: last night @ glad tidings w/ tony campolo :

... World Vision Canada brought Tony Campolo into town yesterday, seeing as he ( and everyone else it seems ) is in BC for MissionsFest this weekend. Not going to get into what he said much here, except to say that he pretty much told a fairly conservative evangelical crowd that any dreams, desires, demands and deliberations towards overtaking government with christians was doomed. Why? because that is a power grab, and position comes with very little actual authority. He challenged us to earn authority through intentional step-by-step acts of radical and sacrificial love. That eventually could change structures and systems and governments, but that is the place to start.

Over the past couple of years MTodd and I have been having a related conversation, although Mike claims Bono started it. Maybe the progression away from positional power to getting things done is ... power > authority > influence > currency? Mike's original question to me was ... compare Michael Jordan and Bono. What have they done for good with the incredible wealth, voice, profile and hearing they have? MJ has a basketball team, some gambling debts, a ba-zillion shoes named after him, and a million kids who were wannabe NBA stars. Bono has other stuff ... he gets invited to Presidential prayer breakfasts. If he has plans to be near Italy, he mentions it to the Vatican, and they say "come on over' ... sheesh, Bill Hybels flew across the Atlantic to interview Mr. U2 for a segment at a WillowBack Summit a couple of summers ago.

I am intrigued by trying to understand how real currency is earned, developed and used strategically as a stewardship of the resources any of us has been given. A good palce to start may be back at a much earlier post here on Kipling's poem "IF" ...

dlc

: what drives you ? and/or who do you blame :

... maybe you've seen this ad pop up on your FaceBook page? I had kind of ignored ancestry.ca until yesterday, when the teaser line 'why are you such a control freak?' got my attention, not that it occurred to me that I was a c-freak of course!

... however, I have known a few, worked for a couple ( you never actually work with c-freaks, only for them, especially in their minds :) and I am sure have acted like one on occasion. As usual, I often wonder/ponder what exactly drives a real control freak? what makes them think they know the answers? or that they have the global corner on implementation? or that there is really only one right way to do something ... theirs.

... I was on a staff once with a person who others ( not on staff ) declared was a control freak. I begged to differ ... they might have been a quality control freak, but that's a bit different. Another time I was beyond surprised when someone I had seen lead in a macro manner, big picture and mature, tended to micro-manage a project or event nearly to death ( or was it us that were near death? ). I kept asking myself ... 'what did I miss? why had I never seen those tendencies before?' only to come up lame ... no answers, no insights, no valid reasons.

... my mentor David was probably the one who modelled anti-control-freakness for me back in the early 1990's. He had an amazing ability to accept big projects from 'the boss' and break them down into manageable chunks for his own staff. He delegated appropriately, ran interference when things got off track, was available for consultation almost whenever staff deemed it necessary, and ... I realized many years later, never actually yanked the rope that he gave us to run with things, even when they went sideways. He took responsibility and 'credit' for the messes, as well as the successes. That's a great staff environment.

... Jim Collins has researched and written extensively about the kind of leadership that sets the stage, builds great teams, communicates the reason for whatever your organization is about, then gets out of the way ... he calls it Level 5 leadership ... pretty rare, pretty unique, pretty great to work with.

dlc