Entries from August 2010 ↓

I’m someone who firmly believes in the important of leadership in almost every sphere of life, and so I tend to pay a lot of attention to leaders and leadership in all sorts of places.  I’ve been watching our recent election and its fall-out with a great deal of interest, and I think there’s a lot to be gleaned from what has been happening in the last week.

My first observation is that Julian Gillard looks and sounds like someone desperate to stay in her job, and even if she manages to somehow cobble together a minority government, I don’t think it will work out.  Her desperation to stay in the job can only lead her to make some compromises she will regret later.  I’m sure there will be others who see it differently, but Labor is suddenly talking about all kinds of things they were definitely not thinking about before the election, stuff which smells like expediency and whatever-it-takes to stay in power.

My second observation is that Tony Abbott has, in contrast, seemed at ease and not desperate at all to do whatever deal will get him the top job.  I think this has been very smart, and in the long run he will prevail, in my view.  It may take several months and an inevitable re-run election, but I think he will end up leading the country.  If he does pull together a minority government , I think it’s going to be on very different terms to Gillard, and I think it would have more hope of succeeding.  But, there is no doubt in my mind that a Gillard minority government will fail, based on the way they are going all out to court the Independents.  Abbott has seemed calm and collected, and has portrayed a principled sort of air in the mad scramble, and I think it will pay off for him.

My third observation is that the Independents have screwed themselves over by having no strategic view at all of their potential influence in the Australian political process.  Instead, from a public perspective, they have quickly shifted to looking like a bunch hucksters cashing in on an accidental bit of power they have, and they look anything but principled as the week has progressed.  I think there is very little chance that whatever deal they strike with Labor would end up being stable and effective because it’s going to be built off Labor just trying to get back in whatever it takes, and as soon as possible Labor will shaft them because nobody likes to be shoved into a corner.  The Independents could have actually spoken of some really big picture things they wanted changed in the political process, but instead they have quickly sunk to looking very political and the essence of the very problems our system has.

I’m sure others will have differing views, but this is what I’ve been noticing.  It’s frustrating to watch, and demonstrates afresh how rare great leadership really is.

I’ve recently been following a bunch of stuff being written about the privacy debate raging on in certain segments of the media, and along with reflecting on my own “public” life, it’s got me thinking a lot about just how much you really want for everybody to know.

Some might argue that we’ve moved into a new space of laying it all out there for the world to see, but I’m not sure I buy that or want that, either for myself or others. I don’t have it clear in my head yet, but I’m beginning to suspect that maybe there are parts of our inner lives that are meant to exactly that… a personal space, not for public consumption.

Are you doing what matters most right now?

I hate that question, but it is such a critical question to ask and answer honestly.  Too often , the answer is “no”.  We fritter a huge chunk of our day away on absolute rubbish, activities which add no value at all to our lives.

I hate that question because I, like many people, have the incredible knack of staying busy and filling my day with a bunch of activity, but sometimes finish out a day and wonder what the heck I actually accomplished that would be worth writing home about.

So, how do you make sure that you’re being productive, and not just busy?  Here’s my best quick thoughts:

1. Plan out your day, don’t just let it unfold.  Just letting things happen as they happen is a sure recipe for being busy but totally non-productive.  It’s so obvious, but I’m amazed at how many people don’t start each day out with a game plan, a list of key objectives that need to happen.  Personally, I’m a huge advocate of 90 day goals, and creating structure in my life to stay focused on the big picture.

2. Constantly be asking yourself whether you’re doing what matters most right now.  I used to do some consulting work at a government department years ago where some of the folks would wander over to check out what I was doing, and there was an older lady there who was kind of like an old boarding school matron who would yell at them like kids and tell them to go and sit down and do their work.  I was always a bit shocked at how she kept them from being distracted, but they obviously needed it.  And sometimes we all need that…  and that question pushes us to go back to our desk and do what matters.

3. One of the great steps you can take to getting stuff done in your life is to intentionally stop doing some other things.  Sometimes our most important list isn’t our to-do list, but rather our not-to-do list, killing certain activities and habits which drag our time and attention away from what matters most.  And social media is sometimes one of our biggest enemies.  The key task in our age is to filter all the crud coming into our lives and figure out what is actually worth taking in and what is worth not spending any time on at all.

As with much of life, if you don’t take control of it, someone else will.

Right, I’m off to get some stuff done… :-)

For the past 15 years or more, I have primarily been viewing the Church from the inside.  That is to say, I’ve been an insider, where my primary time, energy and relational connections have been within the boundaries of the Church.

Prior to that, I worked in the business world, and although I was heavily involved in the Church, helping to run youth groups, later involved in lay leadership, etc., my primary time and energy and a good many (not all) of my relationships were outside the boundaries of the Church.

As an aside, some might argue against my depiction of the Church having “boundaries”, given some of the newer paradigms of trying to understand the relationship between the Church and the world, but if you’ve spent much time at all within a church, you just know that boundaries exist, implicit and explicit.

Lately, since having stepped outside the boundaries of the Church and investing my primary time and energy outside of that sphere, and beginning to develop more relationships outside the Church, I’ve been able to view the Church from the outside, after a decade and half of viewing it from within.  And, I have to tell you, it’s not a great sight.

You know how it is with a messy room or a dysfunctional family?  The longer you live and breathe in that space, the less you notice the mess and the dysfunction, and a new kind of “normal” sets in?

Now, I want to be careful to say that nothing I say here is intended as a slam or criticism of anyone or (more specifically) my previous church, which I still love and have much invested in.  BUT, it has been disturbing to me to walk in the world these past few months and realise just how out-of-touch, irrelevant, even perhaps boring, the Church is to those who are not inside it.  And I’m not talking about any particular denomination or movement here…  the people in the world have a rather smooshed up view of all that.  They just have this weird overlapping and confused mish mash of tradition and weirdness associated with “Church”, but they certainly don’t have any attraction or interest in it.  This much is very clear, and to be honest, as I’ve stood with them and looked back into the Church, it’s disturbing to me.  We’re certainly not the salt and light Jesus talked about…  instead we’re gloom and bland, if not actually a little unpleasant to the taste.

I don’t write this with any huge answers in mind…  perhaps that’s a later post when I have my head around this, but it’s been bothering me a lot lately…  the Church from the outside is far too different from the Church I was looking at from the inside, and although there will always be a degree of difference for a variety of good reasons, mostly I’m disturbed at how big the gap is from where I’m standing at the moment.

PS:  I should just add that (to torture Twain) the rumours of my loss of faith are highly exaggerated…  :-)