My final reflections:
11. The Advantage (business consultant and best-selling author Patrick Lencioni).
Building a healthy organisation is the single greatest competitive advantage. There are two requirements for organisational success: (1) be smart - strategy, marketing, finance, technology and 2) be healthy - minimal politics and confusion, high morale and productivity, low turnover. Most companies spend 80% of their time on #1.
Four Disciplines to Master for Building Healthy Organisations:
a. Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team. Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, Results.
b. Create Clarity. This is not done through a mission statement! You must answer 6 critical questions: Why do we exist (mission – this should inform your decisions)? How do we behave (values)? What do we do? How do we succeed (strategy)? What is most important, right now? Who must do what?
c. Over communicate clarity – people need to hear things 7 times before it sinks it.
d. Reinforce clarity. Organisational health should be a standard.
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12. The Hope of the World (Bill Hybels).
For Bill … the church has been (1) hopeless, (2) hopeful, and now he sees it as (3) the hope of the world – because it has been entrusted with the Gospel, which is the only thing that can change a human heart, both now and for eternity.
It's one thing to see a vision; it is another thing to be seized by one. Vision makes the present experience indefensible. We must not stay here. We must go there. Without vision, people settle for a life of lesser purpose (Prov.29:18).
If the local church really is the hope of the world then every member matters. We need them to discover their gifts then step up and serve. We have to see every church reach its redemptive potential.
Will the local church be able to sustain itself until the end of time? Many huge empires and companies are gone today. Who would have thought? Jesus himself is building and sustaining His church. It is the only thing he is doing. How can we be so busy building our own thing when Jesus calls us to build his church along with him?
P.S. Other speakers included Condalezza Rice, Pranetha Timothy (Director of Aftercare, International Justice Mission, Chennai, India), Mario Vega (pastor of a 100,000 member church in El Salvador), Marc Kielburger (a Rhodes scholar with a law degree from Oxford now involved with Free the Children and Me to We), and Sheryl Wudunn (author of Half the Sky and sex-trafficking activist), as well as artists Michael Gunger and Kevin Olusola.