In their new book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, authors Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer talk about what motivates employees. In a Harvard Business School article, Carmen Nobel uses their book to talk about small wins versus major breakthroughs: But fortunately, seemingly minor victories turned out to be nearly as effective as major breakthroughs when it came to enhancing employees' inner work lives and, therefore, inducing their passion and creativity. The book refers to these as "small wins." "We found that 28 percent of small events of all kinds had a major impact on inner work life," Amabile says. "This is good news! Big breakthroughs at work are really rare. But small wins are something people can experience pretty regularly if the work is chunked down to manageable pieces. This suggests that you really do have to sweat the small…
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Carl Medearis said something in a recent sermon at Mountainview that grabbed my attention. I'll paraphrase: Sometimes the ornaments obscure the Christmas tree. The ornaments may be pretty, sentimental, or traditional but they are not the tree. Applying this to church (and perhaps Christianity in general), the tree is Jesus. Yet we often allow our traditions (the ornaments) to obscure the tree. Even today's innovations may inadvertently draw attention away from the tree they are supposed to accent. Ornaments have meaning, even value. They represent family and memories and love. But they are not the tree. If all the ornaments were taken away, would we be satisfied with just the tree?
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Inscribed on a plaque at the Yokefellow Institute in Richmond, Indiana, is this quotation by Elton Trueblood: "Jesus Christ can be accepted; he can be rejected; he cannot reasonably be ignored." "Reasonably ignored." I found that to be an interesting phrase. If something is reasonable, it has enough merit to warrant further exploration, if not belief. To be unreasonable is to be beyond the boundaries of credibility. Is Jesus "reasonably ignored" today? Or is it more likely that he is "unreasonably ignored" because what many people think they know about Jesus is actually beyond the boundaries of credibility? Reminds me of Phillip Yancey's book, "The Jesus I Never Knew." The Jesus we think we know may not actually be the real Jesus. Thoughts?
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One of the points Patrick Lencioni made during his Leadership Summit talk was this: Many churches suffer from terminal niceness. In other words, we allow problems to continue because we don't want to cause ripples. A critical spirit is allowed to bleed onto innocent bystanders because we don't want to hurt anyone feelings. Jesus calls us to be kind; did he also say nice?
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