At precisely 7:00 am on November 20, 2017, the Georgia Dome, a large sports stadium located in downtown Atlanta, was imploded. In just a few seconds, the 80,000-seat arena became a pile of rubble. Every local TV channel was live, allowing millions to watch the big event. The city of Atlanta, and two of its professional sports teams, replaced the old dome with a larger and more modern stadium, literally next door.
A Special Visit
In March of 2011, a group of ILI’s top global leaders visited that stadium as part of our second Global Summit. At the time, we were nearing 80,000 leaders trained globally, and we wanted to experience what that number of leaders trained felt like. Today, no stadium could fit the 225,000 men and women who have attended an ILI training around the world.
Implosions are Necessary
Just like Atlanta needed a different stadium, it takes a different type of leadership to train 847 leaders (ILI in 2002) than to train 29,739 (2016). Many changes have been incremental, but along the way, we have had to implode a few practices in order to keep moving towards our God-given vision to accelerate the spread of the Gospel. Here are three things you may have to implode in your leadership if you want to grow and remain on-target to accomplish your vision.
- Practices No Longer Relevant. Like many people today, my wife and I no longer have a home phone. In many places, the cell phone rendered home phones irrelevant. At ILI, we once had a two-week international conference done in the US, but in 2007, we had our last “IC.” Change was necessary to remain relevant and on-target.
- Bad Habits. One of the worse answers you can give to why something is done is the classic “that's the way it's always been done.” I'm not sure I ever heard those words at ILI, but we have had our share of not-so-best practices to get rid of along the way.
- Clutter. Getting rid of clutter makes things better, but doesn’t always solve the problem. Even a 19-year old organization like ILI can amass unwanted and useless clutter that needs to be imploded from time to time.
Not everything needs to be demolished
Another famous Atlanta stadium, home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team was replaced by a larger and more modern stadium but instead of imploding it, “Turner Field” will be re-purposed to serve one of the several universities that call Atlanta home. I suspect most leadership practices that start to become obsolete in our lives don’t have to be abandoned or imploded, but can be revitalized and re-purposed. Wisdom resides in knowing when to re-purpose and when to implode.
So, are there leadership practices in your life that need re-purposing and refurbishing? Maybe even a dramatic demolition?
P.S. Click here for a video of the implosion of the Georgia dome.
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