My Top 65 Books

1. Good to Great – Jim Collins

2. The Future of Management – Garry Hammel

3. Maverick – Ricardo Semler

4. Seven Day Weekend – Ricardo Semler

5. It’s Your Ship – M Abrashoff

6. Now Discover Your Strength – Buckingham

7. Courageous Leadership – Hybels

8. The Next Generation Leader – Stanley

9. Axiom – Hybels

10. Primal Leadership – Goleman

11. Resonant Leadership – Mc Kee

12. Managing Transition – Bridges

13. First Break all the Rules – Buckingham

14. How the Mighty Fall – Collins

15. The One Thing you Need to Know - Buckingham

16. Build to Last – Collins

17. Death by Meeting – Lencioni

18. The Volunteer Revolution – Hybels

19. Choosing to Cheat – Stanley

20. Simple Church - Rainer

21. It – How Churches and Leaders can Get It and Keep It - Groeschel

22. Communicating for a Change - Stanley

23. 7 Practices of Effective Ministry - Stanley

24. Biblical Eldership - Strauch

25. Spiritual Leadership - Blackaby

26. A Sense of Urgency – Kotter

27. Leading Change – Kotter

28. The Servant – Hunter

29. Making Vision Stick - Stanley

30. Tipping Point - Gladwell

31. Made to Stick - Heath

32. Why you act the way you do – LaHaye

33. What got you here won’t get you there - Goldsmith

34. Jack – Jack Welch

35. Crucial Conversations – Patterson

36. From Worst to First – Bethune

37. Why should anyone be lead by you – Goffee

38. Rediscovering Church - Hybels

39. Focus - Al Ries

These books weren’t great as a whole, but had a great central idea.

40. The 2-degree Difference: How little things can change everything – Trent

41. The 80/20 Principle – Koch

42. Talent – Tom Peters

43. Adversity Quotient - Stoltz

44. Deliberate Simplicity – Browning

45. Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls – Tichy

46. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done – Bossidy

47. The Leadership Engine – Tichy

48. Leading with Questions – Marquardt

49. The Definitive Book of Body Language – Pease

50. The Principle of the Path – Stanley

51. The Starfish and the Spider – Beckstrom

52. Inside the Magic Kingdom – Connelian

53. The E-Myth Revisited – Gerber

54. The Story Factor – Simmons

55. Crossing the Chasm – Moore

56. A Resilient Life – Mac Donald

57. Leading the Revolution – Hammel

58. Switch – Heath

59. An Hour on Sunday – Beach

60. Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life – Lupton

61. Integrity – Cloud

62. The Circle of Innovation – Peters

63. Leadership – Peters

64. The 5 languages of apology – Chapman

65. The Big Idea: Focus the Message – Ferguson

First Break all the Rules

You have to make it rewarding, in every way, for people to keep doing what they are doing. It is the Leaders job to build the kind of work environment that attracts, focuses, and keeps talented employees.

These twelve questions are the simplest and most accurate way to measure the strength of a workplace.

The 12 Questions

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I relieved recognition or praise for good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, does my opinion seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed o doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, have I talked wit someone about my progress?
12. At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?

If you can create the kind of environment where employees answer positively to all twelve questions, then you will have built a great place to work.

From First Break all the Rules

The Importance of Assembling the ‘Right Team’

One of the greatest insights that I have ever read on this subject matter comes from Jim Collins' book Good to Great. He (in my own words) basically said, before you even think of deciding where it is that you want to go as an organisations you need to

1. Get the right people on the bus (your leadership team)
   
2. The wrong people of the bus.
   
3. The right people in the right seats.
   

Your leadership team is key, I (me not Jim) almost want to say the key (other than obviously God.) Without the right leadership team in place you will only spin your wheels in the mud. The organisation will never grow beyond its leadership ability. If your leadership team is able to lead a 150 people and you have a church of 300, the church will eventually (and this can be a long and painful process) dwindle down to a 150. If your leadership team has the ability to lead a group of 500 and you have a church of 300, they will take it to 500, it will only be a matter of time (again this will obviously only happen if God is in it.)

If you want to grow the church beyond 500, you will have to grow your own leadership capacity as well as the capacity of your team in order to do so or you will have to get those that have the ability to lead a 1000 on the bus as soon as possible.