Chapter 16

BREAKING THROUGH

The Need for New Advisors

The typical response to hitting the wall is to work harder, work smarter, and do better. We focus on effort, efficiency, and quality.

And often, that solves the problem. Redoubling our efforts in any one of these areas can have a huge impact. Improving all three usually takes us to new heights. That’s why we tend to go there first. But what happens when greater effort, improved efficiency, and better quality don’t fix the problem?

Assuming you’ve not reached your God-ordained ceiling and there are still heights to scale, one of three things must change — and in some cases, all three. You’ll need (1) new advisors, (2) new expectations, and/or (3) new structures.

I liken the need to make these changes to fixing the crimp in the hose that always happens when I try to wash my car. Once the hose gets stuck under a tire, it doesn’t matter how much I turn up the flow of water. It doesn’t matter what kind of special high-pressure nozzle I put on the hose. The amount of water coming out of the end of the hose won’t exceed the amount that the crimp point lets through. And the only way to fix it is to go to source of the problem. I need to pull the hose out from under the tire.

In much the same way, our leadership pipeline can become crimped. Shortsighted advisors, unrealistic expectations, and crippling structures can severely limit what comes out of our organizations and leadership.

The only way to release the flow again is to go to the source of the problem and make some changes. Unfortunately, people and organizations aren’t exactly like the tires on my car. They don’t like to let go of the hose.

In fact, sometimes they prefer a trickle to letting everything flow freely. That’s why they squeeze so tightly. That’s why some hold on with a death grip. It can be quite a struggle to get the hose out of their hands. But it’s got to be done; otherwise everything will come to a screeching halt.

NEW ADVISORS

Once we’ve hit the wall and can’t break through with the usual strategies (effort, efficiency, and improved quality), the first thing most of us need to find is a set of new advisors.

But finding them, learning from them, and applying the things they can teach us is not as easy as it sounds. That’s because most leaders and organizations resist outside advice. They assume that the answers to their toughest problems lie within those who know their field best. So they blow off the solutions of outsiders, convinced that they don’t understand the real issues and the nuances of what they’re facing.

But the answers to our most perplexing and difficult problems will seldom be found within. They’ll almost always be found outside, often far outside among the outliers who see the world differently than we see it, unbound by our restricting assumptions and paradigms.

HOW MOST PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED

Most leaders and leadership teams do a good job of solving most problems. That’s why we have success. We tend to follow a pattern that I call Me, My Team, My Tribe. It works like this.

When faced with a problem or roadblock, we turn within to find a solution. We think through, pray through, or work through the issue until a solution comes to mind. Then we apply it and move on. It’s what makes a leader a leader.

If that doesn’t work, we move from Me to My Team. We turn to coworkers and friends whose wisdom we trust. It’s here that many innovative solutions are birthed, critiqued, and launched. Iron sharpens iron. Lessons are learned and experience gained. Over time, the collective wisdom of the team grows, enabling us to solve ever greater problems and issues. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

But eventually, the wisdom of the team runs out. We try everything we can think of and nothing works. We’ve hit a wall. So we turn to My Tribe.

My tribe consists of those who are outside of my specific organization, but with whom I have a natural affinity. Everyone (and every organization) has a tribe. When someone tells me they aren’t part of a tribe, I simply ask who they read, what conferences they go to, who they look up to. Their answers tell me their tribe.

For a church, it’s often the denomination or other churches of a similar persuasion. It’s whom they hang with. For a business, it’s usually those in the same industry. These are the people who speak our language. They deal with the same issues, share the same goals, and understand the challenges and subtleties we’re facing.

The tribe often knows much more than the members of any particular team. That’s why networking, peer-group learning, and conferences are so valuable. Whenever our tribe gets together, we tend to learn things we never would have figured out on our own.

Frankly, most of the issues an organization faces can be solved with the insights of Me, My Team, My Tribe. Many will go years without running into something that stumps the big three. But eventually it will happen. There will be an issue, a problem, or a roadblock that the leader, the team, and the tribe have no clue how to handle.

In many cases, that will be the end of the story. Because, sadly, lots of leaders assume that if they, their team, and their tribe have no answer, there is no answer. They settle in, assuming they’ve gone as far as they can go.

But there is one more place they need to check before settling in, convinced that there is no solution to the problem and no way to break through the wall. It’s a place where the answers to a leader’s and an organization’s most difficult questions usually lie. It’s outside the tribe.

OUTSIDE THE TRIBE

Many leaders never venture outside their tribe. Sometimes it’s because of arrogance. They think they and their tribe have all the answers. Sometimes it’s because of insecurity; they fear leaving their comfort zones. Sometimes it’s because their tribe won’t let them.

But if you want to break through your toughest barriers, you’ll eventually have to go outside your tribe. That’s where the answers have already been found and put into practice by other people and tribes who are unfettered by the paradigms, rules, and conventional wisdom that hold your tribe back. They have a different knowledge base, which allows them to see things from a different perspective.

I find it interesting that despite all the detailed instructions that God gave to Moses, the solution to organizing the Israelites came from his father-in-law, a man who didn’t even acknowledge God until the night before he showed Moses how to avoid burnout and set up a system to administer justice and govern God’s people.¹²

Many of us would have told Jethro to take a hike.

Moses told him, “Thanks, I needed that.”

Or consider the lessons that a Formula One racing team taught a group of medical doctors. After completing a twelve-hour emergency transplant, the head doctor at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London watched a Formula One race. As a car pulled into the pit, he noted that the crew changed the tires, filled it with fuel, cleared the air intakes, and sent it off in seven seconds.

It struck him that it often took thirty minutes to untangle and unplug all the wires and tubes to transfer a patient from surgery to ICU. He wondered if a racing team could teach a hospital how to run an emergency room.

Imagine the pushback from the trained medical staff when the McLaren and Ferrari racing teams showed up to observe and advise them on how to improve their emergency services.

After all, what did they know about surgery?

Nothing.

What did they know about patient care?

Nothing.

What did they know about the complex interactions between doctors and nurses in an emergency room situation?

Nothing.

What did they know about speeding up complex processes?

Everything.

The result was a major restructuring of the process of handing over patients from surgery to intensive care. The Formula One teams suggested better training and actual rehearsals of the new protocols. They provided a step-by-step checklist covering each stage of the handover, including a diagram of the patient surrounded by the staff so that everyone knew their exact physical position as well as their precise task. They designated a leader (the anesthetist) who had authority to guide the team through the patient handover.

It almost halved handover errors.

The biggest problem the hospital faced (considered unsolvable and accepted as just the way things were) was solved by a group of people who knew nothing about the practice of medicine, emergency room procedures, or medical equipment. Unbound by the medical establishment’s lens of experience, traditions, and conventional wisdom, they easily saw what the hospital tribe had missed.¹³

One of the great ironies of getting advice from outside your tribe is that it will make you look like an innovative genius within your own tribe. Many of the most innovative things done in one industry are nothing more than the application of common knowledge from another industry.

Some of the most creative and innovative things we’ve done at North Coast were simple rip-offs of things that other tribes considered no big deal. We have solved some of our biggest problems and launched our most significant innovations with lessons learned from In-N-Out Burger, Downtown Disney, stodgy CPA firms, Harley-Davidson, and educational theorists.

When they look at what we’ve done, they think, “What’s the big deal?”

But when other churches look at what we’ve done, they often say, “Wow! How’d you think of that?”

YOU’LL NEED A PLAN

To take full advantage of the knowledge outside your tribe, you’ll need a plan.

Without a plan, it will be hard to venture outside the safety of your own organization and tribe. The complexities of a growing (or even a stalled) organization consume massive amounts of time. Most leaders and leadership teams have little margin. Without a plan to look outside, they never have enough time to look outside.

I’ve known leaders who join diverse business groups or attend conferences that have little to nothing to do with their specific industry in order to expose themselves to the knowledge bases outside their tribe.

I’ve known leaders who have used travel, hobbies, classes, seminars, and online training to break out of their box.

I’ve long used a potpourri of reading sources from other fields to get me outside my tribe.

You’ll have to figure out what works for you and your team. But I can assure you that you’ll never learn the things that other tribes already know until you have a plan to visit them and learn.

YOU’LL NEED PERMISSION

You’ll also need one other thing. You’ll need permission.

Some organizations fear anything that comes from outside their tribe. If that’s the case in your organization, you’ll need to get permission ahead of time or else they’ll reject everything you bring back from the outside.

If you’re in ministry, step back and identify which key leaders and power brokers in your church naturally resist anything that comes from outside the tribe. Spend time with them to figure out how best to help them see that all truth is God’s truth (even if it comes from somebody whose theology doesn’t line up with yours point by point).

Otherwise, any ideas you bring from outside your tribe will be dead on arrival.

I learned this the hard way.

When I first brought to our leadership team lessons and insights from the business world, they fell on deaf ears. Some folks wanted a Bible verse for everything. They rejected powerful answers not on their merits but on their pedigree. They said things like, “The church is not a business.”

I agreed. The church is not a business. But the moment we outgrew the home we started in, we were an organization. And businesses know an awful lot about organization and systems, much of which churches need to learn.

Frankly, I know the Bible well. But I’ve yet to find the verses that deal with hiring practices, parking problems, administrative workflow, or negotiating a lease. Maybe I just missed them. I don’t know.

But churches aren’t the only organizations that are slow to grant permission to learn from outsiders. I see this same reaction with some of the business leaders I do consulting for. When they bring back to their team the idea of inviting me to talk or meet with them, the initial reaction is often, “What can this guy know about our business? He’s a pastor.”

It’s not that they’re afraid that I’m going to take an offering or have an altar call. It’s that they are just as closed-minded as everyone else. We all tend to think our tribe already knows everything important — or at least everything important to what we do.

Fortunately, most leadership teams have what it takes to solve most problems. Between Me, My Team, and My Tribe there is an abundance of wisdom. But sooner or later, that well runs dry.

What we do next often determines how far we will go as leaders and organizations. Those of us who are humble enough to seek out new advisors usually find the answers we need, while those who are too arrogant to listen to outsiders usually end up complaining that there are no answers to be found.