Maurilio Amorim

Author: Maurilio Amorim

Are You Part of a Learning Organization?

I have the privilege to work with some very dynamic organizations and one of the indicators of whether or not they continue to grow is their ability to learn–both from their mistakes as well as from others. My first consultation with a new client serves two distinct purposes: Is this a good fit? Is this a learning organization? I have been in situations where I knew that my company could add a lot of value to a client, but, unfortunately, they were not teachable and therefore, not a viable business relationship. Here’s what I look for in making my assessment of an organization’s teach-ability quotient.

Secure leadership. The leader sets the tone for the rest of the organization. If the person at the top is not a learner and willing to be taught, then he or she will create a culture of insecurity and excuses. In my experience that shows up first when the leader has an excuse or explanation for every suggestion I make. One of my favorite lines of all time was “even thought this is a large city, it’s about 3 years behind the rest of the country. We just can’t move too fast.” That was just ludicrous.

Commitment to Excellence. We have played down excellence lately because the word has become synonymous with “extravagant.” But excellence compels us to do our very best in every area of ministry or business. If that’s not your focus, then why bother trying to get better?

Healthy team dynamics. Dysfunctional teams are territorial and easily threatened by outsiders. They can’t learn because everyone is usually spending most of their time trying to figure out how to protect their territory or launch a counter-attack at the “enemy” on the chair next to them. I know that they will eventually turn on me.

What does a learning organization look like to you?

March 29, 2011
Getting Your Dream Job. Advice to Young Professionals

“If you deliver on what you’re asked to do, even if you’re not passionate about it, you will earn the right to do thing you love.” That was part of my answer to the young man who asked me, “What advice would you give someone wanting to go into the church communication field?” As I reflect on that answer, I believe it applies to anyone starting out a new career.

I remember talking with someone who confessed not being very good at his job because it wasn’t challenging and not at the level he wanted it to be. He did the minimum required because he felt under-utilized, doing work well below his skill and intelligence capacity. His boss had a different take, “he’s lazy,” said the man to me. “I had a lot of faith in him and wanted to give the kid more important work, but at the end of the day he couldn’t even execute the trivial stuff, so I didn’t give him more responsibilities.”

So the vicious cycle begins: you’re bored so you don’t perform and your lack of performance limits your opportunities. You see where this is going. I remember running a Summer Day Camp that was in bad financial shape when I took it over at the church I was working part time in my early 20’s. I had no business running a camp and, at the time, I didn’t know anything about it and had never seen myself in that position. However, that was my opportunity to show my boss that I could lead a team and grow a business. After 3 years, I grew the attendance 4 fold and the budget by 500% and brought in enough profit that at age 24, I became the Executive Pastor of the church and my boss moved his office off campus. I had earned the trust and confidence of the Senior Pastor and of the church board to do a job that, looking back, was way bigger than my experience and education.

You might be stuck doing a job that you think it’s not a good fit or that under utilizes your gifts. Don’t make the mistake that many people make by doing the bare minimum while you wait for that great opportunity to come around. Chances are that it will not. Roll up your sleeves and get the job done. That is the fastest way to your dream career.

Where are you in your career?

March 28, 2011
Developing Your Own Fashion Sense

You can’t have a sense of personal style without knowing who you are as a person. The fashion Friday posts often focus on a male fashion trend, that for the most part, is very subjective. The fashion gods, and I mean, gods with a very small “g,” decide what’s in and what’s not. But no matter of what the latest fashion might be, you cannot have a sense of style without having a sense of self.

The more you’re set on your convictions and the more developed your world view is, the more you can create the visual part of your persona. They are both tied together. That’s the difference between people who are trendsetters and those who are fashion victims. Those who lack a deep sense of personal conviction and strong sense of self can easily fall prey to the latest fad, no matter how bad or inappropriate it looks on them. I remember thinking “you’re too old and too fat to be wearing skinny jeans,” as I saw a 50 year-old man trying to pull a look off he should never have tried.

You can develop and grow your style as you develop and grow as a person. The reverse, I believe, is not possible. You can only copy and imitate those with style.

So how do you know when you’re developing your own fashion sense? In my experience, stylish people start to describe what they wear in terms of how their clothing and shoes make them feel and how their attire becomes an extension of their personality, a part of their conversation and their story. Once you develop your fashion sense, you are able to walk in a trendy store and say “that’s great, but this is junk.” without a personal style, you look at a sea of options and wonder how to make sense of all of it.

How would you describe your own personal style?

March 25, 2011
The Power of Self Awareness

There’s nothing worse than a lack of self awareness, special for a leader. If you’re a fan of the the sitcom, The Office, think of branch manager, Michael Scott and his apparently clueless existence. It’s more often sad and uncomfortable than it is funny. But not matter you role at work, school and in a relationship, your ability to identify your strengths and weakness is key in determining whether you are going to navigate life successfully or not.

Regardless of what your mother told you growing up, you’re not wonderful at every task in life. I know that’s a significant blow to your self esteem, but get over it, and fast. I had to. Sobriety in life goes beyond not being drunk. It implies that you can look at yourself honestly and assess your skills and talents as well as the areas you are ignorant, deficient, and just plan inept. I had to make peace with the fact that I’m inept at several things. For one, I cannot fix anything mechanical. I also not good building stuff with my hands, even though I used to be part owner of a cabinet company. I can, however, build a business and assemble a great team. Intuitively, I know what the next steps should be in a business or project, but I hate to spend the resources to do it.

We usually get in trouble when we fail to identify our weaknesses and waste a lot of resources and time fixing the stuff we should not have been involved in the first place. Just ask Gwen about the shelving system I decided to install once. It cost us double: once for me to install it, and then again for someone else to make it right.

But some costs are irrecoverable. A lot of business, church plants, and organizations fail because the leader is not self aware and fails to staff to her weaknesses. Visionary leaders are notorious for not being detail oriented. I don’t care how great the vision is, if you cannot execute, it’s not going anywhere.

I’m not saying that self awareness is an excuse to disregard personal growth. If you are not growing, you are dying and taking those around with you down. But understanding your areas of strengths and weaknesses will help you focus your efforts on your sweet spot and give your career, business, or ministry legs to run.

How self aware are you?

March 24, 2011
Rules for Successful Team Work

My best projects have been a team effort. The coming together of two entities, units, or even individuals bring different sensitivities and perspectives that can make a good project, a great one. As I reflect on my successful as well as failed collaborations, I have come up with a few rules that must be in place before the proverbial “best of both worlds” can come to fruition. The difference between the this-was-great, and the it-was-a-total-disaster outcome is directly dependent on team dynamics and how closely I followed the following rules.

Strategic leader. No matter the scope of any collaborative project, it needs to have someone as the keeper of the vision. Who is the champion for the project? Who is going to keep the entire team focused on what’s important and needed? Without strong leadership, projects with multiple stakeholders can move away from its original intent and the entire outcome can be compromised.

Implicit trust. Unless there’s trust among the team, the project will not succeed. Territorial and insecure people cannot collaborate. Eventually they will sabotage the project in an attempt to keep their turf or prove that they can do it better than other team members. Remove them from your team as soon as you have even a hint of their behavior.

Shared Credit. There’s nothing that demoralizes a team faster than someone getting or taking credit for what should have been a team effort. The leader must make sure that the whole team gets recognized publicly and that each member gets praised privately for their contribution to the outcome–specially your star performers.

Without these dynamics in place it’s virtually impossible to have a successful collaboration. After suffering through dysfunctional teams, I have learned to quickly assess the success ratio of a new team. If any of these elements are missing and I can’t fix it quickly, I will, and have, disband the group with no regrets.

In your experience, what else is necessary to make a team work well together?

March 23, 2011
Strategy for Making Important Decisions

Making decisions about your business or career can be a scary proposition to many of us. Some can make quick and effect decisions while others agonize over all the options and can’t commit to a course of action. Ultimately, they are afraid that there are better options just around the corner if they only do more research or wait another day. In my experience Leonard Ravenhill was right when he stated “The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity.”

When we take too long to make critical decisions for our business or ministry, there’s always a price to pay. Too often the window of opportunity is no longer there: the price goes up, the competition beats us to the punch, the organization loses business because it’s under resourced. I must confess, I am much better at the big-picture decisions today than I used to be. Here’s how I handle the big stuff.

Define your win. What do I want out of this deal? What impact does it have on my career, business or ministry? Based on the answer to these questions, you can set the priority you are going to give to this negotiation. This will help you not to waste a lot of time on things that are not critical in the long run.

Set a date to make the decision. Without a deadline things linger and languish way too long. Give yourself a reasonable amount of time, but make it firm. “By this time next week, I will have this thing figured out.” Do yourself and your organization a favor and stick to it.

Set your parameters. Based on your situation, ministry or business model, you need to decide your criteria for saying “yes” or “no” or set a maximum budget. If you don’t know where your boundaries are you cannot make a clear call. You don’t decide your walk-away number during negotiation–usually that’s too late and by then you are emotionally involved in the deal.

Gather all the facts you can. You will never know everything you need to know about anything. I don’t care what it is. I see people driving themselves and others crazy because they keep digging and digging trying to make sure they know every detail. All you need is enough information to feel comfortable to make a call.

Pull the trigger and don’t look back. Once you make your decision, move on. If something better, cheaper, or shinier comes along tomorrow it won’t help you, so why bother with it. Focus on your next big decision and make peace with your choice.

In my experience one can waste more time and a lot of money by pushing deadlines into the future because of not wanting to make the wrong choice. Interestingly a “non-decision” can cost you a lot more than even the non-ideal, but acceptable choice.

How do you make career, business or ministry choices? Where do you think you get stuck the most?

March 22, 2011
How to Tie a Skinny Tie

With the return of the skinny tie to men’s fashion, I’m asked often what’s the best knot for it. Lately I have helped friends, family and even a men’s apparel store salesman with their tie tying issues (he had trouble with a bow tie, however). Personally I like to use the four-in-hand or the Half Windsor knot for the skinny tie. The Full Windsor is too bulky and looks dumb on a thin tie. Also, I would not recommend the Full Windsor unless you are wearing a spread collar shirt that allows for the larger, bulkier knot. Here’s a couple of videos on how to tie two of the most popular knots.

What’s your favorite knot? How do you feel about the skinny tie come back?

March 18, 2011
When Churches Hurt

“I’m in a different stage of my life right now,” said the young man across the counter as I asked him if he went to church. “I don’t like what organized religion has become,” he continued. I hear a variation of that reasoning quite often. But as I probed and asked about his church background, I was not expecting his answer.

As he told me his story, he mentioned growing up in a church I know well in another city. Years ago, it was one of the most dynamic evangelical churches in that metropolitan area. It grew to mega church status and one day the fighting began. First it was over church governance, and then over musical styles, and then over whatever else people could find polarizing. it grew ugly until the inevitable split. It was a mess. No one won. No one. Some have claimed victory, however. But the greatest loss to me was the disillusionment of young men and women who watched their parents, grandparents, mentors, heroes of the faith engage in a selfish, unforgiving, ugly battle over mere preferences.

I know the story well. There was no just cause there. No one was fighting heresy or a scandalous financial or moral cover up. They fought hard over preferences, the trivial. It broke my heart to heart to hear that this 26 year old who grew up in what once was a great church now is questioning his entire belief foundation. I don’t blame him. I have been around enough church fights that I can see how someone would be willing to walk away and never come back. I even considered doing it myself.

I’m sure there are many victims of ugly church splits wandering outside any faith community because those who should have known better, the supposedly spiritually mature, failed them miserably. I don’t have a solution for this problem. The human condition is never going to get better. Righteous indignation will rise up when someone decides to mess with the color of the church carpet, and people will need to be mobilize to stop the travesty from happening.

The one thing I can do is to keep my own heart in check and to save that righteous indignation for the things that really matter such as those facing a Christ-less eternity, human trafficking, hunger, child abuse. I pray for a proper perspective on what’s important and what’s trivial, and if I ever confuse them, may God take me home before I cause people like my young friend to wander from their faith.

Have you see The Church at its worst? How has that impacted your life?

March 17, 2011
In a Church Production, We Should Always Answer the “Why”

I attended a church production featuring great acting and singing talent supported by a strong team. It always make me happy when churches find, cultivate and deploy talented people for artistic productions. Where else would art and creativity come from but from the heart and mind of God? What troubled me about my experience wasn’t the quality of the experience, but the lack of strategic intent. At the end of the thing, I was left not knowing how to respond. Besides showing my appreciation for the talent and hard work through my applause, I walked away not being able to answer the “why” question. That was a miss opportunity of a weekend service to create impact. Next time your creative team decides on a video, play, reading or any artistic element within your service, you should ask these questions.

What do we want to accomplish?

What’s our ultimate goal?

How do we measure success?

Does the potential impact justify the amount of resources both financially as well as human?

I’m always saying to my team “just because we can do it, doesn’t mean we should.” That certainly applies to a lot of ideas within churches and ministries as well. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t take risks and try something bold or controversial because you think its impact might be worth it. No one accomplishes anything great without taking risks. I get that.

But they must be strategic risks with clearly defined rewards; otherwise, you can execute perfectly but fail to advance the cause. While saying “that was cool” might work for a matinee, the gospel has a lot more to offer than that.

When was the last time you sat through a performance or video that you couldn’t articulate its reason for existing?

March 16, 2011
The Law of Expectation that Changed My Life

Expectations can help you grow. Unreasonable expectations will only frustrate all parties involved, however. My college organ teacher, (yes, I played the organ during college) Mr. Shanko was a crusty, old, organ virtuoso whose expectations helped me become a much better organist. What I didn’t know, however, is that the law of expectation would carry over into other areas of my life. “If I accomplished so much more than I though I could in this arena, what other areas can I outperform my own expectations?” I eventually asked myself. So how can you help those around you succeed without creating unreasonable expectations for them?

See what they cannot. Mr. Shanko saw a talent in me that I didn’t see. He affirmed it during our lessons together. “You’re very good. You could be great,” he used to say. I though the organ was cool because I could make sounds with my feet. I took it as an elective out of curiosity, but the experience ended up shaping the rest of my college career.

Start small but keep stretching. My first couple of organ pieces were “doable” but not extremely difficult. But within two weeks, Sam told me, “I’m thinking about giving you Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” (you know, the organ song that comes on the radio every Halloween and featured on every 1950’s creature movie). I hadn’t signed up for that but my teacher convinced me I was ready for it.

Hold them accountable. The darn thing was hard. Very hard. I was over my head and wanted to give it up several times. Mr. Shanko would not let me. He had this encourager/coach/crazy professor thing going on that worked for me. “You’re making progress!” “Are you deaf? How many times are you going to play the same wrong note?” “Bigger, I want bigger and louder!!!” The man was all over the place yelling at me from the empty auditorium where the organ was, but in the process I mastered one of the most recognizable and difficult organ pieces.

I performed the Toccata and Fugue for the music faculty during the final exams my very first semester of college. The next day I was asked to be the campus organist for the next 4 years.

In retrospect, that private organ elective was one of my most, if not the most, important college experience. It shaped my view of my talents as well as it gave me a different perspective in what I could accomplish if I worked hard enough.

How has the law of expectation work in your life?

March 14, 2011