Three Leadership Felonies

Americans love redemption stories. We love tales of rags to riches, of people overcoming terrible tragedies and crushing failures to reach the heights of success. We love the second chance, I'll-prove-you-wrong storyline.

But the fact is, there are some failures that are final. It doesn't matter how much we believe in ourselves or how doggedly we continue to pursue the dream, there are some failures that permanently close the door.

If you're a leader, failure isn't something you can avoid. It comes with the territory. You'll make bad decisions because you failed to size up the situation accurately. You'll make right decisions, only to watch circumstances outside of your control turn them into wrong decisions. You'll hire people you should have passed on, trust folks who prove untrustworthy, and launch programs that are dead on arrival.

All of these are normal leadership failures. They can be overcome. But there are other kinds of leadership failures that are nearly impossible to overcome. You'll want to avoid these three leadership felonies at all costs.

1. The Curse of the Spotlight

There are lots of leaders with a long list of failures before they finally succeeded. But if you look closely, you'll realize their early failures were anything but high profile. They occurred in relative obscurity. The only people impacted were friends, family, and a few investors.

A high-profile pastor may credit his early failures as the key to his current success. We hear about his failures from the main stage of the big conference he's speaking at, or the bestselling book he's written. At that point they're far away in the distant past, now known by many, but actually experienced by few.

But let those exact same failures happen under the glare of the public spotlight and the response of the crowds will be very different. It's one thing to learn tough financial lessons when your small startup runs out of cash. It's another thing when your large, established church goes broke because you convinced everyone that, "If we build it, they will come," and no one came.

These kinds of high profile failures won't prepare you for the future. They'll destroy your future. They squander trust and credibility, the two things every leader must have to lead, innovate, and carry out major changes. Failure may be a great teacher. But make no mistake, its lessons are best learned in a small out-of-the-way classroom.

Serial innovators don't mind failing. In fact, they fail often. But they make sure their failures aren't potentially fatal to the trust they've built up over the years. They never confuse high risk gambling with innovative leadership. They understand the high cost of high profile failure.

2. The Curse of Hype

If we hype something that succeeds, all is well. But if we hype something that fails, the loss in trust can be significant. And if we hype everything, it won't be long until our words are white noise, the leadership equivalent of a carnival barker.

If your primary goal is to get something off to a great start, hype might work. But if your goal is long-term success (or the chance to try again should this idea not work out), hype kills. It undermines trust and credibility.

I grew up in a church where every guest speaker, new program, and special event was marketed as a life changer you couldn't afford to miss. We all knew it wasn't true. But that didn't stop the people making announcements, printing bulletins, and sending out the newsletter. They thought it would increase attendance. But all it did was fuel cynicism. We all knew from experience that the best thing about these "world class" speakers and missionaries was that they could cure insomnia.

Unfortunately, most leaders seem to be drawn to overselling. They want things to start off with a bang. They want results—now. So they easily fall into the hype trap.

But big crowds and enthusiasm are not something to celebrate if the crowds and enthusiasm quickly wane. It's cause for grave concern. A fast start that quickly fades is a disaster. It means that the word on the street is, "I tried it, and it wasn't very good."

It's far better to start out slow, make any needed adjustments, and build momentum over time. Never forget that people won't judge your church, company, or leadership by how you start out. They will judge it by how you do over the long haul.

The standard procedure for a new campus launch is to host a massive grand opening. It usually produces instant growth followed by a slow slide back to a new normal. Lots of pastors seem to see that as a big win. But to my thinking, it's a huge loss when 20 to 30 percent initial growth dwindles down to 10 percent actual growth.

So when we launched our new main campus after spending nearly 20 years meeting in a converted warehouse, we did something different. Rather than kick off with a hyped-up grand opening, we took our cues from the world of high-end restaurants. We had a soft opening.

A soft opening in the restaurant world means inviting friends and associates to fill up the place so that you can stress test the wait-staff and kitchen while also evaluating everything on the new menu. It's a great way to discover and fix problems before real customers show up. And it often lasts a week or two so that all the bugs can be worked out, not just the big and obvious ones.

For us, a soft opening meant absolutely no marketing, advertising, or press releases. Instead of encouraging our congregation to invite their friends, we asked them to hold back. We knew the first few weeks would be a zoo.

Everything was new to everybody. We had congested parking lots, chaotic classrooms filled with amped up kids, and gremlins in the sound system. No one had their routine down: where to park, how to drop off their kids, where to find the nearest restroom, grab a cup of coffee, or anything else that they'd previously done on automatic pilot.

Imagine adding a couple thousand first-time visitors to the mix. That would have been a catastrophe, a guaranteed terrible experience for anyone checking us out to see if we were worth a return visit. Leaders love it when there's standing room only; that's how we evaluate success. But I'm pretty sure the people who have to stand don't see it that way.

The kinds of people looking for a church home don't want a sizzling program as much as a place to connect and grow. For most of them, an amazing program can't make up for a multitude of other things that are frustrating, annoying, or uncomfortable. It's like going to a restaurant where the steak is phenomenal but the restrooms are filthy, the service is slow, and the dishes are dirty. Not many of us would venture back, no matter how awesome the filet mignon.

Under-hyping our grand opening resulted in slower initial growth. The first month, we only jumped up a few hundred. But one year later we'd grown by well over a thousand. Better yet, we didn't have a long list of people who had tried it when we didn't know what we were doing and decided they'd never try it again.

Leaders build trust and credibility by constantly under-promising and over-delivering. A pattern of over-hyping does the opposite. It undercuts trust, making it nearly impossible to push through major innovation or changes.

3. The Curse of Leadership ADHD

We've all seen leaders who can't resist a new idea.

Some are readers. They want to reengineer the entire church every time a new management technique makes the New York Times Best Seller list.

Some are conference junkies. They come back from every seminar or conference fired up about a new vision and strategy.

Some are simply manic. They come up with a plethora of ideas all on their own—all at once.

But all of these folks have one thing in common: a tired and confused staff. No one knows what butterfly they're supposed to be chasing.

This type of idea-a-minute leadership can be initially exhilarating, especially when there's a charismatic leader with a gift for selling at the helm. They have an innate ability to make every idea seem like the next big thing. There's never a trace of doubt.

But after a while, most people figure it out. Instead of charging off to chase the latest butterfly, they feign agreement, but do nothing. They've learned, "This too shall pass." So they keep on doing whatever they were doing before, while the newbies who haven't figured it out yet drop everything to jump on the latest bandwagon. Once the default response to a new idea becomes "this too will pass," a leader's ability to innovate or implement significant change is pretty much done.

Ironically, ADHD leadership is not that far from innovative leadership. It's just a few degrees—but they are important degrees.

Both try lots of stuff. But innovative leadership tries it in an experimental mode. Nothing is oversold. Everything is subservient to, and judged by, its impact upon the mission. And the mission never changes. No one wonders, What's really important around here?

In contrast, leaders with leadership ADHD never slow down to experiment. Every idea that passes through their head—or seems to work elsewhere—is pursued full speed ahead. It's the only speed they know. As for the mission, it's ever changing.

It's the difference between Jack in the Box and In-N-Out Burger (Humor me, I live in Southern California, birthplace of the famous In-N-Out chain).

In-N-Out never changes its menu and seldom advertises. Everyone knows if you want a great burger, fries, and a drink, head on over to In-N-Out. That's all they do. You can't get a salad. You can't get a taco. But you can get a great burger, fries, and a drink.

Jack, on the other hand, always has a new item on the menu and lots of funny commercials. But he's usually so busy marketing his latest peanut butter, bacon, and grilled jalapeno sandwich that he never seems to notice that his cheeseburgers and fries are disgusting.

That's what happens when leadership ADHD takes over. It results in a constant stream of new initiatives and failed projects that eventually numbs everyone to importance of the core items on the menu.

If you are a leader, there is no way to avoid failure. And there is no way to succeed without trying lots of stuff (much of which won't work). But you can do so without committing any of these leadership felonies if you learn the jujitsu of the serial innovator: always lead with a low profile experiment, undersell whenever possible, and avoid anything that looks or smells like leadership ADHD.

Excerpted by permission from Innovation's Dirty Little Secret by Larry Osborne (Zondervan, 2013, pp. 91-101). Larry Osborne will be a speaker at the WFX convention in Dallas in October, and Leadership Journal is helping to produce the pastor's track. For information, visit www.WFXweb.com/2013