Author: Grant Duncan

Have you ever found yourself typing on your computer and you realize that all your letters are wrong because your hands were in the wrong position?

But then you put your forefingers back on the ridges on F and J on the keyboard and you can type normally again?

Well I think this can happen in life too. Think about it. The ridges on the F and J are like reminders to keep you on the right track for typing. They help center you, and it makes it so you do the right things and don’t mess up.

In life, I think we need these reminders too. We may begin to get sidetracked or start doing something we shouldn’t or we get our priorities wrong, but if we have some reminders in our life that will put us back on track, it will help us immensely. Put some “F and J ridges” in your life so that you can be reminded of the right things to do.

Some of my “F and J ridges”:

• Quotes I put up in my room
• My Wheaton College lanyard to remind me of how blessed I am to go to school there
• Sticky notes at work
• Memorized Bible verses
• A big sheet of paper filled with things I’m thankful for
• My laptop screensaver picture depicting one of my girlfriend’s favorite paintings

What are your “F and J ridges”?

I recently finished one of the most impactful leadership books I’ve ever read. It’s called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, written by Patrick Lencioni. It’s a must read.

The main idea is that to make a company successful, you must have healthy teams that function well together. Being a functional or dysfunctional team is what separates top companies from their competitors.

This books lays out the five most important dysfunctions that teams struggle with and actionable steps on how to fix them.

Book Summary:

Background:

It’s written as a fable, which makes it easier to connect with.

Instead of just being theoretical, it makes it practical as you see a story of how to put these principles into practice.

Story:

It goes through the story of Cathryn, a recently hired CEO in charge of turning around a failing Silicon Valley technology company called DecisionTech. By all indicators, DecisionTech should be light years ahead of its competitors, yet they’re behind two of its competitors in both revenue and customer growth.

The reason why: the executive team is so dysfunctional. Once Cathryn steps in and teaches the five dysfunctions of a team to the executives, they are able to understand the dysfunctions and start acting differently. Then the company starts turning around and hitting their targets.

At the end of the fable, Lencioni breaks down the model into more concrete practical steps for how to stop being dysfunctional. He gives tools for team assessments and actionable steps for each dysfunction, so it would be a great thing for your team to work through.

The five dysfunctions quickly defined:

Dysfunction 1: Absence of Trust – Team members who aren’t willing to be vulnerable with each other will have no foundation to build trust on.

Dysfunction 2: Fear of Conflict – By not trusting, there is no ability to engage in unfiltered debates of ideas or thoughts. The team is left to petty discussions where people don’t express how they actually feel.

Dysfunction 3: Lack of Commitment – By fearing conflict and not airing their opinions, team members won’t buy in and commit to the team’s decisions.

Dysfunction 4: Avoidance of Accountability – If the team isn’t committed to the decisions that have been made, then no one will want to call their peers on decisions that seem unaligned with the plan.

Dysfunction 5: Inattention to Results – When there is no accountability, then team members will start to put their individual goals above the collective purpose and results of the team.

Changing those dysfunctions can seem deceptively simple, yet they can be very powerful if actually enacted by teams.

Think back to teams you’ve been a part of. Which has plagued your team the most?

Have you thought about this before? One decision can change everything.

Literally. Just one. This was brought to light for me in a real way when my dad fell recently and broke his hip area in five places. (See my last blog post for more detail on this mountain bike crash.)

Just one decision of his did this. He decided to push it a little harder and go a little faster down the last downhill. He was doing great until the bottom… And then bam! That one decision has made it so he won’t be fully active for three months. Three months has been radically changed because of one decision.

Now I’m not saying don’t ever push yourself or live on the edge or have fun – I’m just saying think about your decisions and choose wisely. Because there can be negative consequences that you don’t think about in the moment. I will still do extreme sports and live my life as I do, but I will be more mindful of the potential effects of my decisions.

So choose wisely, because ONE decision can change everything.

Calling 911 for my dad was crazy. And for it to happen on Father’s Day too… He said I handled it well, but a lot of emotions went through me.

But this instance gave me a renewed sense of what’s important to me. It really hit me that I love him so so much. I didn’t want anything to happen to him, so I just kept praying that God would heal him. (As of 6/19/13, he is still in the hospital recovering from breaking his hip in five places from falling on our mountain bike ride. He will hopefully be out soon. Then he’ll be on crutches for about a month. And then about two more months after that before he’s fully active.)

Later, it hit me: It’s not about what you’re doing, but it’s about who you’re with. 

We had quite a different Father’s Day than we had planned. Instead of a family dinner with our extended family, we spent our day hanging out in the hospital room with my dad in lots of pain. And yet it was still a great time together. Just being together was enough. And that’s what’s important.

It’s about love. And people. And relationships. That’s what matters. Jesus told us to love God and to love others. So that’s what we are to do.

So in the midst of the crazy things in your life, take some time to think about what’s important in your life.

What’s important to you? I hope it’s simply put: Love God and love others.

Don’t you love procrastinating? At least in the moment we do… Sometimes I’m the king at it.

I’ll have some big task or assignment I have to do, but I won’t want to do it so I do everything else on my list of things to do but that one task that I actually need to. Which usually means I turn to Facebook…

This isn’t good, because you not only give yourself less time to do the important task, but you also stress yourself out all day thinking about the thing you’re putting off.

Instead, try doing the hardest thing first.

Brian Tracy calls this “Eat That Frog!”.

The idea is this. If you were told you had to eat a frog, you’d be stressing about it all day long dreading that gross frog you’re going to have to eat. What if instead the first thing you did that day was you ate the frog! Well you’d get it done and nothing else would seem as hard later in the day, because you’d gotten the biggest and scariest thing out of the way.

So stop procrastinating on that big frog. Eat it as the first thing you do in the day, and everything else that day will be easier!

What’s that frog you need to eat today?

Have you ever tried cutting thick rope? Well it’s hard. How about doing it thirty times in a row? Even harder. I can answer yes to both of these. But doing this taught me a very valuable lesson of the difference between being effective and being efficient.

Peter Drucker explains the difference this way:

Efficiency is doing things right.

Effectiveness is doing the right things.

There’s a big difference in that, and I’ll expand on that now.

My Story:

For my previous internship at Convene, a random task I was asked to do was to cut rope for them for a visual demonstration they wanted to use it for. This was based on Francis Chan‘s illustration exemplifying our time on earth in comparison to eternity. (Click here to see Francis’ video).

So cutting rope is not an easy thing. I started out using a wood burner with a small sharp tipped blade, but it took forever to cut and burn the rope using this, something like 6 minutes for each piece of rope – way too long of time… I was determined to make it faster though.

I thought if I could just better position all my tools and materials or keep the burner hotter, then I’d be doing the right thing and make good improvements.

Little did I know I was focusing on the wrong thing. I was using the wrong tools. It was like using scissors to mow a lawn – tedious and terrible.

Listening to my boss’ advice, the next day I went and got a big X-Acto knife to cut it and a coworker brought in a little blow torch. With these tools, I could make the pieces of rope in about 18 seconds.

What a huge change! That’s 20 times faster!

When I shifted away from caring about how to become most efficient with the tools I had to thinking about if I even had the right tools is when I crossed the line from efficient to effective.

My Lesson Learned:

I could’ve kept trying all I wanted to improve my materials’ positioning or I could’ve gotten the right tools. Thankfully, I switched to getting the right tools.

This shows the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. Rearranging my materials to a better position (becoming more efficient by doing things right) only got me so much. It’s when I evaluated if I was even doing the right thing and using the right tools that I actually got to effectiveness.

Efficiency is good and helpful, but it will only get you so far. Focusing on effectiveness is so much more important if you actually want to dramatically improve.

I’d encourage you to focus on being effective in your life. This is where real and impressive change will come about. And in time, efficiency will naturally come as well.

So go ahead and play with the knives in your life to see if they are even the correct ones to be using!

What’s an example from your life where you focused on efficiency instead of effectiveness? Share your story by commenting below.

Welcome to my blog! This is my first post on my blog.

I’m Grant Duncan, and I have just finished up my sophomore year at Wheaton College. For more background on me, please go to my About page.

I’ve been wanting to start a blog for over a year now, and I now am finally doing it. I think it will be a cool way for me to share some of my thoughts and things I’ve learned and to dialogue with you about them.

The theme of my blog is “Learning to Lead” – I feel this encapsulates much of what I want to talk about.

For me, I feel I am very much in a place of learning, and learning a lot in life. Much of this is teaching me how to lead better, something I am passionate about.

Some of the blog posts will be about:

• Examples in my life from which I’ve learned lessons that have helped me to lead better. To name a few areas where these may come from: Jesus, my family, my girlfriend, my friendships, college, work, etc.
• Tools that have helped me to learn and lead. To name a few tools: Evernote, Highrise, Audible, Pleco, etc.
• Analogies that have helped me understand concepts better.
• Important values for life.
• And many more things!

I plan on blogging about weekly, so please subscribe to my posts by entering your email and hitting the follow button! I hope you enjoy, and I look forward to your comments!