Leadership Thoughts
I just started Tribal Knowledge today. I’ve been meaning to start on it for a while and decided this week it would start my attempt to seriously plow through some leadership books this summer. When done I’ll try to post some thoughts/review.
But only a few pages into it and there have already been some great thoughts.
Before I get to some of those I discovered that Starbucks calls their employees, “partners.” Moore writes, “Starbucks positioned its employees ( the company calls them partners) as the coffee experts because they were” (4). At LifeConnection we’re doing away with membership language for partnership and instead are calling the-group-formerly-known-as-members, “partners.”
Member has losts its meaning, some recently have even suggested, albeit misguidedly, that “member” is not even a biblical concept. I think this statement betrays how far away we have drifted from Paul’s notion of membership as part of a physical body. Most see membership in a church like they see membership in a country club or fitness center, it’s voluntary. But if we follow Paul’s concept of membership, it’s anything but voluntary, isn’t it? How does a foot leave the body? So partnership seems to be a more fitting concept, and like most things I’m not the first to think so (dangit Starbucks!).
Okay, that was long winded, on to some good thoughts from the book….
Tribal language is that innate language that isn’t written but only spoken, and then, only within the tribe. It elicits followership, radical commitment, inspires, and creates a certain kinds of ethos. (xii)
“Managing a brand is a lifetime of work. Brands are fragile. You have to recognize the success of Starbucks, or any company or brand, is not an entitlement. It has to be earned every day” (Howard Schultz, 3).
“Contrary to what you may have heard or thought, Starbucks never sought to create a brand. Instead, the company passionately sought to create appreciation for a better tasting cup of coffee” (3).
“It was all about the coffee and the experience, never the brand” (5). Now if this doesn’t teach us something about ministry in the church I don’t know what will. With LifeConnection I have to continually remind myself (and us) of this. We’re not trying to develop a great “brand” as the primary goal. It’s all about Jesus and his mission in our world. By focusing on Jesus and following his leading in our lives we will develop an identity. “[Starbucks] built a business of which the by-product was the creation of a strong brand” (5).
Speaking of brand-obsessed business: “Instead of spending money to improve the performance of a product or enhance the customer’s experience, many companies will attempt to build a brand by throwing money into multimillion-dollar image campaigns. The focus moves away from product devotion to the appearance of product devotion” (6).
What do you think?
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Looks like a great book Mike. Thanks.
When we launched Mosaic Arlington, we too wanted a word that expressed “working together for a common cause” so we also used partners. That word has worked okay for us, but we still get the religious people thinking we are with TBN or another fund raising ministry. And my lawyer brother thinks it’s a little misleading (since partners usually have a full vote in what we do…and that decision making process falls to our elders).
Anyhow, it’s funny you write on this today b/c as of this summer Mosaic Arlington will transition our “partner” word to “staff” (this allows us to fall more in line with Mosaic LA while also conferring that leading here is very important/serious/rewarding.
I trust partner will work will for you guys! (Who knows you may end up franchising LifeConnection all over the world!). Have fun.
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:25 am
Jason,
Here is the link for the book called “The Starbucks Experience”. It has some great principles about not only coffee (no prune juice sorry) and the expectations of its partners.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:15 pm
membership is something we’ve been having a little trouble with at GC. we want to make “membership” mean something– to have a responsibility and benefit attached to it instead of just a name on a role. and i think we’ve thought up some good ways to make it meaningful, but the demographic we’re kinda targeting are anti-commitment, so membership is really scary for them. we’re trying to work through those things, but it’s hard. we don’t want to make membership mean nothing, which is what some in this age bracket want.
Complex issues.
May 24th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
late on this one and could write a million things, but here’s one question/comment…
can you be a “member” or “partner” of more than one “church” if you fulfill all of the “requirements” of the “covenant” or whatever you call it?
May 24th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
good question Mark. My short answer is, “no, you couldn’t.” First off for me is biblical reasons, that’s an entirely foreign idea to the NT. The focus in the NT is on connecting to a local body. In fact, in the NT over 90% of the references to “church” is a local reference, not a cosmic reference.
Second for me is a practical issue. (it’s late…i’m going short) It just doesn’t seem to work out practically. There are a lot of issues here and I just haven’t seen this work out practically. So that really won’t be an option in my mind.
BUT, I will also say that this could be a descriptive and NOT a prescriptive thing too. That is, I don’t think this is a central core issue and so if Church X differs from Church Y on this one I wouldn’t think it’s an essential disagreement, just a difference in methodology. So this is how we’re going to handle it, but I wouldn’t hate on someone who does it differently. I want to hold this in an open hand right now.
whatchou think?
May 25th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
man, so much we could go into here… trying to pick a few key questions… not necessarily asking for specific answers to each…
since the short answer is no, it implies you are restricting yourself in some respect to one congregation or from all the others, yeah?
90% seems high, so i’ll question the most obvious example(s) to hopefully show that others could be questioned as well. why is it that when the NT references a locale with the word church we have to assume that “church” only includes that locale? why can’t it be read as “the [members of the global] church [who happen to reside] in Ephesus”?
which church was Paul a member of?
LifeConnection Olathe and LifeConnection Independence… different churches?
May 29th, 2007 at 12:24 am
I’m back from the weekend trip down south…
This isn’t meant to be a cop out but I think the more appropriate hermeneutical question is why would we assume global/universal/cosmic church when it is not specifically referenced?
I ask it this way b/c it is clear that the herm of simplicity would give us just cause to use a natural reading of a text to consider it is a reference to a local body. This should be magnified when we recognize that the letters are written to a specific destination to address specific issues in a locale and are not, in any instance, theological treatises. This is significant in my mind, because not one single document in the NT is recognized as some sort of theological treatise. They are occasional writings, to real people in real places.
For us, with your reference to LifeConnection Olathe, etc, those would not be independent churches. How we’re looking at operating those would be additional sites of one church. One church, multiple locations. But that’s just how we’re viewing these, mainly because we plan/intend on launching additional churches as well, that will be independent of LifeConnection.
May 29th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
not trying to cop out either, but this has pretty much run its course for a comments section (a collaborative Google doc might be interesting), so i’ll just state something for the record. i’m not against church membership, obviously, since we’re members of FBC. nor do i want to be a member of multiple churches or think that is practical. i just think it’s more of a cultural necessity (common to most cultures) than biblical mandate, but i’m officially undecided (as with most issues). i spend more time with believers from other “churches” at work than i do with fellow members of FBC so i think about this a lot. communication and transportation barriers aren’t what they used to be in the 1c.
May 29th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
That was close Mark. I was about to email DD about my “concerns” over your statements. LOL
So you starting the google doc?