Revitalize Your Church

Innovative cultures are generally depicted as pretty fun. They’re characterized by a tolerance for failure and a willingness to experiment. They’re seen as being psychologically safe, highly collaborative, and nonhierarchical. And research suggests that these behaviors translate into better innovative performance.  But despite the fact that innovative cultures are desirable, and that most leaders claim to understand what they entail, they are hard to create and sustain. That’s because the easy-to-like behaviors that get so much attention are only one side of the coin. They must be counterbalanced by some tougher and frankly less fun behaviors: an intolerance for incompetence, rigorous discipline, brutal candor, a high level of individual accountability, and strong leadership.  Unless the tensions created by this paradox are carefully managed, attempts to create an innovative culture will fail. --  Gary Pisano, The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures , Harv...

Seth Godin passed along this thought provoking post (Thanks to Jerry for pointing me to it). It's a clock, turned off, not ticking, showing no progress, encased in a beautiful glass sculpture. When you're ready to make the leap, to commit, to make something happen, you break the glass. The sculpture is ruined. All you have are shards of broken glass. And a working clock. It's alive and it's changing and moving forward. Interpretation??