What Are You Bringing?

Posted on 2013/04/21 by Ashton

Eph 2:10  For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

 I’ve written before about the importance of finding your design, and living according to that, and I’ve tried to apply this to my own life over the past few years.  The results: My life has become systematically more and more fulfilling as I’ve been considering these principles, whenever I’ve been facing decisions as to what to do with my life.  And as my focus and effectiveness has increased, so has our financial situation.

But recently I’ve been thinking more and more about our role in the church where we find ourselves.  Most of us are not in full-time ministry, yet we are involved in the church.  And I’ve realized we should be doing this same exercise in our church involvement.  We should be really seeking God’s face and asking:  “What did YOU design me for?  And what are the good works YOU had prepared in advance for me, here (or elsewhere?) to do?”

The power of the church lies in the fact that we are a body.  Don’t worry about what you are NOT doing.  God designed someone else for that.  Find out what YOU have been designed for.

What are YOU supposed to be doing in that body?  And if I may be as arrogant as to pre-empt at least part of the answer:

Pro 3:9-10  Honor the LORD with your wealth, [and*] with the first-fruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.

*Most translations I looked at (five out of six) add “and” between these two phrases.

I want to offer an interpretation to the above verse that powerfully impacted my life.  It started from reading the above verse in a translation (that I now cannot find), which didn’t say “first-fruits,” but “the best.”  It caused me to start asking “what is my best?” and I began to realize that my best was not my money, but the deposit of design, strengths, natural talents and passion that God had put inside of me. 

Your wealth may be your money.  But the first-fruit of your crops is not money.  Money is merely the reward for the crop you’ve already sold.  The first-fruit of your crop is the work that you can do by using your strengths, natural talents and passions that God had given you.

I want to encourage you to become quiet, withdraw, if you have to, for some time from doing too many activities in the church.  Begin to look back at what activities really made you feel alive.  What do you think and dream about when you are not busy?  Those are your passions.  God gave those to you.  The church is a great place to make those come alive.  Don’t try to just do more and more.  Rather focus on where you can truly bring your best.

Don’t bring God just your wealth.  Also bring him a piece of all that He had designed you to do, and begin to find the good works that He had prepared, just for your, for this time.

 Blessings to You

Ashton

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How Straight is Your Path?

Posted on 2013/04/14 by Ashton

Pro 10:9  Whoever walks in integrity walks in security, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.

What are crooked paths?  They are the white lies we tell, because we are trying to sidestep some problem in taking the straight path. 

One of the main reasons we take crooked paths is because of fear.  Most of us are not pathological liars who tell lies because of some strange pleasure or because we are drawn towards falsehood by some irresistible power.  Most of us actually believe that we should tell the truth.  But often we believe, or fear, that there is danger, or a problem in the simple truth.  In my life, when I have lost integrity and started twisting the truth, it was often because I was under pressure and wanted to appear more, or less, in control of a certain situation.

The other reason I sometimes find myself exaggerating a truth, or minimising another, is because I am trying to obtain something.  I guess it’s the salesman within me that tends to try and convince.  But the result is that sometimes I’ve oversold myself, and then later, I really struggle to cope with what I had convinced myself and everyone else, I’m capable of doing.  Overestimating my own capabilities is one of my personal weaknesses.  But that weakness swings about later, when I find myself doubting myself and then beginning to underestimate my own abilities.

When I look back on each of those situations, I always realize that in the long run, the most exact truth I was capable of, however harsh, or unflattering it may have seemed at the time, would have served me, and the people around me, better in the long run.  There is security in bringing out the truth as quickly as possible, and then dealing with it. 

The more you can learn to walk in integrity, the more you will be able to also walk securely.

 Blessings to You

 Ashton

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Blessing Accounting

Posted on 2013/04/07 by Ashton

Have you ever been admonished, when complaining about something, to “count your blessings?”

Over these past few months, as I was grappling with an extremely steep learning curve in my new environment, I discovered that there is tremendous value in taking this little statement very literally.

What I discovered was that sometimes when I was feeling really down and stretched to the edge of my capacity, then if I would sit down and begin to count how many really good things had happened to me over the previous two or three days, and make a list of them, I would always be amazed.  Time after time, it turned out that things were going much better than what my emotions were telling me.

And then one morning I read this:

Psalm 106:9 He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up; he led them through the depths as through a desert.

10 He saved them from the hand of the foe; from the hand of the enemy he redeemed them.

11 The waters covered their adversaries; not one of them survived.

12 Then they believed his promises and sang his praise.

13 But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold.

… exactly what I had noticed:

God gives me amazing experiences, but I forget them almost immediately.

:14 In the desert they gave in to their craving;

… so then what happens is the moment there are some difficulties, I simply respond to my emotional state, instead of drawing on the strength and the faith I could have derived from the great experiences God had given me.

These cycles are literally like mini-seasons in our lives.  When we make the effort to remember the good times, to appreciate and savour them, to count them, then they literally become like a harvest of strength and hope that we can carry into the difficult times.

So when God says we should count our blessings, it literally means exactly that:  To count them, and record them — to keep an accounting system of blessings.

I found that doing this also creates a life of continuous expectancy.  Not long term, but day by day expectancy that although I might be having a difficult experience now, it is a matter of hours, or at the most a day, before I am going to be having a great experience again.  And that often is what we need to have the staying power, to hang in there through the crisis, and see the harvest on the other side.

If you want to experience a profound systematic sense of a lifting of your spirit, get into the discipline of once a day sitting down with pen and paper, or computer and spread sheet like I do, and just quickly jot down the keywords of every good experience you’ve had over the previous 24 hours.

I’d love to hear from you if this works as well for you as it has for me!  Try it for a few days and come back to comment and let us know!

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Just Imagine …

Posted on 2012/07/31 by Ashton

Jer:11:8: Yet they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart: therefore I will bring upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do; but they did them not.

Note that they walked “in the imagination of their evil heart”

There was first an imagination.

This was not the problem.

The problem came when they started walking in this.

There is a progression of sin here:

1. An evil heart imagines.

2. These imaginations are evil because the heart is evil.

3. From the evil imaginations flow evil actions.

Struggling with some sin in your life? Start by cleaning up your imagination. Don’t allow evil thoughts to hang around, because whatever you allow to hang around in your imagination, will eventually influence your attitude and actions.

Of course the opposite is also true, and very powerful. When you deliberately use your imagination to design a better future, and you then use your imagination to begin to create a plan to create that future, you are using one of the most powerful tools that God has given mankind.

And as a leader, you can learn to communicate your vision in such a way, that you also engage the imaginations of your followers. Leading in this way saves you a lot of effort in micro-management and control!

Just imagine what you can achieve.

Blessings to You

Ashton

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Decisions, Decisions

Posted on 2012/06/24 by Ashton

I remember when I was an officer in the military, I often felt overwhelmed by the number of decisions I had to make every day, and often the weight of those decisions.

So when I went out with my friends, I used to refuse to make any decisions.

The result was that we often drove around aimlessly for a whole evening, spending time, petrol, and energy.  It didn’t really matter, at the time, because we were together as friends, and we tended to have a good time whenever we were together.

However, later in life, I’ve found that this pattern often repeats itself not only in my life, but I see it around me all the time.

In fact, I think one of the key things that separates excellent leaders from the not so excellent ones, is their decision-making ability.

Now this is a rather vast topic.

But I’ve been thinking a lot about the way our decisions impact our quality of life.  And just like we used to spend our evenings wasting time, energy and petrol (i.e. money), because we wouldn’t decide where to go, so we often waste time, energy and money, because we are too afraid to make, and stick to, a decision.

You can have a look at my thoughts in a slideshow here:  http://t.co/YUxGP43X

If you prefer to download the PPT, you can get it from here: Three_Primary_Resources

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Leadership, God’s Way

Posted on 2012/06/21 by Ashton

Many of my readers are leaders.

And good leadership is one of the keys to success in every organisation – be it the church, a church related organisation, a social enterprise or a commercial organisation.

Leadership is something that has always been close to my heart, and so I’m going to focus for a while on some of the keys that the Bible can teach us, about good leadership.

And I’ll start at the very beginning – the time when God decided to start his “organisation” called “Earth.”

Gen 1:1 In the beginning, when God created the universe,

Gen 1:2 the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water.

Gen 1:3 Then God commanded, “Let there be light”—and light appeared.

Gen 1:4 God was pleased with what he saw. Then he separated the light from the darkness,

Gen 1:5 and he named the light “Day” and the darkness “Night.” Evening passed and morning came—that was the first day.

Gen 1:6 Then God commanded, “Let there be a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places”—and it was done. So God made a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it.

Gen 1:7 (SEE 1:6)

Gen 1:8 He named the dome “Sky.” Evening passed and morning came—that was the second day.

Gen 1:9 Then God commanded, “Let the water below the sky come together in one place, so that the land will appear”—and it was done.

Gen 1:10 He named the land “Earth,” and the water which had come together he named “Sea.” And God was pleased with what he saw.

God started creation by tidying up his work environment, and he did this by putting things together that belong together.

One of the people I respect most in life, Matthew Blewett, used to often say that we should “undo the complexity of our business.”

One of the most important tasks before a leader is exactly this: To learn to unravel the complexity of an environment, and put things where they belong.

There are a few keys here when we look at the way God went about doing this, that can be useful in the life of the leader:

The Spirit of God was Moving Over the Water

There is a management method called “Management by Walking About.” And it is exactly what the name says. It means that as a leader, sometimes you need to walk around, look at what is happening, ask people about what you see, and think about it.

Other translations use the word: “hovering.”

We all have a place inside of us where we contain the world that is around us. Some people say we have “maps” of our environment in our mind. As a leader, it is important that you spend time to think about your environment. “Hover” as it were over your organisation, peruse the maps, think about where things have come from, where things are at now, and where they are going. Regularly update your internal maps to make sure they accurately reflect the world around you.

This is not about actively DOING, but about passively observing, both that which is physically obvious, and that which is deeper – the linkages and connections that you can only observe when you close your eyes, and begin to spread out the map of your world in your mind’s eye.

It is in this place that your spirit can connect with God’s spirit, to give you God’s view of your world.

Then God Commanded

It starts with a “then,” which reminds us that there is a sequence here. God first moved around and observed, before He commanded.

The first step to giving effective instructions is understanding your environment.

As a leader, most of your work will be done through others.

God didn’t need to learn this – He had the power.

But we have to learn to instruct in a way that will motivate people to bring into being a better future. Learn the art of giving instructions that motivate, that enthuse and inspire.

… “Let there be light.”

Light enables us to see what is going on.

As a leader, one of your tasks is to enlighten people. People work better when they can see. Build light into your organisation. Make sure that people have access to information they need, and that people get exposed to information that they might not even have known they needed.

When we can see what is going on around us, we work better.

We are sometimes, as leaders, tempted to hide information that might not “look so good.”

Note that God spoke the light into being while the world was still in chaos. He knew it was chaos. But He didn’t try to hide the chaos.

Don’t try to hide from your people the things that don’t look so good. You need them to help you make things better – and for that, you need them to see things the way they really are.

God was pleased with what he saw

This phrase appears twice in the above piece.

Does this mean He was now happy with everything?

No, otherwise He would have stopped.

But He had issued an instruction, and that instruction had a certain result. In the first instance, the result was that the chaos was exposed. And yet, God was pleased.

As a leader, take time to enjoy and celebrate success, even if that success exposes a whole hornets’ nest of trouble.

Before He went on, He thought it fit to record the fact that He was pleased.

When you have made a change, don’t just keep barging ahead. Stop and ask yourself: “Am I pleased with the results thus far.”

If not, you might want to take action BEFORE you go any further.

Leadership is often a long journey. Stopping regularly to appreciate what you have achieved will go a long way to keeping your and your people’s motivation up. It gives a sense of accomplishment, and with that comes a strengthening of the belief that we can go on, and achieve more.

He separated …

- … light from darkness

- … a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places

- … the water below the sky come together in one place, so that the land will appear

God started tidying up, and he did this by identifying things that belonged together. He gave everything a place.

Lean Management teaches: “A place for everything and every thing in its place.”

Organisations, like children’s bedrooms, tend to move towards chaos.

As a leader, this is going to be one of your continuous tasks, to help you unravel the complexity of your business. Continually figure out, and then remind people of where things belong, and why they belong there.

He named …

- … the light “Day” and the darkness “Night”

- … the dome “Sky”

- … the land “Earth”

Naming and labelling things helps people know what belongs where, it reduces the need for explanations, and it creates a shared understanding of meaning.

In Summary:

- Take time to know and really understand what is going on

- Give effective instructions

- Enlighten people through effective sharing of knowledge

- Pause to appreciate your successes regularly

- Give things a place and put them in their place

- Give and use names consistently

Blessings to You

Ashton

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The War Starts at Home

Posted on 2012/05/28 by Ashton

Exo 4:1 Then Moses answered the LORD, “But suppose the Israelites do not believe me and will not listen to what I say. What shall I do if they say that you did not appear to me?”

Exo 4:2 So the LORD asked him, “What are you holding?” “A walking stick,” he answered.

Exo 4:3 The LORD said, “Throw it on the ground.” When Moses threw it down, it turned into a snake, and he ran away from it.

Exo 4:4 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Reach down and pick it up by the tail.” So Moses reached down and caught it, and it became a walking stick again.

Exo 4:5 The LORD said, “Do this to prove to the Israelites that the LORD, the God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has appeared to you.”

Exo 4:6 The LORD spoke to Moses again, “Put your hand inside your robe.” Moses obeyed; and when he took his hand out, it was diseased, covered with white spots, like snow.

Exo 4:7 Then the LORD said, “Put your hand inside your robe again.” He did so, and when he took it out this time, it was healthy, just like the rest of his body.

Exo 4:8 The LORD said, “If they will not believe you or be convinced by the first miracle, then this one will convince them.

Exo 4:9 If in spite of these two miracles they still will not believe you, and if they refuse to listen to what you say, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the ground. The water will turn into blood.”

I have always thought that these first signs were for the Egyptians, to convince them that God was working through Moses and that they should listen to him.

But they weren’t.

Moses’ first concern wasn’t the Pharaoh. It was his own people. He was worried that his own people, the people he would be trying to help, would not believe him. And God gave him these three signs to show the Israelites, NOT the Egyptians, that he had really been sent by God.

We aren’t all trying to lead a nation out of slavery. One would think that people would be happy for someone to get up and share a vision of freedom. Just like we can easily fall into the trap of thinking that people would gladly accept our vision for improving something in their lives.

Be prepared, however, as Moses was, for the people not believing. Maybe you really feel God has called you. They probably won’t believe that. Maybe you really believe you can do it, and they can do it. They might not believe it. Maybe you really believe that there is the possibility of a better life. They may struggle to believe that.

If you want to be a leader, and you want to help people improve their circumstances, or want your organisation to perform better, your first battle is probably not going to be against some external force such as an oppressive regime, an exploitative government, severe natural conditions, or a tight economy. Your first battle is probably going to be against the mindset, the inability of people to believe that there is a possibility of a better life.

I haven’t heard of many people other than Moses, who had the advantage of things like walking sticks turning into snakes, instant disease and healing, or changing the nature of substances. So it’s likely to be unwise to rely on small miracles as your strategy for convincing them.

Be that as it may, a strategy you must have. So make sure that if you are planning to lead any group of people towards any kind of improvement, that you have thought about how you are going to convince them firstly, to believe.

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Human Resources as a Strategic Function

Posted on 2012/05/10 by Ashton

HumanResourcesAsAStrategicFunction

I have forgotten the source where I got this from.  I think it was Cummings & Worley’s Organisation Development & Change.  One of the most comprehensive books I’ve ever read on Organisation Development.

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If You Don’t Trust Them … Maybe It’s Because You Don’t Trust You

Posted on 2012/05/05 by Ashton

 

In his book “Working with emotional intelligence,” Daniel Goleman makes the following comment:

 

One way to promote positive expectations is to let others take the lead in setting their own goals, rather than dictating the terms and manner of their development. This communicates the believe that employees have the capacity to be the pilot of their destiny, which is a core tenet held by those who take initiative.

Why would we not let employees set their own goals. I have come across several reasons for these, but over time, as I’ve learnt to understand people better, (not that I claim to understand us very well, at all, yet!) I’ve begun to realize that most, if not all of the reasons given, generally actually reflect back that the root problem lies not with the employee, but with the manager himself.

Let’s quickly look at three of the most common ones:

“They will set too low goals.”

Firstly, this reflects badly on you as a manager in terms of the kind of team you’ve been building, unless you are really a brand new manager in that situation. Well developed teams tend to have high aspirations. On top of that, it has been my experience that generally people set their goals too high, not to low, when left to their own devices. The one reason for this is that we have an innate natural desire as human beings to impress others, and most of us have a reasonably good idea of what “impress” would look like. So that is where we set our goals. We also fear failure, or the least indication of potential failure – and we know what goal would reflect “I’m a loser!” Your people are unlikely to set a goal at that level.

“They will set too high goals.”

I laud your positive outlook, and you are probably right. “But,” you might say, “that will be a good thing.” Actually, it will not. Setting too high goals, and then failing, has a negative long term impact on performance. The best performing teams and individuals set ambitious goals that they can attain, and systematically increase those as they move from success to success. So if people seem to be setting goals that are too ambitious, negotiate them down a bit.

“They don’t understand the big picture, and that big picture understanding is needed to set the right goals.”

Firstly, generally people don’t have to understand the overall company strategy in very detail to be able to set goals within their team context. They need to have a good understanding of the company strategy in general, and then a thorough understanding of their team’s role in that strategy. If they don’t have that, you are probably to blame, rather than them. As the manager, it is your job to communicate these things, and to think about how to communicate them clearly, and regularly. If that is in place, people will have enough information to understand where they need to be pitching their goals.

If you’re not the kind of manager who lets people set their own goals, you might have some other reasons. I’d love to hear them. But I suspect that when thinking through them, it will come back to a matter of something you can develop within your own repertoire of management skills, which will help you create the right environment to let people set their own goals.

So be positive.

Believe in your people.

And let them show you what they are really capable of.

 

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Do We have to Choose Between Success and Happiness?

Posted on 2012/05/03 by Ashton

Learning to observe alignment might be one of the most important things we can do in life. Alignment can happen at different levels, but it starts deep within yourself.

The first alignment is between what you love doing, and what you are good at doing. Sometimes there are things we love doing, but unless we spend 28 hours per day practicing it, we will never actually become really good at it. In the same way, you might be really good at something, but hate doing it. Choosing to do that, will lead to a life of feeling trapped in success. Learning to know yourself, therefore, is the first and most important aspect of alignment. This reveals to you, your design. Each of us has been designed to contribute something valuable to this world. You will find yourself contributing your best when you can find the areas in your life where natural talent and love for doing something, are aligned.

So that is the first alignment. It reveals your design.

The second alignment relates to what you are trying to achieve, and the way you’ve chosen to try to achieve that. Most of the times what you are trying to achieve, contains some aspects over which you have direct control, and some aspects over which you have limited, or no control. You have to learn to focus on doing the things you CAN control, learn to do them as well as possible, and continually observe whether doing these things are indeed moving you towards your goals – the things you are trying to achieve. Often you might find that things don’t quite work the way you expected – and then you have to change your actions. So this alignment is about learning to adjust action to environment. If the things you are doing are aligned with your environment, then your actions, and the response to your actions work together towards achieving the things you are trying to achieve. If you live a life where you feel everything is constantly resisting your efforts, you need to be thinking about your alignment with your environment.

So this is the second alignment: Alignment between your actions, your goals, and your environment. Understanding this, helps you understand the things you have to do.

Lastly, you have to align the things you have to do with your design. If the things you have to do are not aligned with your design, you can either change your goals, or you can change the way you’ve selected to try and achieve those goals.

To achieve alignment is not a one morning think about this quickly exercise. It requires that you observe what is going on around you, the effect of your actions on what is going on around you, as well as what is going on inside of you. Sometimes it may take a while to begin to see the pattern, but if you keep watching and observing and learn to understand yourself, and understand what is going on around you, see the impact of your actions on your environment, and the achievement of your goals, as well as noticing how all of this makes you feel, you can begin to observe alignments between your goals, your design, and your environment.

Without alignment at worst you will put in a lot of effort, and still fail. At best, you will succeed, and do so unhappily. To succeed and be happy at the same time, alignment is critical.

Remember, great lives are sculpted over time.

Ashton

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