Thoughts from Harvard

"Increasingly, leaders want not just to run an organization effectively, but to change the surrounding system as well. Not just improve hospital performance, but improve overall health. Not just fix troubled schools, but change patterns in communities that lead children to under-perform. Not just fix a problem, like a broken financial system, but change the culture.

Such challenging goals require leaders to operate in areas where the pathways aren't paved, and the moves aren't already choreographed. This calls for not just great leadership, but advanced leadership.

Advanced leaders work in complex systems where authority is diffuse or divided. Many people are in charge of parts, but no one is responsible for the whole. Goals are unclear or conflicting. There are multiple stakeholders with divergent interests. Outcomes are notoriously hard to measure. Barriers to change appear everywhere. In short, it's like dancing when you can't see forward and your shoes are uncomfortable.

Still, advanced leaders dance to their own tune. They find opportunities for change in the cracks in the system, in the white space where nothing is written. Rather than try to change the establishment all at once, they fill gaps, create new alliances, and forge new pathways."

-Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business Review

New Media, New Future

"In my opinion, this is a new ecosystem emerging in media, between the so-called traditional media and the new media. And this new ecosystem is not based on competition and who is going to win, it's based on complementing each other. When our correspondents were banned, we had thousands of correspondents through these activists." Wadah Khanfar, director general of Al Jazeera, on interaction with social media. (New York Times)

What am I getting myself into here?

Seeking Unity.. .

Lord.. .

Unify my life. Bring together scholarship with practice. Consolidate my contexts with my vocation. Let my character and principles define my teaching, preaching, and organizing for both present challenges and future generations. Guide me to avoid the urgent and the good in order to invest in the timely and the best. Become present again my my heart, mind, and vision so that I may be both wholly me and wholly yours.

Amen