Non tri-related: Faith talk.

My shifter cable broke while I was cleaning my bike last night. Brought it to the shop and decided to get an overhaul and tune up for the big day. I won't pick it up until next Wed. I borrowed my friend's mountain bike tomorrow :). At least I can do some riding.

This week, I haven't train a lot. By this I mean I rarely trained. This post is not about training and more focus about my faith.

...I have been asking fellow Christian questions....

Why do you go to church? Why this church? Why not other church?

Why do you do what you do? Why do you serve? Which ministry?

Basic questions.
Fundamental questions.
Important questions.

I ask b/c I want to know.

There is a number of things I don't understand. My rationale for going to church might be different than someone else.

..today, my friend sent me an email from Good to Great. Jim Collins wrote an extra chapter to discuss Good to Great idea in the non-profit sector.

A few quotes strike my mind:

True leadership exists only if people follow when they have the freedom not
to. If people follow you because they have no choice, then you are not
leading.

This is especially true in a church enviornment. I can't tell people what to do. They either ignore it or choose not to do it. Unlike business enviornment where I can 'power' someone I supervise to do my bidding. In a non-profit enviornment, you can't do that.

If an institution has a focused Hedghog Concept and a disciplined
organization that delivers exceptional results, the best thing supports can do
is to give resources that enable the isntitution's leaders to do their work the
best way they know how. Get out of their way and let them build a
clock!

I can't agree more. I am stepping down being the leader in my fellowship by next week. Last night I was chatting with a potential leader in the leadership. I told him, 'I will back you 100%, you tell me how you want to run and we will go.'

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely
a matter of conscious choice and discipline.

My fellow triathletes, does this sound similair to training? Jim Collins made a reference to Southwest Airlines:

Do you know which company attained the number 1 spot in terms of return to
investors on a dollar-for-dollar basis, of all US publicly traded companies from
1972 to 2002? Not GE. Not Intel. Not even Wal-Mart. Who came
out number 1? According to a 30-year analysis in Money Magazine, the
winner is Southwest Airlines.

Think about that for a minute.
You cannot imagine a worse industry than airlines over this 30-year period: fuel
shocks, deregulation, brutal competition, labor strife, 9/11, huge fixed costs,
bankruptcy after bankruptcy after bankruptcy. And yet, according to Money
Magazine calculations, a $10,000 investment in Southwest in 1972 woudl have
returned more than $10 million by 2002. Meanwhile, United fell into
bankrupty, American limped along, and the airline industry remained one of the
worst imaginable. Not only that, airlines that had the same model as
Southwest got killed along the way. Airline executives have habitually
blamed industry circumstances, ignoring the fact that the number-one
best-performing investment in the universe of American public companies over a
30-year period is - just like them - an airline.

Now, what if the people at Southwest had said, "Hey we can't do anything great until we fix the systemic constraints facing the airline industry"?

It might take decades to change the entire systemic context, and you might be retired or dead by the time those changes come. In the meantime, what are you going to do now? This is where the Stockdale Paradox comes into play: You must retain faith that you can prevail to greatness in the end, while retaining the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your current reality. What can you do today to create a pocket of greatness, despite the brutal facts of your environment?

Faith....hmm...this is what it goes back to. At the end of the day, it is all about faith.

What's my faith..and how strong is my faith and why my faith is the way it is?

The questions and pondering continues.