By: Richard Volzke on September 20, 2014
Like the business and government sector, the church needs to embrace the dogma of greatness. One of my passions is to help churches or Christian organizations implement best practice business standards. I have found that many pastors, church leaders, and local church boards have minimal business knowledge. This lack of training has lead to legal…
By: Michael Badriaki on September 19, 2014
Jim Collins’s book Good to Great was a fun and educational read. Collins starts out with an admonition about the fact that “good is the enemy of great.”[1] This can be an energizing and convicting proposition for people who have already arrived at a good bottom-line in business and are in position to became a…
By: Travis Biglow on September 19, 2014
Thinking and feeling a combination of knowing As we go through life it is always a challenge to go beyond what we feel. I preach to people about faith a lot because I know that people are more prone to feel their way through life. But reading this book has made me conceptually a…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on September 19, 2014
Jim Collins, the author, of Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking is Not The Answer, eloquently articulates why some companies become great and others do not. He details timeless principles usefully in any ministry context. Collins begins by pointing out what distinguishes good from great companies. He says that having…
By: rhbaker275 on September 19, 2014
Leadership and greatness are generally linked together. The significance is the way we define the terms and the concepts or ideology that undergirds our understanding of great leadership. What is greatness? An academic dictionary states it is “the quality of being great, distinguished, or eminent,”[1] which it turns out is only a tranche of meaning…
By: Bill Dobrenen on September 19, 2014
Almost exactly a year ago, I took a trip to Kiev, Ukraine. I went there to begin my research on an organization that taught “ServantLeadership” curriculum in several international universities. My mission was to discover how the teaching of the curriculum was impacting the university and the community around the school. The training had been…
By: Clint Baldwin on September 19, 2014
Jim Collins’ Good To Great book has quickly become a classic…and for good reason. In this work, Collins coalesces ideas that have been floating around for a long time and places them into a narrative that is graspable and implementable. Collins offers 6 major concepts in his text organized under three general categories. First he…
By: Julie Dodge on September 19, 2014
People often describe resilience as the ability to bounce back after hardship. I disagree. Resilience is made evident in the bounce back, but it is hardly formed in the bounce back. In order for a ball to bounce, it already has to be inflated. And how is the resilience ball inflated? Resilience is the convergence…
By: Carol McLaughlin on September 19, 2014
Some years ago I worked as a program coordinator with at risk youth for a public school district. I purchased Jim Collins book, Good to Great not because it was something I was required to do, but because I wanted to learn. The School District Superintendent at the time had chosen this book and the…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on September 19, 2014
Elegant, streamline, sophisticated, yet beautiful in simplicity with such creativity and realism that it transports you to a place of hopeful expectations of great things. No, it is not a visual piece of art work such that David Morgan or William A. Dyrness would write about, but no less compelling in its craftsmanship and design.…
By: Ashley Goad on September 19, 2014
Reading Jim Collins’ best-seller, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, sent me down the path of memory lane. I have never worked in the business or secular world (unless you count those summer jobs at golf courses and hotels!). My work has centered in ministry and non-profits. I started…
By: Dawnel Volzke on September 18, 2014
Sensory ethnography explores the way “that perception and senses impact one’s view of culture. The ethnographer is, in fact, part of the sensory material and, as such, is subject to having political or ideological agendas.”[1] There is an interrelationship between the body, mind and environment, which impacts the way that we interact and perceive cultural…
By: Brian Yost on September 18, 2014
Years ago I found myself in a mall. I wanted to kill some time, so I wandered into a Bose outlet store. As a musician, I was familiar with Bose sound equipment and always loved their speakers. I was familiar with their slogan “Bose for the Pros”, but this was my first exposure to their…
By: Liz Linssen on September 18, 2014
Collins’ Good to Great is perhaps the most helpful book I’ve read on this course to date. These books are not merely philosophical or theoretical, but full of proven principles and examples that hopefully will enable me to function better in my role. As Collins explains, it’s not a question of excellent principles that can…
By: Deve Persad on September 18, 2014
How do you define greatness? The definitions surely abound; most of those definitions would point toward outcomes, performance and goals achieved or surpassed. Many of them would draw comparisons against the weaknesses or deficiencies of others. Greatness, in our starry-eyed culture, is also measured in both beauty, exemplified in power, and often in profit. Churches…
By: John Woodward on September 18, 2014
I cannot read a business book without automatically applying its lessons to my church or ministry, because I have never worked in the business world. My initial response tends to be negative, as my mindset is: “What does Wall Street have to do with Jerusalem?” So I began reading Good To Great by Jim Collins…
By: Jon Spellman on September 18, 2014
Story. The Gospel is incarnational. It is primarily a story about the ultimate Other making himself one of us, putting on our flesh and walking in our shoes (or sandals as it were) so that we could be reunited to him and ultimately reconstituted to perfection. It is a powerful story. Incarnation. In his important…
By: Phillip Struckmeyer on September 18, 2014
On Tuesday of this week, I was talking with a co-worker about a multi-ethnic ministry event we have coming up in November. Santes and I were discussing the session he is going to lead at the event and he made mention of a video, a TED Talk, he would like to show a clip from…
By: Nick Martineau on September 17, 2014
I can still vividly remember being 20 years old and leaving the country for the first time. I can remember walking off the plane in Entebbe, Uganda. There was a burning smell in the air that I didn’t recognize. I remember grabbing my bags, leaving the airport, and being swarmed by men wanting me to…
By: Dave Young on September 17, 2014
I would never have imagined an entire field of study for anthropological knowledge that focuses on senses and aesthetics. However, just because I’m naïve regarding such scholarly work doesn’t mean I don’t see its relevance, especially when entering into new cultures. When we go into a new culture we’re bringing our subjective perception of our…
