Hey, Jim Brown, welcome. This is the Life After Ministry podcast. Good to have you here.
So, good to be with you, Matt. I'm eager for a conversation.
Yeah. So, we had some introductions here. We've had a conversation, and I love the crossover with what you're doing in the business space, but how it also relates to ministry leaders. So, I want to make sure that people from the get-go, they don't tune out and tune off and say, 'Well, he's writing some business books. It's not really applicable to me.' Right?
This is totally applicable. Let me explain more the bigger picture. Matt, I feel goodness, it's got to be 35 years ago, an assignment from God to work and speak to business leaders to go through doors that would allow me to build relationships with business leaders and create conversations, relationships so that we could bring Christ into the conversation with people who likely wouldn't go through the door of a church. But meanwhile, I love the church. I'm a board member of my church and very committed to that as the center of my life. So, whatever we can do to help churches, we're all about that. And certainly the book is written specifically to business leaders but completely applicable to church leaders, to Christian leaders of all organizations. In fact, Matt, I've even got a companion guide. We haven't really gone public with this, but if you're interested, we can figure out how to make this available to your listeners if they're interested, which we call it Leading a Healthy Church, and it is exactly how to use The Imperfect CEO and the principles in it and apply it in a church context.
Yeah. So, let's get into it because today on the day of the release here, your book is coming out and the book is called The Imperfect CEO. And so I want to work through that. You started to notice this is not your first book. So let's rewind the tape just a little bit on your first book. And there's also something you have a little bit of this. You pay attention to things that are not perfect. Give me a little background and some of the friction that you saw that said I want to address this.
Yeah. The first book is called The Imperfect Board Member. And the idea here is that we just in the western world especially have this crazy pressure that we're supposed to be perfect. People think that, oh, if I'm going to be a good leader, people are expecting me to be perfect. If I'm going to be a good board member, I guess I better show up with, you know, all the answers. And it's not possible. The truth is, no one is perfect except Jesus. And we just need to embrace our imperfection, which I'm not saying is a license to stagnate, right? Rather, it's a recognition that God has given each of us certain gifts, but he actually by design has created a world where we need others so that we can all be our best. That's certainly true in a boardroom. If we want to be a great board, we need to figure out so what does each person around the table bring that when we put it all together, it all complements the rest and is wonderful. But that's also true in leading an organization. The CEO who is the hero is the wrong picture. The right picture is that the CEO is humble enough to recognize God's given them strengths and weaknesses and they need other people around them to bring strengths that cover their weaknesses. That's when we can be a great team and a great organization.
So looking back over the last 20 years, tens of thousands of copies sold for The Imperfect Board Member. What have you seen that's played out of that that kind of led into this new iteration of not just looking at the board and how that functions, but how now as we have an imperfect CEO, how do those two come together, collide? I mean, it's really you're encouraging people to drop the fig leaf and not have to claim that you are the five tool player. You got it all together. That actually there is some strength in acknowledging weakness.
Absolutely. I think the biggest thing for me, Matt, was a recognition that the times have been changing for certainly for 10 years, probably for longer than that. And there were quite a few founders of organizations, companies, and churches that I've worked with that were frustrated because the things that they had found had made them successful were no longer working. And it was irritating to them. It was irritating that they couldn't just declare, 'Here's the goal. Here's what we're going to do,' and everybody marches along behind them. No, that doesn't actually work anymore. Today, we have to create a conversation and invite people into the journey of figuring out where we're going so that they can own the trip rather than just be obedient to the leader. So yes, I will also humbly admit Matt, it was happening in my own life. There are a lot of things that building this business that I've been leading for 32 years now is just I have to do it very differently. People do not respond like they used to respond. And as an imperfect leader, I have to keep learning more about myself and about other people and how to interact with them in a way that's going to work here. Here's a line that has had to really take root in my spirit. I have to be more focused on the impact that I'm having on people than the intent that I had for it. So, whatever I said or whatever I did, I've got a very reasonable intention. That's why I did it, but they didn't hear it the way I meant it or that it didn't feel the way that I was trying to project. And rather than me being irritated that they're not getting it, I have to take responsibility that I'm not delivering it the way that works for them. And a good leader is more committed to the outcome of the effort than to the intention of the effort.
It feels like, you know, I grew up with the notion that the boss said it, you've got to do it right. And there is a different structure. But what's your and really like that it's who in that relationship has to be more flexible. If this is what the boss asks for, then you've got to bend and twist and break until you've fulfilled whatever it is that they're asking for. You're almost saying that what we're asking for is that as a leader you are now having to be exerting a little bit more of that flexibility to be able to communicate and lead your team in a different way.
A lot more. It used to be that being a confident leader standing at the front of the room declaring, 'Hey, this is the real world. Here's where we're at, the state of our nation. Here's what we're going to do.' That doesn't help people. People are tired, especially people in their 20s and 30s. They're tired of listening to leaders who claim to have the answers. Believe it or not, what they are really looking for is that leaders know the right questions. And a more effective CEO these days, Matt, is going to say, 'Well, you probably are aware that we are living in changing times and what used to work in this business isn't working as well. So, we've been asking some important questions like who are our target customers and what do I need to do to make them believe that we could help them? What are they looking for?' Anyways, listing some questions that starts to resonate with the listeners because they've been thinking about the same questions. And if they see, oh, you're not missing the questions, that actually makes them more confident about the future than you standing there saying you have the answers. It's like things have completely flipped. Instead of saying I know what we're going to do, it's absolutely about we and an invitation for people to be a part of the we. Come and join us.
It's the outcome of all of this though. It feels like we're trying to get better relationship between the boss and the employees, the team around that leader. And so you could create a better culture, a better workplace. It feels good. It feels better. Is that helping or hurting the bottom line?
Yeah. Let's go a little bit deeper here. We need to recognize that if we are leading something, our job is leadership. And that means it's all about people. We used to allow ourselves to think that it's all about results. We're just interested in the outcomes and the people just have to do what needs to be done. Now, if I've got 20 people that work for me or 20,000 people that work for me, the outcome of that is going to be more dependent on how effectively those people feel empowered to be the best they can be and bring their best to their role than me bringing my best. I could have been the best salesperson and I got promoted to be the CEO because I was the rainmaker. Okay, but that is not your job anymore. Stop it. You need to be helping the next rainmaker and everyone else do the part that they have to do. It's about creating a space where people feel that what they're doing matters in the world. It's bigger than them. That they have something that they can bring that is valuable and appreciated, that they have ideas that are helpful and welcome. And when all of that happens, then they start to see results, progress being evident in the organization. Then they start to believe that they are a part of something that's working. And there's just something magical about that, Matt, that we are doing this. It means they go home feeling a little, you know, there's a bigger skip in their step. They feel a little better that the day counted and I count. And that's such a different feeling than sadly the latest results from Gallup's research is showing that 80% of people working in America do not like their jobs and are not engaged in their work. That should be a horrifying number, Matt. And again, if we're leading, that's on us because we need to be creating the space where they feel valued and appreciated and enabled to be the best people they can be. And that requires a humility and a vulnerability for the leaders to set the culture. Imagine sitting in a room and we're trying to talk about how do we overcome this problem? And the old model is the CEO's got all the answers. So, who do you think is supposed to do the talking? The CEO. Everyone thinks the CEO is supposed to talk, but he doesn't want to. He's thinking, 'No, I got people here. You should have some ideas. What are you thinking?' It's very scary for them to share an answer because it might not be as good as the CEO's. So the CEO now needs to say, 'I'm so grateful that this is not all on me and that I've got a team of great people who bring different ways of seeing things and different ideas so that we can put the best ideas in the conversation and figure out the best answers to our problems. So let's start with that.' And as soon as somebody shares an answer, we don't have five questions that are trying to figure out why that's not the right answer. We are simply encouraging. 'Okay, that's a fresh way of looking at that. Let's build on that. What would we need to do to make this work?' And okay, so then the next person feels a little bit more willing to share an idea or ask a question. And then we build on it. There's about five positions or stances that I want to encourage leaders to take. I want leaders to be humble and to admit when they have made a mistake. So it might be me saying, 'Gang, I want to just apologize. We've been pounding the path to go down this trail because I believed it was the thing we needed to do and it's clearly not working for us. That's on me. I'm sorry. We have to figure this out together.' Can you appreciate, Matt, that people hear that and they think, 'Really? The boss just said he made a mistake and he thinks that we should be okay with that.' I guess we should because I need him to be okay when I make mistakes and I know I do. I just don't want to tell anybody about it, right? So, admit mistakes, ask for help, apologize, share a little bit about our personal world. There's more. Let's just leave that. That's a good start. These kinds of vulnerabilities are changing how a leader shows up and that's changing how everyone else is thinking that they're supposed to show up which changes the whole game.
Give us a framework of how the book is laid out and the change or the transformation that you're hoping that somebody encounters as they go from page one to the very end of the book.
Yeah. Well, first let me say the book's organized first as a story. So, the first half is a fable about a leader who's pulling his hair out because things aren't working. And he works with his lead team to try to sort this out. Also, he also gets some really important help from his wife, which is, I think, an important part of the story as well. Along the way they discover what we describe as four peaks of the ascent model. So we are beginning with collaborative cultures. A starting place, the center of all of a healthy organization is that we create a collaborative culture where people help each other. Let me tell you a story. This is from a client that I worked with quite a few years ago. It was the Canadian plant of a global manufacturing company and they were told by the German head office that they had the highest cost of manufacturing and if they didn't fix that they would get closed down. 700 people would be out of work and I had the privilege of helping them totally reframe how they were leading. So that the leadership team would get together and they each week they would talk about where are the choke points in our production system and rather than arguing about why I need more resources in my area they solved the problems of the biggest choke points which eventually got to leaders of departments offering people from their department to go and work in a different area because that's where they needed them. And even eventually leaders of departments offering part of their budget so that others could get some maintenance done or get some new equipment that would really catapult them forward. One year later, Matt, they ended up that they had the lowest cost of production in their global operations. And I share that because that's the degree of opportunity that every organization faces that if we would figure out how to really collaborate, oh my goodness, people can do so much more than they're doing now. Especially if 80% of the people are coming to work, but they're just showing up. They're not really bringing their best. They're not really doing everything that we could do. They just are getting paid. What if it was the other way? What if 80% were bringing their best ideas and giving their best energy and thinking about things later at night? 'Oh, I could have tried this. I'm going to do this tomorrow.' And they come with excitement the next day to try to solve this problem. Well, you can go from the highest cost of manufacturing to the lowest.
