The book “Leading Things You Didn’t Start” was authored by Judah Smith and Tyler Reagin and published in 2021. It focuses on how a person can succeed when taking on leadership responsibilities for something they didn’t initiate.
The book covers practical advice on how to handle inheriting new teams and systems and includes insights from experienced leaders.
Good Fruit
- Are you stepping into a complete mess? Take good fruit.
- Have you inherited a role from a leader who was beloved? Take good fruit.
You are responsible for yourself. not what’s gone before. If you want to know where to start, show the fruit.
The truth is that often, as leaders or content creators, we feel the need to add more words, complexities, or principles.
But first, let’s build on a foundation that has eternal implications. Get in step with the spirit and hold on as we build something great in an inherited space. We can do this with God’s help!
Trust the Process: Seeds Don’t Grow Overnight
There is a massive difference between idleness and patience. Many leaders miss this important piece of the puzzle. Often when we are waiting, we will find ourselves idle. This doesn’t mean we can’t be doing something! It is just as important to keep planting new seeds as it is to wait for the growth from the first seeds.
We have to keep working and fertilizing even while we are waiting. It’s not time to sit on the bench and watch until something grows. We have to work and plant more seeds for the years to come.
The five ways to honor the past without getting trapped by it: #1. Celebrate Appropriately
Whether it’s good or bad, you have to honor it. Period. If you have any desire to rally a team or make them understand that you are for them, you first have to show that you know them. Where they’ve come from where they’ve been hurt. Where they’ve crushed it.
It’s important to plan how you will honor the past—it can’t be ad lib. Celebrate all the good publicly. This needs to be sincere. However, it might take some manufactured energy since you know all the good and the bad. But you have to do it. To gain influence, pour life into the people by celebrating them well.
# 5. Move on from Honoring
“Every scholar of the Scriptures, who is instructed in the ways of heaven’s kingdom realm, is like a wealthy home owner with his house filled with treasures both new and old.” “And he knows how and when to bring them out to show others.”
This passage is about how every scholar of the Scriptures who is instructed in the ways of heaven’s kingdom realm is like a wealthy home owner with a house filled with treasures both new and old.
Leaders who can move into an existing team or organization and make it better than before have an understanding of this principle. Discernment about when to move on from the past and not feel the need to honor it anymore will be crucial in your journey.
Instead, we move into the new season.
#2. Honor the Right Things
Leadership isn’t just what you do. It’s what you allow.
How true! This is one of the hardest parts of leadership in general, but it’s incredibly difficult when you are transitioning into a spot where leadership was lacking. If you celebrate the wrong parts of the past, you will potentially create the wrong impression of what you want winning to look like for the team. Does that make sense?
When and how you celebrate past leaders and successes will create a baseline for what is going to be allowed and celebrated in the future.
Evaluation Is Brutal but Necessary
Every great organization that lasts has learned the art of evaluation. You don’t get to be great without it. When you are leading something you didn’t start, you need a road map to figure out where you and the group are going.
Without evaluation, you’ll never know how to hit your tee shot! If you don’t know what’s currently working, what’s failing, and what might be salvaged with proper focus, how will you ever know how to lead?
The EPIC Way
- You have to know what and where to plant (Evaluation).
- You have to learn the timing for maximizing growth (Patience).
- You have to know how to harvest (Implementation).
- You have to care for the seeds while they are growing (Care).
Take your time, but don’t sit still. Look around and learn, but don’t be lazy. There’s too much at stake. Your faithfulness will be rewarded. It just might not be overnight.
#3. Shift Focus
Come prepared to tilt shift. You focus on the main objective first while also determining the organizational items that need to be set aside or temporarily “blurred out.”
A skilled tilt shift can be instrumental in your early success.
So here are some beginning questions:
- How strong is the team? For real.
- What financial situation are we in?
- What fires have to be put out?
- What fears and insecurities are floating around the team?
- How’s the leadership? Board? Directors?
If you can answer most of these questions before day one, you are well on your way to a strong starting baseline.
#4. Cast New Compelling Vision
If you can’t see what something looks like, even with an accurate description, it’s often difficult to get motivated or excited about it. This is absolutely the case when you enter an inherited situation. So many on your new team will not be able to see what you’re seeing down the road.
It’s going to be of utmost importance that you learn the art of casting vision. In fact, not just vision but compelling vision! Even if it means hard work and difficult decisions.
- A vision that moves people.
- A vision that creates emotional buy-in.
- A vision that makes them say, “Let’s go!”
