Simon Cox Blog: The Values-Driven Leader: A Mosaic of 3 Tiles

Wednesday, 21 March 2018

The Values-Driven Leader: A Mosaic of 3 Tiles

What can you do to keep your organization on mission?

Coca-Cola’s disastrous attempt to sell “New Coke”
Sony’s decision to diversify itself into relative obscurity
The West Wing, Seasons 5-7

What do these things have in common?

Each is an example of an organization that lost its way. Somewhere along the line— whether on account of market pressure (Coke), diluted identity (Sony), or the departure of a visionary (West Wing)—each of these trains ran way off its respective track.

Unfortunately, churches and non-profits are every bit as prone to wander as their business counterparts. In their award-winning book Mission Drift, Peter Greer and Chris Horst describe this as the “unspoken crisis” facing faith-based organizations today.

How do powerhouse brands like the ones I mentioned above so famously lose touch with their raison d’être? What causes churches and non-profits to slip their moorings and drift out to sea? What can you do to keep your organization on mission?

Organizational Drift Starts at the Top

So often, leaders come into their positions with a certain image of what the ideal leader should look like. For some, it’s the deeply convicted stalwart. For others, it’s the creative luminary. Still others aspire to be the courageous hard-charger.

Each of these images are great. But, when leaders exaggerate one over the others, they can quickly drift off course… and take the entire organization with them.

In short: if your values get out of whack, so will theirs.

Assembling a Leadership Mosaic

For Christians, no monolithic model of leadership will do.

We worship a God whose redemptive leadership takes shape in manifold ways throughout Scripture. He is our archetype—the one in whose image we’re made ...