Sunday, June 28, 2009

What's on your summer reading list?


I've posted before on the high value I place in reading. It's something I learned from my father, and something that my own kids have caught. Regular readers of this blog also know that I am always reading several books a week - books of all types. So when "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time" came out earlier this year, it was only a matter of time till a reserved copy came up at my local library. I've started reading it on my Dallas trip and it is living up to its title.

11,000 - that's the number of business books published in the US in 2007. In more concrete terms, that's a stack of books as tall as a nine-story building, with 880 million words that would take six and a half years to read. "100 Best" authors Jack Covert and Todd Satterson also maintain that locked up somewhere in that tower of paper is the solution to your current business problems.

With their comment in mind, for the next few days, I want to dive into "100 Best" and pull out a few that made the list and have proved their worth to the church leadership audience.

At the top of my list from "100 Books" is Peter Drucker's "The Effective Executive". While I will not attempt the impossible task of trying to capture the genius of Peter Drucker in a few paragraphs, I would instead encourage you to pick up a copy from your library and read it; better yet, just go buy up a paperback reprint.

The word "effective" in the title speaks powerfully to Drucker's wisdom. One quote will suffice:


Effectiveness is, after all, not a "subject", but a self-discipline.

You really can't get much simpler, nor much deeper, than that. Effective church leaders do first things first and they do one thing at a time. Effective church leaders are continually learning - and practicing - these disciplines: Time. Strengths. Contribution. Concentration. Decision-making.

How do you measure your effectiveness?

No comments: