UNLEASHING POTENTIAL IN STORYCENTRIC COMMUNITIES

The “Matt Foley” Flaw and Genuine Motivation

Leaders are mistaken to think that people are not motivated.  Rather, people are simply longing for needs they cannot name. Twenty years ago, the late Chris Farley performed a comedy routine on Saturday Night Live. The sketch depicted a family with two delinquent teenagers. Dad hires a speaker, “Matt Foley,” to motivate his kids into better behavior. In addition to his disheveled and overweight appearance, Matt shouts insults at the teenagers, frequently loses his temper, and wallows in self-pity. Foley’s trademark line is warning the teenagers that they could end up like himself, being “35 years old, eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river!” The routine concludes when his speech has impacted the teenagers, but only because they don’t want to be like him.

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The Rookie Advantage

Experience can be a curse. Being new and naive can be an asset. New studies show that constant learning is more valuable than mastery. Conventional wisdom suggests that mastering a discipline would provide the knowledge worker with a competitive advantage. But the opposite is actually true. We are often at our best when we do something for the first time. We often see it on the athletic field, but it also plays out in the workplace. Leadership expert Liz Wiseman and her team of researchers studied almost 400 organizational scenarios, comparing the performance of productive veterans versus productive rookies. They defined a rookie as “someone who had never done that type of work” and a veteran as “someone who had previous experience with that type of work.” Here’s what they found:

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Kingdom Entrepreneurs

Shark Tank is one of TV’s most watched programs The show’s popularity taps into our surging attraction for people with fresh products and plans for a morphing world. These entrepreneurs fuel the future for successful businesses, great societies, and Kingdom advancement.

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