Case in point, I recently overheard a new college graduate at work say (in regard to a particular business metric) “what’s the problem if we’re beating the industry average?” The response from his boss was “yeah I agree let’s focus elsewhere.”

Here’s the problem with that mindset. In this case, the industry being mentioned is struggling. So in essence what was being said was “what’s the problem if we’re struggling, but doing better than others that are struggling?” Or in other words, “our lifeboat is sinking, but not as fast as the ship”.

Occasionally at work, we have other retailers come in as part of a ’share group’. We meet to share ideas on how we pursue operational efficiencies. Most of the time the retailers in our ’share group’ are companies that are comparable in size and performance to the company that I work for. Usually those meetings end, the ’share group’ disperses and I hear statements like this: “wow, we’re doing really good compared to so and so.” Congratulations, you’re the best in your peer group. Too bad your peers are just like you – being beaten by their competitors.

I don’t believe that most of us want to be average or slightly better than average, but by comparing ourselves to others (even those that are ‘best in class’) we will end up limiting our potential. Our maximum potential is only found in the uniqueness of who we are. I heard this statement the other day and I think it sums this up best: “As long as you are trying to be like someone else, the best you’ll ever be is #2″

Save Money by Questioning Your Purchases

Today I just wanted to highlight an excellent comment that I recently received. In response to “Quit Shopping, Save Money,” a reader named ‘sekishin‘ said:

“When considering a purchase, picture a stranger offering you [the cash value of the purchase] or the item in question. Which is of greater value you? Which would you choose?”

This is a great piece of advice, and one that could save us all a lot of money. If someone walked up and offered to give you $1000 cash or that new HDTV you’ve been drooling over, which would you choose? If you’d rather have the cash, then you better think twice before trading your hard-earned cash for that shiny new TV.

The point here is that simply stopping to question your buying decisions can go a long way toward cutting down on frivolous expenditures. If the purchase is still worth it to you, and if you have room in your budget, then go ahead and buy it. If not, then you should turn around and walk away before you change your mind.

• It’s not the magic that makes it work; it’s the way we work that makes it magic.
• Creating magic requires that the outsiders never see the effort required to deliver the product.
• Products and services can easily be replicated. So if your company’s competitive advantage is based on products and services alone, you are at risk.
• The three-legged stool: the Guests, the Cast Members, and the business metrics.
• When you do something really well, the word tends to get out.
• All business problems boil down to leadership problems.
• The true work of a business leader, like that of a mother, is to help others to be the best they can be.
• In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.

There is a lot of good content in this book. If you’re a fan of Disney, leadership, common sense, continuous improvement or good stories, this book is worth a read.

I saw this book on someone’s desk a while ago. The title was provocative so I really wanted to check it out. I finally got around to reading it. This isn’t the best book I’ve read by Hybels, but the content supported the premise. Here’s an overview and some highlights.

The premise of Holy Discontent is that in the lives of people who are investing joyfully of their time, their money, and their energies into something [a passion], they can always link it back to a single spark of frustration that fueled what is now a raging fire in their souls. And that this attraction to a specific cause or purpose is irresistible. One example Hybels uses is the example of Moses and the frustration he felt over the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt. Here are some of the highlights:

-       I believe the motivating reason why millions of people choose to do good in the world around them is because there is something wrong in that world. In fact, there is something so wrong that they just can’t stand it.

-       I’ve come to refer to the powerful, spiritual congruence that connected Moses’ priorities to the priorities of God as his “holy discontent,”

-       Still today, what wrecks the heart of someone who loves God is often the very thing God wants to use to fire them up to do something that, under normal circumstances, they would never attempt to do.

-       The most inspired, motivated, and driven people I know are the ones who live their lives from the energy of their holy discontent.

-       Your ability to detect and then act on that which makes you discontent can actually catalyze freedom-based living in the hearts of your friends and family members!

-       Martin Luther King Jr. became famous because of what he couldn’t stand.

-       I think you know the question I have for you. What can’t you stand?

-       A bad day lived from the energy of your holy discontent is far better than the best day lived anywhere else.

-       Figure out what you can’t stand. Channel your holy discontent energy into helping to fix what’s broken in this life.

Recently, I had a chance to spend some time with one of these people and run through some of my list of questions. It was probably annoying to that person, but it was awesome for me. One of my questions is “what is the most important thing that every person who is new to doing what you do, need to know?” In this case, it was a pastor. Since our conversation was not based on the pretext of me writing about it later, I’m not going to name this person, but they deserve credit for this. So here’s the question exactly as I asked it, then his response (paraphrased and hopefully not butchered too badly by me).

Question: What should every new or young pastor know about being a pastor?

Answer: The importance of relational priorities. Everyone [in church circles] talks about the order of priorities in relationships: God first, wife and family second, church third, work fourth etc. But I don’t know how often we live it. The best way to evaluate the priority of your relationships is to see what roles you are dispensable in and where you are indispensable. We are indispensable as the husband to our wives and the father to our children. We are indispensable in our relationship with God because only we can be who He called us to be and only we can be the child that He asks us to be. We are completely replaceable in our jobs. There is always someone more skilled that could do a better job than we are doing at our work. We are replaceable in many of the activities where we invest our time. When our time begins to become consumed with the activities where we are dispensable it’s time to make some adjustments. Balance in life is important, but we could all stand to invest more time in our indispensable roles.

This was a great reminder of something I thought I knew, but I know I can get off track in this area. Good stuff!

If you decide to checkout this book (and you should for the sake of your audiences and your messages), it’s divided into 2 parts. The first part is a fictional narrative that tells a story of a pastor learning Andy’s principles from a gifted communicator. The first part was good, but the second half is way better. The entire book revolves around 7 Keys to Irresistable Communication and a relational outlining approach (ME-WE-GOD-YOU-WE) that Andy uses. (By the way, I listened to Andy to see if he followed his outline approach at Catalyst West. He nailed it.)

Here’s some highlights that I clipped via my Kindle 2:

- Every time I stand to communicate I want to take one simple truth and lodge it in the heart of the listener. I want them to know that one thing and know what to do with it

- Every sermon should take the audience somewhere

- Until you can deliver it with no notes, from memory, then it’s not your message.

- Until you can stand up and tell a story, you’re not ready to preach. You see, people connect with a story, and a story takes people on a journey

- Speaking from memory isn’t difficult to do if you’re telling a story. People make it difficult when they try to communicate points instead of telling a story. If you have four or five points you’re trying to drive home, then you get focused on not forgetting any of them.

- Have a one point message

- How can you expect your listener to care enough to remember what you’re saying when you can’t?

- At some point we’ve got to begin caring more for the people in the audience than the person on the platform. When we do, our presentations take on real significance. Until we do, communication is really all about us.

- Preaching for life change requires far less information and more application. Less explanation and more inspiration.

- If you decide to preach for life change you won’t be satisfied until the behavior of your audience is transformed; and you will be willing to do just about anything to see that transpire.
- You need a sticky statement.

- People ask me all the time how I preach without looking at notes. Now you know.

P.S. – This review took 5 minutes since the Kindle 2 already had my notes and excerpts organized.

Tripp and Tyler did a great job as emcees at Catalyst West. They’re really funny. You can check them out here.

- If you don’t already read, you won’t read more just because you have a Kindle 2, but if you love to read, you will read more, because in my opinion, it makes reading more convenient, quicker, and easier to stay organized, especially if you are reading multiple books.

- I have only had 2 books that I want to read, not be available for the Kindle 2

- Purchasing content is cheaper than buying traditional books

- Making clips and exporting them, is changing the way I retain information from what I read. You can highlight, take notes etc just like a real book. It creates a text file that you can then export to your computer. Now I’ll have cliff notes for every book I read. Great for book reviews on blogs or later reference.

- It’s not perfect. It does a lot of things really well around it’s core purpose (e-book reader). I don’t love it for reference because while it has great search features, it’s a few steps to switch books. It’s not a show stopper if you want to use it for reference, but to me it could be better. I don’t enjoy reading periodicals on it. I tried the USA Today for free for a week. I stopped after that. It works fine, I just don’t think that’s what I bought it for.

- It’s a small package. I had 5 books with me in a package that’s about the thickness of a pencil and about the size of your normal Moleskin notebook.

- I wish the keyboard had a slightly different feel to it. The layout and size is good. I just find I mis-type things (e.g. miss a letter) due to the type of tactile feedback it provides.

- The battery lasts forever with the wireless turned off.

- The Kindle 2 will also read to you with a ‘Text to Speech’ feature. It’s fine if you have to keep getting through something but are unable to read for a period of time. But in the end, the voice is a little annoying. Those who argue that this feature will replace audio books are dead wrong. I can’t imagine an audio book fan trading their Audible account for this feature. The voice provides no emotion and does mispronounce words from time to time. I couldn’t listen to a whole book with this functionality. (FYI, you can load MP3s and Audible books onto the device and listen to those)

- My favorite part is one handed reading. I can do something else (e.g. feed L.J.) and read at the same time.

- The ability to share books is a missing feature. I think you should be able to loan or gift a copy of a book to another Kindle user, with your notes. I often share or gift books that I enjoy and I think a lot of other readers do too. That is a part of the reading community that the Kindle 2 doesn’t have a solution for yet.

- I think I’m done with old-fashioned books. Right now, I don’t see a need for them. I wish Amazon would have accepted a trade-in of my old paper books for credit towards Kindle content. Might be a good incentive if anyone at Amazon ever happens to read this.

Obviously, this isn’t a full technical review. There are plenty of those online to read (I think I read them all before I ordered mine). If you are considering a Kindle 2 and have other questions just send me a comment. If you’re in the area, I’ll let you check it out. I was upset that it can only be purchased online from Amazon making it impossible to see before buying.

p.s. – the first book I read on my Kindle 2 was Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley. Look for a book review on The Faction in the near future, using the clip feature on the Kindle 2.

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Grab life by the mane. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Accumulate experiences. Consider the lilies. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don’t let what’s wrong with you keep you from worshiping what’s right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze new trails. Criticize by creating. Worry less about what people think and more about what God thinks. Don’t try to be who you’re not. Be yourself. Laugh at yourself. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Quit running away.