LEADERS FOCUS ON THE FUTURE

Being forward-looking is what differentiates leaders from other credible people. While credibility is the foundation, the capacity to paint an uplifting and ennobling picture of the future is that special something that truly sets leaders apart. Leaders must be able to gaze across the horizon of time and imagine that greater things are ahead. They must foresee something out there, vague as it might appear from the distance that others do not. They must imagine that extraordinary feats are possible or that the ordinary can be transformed into something noble.

The consensus among Nanus, Drucker, Collins and Porras, and Hamel is that little can happen without vision. All enterprises or projects, big and small, begin in the mind’s eye.

They begin with imagination and with the belief that what is merely an image can one day be made real. Without a clear view of the potential future, constituents will be as nervous as tourists driving an unfamiliar mountain road in the fog. While the evidence is abundantly clear that constituents need and expect leaders to have a clear vision for the future, there’s been a disturbing trend among some executives in the most senior ranks of large institutions. More than one could be heard uttering a phrase like “Visibility is limited” and then following it by some excuse for why they can’t articulate where their organizations are headed. Well, excuse me. If you’re not sure where you’re headed, O Captain of the Ship, then let me the hell off. Granted, times are uncertain. Granted, you can’t predict your company’s stock price tomorrow. But there’s absolutely no excuse for abdicating your responsibility for clearly and passionately articulating your collective destination. Leaders must also engage their constituents in a dialogue about the future. When we can clearly see how we fit into the image of the future, we’re more inclined to want to go there. It’s like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. It’s a lot easier when we can see the picture on the top of the box. Leaders must be able to paint that picture.

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FUNCTIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Function of the Holy Spirit. This list of the 70 Functions of the Holy Spirit come from her research. He leads and directs. (Matthew 4:1; Mark 1:12; Luke 2:27; 4:1; Acts 8:29; Romans 8:14) The Holy Spirit speaks – in, to and through. (Matthew 10:20; Acts 1:16; 2:4; 13:2; 28:25; Hebrews 3:7) He gives power to cast out devils. (Matthew 12:28) He releases power. (Luke 4:14) The Holy Spirit anoints. (Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38) The Holy Spirit “comes upon” or “falls on”. (Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 2:25; 3:22; 4:18; John 1:32,33; Acts 10:44; 11:15) He baptizes and fills. (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 1:15,41,67; 3:16, 4:1; John 1:33; Acts 1:4-5; 2:4; 4:8,31; 6:3,5; 7:55; 10:47; 11:24; 13:9,52; 1 Corinthians 12:12) He gives new birth. (John 3:5,8) He leads into worship. (John 4:23) He flows like a river from the spirit man. (John 7:38-39) He ministers truth. (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13) He dwells in people. (John 14:

SETTING A DIRECTION VS PLANNING AND BUDGETING

Since the function of leadership is to produce change, setting the direction of that change is fundamental to leadership. Setting direction is never the same as planning or even long-term planning, although people often confuse the two. Planning is a management process, deductive in nature and designed to produce orderly results, not change. Setting a direction is more inductive. Leaders gather a broad range of data and look for patterns, relationships, and linkages that help explain things. What’s more, the direction-setting aspect of leadership does not produce plans; it creates vision and strategies. These describe a business, technology, or corporate culture in terms of what it should become over the long term and articulate a feasible way of achieving this goal. Most discussions of vision have a tendency to degenerate into the mystical. The implication is that a vision is something mysterious that mere mortals, even talented ones, could never hope to have. But developing

ALIGNING PEOPLE VS ORGANIZING AND STAFFING

A central feature of modern organizations is interdependence, where no one has complete autonomy, where most employees are tied to many others by their work, technology, management systems, and hierarchy. These linkages present a special challenge when organizations attempt to change. Unless many individuals line up and move together in the same direction, people will tend to fall all over one another. To executives who are overeducated in management and undereducated in leadership, the idea of getting people moving in the same direction appears to be an organizational problem. What executives need to do, however, is not organize people but align them. Managers “organize” to create human systems that can implement plans as precisely and efficiently as possible. Typically, this requires a number of potentially complex decisions. A company must choose a structure of jobs and reporting relationships, staff it with individuals suited to the jobs, provide training for those who need it,

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