With Skillful Hands

A Leadership Resource

The Best of What I Read in 2023

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In this post I’m sharing the most helpful and interesting things I learned from some of my favorite books read in 2023. Benefit to me: My main takeaways in one place for easy reference. Benefit to staff: By understanding what I’ve read you will better understand my leadership and better understand the “why” behind the “what” at New Day.

1. No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings

  • Developing “high talent density” (a team of amazing staff) is one of senior leadership’s top priorities. The rock star principle states that a highly talented worker will outperform an average worker by 10x, not 2-3x, which is why developing high talent density is so important.
  • Only a CEO who is not busy is really doing his job. You get not busy by not making all the decisions yourself, rather empowering others to research something, propose a solution or make the decision on what the solution is. If you keep it all up to you, you’ll be busy AND under-develop your people.
  • Personal Improvement Plans (PIPs) rarely work and delay a needed firing. Instead of spending four months paying and underperforming staff, just let them go with a four month severance package. Adequate performance gets a generous severance package.
  • At Netflix the informed captain is the decision maker, not the boss. The boss’s job is to set the context that leads the team to make the best decisions for the organization.
  • Our success will depend (in part) on how much our employees reflect the audience we’re trying to reach.

2. A CEO Only Does Three Things by Trey Taylor

  • CEOs all too often spend valuable time and energy on tasks and decisions best left to others. Focus is what makes a CEO successful (i.e. focusing on the right things).
  • The typical American reads three books a year. The typical CEO reads twelve.
  • At most companies people spend 2% of the time on recruitment and 75% of their time in their recruiting mistakes. To level up your organization you must level up your people.
  • A CEO’s top priority is talent acquisition and talent retention. So what if you hire the best people if you can’t keep them!
  • Hire character, train skill.
  • Become a praise machine.
  • If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business.

3. Atomic Habits by James Clear

  • Forget about goals. Focus on systems instead. Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the process that lead to those results. Most people focus too much time thinking about their goals but not nearly as much time working on their systems. Fix the system and the outputs will fix themselves. Fall in love with the process vs the product. It’s the process that will get you where you need to go. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
  • To win an election you don’t need to get all the votes, just the majority of votes. To reach your goals you don’t need to be perfect with your habits. You just need to do them consistently enough to win.
  • You have to fall in love with boredom. Professionals stick to the schedule.

4. The Feiner Points of Leadership

  • THE GREAT MAN MYTH: Great leaders are great men who do it all alone. FALSE. You can’t do it alone. Don’t be the leader with all the answers. Be the one to build a team and tap into them, solving problems as a team.
  • In sports the players need to know what the score is. In business workers need to know how they’re doing.
  • 80% of the value of our opinions are expressed in the first 20% of our statement. The rule was: If someone was repeating themselves anyone could call out 80/20 and the speaker would have to stop.
  • Trust is like virginity. You only lose it once.

5. The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger

  • Iger wakes each day at 4:15am because he believers it’s vital that each day you make time to let your thoughts wander beyond your immediate job responsibilities – to turn things over in your mind in a less pressured, more creative way than is possible once the daily triage kicks in.
  • Shokunin: the endless pursuit of perfection for some greater good
  • State priorities clearly and repeatedly.
  • If you want innovation you have to grant permission to fail.

6. Jack Welch and the GE Way by Robert Slater

  • Successful leaders are always looking for the best way to do things, which results in a lot of change. They could be doing things a certain way for five years and realize changes are needed and they will change. But after making that change, they might realize there’s an even better way after just one year, and if so, they will change again.
  • Successful leaders don’t always go by traditional wisdom. They have a mind of their own. And if they believe the way they want to do it is better than the way things are traditionally done, they have the courage to deviate from tradition. Their first question isn’t: What is everyone else doing, rather what is best to do? What makes sense for us?
  • Jack had to fight the NIH (not invented here) culture that was present in the company. Jack didn’t want to rob GE of something just because they didn’t come up with it.
  • We have found that by reaching for what appears to be impossible we often actually do the impossible. And even when we don’t quite make it, we inevitably wind up doing much better than we would’ve done.

7. The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

  • Stop what you would not start.
  • What make an effective executive? Effective executives are all over the map in terms of personality, attitudes, values, strengths and weaknesses. But they all have eight things in common: 1) They ask “What needs to be done?”, 2) They ask “What is right for the enterprise?”, 3) They develop action plans, 4) They take responsibility for decisions, 5) They take responsibility for communicating, 6) They’re focused on opportunities rather than problems, 7) They run productive meetings, 8) They think and say “we” rather than “I.”
  • Good executives ask: What’s the priority? This is to be constantly evaluated.
  • Good executives ask: What are the opportunities? They then put their best people in their biggest opportunities.
  • Nothing else, perhaps distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender, loving care of time.
  • Executives shouldn’t be making a bunch of small decisions each week, rather a few really important big ones each year.

8. The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni

  • Great executives continually narrow the scope of their responsibilities to a core set of important activities.
  • If you’re the senior leader your priorities are to 1) build and maintain a cohesive leadership team, 2) create organizational clarity (mission, strategy, major goals, roles and responsibilities), and 3) over communicate direction.

9. The Five Temptations of a CEO by Patrick Lencioni

  • Don’t aim to be popular. If you do, you won’t hold people accountable for results.
  • Tell people what you expect. Then tell them over and over. Then hold people accountable.
  • To make good decisions you have to get all the perspectives by mining for them. This sometimes leads to conflict, but you shouldn’t seek to avoid such conflict. You need it to make a good decision.

10. Invent and Wander by Jeff Bezos and Walter Isaacson

  • Executives should focus on the long-term vs the short-term. Day-to-day responsibilities should be handled by others, executives should focus on long-term projects. Executives need to live and work in the future. Whatever quarter you’re in, you should be working on whatever is 2-3 years out.
  • Focus on the big decisions. As a senior executive what do you really get paid to do? You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Your job is not to make thousands of decisions every day, just a few big and important ones each year. Warren Buffet says if he makes three good decisions per year he’s good with that.
  • Focus relentlessly and passionately on the customer. Amazon focuses on making the customer say “wow!” Bezos says: Be terrified not to satisfy your customers. Customers will be loyal to you right up to the second someone else offers them better service.
  • Hire the right people (versatile and talented). Our success will be largely determined by our ability to attract and retain great employees.
  • They always ask “How can we make it better?”
  • Amazon maintains a “Day 1” mentality, which is about approaching everything they do with the energy and entrepreneurial spirit of day one. Day 2 is stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciatingly painful decline, followed by death. And that is why it’s always Day 1 at Amazon.

12. CEO Excellence by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller and Vikram Malhotra

  • 45% of what happens the CEO is responsible for (which is why CEOs are paid a great deal more than everyone else).
  • No one is galvanized by “double return to shareholders .” You need something that people can rally behind. People need an inspiring North Star to look to. It was from this book that I developed our updated mission statement “Our vision is to fill our region with Jesus-loving, gospel-preaching, disciple-making churches.”
  • Resource allocation: Act like an outsider. Pretend you’re new to the company having coming in from the outside and ask yourself “What do we need to truly spend money on? What will make the most impact towards advancing the vision?” Ask yourself: if a new CEO came in and took over, what would they prioritize spending money on? If you realize one thing is more important to spend money on than another then take away from A and give to B. Capital is likely to be distributed the same way it was the previous year vs strategically. Zero based budgeting, prevent this from happening. It’s more arduous than just using whatever you did last year but it’s more strategic.
  • Executive needs to focus on talent management: This is about making sure you have good people working within the organization. Good executives focus on “building the bench.”
  • The best CEOs build blocks of open time into their schedule. Said one successful CEO: My aspiration is to be free 70% of the time so I can think, reflect, and have the time to deal with important things as they come up.
  • People support what they help create.
  • Good executives adopt “we, us, ours” language vs “I, me, my” language.
  • The law of triviality is C. Northcote Parkinson’s 1957 argument that people within an organization commonly or typically give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Parkinson provides the example of a fictional committee whose job was to approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spending the majority of its time on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bicycle shed, while neglecting the proposed design of the plant itself, which is far more important and a far more difficult and complex task. It was this example that made me proactively put the most topics for the DLT to discuss into a calendar. This way the less important issues get crowded out by the most important issues vs the other way around.
  • If you don’t have the right data, you’ll never know where you have performance issues.
  • Good CEOs evaluate their greatest opportunities and greatest threats.

13. The Great CEO From Within by Matt Mochary

  • Check inbox 2x a day (once in morning, once at end of day). If you check it all the time you’ll waste hours of productivity every day.
  • Meetings: Be on time. Be present.
  • The goal is to spend 75% or more of your time doing what is energizing vs draining. To help you get to this place, delegate what you can, automate what you can, and eliminate what you can.
  • Getting buy in: How do you get your team to buy in to a decision? If your team isn’t invested in a decision, their execution will be half hearted. You create buy in when you make people feel they are a part of the decision and that their input contributes to the final outcome. The more influence they feel they have on the outcome, the more they’ll be invested in the final result. This approach takes the most time, but the greatest benefits always require the most work.
  • Most leaders resist play because they think they will fall behind if they aren’t seriously working hard. But organizations that take breaks to rest and play are actually more productive and creative. Energy is maximized when rest, renewal and personal rhythms are honored. Conscious leaders who value and encourage an atmosphere of play and joy within themselves and their organization, create high functioning, high achieving cultures. 
  • Single point of failure: Something you have in place where if the only person who knows how to do it gets sick or dies or quits unexpectedly you’re screwed. Aim to have zero single points of failure.
  • Keep the number of board members to an odd number into the minimum number possible. The ideal number is three (never more than 5).

14. High Output Management by Andy Grove

  • Delegation without follow through is abdication. You can never wash your hands of a task. Even after you delegate it you are still responsible for its accomplishment. Monitoring the delegated task is the only way you can ensure results.
  • A big part of a middle managers work is to supply information and know how and to impart a sense of the preferred method of handling things to his subordinates.
  • Spending 90 minutes with your subordinate in a one on one will help them to know how to focus their work for the next two weeks a.k.a. the next 80 hours.
  • The dollar cost of a managers time (including overhead) is about $100 an hour. A meeting involving 10 managers that last for two hours cost the company $2,000. So never invite people to a meeting who don’t need to be there and never attend a meeting that you realize you don’t really need to be at. This will save the company money free of peoples time to work on other priorities.
  • If you put in 12 hours of training with your team, you can get an extra 200 hours per year of work out of them. Therefore training is a good use of your time. Make a list of the things your subordinant needs to be trained on. Don’t limit the scope of your list. Ask your staff what they think they need to learn. Prioritize your list, then develop content.

15. Work the System by Sam Carpenter

  • Everything should not come to a halt in your absence. If it does, you have set things up wrong.
  • Statistics show that out of 100 new business start ups only 20 will survive five years. Then in the next 5 years only 4 of those remaining 20 will be functioning. In another 5 years 3 of those 4 will disappear, leaving only 1 out of the original 100. That’s a 99% small business fatality rate over a 15 year period.
  • To free up time: Automate, delegate, eliminate
  • Work until your business is self propelling.
  • When you fire a staff member for not abiding by your policies that were agreed- upon at the time of hire, it makes the rest of the staff feel more secure in their jobs, not less.

16. Grant by Ron Chernow

  • His happiest day was his last as president, which shows you that leaders truly do carry a heavy burden. Grant longed to be free from the intolerable burdens of office. He said, “My anxiety to be free from care is so great.” When he retired “He was at last free to set down that awesome burden.” In retirement he said he felt better than he had in 16 years.
  • Liquor seemed a virulent poison to him and yet he had a fierce desire for it.
  • The other Generals (e.g., Hallock and McClellan) were gentlemen but ineffective. Grant was not but he got results. They were proud. Grant was humble. They dressed fancy, Grant was nearly indistinguishable from his soldiers, dressing shabby. They were timid. Grant was aggressive. They led from a distance. Grant got up in it. They acted superior to the soldiers, but Grant never snubbed those of inferior rank. They yearned for power. Grant had mastered the art of not grasping for power, but letting it come to him unbidden. They demanded fancy accommodations. Grant was perfectly content with lowly ones. They bragged on themselves. Grant was self-effacing. They were polished. Grant was rough and uncouth. They were always asking for more troops. Grant figured it out with what he had. They flaunted their rank. Grant did not. They would’ve jumped at the chance for office but Grant didn’t want it. When Lee surrendered he was dressed fancy as could be. Grant on the other hand was caked in mud (no sword, old suit, no marks of rank, etc). The one played the part, the other WAS the part. Grant was unpretending.
  • A warning against taking unnecessary risks: John Sedgwick (Union army general) mocked his men for being afraid of Confederate snipers taking potshots at them. They didn’t have to worry he insisted because they couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance. These were the last words he ever spoke, struck by a marksman’s bullet to his head.
  • A warning against having high expenses: After the war some rich people got together and provided a lavish home for Grant free of charge, but the upkeep on the home was so expensive that Grant had to rent it out instead of living in it, lest he accumulate 10 years worth of debt.
  • Dangers of desk work: (2nd term inauguration) The Grant who emerged from the White House at 10am looked grave and heavyset compared with the wartime general – his chest more massive, his paunch thicker, his body pear-shaped, suggesting a sedentary overfed executive.
  • When a hire doesn’t work out: “It is impossible that where so many trusts are to be allotted that the right parties should be chosen in every instance.”

17. Hybrid Church by James Emery White

  • The digital revolution took place in 2007. In 2007 the iPhone came out, Facebook moved beyond college campuses, Twitter was spun off, Google bought YouTub and launched Android, Amazon released Kindle, Internet users surpassed 1 billion worldwide, and Netflix began streaming movies.
  • 2G was riding horseback. 5G is riding a rocket ship. That’s the difference.
  • The digital world has value, even if its only purpose is to use it to call people to the physical world.
  • We need to connect people in whatever way they are willing to connect. Right now and for the foreseeable future that will be done digitally.
  • Jesus wanted to reach the lost so he came to where we were. If we want to reach the lost, we need to go where the people are and that’s ONLINE.
  • Churches need to go phygital (mix of physical and digital). We need to disciple followers of Jesus in person and online.
  • The railroads failed because they didn’t realize they were in the transportation industry, not the railroad industry. The Gideons are in the evangelism business, not the put Bibles in hotels business. That was just a means to an end. When the hotels told them they couldn’t do it anymore they just switched the means. Likewise, the church is not in the meet in a building business. We are in the make disciples business, which should make us open to ministering to people digitally.
  • Related to discipleship: If we find that a method is wanting or that there is a better method to use then no matter what that method is, no matter what the optics might be, no matter how much time and money and effort has been invested in that method, the method has to go.
  • We must not simply think and learn, but rethink and unlearn.
  • Some have opined that the seven last words of a dying church are “I’ve never done it that way before.“

18. The Wisdom of the Bullfrog by Admiral William H. McRaven

  • Leadership is difficult, but it’s not complicated.
  • Only promise what you can deliver. The quickest way to lose trust is tooverpromise and under deliver.
  • If you take pride in the little jobs, people will think you worthy of the bigger jobs.
  • Measure the strength of your employees by their willingness to do the little tasks, and do them well.
  • The day you no longer believe you have something to prove, the day you no longer believe you must give it your all, the day you think you are entitled to special treatment is the day you are no longer the right leader for the job.
  • You are not entitled to anything except more hard work. The rank-and-file are working hard and getting paid less.
  • Attack each day as if it were critical to the organization’s success (because it is).
  • Be aggressive. When you see a problem, do something about it. That’s what’sexpected of leaders.
  • The mistakes of action are far less consequential than the mistakes of inaction. Foster a culture of action, allowing the rank-and-file to take initiative and fix problems that need addressing. Praise those who attempt to solve problems on their own, even if the results are not as expected.
  • Hope is not a strategy. Hope without proper planning is just a dream.
  • Officers need to get out among the troops to confirm the senior officers orders are being followed and because it’s important that troops see their leader as often as possible.
  • The c-suite, the corner office, the front office or the largest cubicle can trap you into believing that your place is above the people you serve. It is not. Wherever you sit as a leader, don’t sit for long. Get out of your office and spend time with the employees. This will give you an appreciation for the work they do, an understanding of the challenges they face, and insights into how to improve the business.
  • Too much oversight versus two little scrutiny. We all must find the balance.
  • From Gates of Fire: Xerxes to the defiant and sole surviving Spartan: What was it about the king that made him such a great leader: Spartan to Xerxes: A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his mens loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold. He earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden the king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads, but provides it to them.

19. Timothy Keller by Collin Hansen

  • Tim and his wife Kathy had Psalm 34:1-3 engraved on the inside their wedding bands, “Oh magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.”
  • The church always needs to resist the pernicious influences of culture.
  • 25 years after preaching at his first church, a reception was held in Tim’s honor. People got up and shared something about Tim. No one mentioned a single sermon, rather things he did for them.
  • Sensitive to Kathy’s reluctance to move to New York Tim insisted he wouldn’t go unless she approved. Kathy erupted “You’re not pushing this decision on me! You’re the head of this household. If God calls you to New York I’ll wrestle it out with God.”
  • If you don’t go public as a Christian, then lost people will persist in media driven stereotypes.
  • Tim’s preaching approach: 1) Enter the culture, 2) challenge the culture, 3) appeal to the gospel.

20. Spurgeon the Pastor by Geoffrey Chang

  • Writing your sermon: Write out every word, make an outline, but come Sunday, leave it at home.
  • Spurgeon believed: Making the church more like the world would result, not in the world coming over to the church but the church going over to the world.
  • Spurgeon was not a healthy pastor. He would work himself into the ground and then be forced to take weeks or months off to recover.
  • Spurgeon withdrew from the Baptist union when he felt they went astray theologically.

21. The Seven Pillars of Health by Don Colbert

  • Studies now show we can reduce our risk of deadly diseases (such as heart disease) by 80% or more, and cancer by 60% or more simply by leading a healthy life.
  • The seven pillars of health are 1) water, 2) sleep, 3) living food, 4) exercise, 5) detoxification, 6) nutritional supplements, 7) coping with stress.
  • Drinking the right amount of the right kind of water (clean, natural, alkaline water) will do more to improve your health than anything else you could do. Take your body weight in pounds and divide it by two. That’s how many ounces of water you need each day.
  • Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.
  • Moderate regular exercise is the single most important deterrent for heart related problems. Brisk walking is one of the best exercises.
  • To determine your target heart rate subtract your age from 220. Multiple that by .6 and .9 to get the low and high ends of your ideal target heart rate.
  • Thankfulness helps evaporate stress.

22. The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and the Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie

  • Carnegie LOVED reading. Books were precious treasures of knowledge to Carnegie. Someone made their 400 volumes available to him and the other working class boys when he was young. This is why later in life Carnegie used his money to create so many libraries – to return the favor. A total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929.
  • The highest worship of God is the service of man. Carnegie believed this, which is why he created private pension funds to provide retirement for worthy individuals who had fallen on hard times, created parks for children and created libraries for the poor.

23. A Change of Affection by Becket Cook

  • The 10 billion dollar blunder: Joe Green created Facemash with Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg urged Joe Greene to join him in his Facebook venture and offered to pay him in shares, but Joe’s father disapproved so he turned Mark down. When Facebook went public Green’s shares would’ve been worth $10 billion.
  • It is not loving to affirm something that if not repented of will send someone to hell.
  • To conclude that “I disagree with you” is the equivalent of “I hate you” is ridiculous.
  • We are all broken and need Jesus.

24. Letter to the American Church by Eric Mataxas

  • “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless.”

25. Boundaries with Teens by Dr. John Townsend

  • Teens want freedom and parents want control. Teens need to learn that freedom is earned and that they can gain freedom by demonstrating responsibility.
  • Don’t judge a teen too harshly for being a teen.
  • You will enjoy the teen years more when you accept that they will not be perfect.
  • Teens are changing in four areas: 1) Physical (eating huge quantities of food to fuel their growing body), 2) Mental (reasoning), 3) Personal (they start thinking about “Why?” They start questioning things. They start feeling intense emotions.), 4) Social (the center of their life shifts from family to their peer group).
  • Establish a code with your kid. Call your kid while they’re at a party or friends house and ask “How it’s going?” If they say “Do I have to?” you come get them.
  • Your kid’s phone needs a curfew too.

26. Successful Christian Parenting by John MacArthur

  • Constantly teach your kids the truth of God’s Word (Deuteronomy 6:7). Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” The task of teaching that’s required is a never-ending, full-time occupation. There is much to teach, and an endless supply of opportunities. Be sure you make the most of those opportunities. Kids are born knowing how to disobey. They must be taught to obey.
  • Discipline them when they do wrong (Proverbs 23:13–14). “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of correction will drive it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15).
  • Parents who fail to correct their disobedient children are displaying a shameful lack of love. “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly” (13:24). Proverbs 3:11–12 says, “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest His correction; for whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights.” Parents who truly love their children will reprove them when they disobey. When you correct them, don’t do it merely to satisfy you as the offended, irritated, frustrated parent. That’s anger; it’s vengeance. But when you correct them, help them to see that it is first of all God who has been offended and that He offers reconciliation through Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20).
  • It is never necessary to bruise your children in order to spank them hard enough to make your point. Spanking should always be administered with love and never when the parent is in a fit of rage. That sort of discipline is indeed abusive, wrong, and detrimental to the child, because it shatters the environment of loving nurture and instruction Ephesians 6:4 describes.
  • And don’t provoke them to anger (Colossians 3:21). “And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).
  • This is a caution, a warning, designed to put parents on guard against stirring their children’s anger either deliberately or through careless but unnecessary provocations. Parents, make it a point to notice when your kids do well, as much or more than you notice when they don’t.
  • To the degree that we have followed God’s design for parenting, we have succeeded as parents before God.
  • We are born into a fallen race. We inherit a fallen nature. We are inexorably drawn to the lure of sin. We have an appetite for evil and no natural thirst for God.
  • We are born with a sinful bent. We have a fallen character even before we commit our first deliberate act of sin. In fact, we sin because we are sinners. We are not innocent creatures who suddenly become sinners when we first sin. We are not bent toward good until exposed to evil. We aren’t perfect until ruined by our parents, as some would suggest. We are not even born morally neutral. We are born sinners. There’s only one remedy for the child’s inborn depravity: The new birth—regeneration. Your top-priority job as a parent, then, is to be an evangelist in your home. Their salvation is a matter that must ultimately be settled between them and God. But as parents, you are nonetheless responsible to exalt Christ in your home and point your kids to Him as Savior.
  • Help educate your children’s conscience so that they view their own misbehavior as a sin for which they will eventually answer to God—not merely misconduct against their parents. From the very earliest age, teach your children that sin is a capital offense against a holy God. Teach them that God is not mocked, and they will reap the bitter consequences of whatever sin they sow.
  • Aside from the parents’ fundamental commitment to Christ, the single most important foundation for successful parenting is a healthy, Christ-centered marriage.

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