They I just do I just do what I just do what the Lord tells me to do.
And it wants to put us in servant mode and not in friend mode.
And yet Jesus said, you know, I no longer treat you as servants
because servant doesn't know what his master is doing.
But I've told you everything as the father has taught me.
So it's really important to Jesus that we are in friend mode
in this in this yoke, in this partnership.
We've talked about the red flag of if you find yourself weary and heavy laden,
red flag, you've stepped out of the yoke because it's meant to be light
and delightful.
And I was encouraged to hear several of you refer to that.
Well, let me take
let us let me just walk us through what I would call
the different elements of how our partnership works with the Lord.
And so. Let me just pick this one,
if everybody can see my screen, so I want to talk about this
this idea of high impact kingdom management, because, you know,
we've already talked about this basic idea of how does this work with,
you know, our partnership informs our leadership.
And then as leaders, obviously, we lead our team.
So specifically, you know, we've looked at this element
that permission drives bold action. Right.
I want to focus on those top two, those top two elements.
And then later on, of course, we want to create a team of leaders.
So right here, what we're learning is,
you know, the permission is the thing that God initiates.
It's a fascinating idea that in the kingdom,
only the father can initiate anything.
Jesus, I can initiate nothing of my own.
And so in the kingdom, every initiative comes out of the heart of the Lord.
And there's a lot of freedom in that, because once we
when something's initiated in God's heart,
obviously, if Jesus couldn't initiate anything, we certainly cannot either.
So but there's freedom in that.
And and the glorious freedom of that is then our bold action.
You initiate once you know this is what God is doing with you.
And so we've called that word permission.
You know, that word does have some limitations.
But what we're saying is that you've you've caught on.
You're in sync with the Lord is initiating this thing.
And when he does, you know, your favor goes before you and makes a way.
And suddenly you're meeting the right people.
And he starts gathering people around you.
And as you're starting to build that, that starts to inform
how you lead your team, because as how you learn in your partnership
informs how you lead the team.
So as you're the glue, you're the the middle of the sandwich.
They're making it all happen.
And so from your team's viewpoint, if they don't know the Lord
and they don't know you have the partnership,
all they see is you making one amazing, you initiating one amazing thing
after another with unbelievable confidence
because your confidence is in the permission the Lord just gave you.
And so this sets us aside, sets us apart as leaders
because it puts us in a mode where we where we're doing bold things
that most others maybe wouldn't, because our confidence
isn't in our own ability to pull it off.
Our confidence is in the Lord's permission to do it.
We've talked quite a quite a bit about how how that works.
And of course, these top two is really what we're focused on here
on the inner circle part.
So I wanted to take just a quick recap of something we did at the school,
Brilliant School of Leadership on Tuesday.
But then I want to take this conversation at Inner Circle to the next level.
So the first thing is, you know, we we look through this idea
that, you know, the first commandment we see to mankind was given to Adam.
And that was that he should take care of the garden.
He should guard it.
He should attend to it and he should take care of it.
He was given his work.
And so the question is, what is work?
Adam, the Lord says to Adam, I want you to tend to this garden.
First command.
And in that tending to it, when we think of work,
we usually think of what do I do? And there's an element of that.
But first, there's the upstairs element, and that is it's revealing yourself.
It's who are you becoming in the Lord?
It's your new nature in Christ, taking full expression in the world
that as he is, so am I in this world and how that connects
to your leadership and how you lead a business, how you do your work
is everything, because what's what you're doing is you're stepping in.
And in this, what worked for Jesus is designed to work for you
in the same way Jesus learned to do this.
You know, in John 17, Jesus goes to the father and said,
my work is done, the work I did, the work you gave me to do.
I gave them the words you gave me, and now they know you.
So Jesus is saying to the father, mission accomplished.
Father, I have done the work.
And so.
One day, you know, we want to be able to do that.
Stand before the Lord and say, mission accomplished.
But we don't have to wait for that day to hear that.
We can do that, of course, every single day.
So the downstairs is the value you bring.
And that's got something to do
with what God installed in your heart.
And the simple analogy we used
when we were discussing this on Tuesday
is, you know, God put flight into birds.
And then he said to the birds, fly.
So the bird didn't go to flight school.
The bird had flight built into them.
It's the most natural thing for the bird to do is to fly.
In the same way, the gifting God put in you,
he put in you because that's the value
you bring to the world.
That is your work.
Now, I'm not talking about your job.
I'm talking about your work.
The work he's given you to do.
This is the value, your God-given value
that you and the Lord together are bringing the world.
And so this is really helpful
because now we're seeing that God has given us a gift
and that gift is meant to bring some goodness,
to be in partnership with the Lord
and bring something of huge value to the world.
And there's a tremendous freedom in this
because Jesus talked about good work,
which we, you know, quote always from Ephesians 2.10.
So it's interesting, we are,
of course, we are his workmanship,
obviously his work in there, created in Christ Jesus.
So this workmanship was created
in that partnership with Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
So this permission to walk in them
is that the Lord has already, you know,
gone ahead of you and he's prepared the good works
for your partnership, for that thing,
that offer, that invitation in Matthew 11,
take my yoke upon you.
And then he said, learn from me
because I'm gentle and I'm humble.
There's a gentleness to the way the Lord
works in the partnership and he's humble in the partnership.
And one particular way in which he's humble
is that when things go well,
everyone looks at you and says, you're a genius.
How did you think of all that?
And you know that it was the Lord,
but often we're in a situation we can't tell anyone.
So, you know, we take the glory on his behalf
and that's part of his humility.
But, and then he says, and you will find rest for your soul.
So in this work, in this good work,
there has to be a finding of rest.
In fact, the more we work,
the more we push into that partnership,
the more effective we become as we know.
So as we go through that process,
what we're learning in this is that the Lord's,
the good work the Lord's given us is not our job.
So it's, we're not talking about your job.
Your job is where you get your paycheck,
your work is what you've been assigned from heaven.
It's your assignment from heaven.
That unique gifting God put in you,
gave you the ability, it's natural for you to do it.
It's your value you bring to the world.
And that's not necessarily your job.
So what I mean by that is there can be a distinction.
So your work is not, it could be your job,
but it's not always your job.
Sometimes your job provides the financial wherewithal
to go and do your work.
So maybe you're doing your work after hours,
or you're doing it in a different time,
but your job is paying the bills.
And that's fine.
It gives your job a lot of very deep meaning
in that context, because the job is buying you
the ability and freeing you up to do your work.
So the good news about that is that,
your partnership is the gift to the world.
That partnership you and Jesus have.
And being clear about that sets us free.
It sets us free because we're not the architects
of this program.
So when you were born, God built this into you.
He gave you work.
And you know, in the scriptures,
first mention is very, very important,
because it tells us God's intent.
It tells us the Father's intent.
So the first mention of work,
right there in Genesis chapter two,
we're seeing that the Lord says to Adam,
tend to this garden.
What does that mean?
You're meant to tend to your work,
to all the abilities that make it up,
protect it, guard it, care for it, pay attention to it.
Then he goes on to, and he gives him permission and delight.
And he says, you can eat of the fruit of all the trees.
So we get to eat of the fruit of our work.
And that's what feeds our souls.
Why I asked each of you, what's your delight right now?
And the second thing is, but do not eat from that tree,
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
So it's really interesting that the tree of knowledge
of good and evil was the mechanism,
the enemy used to get Adam and Eve to believe the.
lie that if they if the aid of that tree they would know the difference between good and evil
and therefore they would be somehow like God. What's really interesting is because when they
get kicked out of Eden the the angel that's put on duty is to prevent them from getting to the
tree of life which of course talks of Jesus. Now that we're in Jesus we're in the tree of life
there is no more need for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and it's interesting that still
as leaders we hit a problem we think I need more knowledge if I had more knowledge I'd be able to
do better if I had more you know more information and that's fine the information part is the
downstairs piece it's fine but it's not what drives your work what drives your work is being
part of the tree of life being because you're in Christ that that's why I said it can it can be
as simple as saying Jesus do I have permission for this is this what we're doing is the father
initiating this so in in other words from the partnership viewpoint you know his work that God
is initiating connects to your work is what you're initiating and that's what makes the partnership
work so it's not like we do we've got to get out of that religious mindset of doing things for God
and start doing them with him when we try to do things for God we feel alone we feel it all
rests on us I have to be a good servant I have to perform so one day I can stand in front of the Lord
and he says well done good and faithful servant and sure there is an element of that servant
heartedness in in what we do what the Lord's inviting us into is departing that yoke saying
in such a way that we can see what it is he is doing so this is really what drives your
significance in the world your significance comes through your work that you do with the Lord and
you know that's what we all want you know we want to move from just success into significance it's
great to have a successful business that pays the bills that's great but the significance of that
business comes through the work how much of what you do how much of your job is your work
and the cool thing about that is you cannot get fired from your work you could get fired from
your job but you can never get fired from your work because your work is something that sits
outside even your career perhaps you studied you know law or you studied finance you studied
something else for your career and now you've ended up doing different a different work in
some cases I can tell you I know of so many professionals that I've met who've studied
you know law and now doing tech or studied you know their their doctors and now they
lead tech companies or whatever it is and and what it is it's the pursuit not just of
of what fulfills me what makes me come alive which is by the way part of how you know you
discovered your work God said he's he said his delight in you and he said his desires in you
gave you the desires of your heart that means he put part of his desires in your you so it feels
to you like your desire so your imprint that you leave God means for you to leave this mark on the
world and so it's really helpful to get clear with the father what is our work together what is my
work and the legacy you leave is really to perform the function that you were designed to do
and love it because the world needs your gift it is definitely time to bring the kingdom we know
when the world's in crisis what do they do when the world's in crisis the world looks for a gift
we know this from Joseph Joseph's gift is what brought him in front of pharaoh pharaoh didn't
invite him because he thought he was good looking or had a really wonderful personality or whatever
very inviting because he wanted access to his gift and that gift made away from the scripture teaches
us your gift i think it's proverbs 18 your gift will make a way for you and bring you in front of
powerful people and significant people so the the work comes with a gift and the gift makes a way
in the world and it it's like another way of saying that is your favor goes before you and
makes a way because god's favor in you is what makes a way so i thought that was just a recap
from tuesday but very briefly what i wanted us to settle on is what is my work getting really clear
with the lord lord what is my work what are we doing together what is this goodness that we're
going to bring to the to the world together and it's the same thing that makes you come alive
it's the same thing it's going to bring you significance and it's the same thing that your
gift that god put in you makes a way for you it brings you in front of powerful people
And so I want to talk about the five stages of partnership with the Lord,
because I've heard different people in different stages as we were talking
earlier, and I was I thought it would be helpful to talk about each stage.
What is the key thing we learn at each stage?
And then how does that bring different types of people around us?
How does the Lord surround us, the different type people?
So let's look at the five stages.
If you've been around Brilliant for any length of time,
you'll recognize some of these.
But first, we start as an explorer, then a pioneer, then a warrior,
then a champion, then a game changer. What do we mean by that?
So from an explorer viewpoint, what we're learning is that the Lord,
we're exploring who God is.
We're exploring his heart.
And then from that, we're learning who we are.
One of the big sort of
odd, I would say,
odd emphases is this overemphasis on your identity, your identity, your identity.
It is true, but it's a secondary effect.
It's not the primary thing.
The primary thing is his identity, because as he is, so are we in this world.
So that means until I know who the Lord really is, what he's really, really like,
then I discover who I am and what I'm really like.
So my identity is a secondary effect.
It in many ways, there's the cause and the effect.
It's it's his heart in me.
It's our partnership that causes me to explore who God is and who I'm becoming.
Now, once we explore that, we start talking about our work
and now we start pioneering. We start our work.
We start to do something. We pioneer something.
We do something new.
Several of you are in reboot mode or you're pioneering something completely new
and you in that early stage.
One of the big
restrictions to pioneering is if we haven't explored enough.
If we haven't explored enough of who the Lord is and what he's like
and how he's going to be with us, then when we pioneer, we tend to shrink it down.
We tend to make it smaller than it needs to be.
But once we start pioneering and your work starts to take effect,
you get resistance.
You end up in a fight and you find out what Jesus is like in a fight.
I remember the first time when we were going through all our stuff in 2018 and 19
and we were getting all this resistance and the Lord said,
you haven't seen me in a fight.
And I thought that is a fascinating idea.
Jesus is like in a fight because number one, he's never lost a fight.
And number two is victory is guaranteed if you're in Christ.
And so we learn to become a warrior.
We learn to fight for this work.
We learn to to stand against what you know.
Obviously, it's not just the kingdom of darkness, but sometimes it's
well-meaning people who are misinformed or whatever the case may be.
But it's a fight nonetheless.
And so Paul writes to Timothy and he said, you know, fight the good fight of faith.
There is a fight.
But when we in the fight part,
how we learn to fight, how we learn to respond in the opposite spirit,
the weapons we pick up in stage three is really important.
When you're cursed, you bless.
When those who offend you, you forgive them immediately.
We're picking up all the kingdom weapons.
We're not picking up the enemy's weapons to fight.
We're picking up kingdom weapons.
And that's what it means to find out what Jesus is like in a fight.
So we learn that when people are are terrible towards us,
we respond with kindness.
So responding in the opposite spirit and various other kingdom weapons,
that starts to become not just a nice to have that becomes critical
to the survival of the organizations we run.
And then we get to stage four.
We start to win the fights and we start to win the fights enough
that we start to become a champion for that cause, for that work.
And if we keep the champion thing up long enough, we get to the point
we become a game changer.
We start to change our industry.
And it's this process.
And by the way, they don't you don't move from one to the other
and forget the first one.
They each keep growing.
The more I explore, the more I can pioneer, the more I get into.
I can I have to defend it.
Then I go back. I explore some more. I'm pioneering some more.
So there are there are simultaneous things that it's not like you move
from the one, forget that now move to the next.
They build on each other.
We could have built it maybe as a pyramid and a stack to visualize that.
But there are other things we want to do.
We wanted to talk through.
So let's just talk through some of what these key learning elements are.
So.
A key learning element when you're in the Explorer stage, you're learning freedom.
You're learning how absurdly ridiculous your freedom in Christ is.
You know, God didn't set you free so that you can do stuff for him.
I think it's Galatians 5, is it 5.1 or 6.1?
It is for freedom that Christ set you free.
I think it's 5.1.
So it is for freedom that Christ set you free and he set you free.
And this, you know, it is it's scandalous how free we truly are.
The whole concept of sin isn't even applied to anymore.
The knowledge of good and evil isn't applied to you.
You are in Christ.
Jesus Christ catastrophically destroyed sin in your life.
And now everything that was wrong with you, Jesus paid for.
Now he's talking to you about who you're becoming.
And that's why he he isn't working on our sin.
He's only working on our righteousness.
And so that we become like him.
And as we learn to become like him,
we're discovering the incredible freedom we have in him.
If he's your provider, suddenly you're not held hostage by anyone.
If he's the one initiating something in you, suddenly your confidence is in him.
And so you're learning these elements of freedom that are so ridiculously free.
Sometimes they're a bit frightening.
And then as we move to the second stage, you're learning to innovate.
You learn to get innovation from heaven.
Brand new things.
I love Graham's story about the prophetic dream that he had once.
And he was in heaven and he was walking along with Jesus.
And they came to this enormous, enormous warehouse.
As far as the eye could see, this warehouse just went on and on.
And as they got into the warehouse, they started to walk by.
And there were like medical inventions and technology
inventions and new ways of doing government and so on.
And so he said to Jesus, what is all this?
And he just smiled and said, this is how we pay for everything.
And I love that in all innovation,
the Bible says all good gifts come from the father above.
And as we've talked before in our sessions,
I don't want the Lord to have to give this to someone doesn't even know him
because the Lord wants to give goodness to the world.
If he's got to give it through someone who knows him or not, he will do that.
But I want to be that type of pioneer that I'm taking these brain innovations
from heaven because my freedom informs my innovation.
My innovation is bold.
It's clear. And of course, then we move into the next thing.
We learn to fight.
Then we learn to win.
And then we learn how to transform an industry
because we ourselves were transformed.
So the inner territory we take translates
to an external territory out there through this process.
That makes sense. Are we still with me?
All right. So let's land this on.
So what people what kind of people does the Lord surround you with
as you hit each of these stages?
The first thing is you hit the explorer stage.
God will bring revelators in your.
These can be.
I mean, you're part of this group.
This is hopefully part of that.
You know, maybe you're part of the school of leadership.
Maybe God brings other prophetic people into your life.
Great Bible teachers, people who really opening up kingdom territory to you.
And as you start, God will then bring builders.
These are people come and help you build.
There will be, you know, substantive people.
Somebody said, you know, a new a new
operating officer, I think Mark, you brought that up.
And now we're excited because God's brought a new builder.
And as you keep going, then warriors will start to join you.
You know, in our lingo, it's more like God's going to bring you some super fans
and these super fans will defend you.
At Brilliant, we see them active all the time, even if we're on a chat session
or something and somebody says something negative.
I saw this at Brilliance 24 in March as we were on the conference.
You know, there were people, one or two people saying negative things
and the super fans were on it, man.
They they took care of it before we even knew there was a problem.
And then, you know, as we as we go through this process,
God then builds brings pillars into our lives.
And as he brings pillars into our lives, you know, these are people
we can really put weight on.
These are people who you can hand a business to.
These are people that you can substantively build a new
and a substantive organization around.
And then as you get to the game changes, you give birth to explorers.
And the whole process starts again because that's the kingdom.
Now you become a father
or you become a mother in the kingdom and you become the person.
So I wanted to share these stages with you and hopefully bring some clarity
to you in your conversation with the Lord.
So first question.
is, what is your work? Are you clear with the Lord? What is
your work, not your job, not your career, Lord, what, what
did you build in me that feels so natural to me that I come
alive when I do it, and I sense your pleasure in doing that
work. So we can take a second on that. Take a second. So what is
your work? And then the second exercise, and this is what sets
you apart. What if your team found their work at their job?
What, how, what kind of high powered team would you build if
everyone on your team wasn't just doing a job, but they were
doing their work. So this means that the kingdom management
element of this means we have to take a different mindset. It
means that the people in my care, in my team, so if you've
got 15, 20, 30, whatever, 50 people or five, it doesn't
really matter. The people in your team, are they finding
their work here? Or are they just doing a job? And it's okay
if they're doing a job, but how much better if they find their
work, even if they don't know the Lord yet, they find their
work. It's something at Brilliant we've worked really
hard on doing. Somebody may come into the organization in one
area, but then as they find their work, we move them into
another area where they can fully express their work. And
with it comes, of course, new challenges. But this is at the
heart of kingdom management. Kingdom management is simply
managing in partnership with the Lord, people's work. So that is
the kingdom management key. Because when people realize that
their contribution matters, that's game changer. But when to
make their contribution matter, that only feels real to them
when they're creating something. And so that fundamentally means
we have to move innovation from the top of the structure down
into the bottom of the structure. So let's get really
practical about what that looks like. So let me hit the pause
button there for a second. I know I kind of ran through that
quickly. But I know you can also catch this on the replay. What
I'd love you to settle in your own heart.
Yeah, that's a very clarifying question, as well from the
comments. The other words for work, the clarifying question
was, is destiny calling? Is that kind of where you're going with
that? Or are those two entirely different topics?
That's exactly what I'm talking about. So when we talk about our
calling, our destiny, that's what we're saying. We're saying
that thing God put in you, He set you aside for this. Right?
So it's a big topic. So I was trying to keep it succinct. But
it's really interesting that when God sets us aside, when He
gives us that calling, that unique gift, that gift also
comes with the ability to teach it and lead it. You know, since
some of you here are in ministry, and are in church, in
a church leadership thing, let me let me take a second and talk
about that as an example to illustrate this. So if if we're
in a church, and you know, the prophetic isn't doing well in
our church, and we want to bring a prophet in, we don't bring a
prophet into prophesy. We bring a prophet in to teach everyone
how to prophesy and raise the temperature of the prophetic and
normalize the prophetic and build into the foundations of
the church, the prophetic, so the prophetic starts to have a
real and properly governed prophetic starts to have a real
place in our in our environment. And now that person
who's coming in will demonstrate through prophecy, but they can
also they can teach it, they can lead it and they can demonstrate
it. Same with evangelists, we don't bring evangelists in to
evangelize, we bring evangelists to get the whole group to get
the whole group up. In a business context, we might use
the example of innovation, we can bring in an external
consulting firm to come and tell us how to innovate. But until
innovation is taught at the ground level, and innovation
rises up the temperature of innovation until we innovating
at every level in the organization. And by innovation,
you know, we mean all types. So you can teach innovation, you
can lead innovation. So what we're saying is that whatever
your gift is, you can teach it, and you can lead it, it's built
into the gift. So we can put words like calling, purpose,
destiny, wrap those all up, whatever is the outcome of your
partnership, your yoke with Jesus. Did I miss any other
questions?
questions there. No, no, thank you. That's helpful. Let's
breathe there a second. Any other questions? Or any
comments? Yes, Glenn. Hobbs.
Yeah, this is fantastic. I think this framework is really good.
One one thought that is going through my mind is in my
experience, there's, you know, in is, you know, in years past,
we've kind of looked at this thing of what's people's
passion, what's their calling, and so on and so forth, right?
And I've discovered that there's a risk in that. Because what
that does is it tends to, it kind of creates a sense of like,
oh, okay, that's what it is. And now I'm going to go from I'm
going to charge after this. And what I'll come back to when I
when I have when I run into trouble, as opposed to really
partnering with the Lord through that journey. And there's a
consequence of that, at least in my own life, what I'm
discovering is, is that that, that the clarity of of that,
that call is something that actually starts to emerge
through the course of the partnership with the Lord,
versus something that I have to get a download from the Lord on
and then go off and run and do something. And, and so there's
this partnership aspect, which I think is really exciting, which
also means that we don't necessarily have to get the
super clarity about what that is, ahead of time, as much as
it's the daily walking with the Lord in it. And as you look back,
you suddenly realize, oh, wow, now I actually understand what
it is that the Lord has been leading me in and now start to
get a sense of what my, what my purpose is.
I, you're mentioning a lot of key elements going on. I know
you and I've been talking about this stuff for close on what's
it nearly 40 years together?
Something like that. I'm still learning, right? I mean, I feel
like I'm back at that Explorer stage right now, you know, in
many ways, as you know.
Yeah, for sure. And I know what you particularly, you know, you
come out of a very large consulting firm, and you played,
you know, we spent your career in a big consulting firm,
helping big enterprise companies, and so on. We've
talked about how this works, regardless of whether you're
doing that, or you're a, you're a solopreneur, it literally is
all the same thing in Jesus. And I love what you said, we stopped
trying to do things for God. So the clever thing from an evil
viewpoint, the effective thing from an evil viewpoint is to get
you to do things for God, because that takes you out of the
partnership. So what it does is you get into performance mode,
because now you're going to go off and do it for him, as you
said, come back and check in when you need help or prayer or
whatever. But when, but when you're in partnership, firstly,
you you're at rest. The second thing is it becomes a day by day
thing. The Lord encouraged us to pray for our daily bread, not
our weekly bread, our monthly bread, our annual bread. He just
said daily bread. So we have a general sense of what he's
doing. But many times it's what's happening today. And so
there's a freedom in that you're learning every day, not getting
instructions, executing, come back when when you have problems
or when you did well, or whatever. It's that it's the
relational engagement portion, that's absolutely critical to
the Lord. So you have, you have a right to that relational
engagement. In fact, relational engagement is one of the
faculties of your human spirit, which is way more intent, way
more capable than your downstairs stuff. So I want to
apply this immediately to, I don't want to run out of time,
but I want to apply this to. So okay, if we're going to do
innovation at every level, then how do we how do we get people
in our in our companies to start creating so we can see
where their work really is? Oh, Angie, I missed your your hand
there. Sorry. Go ahead.
No worry. So, so this idea that the gift comes with the ability
to teach it and lead it. I've always seen myself as like
having the gift of teaching. And I'm not I'm not just talking
about like teaching math, but like I, like I love equipping
and evangelism, praying for the sick, the prophetic, that's
sort of thing. And, but I do enjoy teaching math, but I, but
I really want to train teachers to teach math. So what I hear
you saying, though, is this idea? So is teaching the idea
of teaching being a gift? Is that is teaching still a gift?
Or because you're, because you're saying that whatever the
gift is, it comes with the ability to teach it. Do you see
what I'm saying?
Right? Well, it's a little confusing, because you're a
situation. But yes, the point is, let's say, you know, your,
your ability was some creative thing, then, then your ability
to teach that creative thing, your creative thing happens also
be teaching. So you're teaching the teachers, you know, you can
teach others to teach math, you can teach others to do what it
is you
are uniquely gifted at. And that's part of that's part of the function of the
work. So we can't always teach in our job, every aspect of it. And there's a
lot of elements of that that could be just related to the job. What I'm saying
is that built into what God built into you is the ability to teach and lead the
very gift that's within you. Right? So that, that ability is so innate to you,
it's so foundational to you, that you can create from that place in a very
natural way. So the real question is, is your job facilitating your work? It
doesn't have to. Is it empowering your work? In other words, does your job
provide the money and the time to think about for those of you are doing a
startup, a couple of words of suggested wisdom here is don't don't rush into the
startup is I'm going to give up my job, we're gonna go do this. Sometimes it's
helpful to let the job buy you time to figure out the work you and the Lord are
doing before you jump in. Now, sometimes it's forced on you, like several of you
have mentioned, we, you know, we're kind of well, Jonathan, in your case, and some
others here, what's happened is you've ended up in the reboot by your, you know,
without planning to, you've ended up there, which means then that's part of
the lesson, that's part of the gift. So when you constrain your resource
constraint, when your revenues are like just marginal, or you're struggling in
that moment, many times the Lord is holding you down so that you get really
focused on the work. Because he, he won't, he will scale it, when it's something he
wants to scale. And often we get a first inkling and say, Okay, Lord, this is great
scale this, you know, lots is no, we're not quite there yet. Keep, keep going,
keep going. And when it gets to the point he went, because here's the thing, when we
suddenly scale something, we can be scaling something with stuff built in
that isn't part of what the Lord wants. So don't be frustrated. Just because your
business is struggling doesn't always mean you're doing something wrong. In
fact, you might be doing something right. You might be right in his heart, where
you're learning that he's your provider, that he's, he's focusing you down on what
you need to be empowering in your work. So just to drop into the this idea, I
wanted to, I wanted to talk through, you know, there's a, there's a professor at
the University of Florida. His name is Jerry Ellsman, I think I pronounced
correctly. And he's a professor of photography. And he did this experiment,
this has happened again, and others have done this with pottery and other things.
But in this, he took his students and he divided them into two, into two classes.
And what he did is he said to the first group, you're going to be the quantity
group, and the others, you're going to be the quality group. The quantity group, he
said, take as many photographs as you can. So if you take 100 photographs, you're
going to get an A. If you take, you know, 90, you'll get a B, and so on. So they're
going to be measured purely on quantity in that time frame. And the others, they
were only allowed to hand in one photo, the very best photo possible, and they
were going to get rated on that one photo. And of course, if you've heard of
the experiment, you know exactly what the outcome was, who produced the highest
quality product. And almost everybody says the quality people because they had
to really focus on the one photo. And that's not true. The ones who did the
quantity produced the best photo. Same with the professor who mimicked that and
did it with pottery, and he divided the two up, did the same thing. And the ones
who produce the best quality, the ones who do the best quantity, which brings us
to this notion that Elon Musk's often brings up, the rate of innovation is the
only thing that matters in a business. At the end of the day, when you net it all
out, the one who innovates the fastest wins. And what do you and if you can get
that innovation down to everyone that speeds up innovation, if you're the only
primary innovator in your business, you're going to go slow because it can
only go as fast as you can innovate. If you can push that innovation right down
to the lowest level of the organization, and you've got innovation working at
every level. And you know what I mean by innovation, I'm talking about how you get
paid, I'm talking about how you invoice, I'm talking about, you know, how you do
HR, I'm talking about innovating every aspect of the business. And, and in this
scenario, what has been coined the 70-20-10 rule, for those of you who've
done the edge may be already familiar with this. But the 70-20-10 rule is 70% of
what you do is going to be average. 70% of your innovation is going to be
average. 20% is going to be poor, you should delete it, you should stop that
today.
That's really not great.
10% is going to be amazing.
So a lot of people are like,
well, why don't we skip the 90%, the 70% and the 10%
and just go straight to the 10%?
Well, that's like trying to get to the grandparents
by not having kids.
You know, you can't skip the middle part.
You've got to have kids to have grandkids.
You can't say, well, skip having kids part,
we'll just go to the grandkids part,
because I've heard that's a lot of fun.
So it's the same thing here.
You have to go through the process of learning.
You have to go through the average and even the poor
and the amazing, which means you have to have the permission
for your team to come up with some really bad ideas.
Because if they can't get the 20% poor,
how will you know what's average
and how will you know what's great?
It's really interesting that Jeff Bezos was once asked,
in fact, he was doing an interview at Basecamp,
at the Basecamp offices,
and they asked him, what do you look for?
You know, what should every entrepreneur have?
What should every person who's starting
and running a business,
what's the most important quality you think they should have?
When you're trying to hire superstars,
you know, what is that one thing you look for?
And his answer will probably shock you.
He said, for him, he said,
the most important thing is I like to look for people
who are wrong a lot and trying to be less wrong.
And I thought, you know, that's a very profound thing.
So what he's saying is people who are not afraid
to step out of the boundaries and try something new.
And we already know that when you're doing a reboot
in a company, your biggest,
your biggest threat is what used to be.
Right. You see this when people come out of,
Glenn, you and I were talking about this.
It's the big brand syndrome.
Right. You come from a big brand.
You're well-known.
You know, you came from some well-known company.
I'll just pick Apple.
And you came from Apple.
And when you picked up the phone because you were
an Apple executive, stuff happened.
You know, I mean, you just had brand power
and you could get stuff done.
Then you leave Apple and you pick up the phone
and no one answers.
And you go, what happened?
And that's what I mean by the big brand syndrome
is that you don't have the horsepower behind it anymore.
And now you're starting to innovate and you realize
how much of your innovation was contextual.
It was in that context, which is fine.
I mean, it's it worked.
The question, though, is when you're running
a smaller business, you have to distribute
that innovation as quickly as possible
and give permission to your team to do that.
So as I was thinking about this whole thing,
you know, the reason the quantity group wins
with the photograph or contest,
the reason is, is that the ones who had to do
just the quality, they were handicapped.
Why? Why were they handicapped?
Because they had to produce the perfect photo.
If you put your team under that pressure,
we have to produce the perfect photo.
I have to do the perfect course.
I have to come up with a perfect piece of software.
I have to come up with a perfect whatever.
You're killing the team because of that.
It creates crippling high expectations
and then the fear of failure, the fear of imperfection
and all the rest kicks in.
And if you've got any perfectionists in your in your group,
man, you just turn their perfectionism up to maximum.
And so that's that's why you have to get through the quantity.
Fail fast, fail forward, move on.
And you say, well, we're too small.
We can't financially afford those kind of failures.
And I would argue you can't financially afford not to.
And the reason is you could better get through all those failures quicker.
It costs less.
Really get through that stuff quicker.
And what informs our experience?
Diya mentioned the six hats.
Well, one of those hats is the red hat.
It's your intuition hat.
Think of the heart.
And if you want to make the team a brilliant laugh,
just say my experience tells me and we'll all know you're about a 90 to 95
percent chance of being wrong with whatever you're about to say.
Because white hat data, which is think a piece of paper,
is factual information is what we don't often have.
And so, well, you know, my experience tells me my gut tells me fine.
But we found in our industry particularly about 90 percent wrong.
And we go, well, this is going to be a fantastic campaign, man.
This is going to really work.
Customers are going to love this.
And hardly anyone signs up.
Well, yeah, we'll give that a go.
I don't know who's ever going to pay for that.
And people do.
We have usually been completely and utterly surprised
by the things we weren't sure were going to be great.
And how did we find that out?
We experimented.
We were creative.
We took stuff out to the market in a way.
We did it quickly.
And we did it in what we call a thin slice.
We took the project, cut it down to its thinnest possible version
of it, and tried it out.
So that if we can get that information, we can learn a bit,
take another slice, learn a bit.
And so what happens is our learning track the business very quickly.
If you try the project too big, if you do the boil the ocean project,
you do this huge project, and then you roll it out and it doesn't work,
you've wasted massive amount of capital and resources.
So thinking of the smallest possible idea that can test your idea,
go to the customer, test it fast, test it fast, quick, constant innovation.
And so I've used this example before.
In Tesla, when there was the massive chip shortage,
all the car companies were scrambling.
You remember you bought cars, maybe you have one,
that's missing some features that are actually on the sheet
but don't actually work because there wasn't enough chips for them.
I don't know if you have a car like that.
And in that context, VW, which is one of the biggest car companies,
VW negotiated their contract in seven months,
which was the fastest in the industry by a huge margin,
renegotiated all their vendors, everything they had to do.
And the question I love to ask is,
how long do you think it took Tesla to renegotiate their deal?
And you've heard the story before, then you know, one day.
And the reason is Tesla set it up that their contacts renew every day,
as long as the vendors are constantly taking their feedback.
Now, what kind of innovation?
Who said we don't have to have seven-year agreements
and 10-year agreements, we're going to do one-day agreements?
What kind of legal innovation is that?
So what happens is we make big assumptions,
which we learn from our industry, we learn from our experience,
and they're almost always wrong.
Back to Jeff Bezos' idea,
I'm looking for people who are often wrong and know they're wrong
and don't mind being wrong.
So here's what I've come to realize,
some of the illusions that slow us down.
We try projects that are too big, we don't innovate fast enough,
and we don't innovate fast enough because we don't know
how to empower everybody to do a thin slice,
to just test the idea very quickly and see,
you know, what's the least amount we can do
to take it to the customer to test the idea.
And then I'll land on this idea.
So if innovation is everything,
then it comes down to if people being creative
is part of how they find their work,
how they find meaning in what they do,
then the question is, there has to be a vision on the one end,
and on the other end, there have to be tactics,
things you're testing and trying all the time.
The thing in the middle is called strategy.
And in my personal view, it's the most overrated thing, strategy.
What's your strategy? What's your strategy?
To me, a strategy is just a snapshot of which tactics are working right now.
Ask me next week and I'll have a slightly different strategy.
Ask me in a month and I have quite a different strategy.
And in six months time, I have a completely different strategy.
You never heard me say, why?
Because I want to innovate so fast.
So a lot of people say, here's the vision,
here's the strategy, what are the tactics?
To me, this is a backward way of running a business,
especially a small business,
because it's like sitting in the boardroom
trying to figure out how to do a sales pitch
instead of going and talking to 10 customers
and figure out what caused them to buy.
When I figure out what caused them to buy,
I bring it back, we'll turn that into a strategy.
That's the way you get innovation.
So one of the innovation killers is we become slave to our strategy.
We become slave to our experience.
We become slave to the way,
well, industry's always done it this way.
But no one in the car industry said,
you know what, what we should do
is have one day contracts with our vendors.
That would seem insane to people who didn't know how that worked.
I mean, that's an insane strategy, right?
But tactically it worked,
so they just figured out how to make that tactically
work across the board, now it became their strategy.
If you listen to the companies that focus on tactics first,
there's a big goal, how are we going to get the big goal?
Here's all the tactics we're going to try.
Where strategy is helpful is keeping people generally coordinated
because you don't want everybody going off and doing.
crazy things. So you want to have a general coordination.
So every few months getting up, OK, this is the strategy that's working for us
right now. I was struck by being a Tesla shareholder.
I was struck by their Q1 financial report.
And they started talking about the fact that, you know, they were driving this,
all this battery innovation and getting the power densities of the batteries and
all this other stuff. And someone said, but, you know, six months ago, you said
your strategy was to make the batteries the main thing.
And he said, but now we... And so Elon's answer was, well, a lot of big car
companies are failing in their EV strategies.
So suddenly there's a huge availability of batteries.
That's no longer a threat to us.
So we're not focusing on that. Our strategy now is... And he's changed it.
So how can you take a company, you know, a company that's worth...
What's Tesla worth now, market cap?
I've forgotten. Five hundred billion or some number that.
I know you can add all the other car companies up together to match Tesla now
in terms of market cap, right?
All of them, Toyota, VW, all of them, all make up Tesla's market cap.
And the reason is that they don't... They're not married to their strategy.
They're married to their tactics and their vision.
They're passionate about their vision.
The vision is why did we do this?
That's that timeless element that you lock in place.
We do this because that timeless thing, get people to buy in.
If you walk into SpaceX, there are two huge things on the wall.
The one is of Mars, as it is today, barren red planet.
And the next one is an artist's impression of a million person city on Mars.
There's the vision.
Now, how on earth are we going to go from today to that?
And why is that important?
Why do we have to have multi-planetary species, et cetera, et cetera?
So I pick these these these examples for you.
Let's bring them down into your world.
And the only reason I pick the big example, if it works for a big,
complex business, that's a that's a huge enterprise
full of unbelievable complexities and issues.
It can easily work for a smaller business.
So my question to you is, are you really clear about your vision for your team
and then really empower them to innovate in their tactics?
And then you can just summarize the tactics that are working
and call it your strategy every now and again.
So I call that an adaptive strategy.
You know, the strategy is following the tactics.
And then it will inform the next tactic.
Oh, that works.
And now what worked in one department can work in other areas.
So as we experiment in one area,
that adaptive strategy is a great way.
It's like a summary of what's working right now.
And so we're going to stay with that until the next innovation informs us.
But we don't we don't go vision strategy tactics.
I know that's traditionally taught.
That's why I always say my MBA is my most worthless degree.
Sorry, Emily, I know you're doing your MBA
in a big corporate environment, by the way, MBAs are actually useful.
So but for a smaller business is much more challenging.
So let's go to questions.
I got five more minutes of questions.
Was that helpful?
70-20-10 rule.
Get through the average, get past the poor, get to the brilliant.
I know Jonathan had a question, I think, earlier,
I'm not sure if it still is relevant.
And then I wanted to let everyone know that the exercise,
I went ahead and posted that in the group.
So if you have questions while you're doing that,
I'm going to add that as homework this week.
What is your work and what if your team found their work at their job?
So if you have questions on that and post that in the community
and Deanna and I will be taking close, keeping a close eye on that today
and make sure we can answer anything so that you can get through that exercise
since we ran out of time to do it live.
But Jonathan, did you have anything that you still wanted to mention or are we good?
Just lots of thought provoking questions you just gave in the last 10 minutes.
I here's the coolest thing I found.
You are sitting on the greatest.
Kingdom advantage, because when tactics come up, you can say, Lord,
should we focus on that?
Is that should we should we go after that?
Sometimes the Lord said, absolutely, let's go.
I see Matthew said, yeah, true God did that.
Exactly.
So you ask the Lord this, these simple questions, you know,
bring the Lord into the tactics and say, Lord, open up new tactics, show us new ways.
We need innovation from heaven.
We need to do this differently.
We need to write different contracts.
We need to offer our customers more.
We want to overdeliver.
How can we bring life and goodness to our customers?
Lord, show us more tactics.
And when somebody suggests an idea, be careful.
And be suspicious that your experience and previous business model may be misleading you.
Be aware of that. Try to be less wrong. Assume you're wrong. Try to be less wrong.
And I think what that does is that it just frees you up from having to be right.
Oh, we don't do that. Now, there are certain things that there are boundaries.
And you know what? You know what I'm saying. But be open handed.
So I do love that. Holy Spirit is a genius.
He invented business and technology and every other thing to do with it.
Perhaps he knows. I bet you he's got five things right now that he wants to give you.
Right now that he's saying, I got five things right now that we can do.
And the only thing I would say that I've done very poorly is I take too long to ask him.
For some reason, I want to do it myself for a while, fail and then ask.
But I'm learning, you know, ask first. Lord, be with me in this.
And I also want to say it's not always a download.
It's not like you get a prophetic word, focus on that. I mean, it can be that.
In my experience, it's actually rarely that.
It's more like as we walk together, it becomes clear, it becomes obvious.
And something witnesses in my spirit we need to focus on.
Or I ask the Lord, these these three things going up are going on.
We're in this is focus on number two.
Or you haven't we haven't drilled in deep enough on the stay on this.
Even in preparing this talk for today.
You know, I was talking about work and and the Lord kept pressing the work thing.
We're not there yet. We're not there until I finally got it to.
Oh, let me bring in the five stages of how this all works.
And then it all started to click for me what he was trying to bring across.
And Dan, I think Emily has a question.
And closing, we might have just enough time to squeeze that in before we wrap.
It's so funny, because when I was doing the management classes on the NBA,
that's what I heard. I heard your voice going at us for such a waste of time.
But I was I was excited because I'm actually using it for like the accounting,
you know, just knowing the symptoms of it and all that anyways.
But I feel like I have this passion for this job that I'm in to, you know,
see or see them at a at a hole.
You know, there's such a large company.
And I feel like the word in our partnership,
like me and Holy Spirit is is he's given me the ability to see
really minute details to help fine tune, you know, pieces of the company.
And I think about the rosebush analogy used a couple of sessions ago with don't
don't worry about the putting money into the dead branches, you know,
clip them off and put in to the ones that are thriving.
I want to do that with them, you know, and I just I see that, you know,
I feel like I've got the Lord has put favor with the CFO.
And I think that there is a it's a timing thing and just really valuing the time
the Lord is giving me with him with the word in this fine tuning process,
you know, maybe widening my tent pegs to be able to have that, you know,
capacity once he does move me into that place.
Because I mean, I, I mean, you're, you've got so much experience.
I know these CFOs and CEOs and they all,
they all know how to strategically maneuver things,
but that's where I feel like the get the,
that Jesus comes in is like, but they're not Jesus.
And they don't have like father does.
So I'm excited. I, I just, you know, it's, it,
I think it's easy that that fruit of self-control and,
and just patience is definitely a good growth, I think, for business too.
Yeah.
Well, I think you and Glenn should talk first of all.
And secondly,
because when you're in a multi-billion dollar environment like you're in,
and when you're, you know, I think if I remember correctly,
you have a very large private equity fund backing this roll up in this
industry that you're a part of.
The play is a different one because you're an intrapreneur,
not an entrepreneur. You're, you're doing it inside an organization.
You're bringing intrapreneurship kingdom,
intrapreneurship inside what you're doing. Totally space for that.
It's more feels like a solopreneur game in a way,
but it is a different play for sure.
And the Lord loves to bring goodness to the world.
Sometimes he's doing that because he's equipping you for the next thing,
but that could be your main thing. I think Glenn was your case.
So that was your main thing, right? It's what you did.
So maybe you should be the one answering this question, not me.
So, Hey guys, if you need to go, we're two minutes over,
you're welcome to drop off,
but I'm happy to stay on for a few more minutes and talk through any other
questions.
questions you might have. We won't consider you rude if you
drop off at this point. So, so, to go to go back to what I feel,
if I could go back to my younger self, I think, fortunately,
early on in my career, I did learn the idea of bringing
innovation down to every level, building a trust culture, and so
on. Trust literally mean you trust that people are doing what
they're supposed to be doing. And when we did all that, what I
didn't know, was that tactics were more important than
strategy. And, and to get great tactics working, you've got to
innovate very rapidly. And, and otherwise, the tactics won't be
the main thing, then strategy will be more important. So I
think if you if you are thinking about this, you're thinking
about having a very clear, powerful, compelling vision, the
timeless part of why you do what you do. And then on the other
side, you know, highly creative tactics, then then the adaptive
strategy works, because you're constantly summarizing for the
team, what they're doing is very encouraging for them, hey, my
tactic is now part of our strategy. Guess how much
meaning that brings to the, to the person involved, you know.
So, hey, they use my idea. It's part of the business now. So
that's, that's when you get huge buy in. And you get that feeling
of people feel taking ownership, because they started to act like
owners. So you get that effect. Telling them they should act
like owners is about the most worthless exercise I know.
Helping them become and give them an environment in which
they can act like owners. That's different. So, did I miss any
other questions? Or Bridget, did I miss anything?
No, I think we're good.
We'll wrap it up there. And I hope, I hope your ideas were
stimulated. And so the Lord bless you, and we will see you
next month. Bye bye.