The Year Without Pants: 12 Thoughts on Leading Great Teams

I just finished the book The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work. The first thing I’ll say is Scott Berkun is a brilliant thinker and writer, and I’ve quickly added him to the “people I follow” list. Beyond that, though, the book really stretched my thinking about The Unstuck Group team and the churches we serve.

I’ve narrowed my favorite highlights from 30 down to these 12. These are some of the key thoughts that Scott’s book prompted:

1. On remote work: “Since location is irrelevant, Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, can hire the best talent in the world, wherever they are.” – After reading this, I’ve decided one of the key values that will drive The Unstuck Group moving forward is that we will hire the best people to join our team no matter where they live and work.
2. On empty leaders: “There’s a deep emptiness in the lives of our most powerful people. Their drive for power is an attempt to fill that void.” – When leaders are running on empty, their natural tendency is to shift into management mode and dive back into the details. It’s what’s most comfortable for them, but it’s what creates the most harm for the long-term health of the organization.
3. On meetings: “Until the day you end a meeting where someone other than you says, ‘Wait! Can we meet longer?’ it’s safe to assume the meeting was longer than necessary.” – If you can’t cover everything in your current meeting, it probably means you’re covering the wrong things rather than not meeting long enough.
4. On status quo: “The more an event is driven by the people in power, the more it will reinforce the status quo.” – When I read “event,” my mind immediately jumped to Sunday services. It’s our big event. Since Sundays are typically driven by the senior pastor, this explains why even the biggest churches end up doing what they’ve always done. This week’s service feels just like a repeat of last week’s service.
5. On advice: “This is the advice paradox: no matter how much advice you have, you must still decide intuitively what to use and what to avoid.” – If you ask for advice, someone will gladly provide it. As soon as you step on the platform, you’ll start getting advice whether you want it or not. Listen to the advice of the people who want you to have a bigger impact, and turn the other cheek to those who want you to fail.
6. On traditions: “There is nothing wrong with tradition until you want progress: progress demands change, and change demands a reevaluation of what the traditions are for and how they are practiced.” – This, of course, is why mission, vision and values must drive the methods we use. As soon as our methods become more important, the mission is relegated to a nice phrase we hang on our walls.
7. On hiring: “Every time a company settles for a mediocre hire, it becomes harder to recruit the best.” – Hire slow. Hire for the future. Read “Necessary Endings” to help you coach or transition the mediocre hires from your past. It doesn’t matter what your mission or vision is, you have to get hiring right.
8. On clarity: “Regarding clarity, most teams in the working world are starving for it.” – Ironically, it’s usually the top leader who is the last person in the room to know clarity is missing. In their mind, everything is clear. They know the vision and assume everyone else does as well. Leaders need to cast a clear and compelling vision until they get bored with it, and then they need to do it again.
9. On clutter: “As was the case with many Microsoft products, and now WordPress too, many little features, each designed on its own, compete for attention at the expense of the customer’s experience.” – This, of course, is one of the biggest challenges churches face. Our “many little features” are every new ministry and event that we embrace along the way. When our ministries become more important than who our “customer’s” are becoming in Christ, we’ve lost the battle.
10. On empowerment: “Founder-centric companies, which most start-ups are, are a double-edged sword. The initial big ideas come from one person, which, if they are good, is fantastic for early growth. But as the company matures, the need for more people with similar courage increases.” – If you’re the only person in the room with ideas, you are probably a micromanager. You’ve probably hired people to “do” your ideas rather than people who bring new ideas and stretch your leadership. In other words, you’re a manager rather than a leader.
11. On making a change: “We all imagine an angel will fly down from the sky and let us know it’s time to make that change we’ve had on our minds for far too long. But that angel never comes because that angel doesn’t exist.” – If I would have waited for the audible voice of God to tell me what to do next, I’d still be living in my parent’s basement collecting baseball cards and watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island.
12. On work that matters: “I recognize the distinction between work that matters to me and work that doesn’t, and the difference has defined the choices I’ve made in my career. What I’ve sacrificed in income has been compensated for in things money can’t buy.” – And that’s why every job transition I’ve made in the last 15 years has involved a pay cut. If you want to hire me, you’ll probably have to pay me less than I’m making now.

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