August Top 10

1. 6 Ways Your Brain Tries To Kill Your Ideas And How To Fight Them
These common excuses for stalled creativity hit close to home, but at their core, they're pretty weak.

2. 3 Types of Dysfunctional Teams And How to Fix Them
Is your workplace a battlefield, a love-in, or does it barely function? Leaders can save these teams by instilling a healthy community.

3. 5 Factors That Separate Great Teams From Good Ones
What traits do winning teams like the German 2014 World Cup champs, or Facebook's execs have in common?  How does your team compare?

4. 70% Of Your Time At Work Is Wasted--How To Change That
Streamline time-sucks, like email, meetings and task-running, to get your time back.

5. How to Spend the First 10 Minutes of Your Day
What's the first thing you do when you get to your desk? Check email and listen to voicemails? This is the worst way to start the workday. Instead of automatically going into reactive mode and focusing on other people's priorities, begin your day with a brief planning session about what you need to get done. 

6. How to Manage Culture During a Pivot
Considering a shift in your strategy? Here's a quick primer on how to make sure your organization makes it with you.

7. The People Have Spoken: It's Time To Start Trusting Your Employees More
There are steps you can take to steer employees back from disengagement, but it takes a genuine commitment from the top.

8. How To Figure Out Your Most Productive Time Of Day
When your days already feel jam-packed, how can you afford to experiment with productivity? Get to the bottom of time-wasting habits.

9. Three Ways to Actually Engage Employees
If you can increase the level of engagement in your organization, you'll likely see the productivity of your workforce rise, too. And almost any organization can foster greater engagement if leaders: talk about the company’s impact, reward inspirational leadership, and measure employee advocacy.

10. Do You Own Your Failures More Than Your Successes?
Do you own your failures? And if you own your failures, and not your accomplishments, why? Does God want you to disregard the memory of the things you’ve done well?

July Top 10

1. 4 Things Employees Need to Boost Productivity
A study of 19,000 employees from a wide range of industries reveal that if your company meets just one of these core needs your employees will be more engaged, productive, and bring in more money. But if you meet all four...

2. 5 Powerful SEO and Content Marketing Techniques that Took My Website to 320k Visitors Per Month
I was looking at the traffic for my swimming pool website today and a smile came to my face as I saw we had annihilated our previous traffic records for a single month by reaching over 320,000 visitors to the site during the month of June. As I sat and pondered these numbers, I was brought back to thinking about the different ways we were able to achieve this incredible growth, and what exactly this means for other businesses looking to achieve the same.

3. How To Know When It's Time To Fire Someone
Here's how to figure out if your employees are worth giving a second chance.

4. Bye-Bye Brainteasers: 9 Interview Questions You Actually Should Ask Candidates
When you're interviewing people to join your team, you have to get creative somehow. There's only so much that questions like "What was the last book you read?" and "Where do you see yourself in five years?" reveal about who your candidates truly are as professionals and as people.  To help give you some ideas for the next time you're screening candidates, here are nine interview questions you should ask.

5. How to Override Your Default Reactions in Tough Moments
“It’s 9:00am, you’re across the table from a colleague who doesn’t like you or the changes you’re proposing, she’s pushing all your hot-buttons and resisting your efforts to get her to support the change. What’s your typical reaction?”

6. 3 Simple Ways To Tell A Better Brand Story
Brand storytelling is complex. A brand story evolves over time and is a result of doing many things well. But there are still opportunities to start telling a better story in the short term.  Here are three things you can do today to improve your brand story.

7. 9 Work Habits You Need to Stop Today
Author Tim Ferriss suggests some common bad habits you should definitely add to your not-to-do list.

8. 3 Questions Executives Should Ask Front-Line Workers
The higher up you go in an organization, the harder it is to stay in touch with what’s really happening on the front lines.  And the bad news—if you hear it at all—is presented only in the best possible light.  How do you get the real truth about what’s happening out in the field?  How do you stay connected to all corners of your organization?  I have found that three simple questions, asked with the intent to learn, can help you stay in touch with reality and be a better leader.

9. Ready, Aim, Fire
Take the ready, aim, fire diagnostic to yourself and your team. Talk about it for each leader, and/or for the team as a whole. Find where you, the team, or the organization has a weakness in these areas, and address it, either through people or processes. That way, your mission won't be unprepared to win, too scattered to know who it is, or too paralyzed to move

10. How To Get More Done By Having Less To Do
If your life feels like a constant game of tug-of-war, then it's time to pare your existence down to its essentials.

June Top 10

1.  Reformed Workaholic On How to Work Smarter
Instead of fighting the workaholic spirit, make a plan to work smarter.

2. Stress Isn’t a Threat, It’s a Signal to Change
Is stress impairing your performance at work and compromising your relationships? Changing the way you think about stress can help you turn stress into an ally and use it to improve mental agility and work performance; a report in the Journal of Experimental Psychology showed that physiological and cognitive benefits result from thinking of stress as “functional and adaptive” rather than a signifier of “threat.”

3. 5 Skills of Really Amazing Listeners
Everyone wants to be heard. But not everyone knows how to truly listen. Here's how amazing listeners use those odd things on the sides of their heads.

4. 5 Ways To Make Fewer Decisions
Make fewer decisions, so you can focus on the ones that matter.

5. Why 'Underpromise and Overdeliver' Is Terrible Advice
According to new research, there's no payoff in going above and beyond.

6. 5 Ways to Focus Your Mind and Maximize Productivity
It only takes a few distractions to eat up half of your workday. Here are 5 ways to focus.

7. The Best Hires Are Right Under Your Nose--Use This System to Never Miss Them Again
Early in your company's life, you can't afford to waste time or effort on chasing the wrong people. Go the extra mile with these tips for being your own headhunter.

8. 8 Steps to Interview Anyone for Any Job
Here's how to conduct a job interview that allows you to hire the best people--versus just the best people you know.

9. How To Learn To Delegate Without Giving Up All Your Control
You aren't helping anyone when you try to do everything yourself. Giving up control can feel scary, but it's easier if you create a good system.

10. Pick One Thing
The secret of all great companies (big and small) is that they choose. They understand how they create value and they do it on purpose, with intention.
 

Focusing On The Few

“It all started by Jesus calling a few men to follow him. This revealed immediately the direction His evangelistic strategy would take. His concern was not for programs to reach the multitudes, but with men whom the multitudes, but with men whom the multitudes would follow. Remarkable as it may seem, Jesus started to gather these men before He ever organized an evangelistic campaign or even preached a sermon in public. Men were to be His method of winning the world to God. ”

— Robert E. Coleman

A couple of years ago, we were meeting with some young men at our offices.  They were there for a marketing related project, but clearly trying to walk the missional road more than a path to worldly success.  Before they left they slid a book, “The Master Plan for Evangelism“, across the table.  You could tell that it was a pearl of great price for them.

After 30 years on this journey, I have become jaded about many things; the political system, the church, faith-based leaders, and even the latest and greatest book about a new evangelistic method.  While I completely trusted the sincerity of these guys, I had a sort of “good for you” but “not for me” response in my heart.  I put it in the stack of books that I intend to read when I get the time (that I likely never will).  Meaning… it wasn’t going to get read.

Last week I was cleaning a pile of stuff of the dining room table and I saw another copy of that book mixed in with the crayolas and coloring books.  One of the other “elders” of our home church dropped it by for a study we were doing.  Now, I didn’t really have a choice.  Sunday night, we plowed through chapter one.

Coleman makes a case for evangelism based wholly on what Jesus did.  He doesn’t do much referencing of the Law.  Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law and he was here to reconcile mankind to their Father… to reestablish sonship and advance the Kingdom.  His incontrovertible plan can be summed up in some of the first chapter sub-headings:

• Men Were His Method
• Men Willing to Learn
• Concentrated on a Few

It reminds me of the 1980 hockey team.  To turn the tide and produce maybe the most unlikely upset in sports history, something incredibly unorthodox was required.  Coach Herb Brooks defied the U.S. Olympic Committee and virtually all conventional wisdom.  He didn’t choose many of the superstars of the sport, but the essential building blocks with the ability to be conformed to a system he knew would win.  And he did.

Jesus intended something unconventional as well.  Rather than using an established model to raise a multitude, He went a different way.  Rather than utilizing all the likely players of his day, He focused on a few un-likelies.  He had a clear plan and laser focus.

“You can do many things, but invest in only a few.

You can know many people, but invest in only a few.”

If you want to change the world you need a plan.  No better place to get a plan than the Master.  Want to accomplish big things?  Focus on a few… the right few.

• Who are you being mentored by?
• Who are you mentoring?
• Does your leadership focus on a few or the multitude?
• How does the way you measure your success intend that result?

May Top 10

1. Conservation of Energy

Have you noticed this about Jesus’ way?  Intensity is no doubt a weapon in His arsenal.  It wasn’t a soft and passive man that braided a whip from rawhide and created pandemonium in the synagogue, turning tables and sending animals fleeing and money flying (Matthew 21:12). But intensity wasn’t His only weapon. It’s amazing how often He slips away to rest, heal, be alone, be restored (Mark 1:35).  It’s amazing how often He leaves the scene with need at His doorstep, leaving people wanting.

2. From Purpose to Impact

What creates the greatest leaders and companies? Each of them operates from a slightly different set of assumptions about the world, their industry, what can or can’t be done. That individual perspective allows them to create great value and have significant impact. They all operate with a unique leadership purpose. To be a truly effective leader, you must do the same. Clarify your purpose, and put it to work.

3. Great Branding Is Invisible

The thumpf of a BMW's door closing, the muted click of calculator buttons, a human on the phone. It hooks you in.

4. Surprising Things You Never Considered About Your Company's Reputation

You probably know that a good reputation can work to your business's advantage, but here's a few factors you might not have considered.

5. How Do I Avoid Being A Micromanager?

You need to make sure things get accomplished but you don't want to be the boss that everyone hates--the dreaded micromanager. Leadership coach Lolly Daskal and Psychologist Art Markman offer their advice in how to balance this tricky situation.

6. Why Work-Life Integration Trumps Work-Life Balance

One CEO makes the case for why integrating work into your life--and vice versa--is the future of the working world.

7. Are You Destined to Be a Great Leader?

Some people just have that "it" factor. Here are five things every born leader does every day.

8. 7 Things Great Leaders Always Do (But Mere Managers Always Fear)

Are you a great leader or just a mere manager? Here's how to tell the difference.

9. The Art Of The Pivot: 6 Ways To Make A Big Change

How do you reinvent your company or yourself without dinging your credibility? Here are the moves that make up a successful pivot.

10. Blogging Didn’t Save My Business. Neither Did Content Marketing.

From now until the end of the internet (and well beyond that), the businesses that see themselves as teachers and problem solvers, and then take the time to tell the world what they know, are going to earn the most trust and ultimately the most business.