Machine Gun Mission

I watched ‘Machine Gun Preacher’ the other night.  Gerard Butler was outstanding in the movie.

It’s the story of Sam Childers, the real-life machine gun preacher who still works in the Sudan.  This guy had a rough background to say the least.  After getting out of prison he ‘found Jesus ‘and then started a church for outcasts (like he was) in Pennsylvania.  At one point he was moved to help on a ‘missions trip’ to Africa and there became exposed to the unspeakable violence of child-soldiers & Joseph Kony’s Lords’ Resistance Army.  That was a tipping point that led him to a single-minded campaign to build an orphanage and further to defend that orphanage from Kony’s LRA soldiers by use of force and by leading armed rescue missions directly into LRA territory (his own ‘get it done with a gun’ history still influences him).

The movie affected me emotionally like only one other movie in my life – Kramer vs. Kramer (waaaay back in the late 70’s!).  I was newly married when I watched Kramer vs. Kramer and it made me angry how couples could choose to marry, choose to have kids and then so irresponsibly and acrimoniously tear it all apart.

Machine Gun Preacher did the same emotional number on me but with obviously different issues at play:

·         It makes me angry that Joseph Kony and so many other characters like him get away with the ego-centered violence that they do.  It’s such a messed up world out there.

·         It makes me angry that we in the world so easily keep our distance from getting engaged in the messiness of evil.  Assad and Syria is a current example of the world (READ: the UN) pontificating a moral stand but basically doing nothing of true import to end the conflict.

·         It makes me angry and sad that I am also guilty of seeing what is wrong out there, articulating a moral opinion about what is awry, and then hope someone else will take action while I go on my way, untouched and untouching.

Got me thinking about being a leader who considers the benefits of Sam’s ‘Machine Gun Mission’ approach for what I lead and who I lead.

Sam Childers (born 1962) is a former gang biker who now dedicates his life and resources to rescue children in the war zone of South Sudan. Childers and his wife Lynn founded and operate Angels of East Africa, the Children's Village Orphanage in Nimule, South Sudan, where they currently have more than 300 children in their care. (Wikipedia)

Sam would be chided for his approach by most international development professionals.  I am among those who say his approach was very ego-centric.  However I am not here to argue for or against his developmental philosophy or his use of guns, but to draw some lessons from his actions; because he at least accomplished something versus doing nothing.  Here are those thoughts:

1.       His approach was radical, but he DID something.  How many times do we seek the magic bullet, the perfect approach, the comprehensive ‘game-changer ‘plan?  I find the more we do that, the greater the likelihood we rationalize, analyze and even spiritualize our way out of action.  This world, our cities and neighbourhoods, are highways littered with the remains of good intentions.

2.       He did not change a system to save everyone, but he did save some.  Forget about your grand plans to change the world.  You can’t.  But you can impact someone, something, somewhere.  Bishop Oscar Romero was martyred because of his tireless advocacy for the poor in El Salvador; cut down before he could accomplish all he wanted.  In his eulogy, Bishop Ken Untener said: 

It helps, now and then; to step back and take the long view....we accomplish in a lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.  We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing this.  This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.  It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lords grace to enter and do the rest.  We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the worker.  We are workers, not Master Builders; ministers, not messiahs.  We are prophets of a future not our own.” 

3.       His work wasn’t perfect – but it worked.  Just because our work may not fit a known system or model of good development, or be part of the latest trend does not mean it isn’t worthwhile.  I want to remind us that our models are not the mission.  Professional associations, academic institutions, businesses, relief and development agencies, churches etc. have to protect themselves from becoming so invested in a model that they lose sight of the desired outcome.  If your model isn’t producing what’s at the heart of your mission, it seems obvious to me that you need to re-examine what you are doing!  Dr Phil’s question is a great one to apply to our particular mission strategies: “How’s that working for you”?

4.      WARNING: His ego almost became his mission.  Sam’s initial motivation was pure, innocent, and yes, ill-informed.  But overall it was a good mission.  However, his mission ran into trouble when when his ego and identity became so wrapped up in the cause that he lost sight of the purpose.  IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU – IT’S ABOUT THE MISSION.  Sam foolishly risked his finances and ran roughshod over his closest relationships – signs he was losing mission-focus.  How much ego vs. mission (to benefit the investor) has been involved in Wall Street financial deals that have melted down in the past few years?  How many ministries have focused on the leader and not the people?  How many non-profits have been started which now serve the leadership and the donors but not the poor? This is a good reason to never go it alone on any mission.  Who is your team and how are they speaking into not only the process, but into YOU as the leader?

Could it be that the approach you are taking right now is no longer prospering you or your mission?  Could it be you need a more simple yet radical, machine-gun mission approach?

I have named this blog the ‘Nomadic Leader’ for a reason.  Leaders in our world and in our organizations need to be ones who do not settle too long in one place, in one strategy, in one way of thinking.  There are times when you have to look around, see that the place you are in is no longer ‘feeding your tribe’ and prepare to move on.

Perhaps it’s time to pull up stakes, roll up the tent and seek a new context or approach so that your mission will make its intended impact. 

If it’s not you, then who?  If not now, then when?

Harv Matchullis

www.visiontracks.ca

Track Your Organizations' Impulses

 

If you like where you are; if your organization is all about itself and maintaining stability & control at the centre, don’t read any further.  I won’t convince you to change.  You are the person who tunes the radio to their favorite station and then pulls the dial off the radio so it can never be changed. 

Enjoy your music.

But if there is even a hint of impulse toward serving someone or some purpose outside the space your building and people occupy, keep reading. 

Businesses often state they are about innovation for the ‘marketplace’.  Churches say they are about the ‘mission’.  Retailers focus on the ‘customer’.  Non-profits express their existence is for the ‘client’ or a broader social purpose.  Most state their organizational impulse is for a purpose or people beyond themselves.  Wonderful. 

However, if your impulse is truly beyond yourself, do your current organizational structures and processes reinforce & support  that?

Within our North American culture we pride ourselves on our ability to change with the times.  We believe we are innovative and flexible enough to adjust to the needs of our customer or target audience. Yet in the business world the field is littered with once-great, well known companies who have talked the talk but could not take the walk.  Blockbuster, Eastman Kodak, Sears and Yahoo are but a few of the big-name examples of companies with commitments to change but who did not adapt well.  I can identify a few non-profits who started with the most altruistic and noble of impulses, but as they grew in size they grew in complexity and along with it found they became bloated or myopic, and inevitably off course.

Much of the reason for this is that with time and success, people in groups, whether as businesses or non-profits, think less and less about the further development of ways to serve their original ‘outward’ impulses, and more about how to preserve what they have.  (By the way, that’s a natural tendency of all human beings).  They will walk and talk right up to the edges of change, but taking the step over into real change is rare.  Leadership talks about innovation in order to keep serving the needs of the person or customer, but leaderships' walk usually reinforces it’s about keeping the business or the organizations' status quo.  When you see a company driven by stock price over principle, or a non-profit influenced more by its donor-base than the needs of the people it serves, you have an indication of what I mean.  No one likes hearing this because we all live in the illusion that we are change-agents.  Our culture regularly streams out the message of change, but our collective rhetoric proves we no longer get the point.  Talk about change has become a cheap and easy way to maintain leadership currency.

But true leadership is about identifying and declaring current reality in light of where you want to go and then being bold enough to address the gap.

Conduct a brief audit of your own organization:

·         How do we expend our primary personnel resources?

·         What does our budget indicate to an outsider as our priority areas?

·         Where do most of our activities take place and what does that say about who and how we serve?

·         What gets celebrated in our organization and what does that indicate about what we value?

·         What are the top 3-4 areas where leadership expends their energy?  How does that define the core ‘impulses’ of our organization?

(Would you be bold enough to use these questions as a 360 of your organization?)

If the assessment reveals a significant gap, let me propose a solution:

An ongoing perpetual strategy for maintaining focus on your core impulses is to identify and release the people within your organization who already have the capacity for reflection, ingenuity and innovation.  I can tell you right now that there are people within your organization who are connected to your original impulses and who think about it...a lot.  How are they heard?  Is there a place for them?  They often exist a little ‘in orbit’ around the hairball of your organizational inertia.  Sometimes you might feel they work for you and against you all at the same time.  They ask too many questions.  They might even be complainers.  Their ideas are just a little too off the wall.  “Can’t they ever just put their nose to the grindstone and do the job”??

Yet they are a key to ensuring that you make whatever changes are needed to stay true to your original organizational impulse.  Rarely do the answers to needed change & innovation come from corporate strategy sessions.  Rather, they come from within individuals who are not only set free by the organization to think innovatively, but who carry within themselves the capacities for ingenuity. What you need to do as a leader is find a way to let them be themselves to examine, criticise, dream and innovate.  Come into their space once in a while and hear what they have to say.  Spin them off in orbit on a retreat, or in specialized task groups.  Ground them in the organizations’ core impulse, and then release them to discover how to stay true to that.  Feed them with the freedom of thought and innovation towards a grounded purpose.

 

The Jesuits, of all organizations, have the most to say to all of us about releasing ingenuity.  They were/are one of the most decentralized yet focused organizations on earth.  (You can read in detail about their founding principles and extremely dispersed organizational philosophy in a book by Chris Lowney, a former Jesuit himself who worked in the banking and non-profit industries.  His book is “Heroic Leadership”, 2003, by Loyola Press).  For them, ingenuity is the readiness to ‘cross the world’ at a moments’ notice in pursuit of a good opportunity.  It is the willingness to work without a script and the creative embrace of new ideas.  It is not achieved merely by developing the skills leadership pundits always champion for innovation:  imagination, adaptability, creativity, flexibility etc.  Rather, it is about adopting the demeanour, attitudes and worldview that make creativity and adaptation possible.  What is that stance? It is an “optimistic view of the world thoroughly shot through with (divine) love. Ingenuity blossoms when the personal freedom to pursue opportunities is linked to a profound trust and optimism that the world presents plenty of them.  Imagination, creativity, adaptability and rapid response become the keys for finding and unlocking these opportunities” (pg 128 – Heroic Leadership).

Ingenuity is NOT however the blind pursuit of anything new and creative.  It is in pursuit of a broader purpose or a core impulse that ingenuity takes on meaning.  The Jesuits had a purpose to ‘help souls’ and left it up to the ingenuity of their people to make that happen.  What resulted was a global kaleidoscope of endeavours, but all in pursuit of this purpose.

Your organization may grow to get involved in many things, but do they serve the core impulse of why you exist?  Reject the impulse of inertia.   As the leader, restate your organizations’ core impulse and release the ingenuity of your people to help you regain that ground and innovate your way back (or forward) towards the accomplishment of your primary purpose for existence.

Harv Matchullis