Category: Leadershipstrategy

Fifty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. issued his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” responding to local clergy who felt King and others were moving too quickly, too disruptively in advancing civil rights. To mark the occasion, IVP has published Ed Gilbreath’s ebook short Remembering Birmingham, which puts King’s letter in historical context and offers reflections on its significance then and now.
Continue reading “Remembering Birmingham”

Coming up with good, new ideas is the hardest thing I do. Some people seem to have a hundred ideas a day. Often they are entrepreneurs driving their people nuts with their lack of focus, and usually most of their ideas are bad. But if one percent are good, that’s one good idea a day–a very impressive output!

What about the rest of us? How can we get creative?
Continue reading “Thaw Out Your Brain”

Back in April 2008 I mused on Steve Jobs’s leadership style (brilliant micromanager) and how Apple has benefited from that. Yet making the company so dependent on one (very talented) person has actually made the company more vulnerable.

With news that Jobs had to give up his day-to-day duties on doctor’s orders, Wall Street seems to agree. Shares of Apple have dropped about 5 percent since the word got out about his health a week ago.

Why didn’t Wall Street factor in Apple’s inordinate dependence on Jobs during the last five years’ run up in the value of Apple stock? Why do they just recognize this vulnerability now? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the sad but shocking truth that I must now convey to you is this: Wall Street is shortsighted.

For most people, no matter how exciting the change is, the big meaning of change is loss. I once heard a pastor tell how he implemented needed changes. His church had become calcified and stuck in its ways. It needed to break out of its doldrums. But there was resistance, of course. How did he move forward?
Continue reading “Honoring the Past to Reach the Future”