Are You A 9-1-1 Leader Or A Manager?
9-1-1 Leadership. How do you know if you are a leader or a manager? Certainly if you Google this topic you will get a laundry list of different articles or answers. There are many well known spiritual leaders who have written numerous books on leadership; my favorite being Bill Hybels. I would like to take an approach that comes from personal work experience as well as a biblical example. I have never heard it explained the way I will attempt to in this blog. I like to call this the 9-1-1 approach to leadership. The “9” stands for the 90% that is working correctly in your organization day in and day out. Let’s face it, not everything is broken on a daily basis. If you are a positive person it is easy for you to identify the areas that are hitting on all cylinders. The first “1” stands for the 10% that is not going well and is causing you headaches. Some organizations recognize the 10%, while others do not even know the 10% exist. And the last “1” stand for the up to 10 times longer it will take to identify, fix and change the behavior behind the 10% not going well.
So back to the initial question, how do you know if you are a leader or a manager? In my opinion, if you focus and spend a majority of your time on the 90% that is going well…then I would call you a manager. However, if you spend most of your time and energy in the 10% area that is not going well…I would call you a leader. Managers keep the organization rolling and steering the ship on a day to day basis. They are there to “manage” what processes/policies already exist within the organization. They quickly identify situations that start to slip or get out of whack with what is the norm. Managers have typically been handed a proven solution and told to carry on the way it was designed.
Blackboard and e-Learning Systems
As stated in a recent article by Inside Higher Ed, “Between the announcement of its purchase of an iPhone application yesterday, its acquisition of Angel Learning in May, and its recently released new interface, Blackboard has made significant moves to strengthen its hold on the e-learning market. But many users aren’t happy with the basics.”
Living in the online space as a CEO and Executive Director of Operations, for the past 4 years, I have had many e-Learning vendors contact me about using their products and services. I have also been an online adjunct facilitator for the past three years. I have taught courses in Blackboard as well as Angel. My personal experience has been one that I prefer the functionality and the ease of navigation within the Blackboard system far more than that of the Angel system. I cannot speak to the functionality of WebCT, eCollege, or other delivery systems. However, having run an online program with over 37,000 students, Blackboard has more than met the faculty as well as the students needs.
Quit the Right Stuff at the Right Time!
For many of you who follow my blog and subscribe through the RSS feed, you have been wondering what’s been going on. Well here I am, back at Liberty University after 8 months away.
I know many of you are wondering why I left only to return in just under a year. The truth of the matter is…in the words of Seth Godin “Winners quit all the time, they just quit the right stuff at the right time.” As Alina Tugend states “sometimes we can feel so invested in our situation, or too embarrassed to admit that we might have chosen the wrong path that it permeates all aspects of our lives”. The truth is it sometimes shows more courage to leave than to stay. Going against the grain, and being the lone defector is hard. In this age of being politically correct or slapping a catchy label on everything we experience…let’s refer to quitting as “disengaging from our goal”. I am not giving up on my dreams, just shifting to more meaningful ones.
The trick, of course, is to know when it’s right to walk away and when it’s not. For me it was a series of events that unfolded overtime that said it was time to move on. I don’t want to get into a laundry list of those things, but at some point I had to draw a line between what was attainable and what was not, and at what cost.
Father’s Day at the Kennedy’s
Father’s Day was Sunday June 21st. What a great day Jen and the kids had planned for me, breakfast on the screened in porch with eggs, bacon, toast and coffee. Then it was off to church and out to eat for lunch. In the early afternoon I laid down for a quick nap (not usually allowed with 4 kids wanting attention) only to be followed up with a trip to look at and purchase my new dirt bike a Yamaha TTR230. You can see the pictures. The kids are loving it that Daddy now has his own dirt bike to ride around with them. I have some day trips planned so we can load them up and hit some small trails in the area. We can’t get too carried away just yet as Peyton will be on her Honda 50cc for a while. We will pack a lunch and hit the trails in the near future. Stay tuned for more blogs on our dirt bike experiences.
PS. Don’t tell Jen but I have been hitting some 16 foot jumps in the backyard with a ramp I have. Dawson is hitting about 8 feet.
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