3. Denial of risk and peril. You have to be able to put together faith and facts. Faith that you will prevail, while at the same time a brutally honest assessment of the direness of your situation.

4. Grasping for Salvation. They went looking for a silver bullet. Mega-merger. Greatness us a cumulative process. The flywheel process. Disciplined, consistent action.

5. Capitulation is the final stage if decline. You can go into late stage four and still become a great organization. Capitulation is giving up. You’ve squandered all your influential capital.

Built to Last. The 18 companies that made it 30 years had a reason to succeed. They had an answer to the question: What would be lost if we ceased to exist? The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.

All the great leaders we studied were geniuses of the “and.” They had the ability to live in paradox. There has to be a core not open to dilution, but on the other hand we have to be open to evolution and change.

Jim Collins’ to do list:

1. Download and use the diagnostic tool. JimCollins.com.
2. Count your blessings. In a spreadsheet. Don’t stop short of a hundred. Account for alll the good things that happened tingly that you did not cause. It’s humbling.
3. What is your questions to statements ratio, and can you double it in the next year? Invest more in being interested than being interesting.
4. Count the seats on your bus and how many are filled with fantastic people. Make a time-dated decision to set it right. 5. Do the team diagnostic.
6. With your team in the very next meeting, create an inventory of the brutal facts or your organization’s situation. 7. Discipline begins not with what you do but by what you stop doing.
8. Define results and keep track. What do you mean, precisely, by results? Count clicks on the flywheel.
9. Double your reach to young people by changing your practices without changing your core values. 10. Set BHAGs. At 65 Drucker had done 1/3 of his books.

The path out of darkness begins with those indivuals who are incapable if capitulation. Be willing to kill bad ideas. Never give up on the idea of creating a great church. Be willing to form alliances with former enemies to make necessary compromises.