Leadership Lessons from Legacy
“Only by knowing yourself can you become an effective leader”
With their debut game on September 16, 1905, the All Blacks, then "The Originals", are easily the most successful sports team in history. Over the past 110 years, they won 77% of their tests (games). Regardless of your sports affinity, this is a legacy anyone can and should appreciate.
James Kerr is a European business consultant who helps teams and organizations define, design, and deliver effective change in leadership to improve the overall success of their organization. His book, Legacy, quickly added bestselling author to his title.
It is week 28 of 52 in the Tim Challies 2020 reading challenge, and the task was to read a book with a person on the cover. James Kerr's Legacy has a picture of an All Black carrying the footie (ball) and so it meets the criteria!
In this extremely readable book, Kerr identifies 15 lessons in leadership from the All Blacks legacy.
I give this book 4.5 out of 5 stars for readability, organization, applicability, and overall genuinely good advice! Minus a half star simply since some points are clearly only applicable to the sports arena, however, Kerr unsuccessfully attempts large leaps to apply them to the business and corporate world.
Overall, if you are a part of any sort of team, business, organization, sport, or even ministry team, this book will be an excellent undertaking to stimulate critical reflection and thought. The following are several key highlights that I have taken from the book and what I hope to apply to my own team context.
Successful Character Starts with Humility
"Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done" (p. 2).
After every test match, the All Blacks debrief, and then something wild happens. They clean their locker room. They call it sweeping the shed.
Regardless of win or lose, home or away, the All Blacks, including the most senior players, clean the locker room. This is apart of their ritual as a team. Their reasoning?
Humility.
"Successful leaders balance pride with humility: absolute pride in performance; total humility before the magnitude of the task" (p. 3-4).
I will never forget the day my boss', boss', boss came to visit us a work. We were about to display what we had been working on and were shoveling a quick meal down before heading out the door. As I was finishing my plate I looked up and was shocked by what I was witnessing.
The top dog boss was taking out the trash.
This was the job of new people to the organization, certainly not the boss! But he set the tone then and there that no one was too big to do the small things.
"Collective character is vital to success. Focus on getting the culture right; the results will follow" (p. 10)
Always Analyze and Critique your Team
"When you're on top of your game, change your game" (p. 31).
If you don't analyze and critique your team healthily and regularly than you are setting yourself up for failure.
The old mantra, if it isn't broke don't fix it, doesn't always apply to teams. Part of cultivating a culture of humility is being able to conduct self-analysis, even when everything appears to be going your way.
One of my preaching mentors is Dr. Mark Dever of Capitol Hill Baptist Church. I love Mark's passion for the word and ability to communicate with precision and clarity. However, even more so, I love Mark's humility.
Every Sunday, Mark invites students, visitors, seminarians, professors, and other theologically minded individuals to come over to his house, share some coffee, and critique his message. This serves as a further opportunity for him to provide mentorship, while at the same time getting real-time honest feedback on his sermon.
But analysis and critiques should only lead to change when several factors have been considered.
"Four Stages for Organizational Change: A Case for Change; A Compelling Picture of the Future; A Sustained Capability to Change; A Credible Plan to Execute" (p. 22)
This is nothing incredibly new, but Kerr notes it has been readily accepted and utilized by the All Blacks and is part of their success.
Utilize the 1% Rule Often
"'The whole principle,' Brailsford explains to the BBC, 'came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and improved it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put it all together." (p. 66)
Brailsford is a British cycling coach. I found this sidebar comment from Kerr pointed as it breaks down mastery of an individual craft.
Too often we get stuck in thinking about how to make significant strides or improvements over a short period. Brailsford and the All Blacks just look for the 1%.
How can we improve our process by 1%? How can I become 1% more efficient at email? How can I give 1% more of my income? How can my church reach 1% of our sphere of influence?
The 1% question attacks every aspect within realistic attainable goals that show a significant change in the long run. But to rightly utilize the 1% rule requires silence and listening.
"The first stage of learning is silence; the second stage is listening" (p.110).
Sometimes organizational leaders want to answer questions that no one is asking and solve problems that no one is having. Silence and listening are humble steps to addressing real aspects requiring change.
Put your Purpose in Front of you; Everyday
"If you want higher performance, begin with a higher purpose" (p. 39).
The purpose is vital whether you are a rugby team or a church ministry team.
Kerr paints the hard reality, "Every day we go to work, every meeting that bores us, everything we do just for money or out of obligation, all the time we kill, we are giving our life for it. So it better be worthwhile" (p. 138-139).
As the church, we have the greatest purpose of all. To believe, live, and proclaim the goodnews of Jesus Christ so people might have eternal life! Ours is an everlasting, all or nothing, monumental purpose!
But we are prone to wander, prone to leave the God I love.
We need our purpose always before us to drive and direct our daily lives.
One of Kerr's chapters starts with this little line, "Find something you would die for and give your life to it" (p. 132)
I would like to rephrase that for the Christian.
"Fix yourself on the one who died for you and give your life to him!"
If you are not going to read this book, but want to take one thing away, take the 1% challenge with a Christian twist.
What can you do tomorrow to surrender 1% more to Christ? Consider the contexts of Sacrifice, Obedience, Love, and Discipleship. What is does surrendering 1% more to Christ look like tomorrow?
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John Owen came from Welsh descent, was educated at Queens College, and became a renowned Puritan theologian, Oxford professor, and passionate pastor who lived from 1616 to 1683. In 1647, he wrote the exhaustive treatise The Death of Death defending Limited or Definite Atonement against the Arminian view of Universal Atonement or Unlimited Atonement.