Who would have guessed 12 months ago that our lives would look so different today?
As we all begin rebuilding our lives and organizations post-pandemic, it might encourage you to allow two simple words to help guide creating your new normal: Fail Harder.
As Facebook exploded, founder Mark Zuckerberg realized he had to release more and more of the work to web programmers and developers. He couldn't do it all by himself.
Sometimes details fell through the cracks. Mistakes happened. And that's okay.
Zuckerberg knew that effective leaders cannot micro-manage people. You must give them freedom and margin to hit the wall and learn.
Fail Harder. That's his mantra at Facebook. Move fast and break things. The same is true for you: your effectiveness at rebuilding your organization post-pandemic will INCREASE as the load on your plate DECREASES. For leaders, this means enabling more and more people.
The start-from-scratch labor of love that my wife and I began a few years ago, Life Church, has grown to be one of the fastest-growing churches in Michigan. As the founding pastor, my temptation is to try doing everything in the church. This would only lead to a bottleneck and stunt our organization’s growth.
What I have been learning as we bust through growth barriers is that as the leader I can have either control or growth, but I can’t have both. When I let go of control, our church experiences more growth!
I believe that this post-pandemic season will lead us all into a stronger future. We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.
As you release things in your organization that you’ve held onto tightly, you also unleash mistakes. And that's okay. Comedians get better and better every time they bomb on stage. There is no better teacher than making a mistake.
Wisdom is simply knowledge plus scars. We cannot microwave leaders. You have to give your team time to make mistakes. Crock-pots cook s-l-o-w-l-y.
Thomas Edison famously said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Failure is the incubator of leadership. Failure says that we get to try another direction in solving this problem. Leadership is formed when we choose to fail harder.
Whatever happened before is now in the past. Following Christ is like an improv scene: you always get to start fresh. Dream big. Stand back up and stretch your faith further. That’s the beauty of following Christ.
Your vision is never too big for God. He forgives, He authors second acts, and He releases you from your past (see Romans 8:1).
Now be careful; don’t waste this fresh page.
Don’t be obligated to ordinary. No one will ever follow you down the street if you’re carrying a banner that says, “Onward toward mediocrity.”
Instead, take risks. Paint a big picture of what could be and should be. And then do it.
