by Dr. James Pingel
According to researchers, the top two emotions expressed by humans are love and regret. Daniel Pink has written another outstanding book, this time focusing on The Power of Regret (2022).
Leaders constantly hear the axiom—live and lead with no regrets! Whether it be in songs, tattooed on one’s skin, or embraced by wise sages, the anti-regret philosophy of life feels intuitive, right, and convincing. Indeed, the old adage—“live with no regrets!”—is accepted as a badge of honor and seemingly encourages bravery, boldness, and an action-oriented mindset. To live with no regrets is the way you are supposed to live…so they say.
Daniel Pink argues, however, this “no-regret” mindset is all wrong and costly to the individual. In a page-turning work, rich with research and anecdotes, Pink compellingly illustrates how embracing regret makes us better—in decision-making, performance, and living a meaningful life.
One of the best attributes of the book is the practical tips Pink gives in how to grow and respond to his four categories of regret—foundation, boldness, moral, and connection. (Aside: I found Pink’s discussion of abortion regret, under his moral category, very interesting—especially considering that he is a secular researcher and writer who worked for “pro-choice” Vice-President Al Gore).
Every Lutheran administrator and leader can benefit from this work. While no one sets out to make a life filled with regrets, Pink shows how living with regrets can be a blessing and propel one forward to serve in better and more fruitful ways.
Four thousand weeks. That’s the average life expectancy of someone currently living in the United States. While none of us are guaranteed tomorrow, if the statistical analysis holds true for my life, I have a little under 1,400 weeks left. Time to make the donuts!
If Burkeman’s Time Management for Mortals isn’t the best time management book I’ve ever read, it is definitely one of the most refreshing and sticky. While he does offer some tips and practices for you to improve your time management, Burkeman shows how most time management methods and approaches address the same symptoms—not the root cause or challenges of time management. Master your time, master your life is the mantra you will read about the most in time management works. Yet most of these time management strategies fall prey to the productivity trap (the faster you clear the decks, the quicker they get filled up again).
Burkeman offers a different worldview on time management. Instead of thinking of time as something you use, Burkeman persuasively demonstrates ways you can let time use you.
My team members at CUW loved this book and it opened up all kinds of conversations on how to stay refreshed in ministry, care for one another, and be good stewards of all that God has given us. I couldn’t put the book down, and when I finished reading it, I couldn’t wait to talk to people about it. After all, the data says I only have 1,400 weeks to live a life to the fullest.
Always on the lookout for books that reveal and anticipate societal and educational trends, Kevin Roose’s Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in an Age of Automation provided a delightful and compelling read. While the first half of the book imbibes in truth-telling and some gloomy predictions on how AI is replacing human capital and eliminating jobs faster than the new ones are being created, the second half of the book prescribes nine rules, or conceptual frameworks, to embrace which will be critical to surviving and thriving in an AI-dominated future.
I couldn’t help but reflect and apply his rules to the future of Lutheran education. For example, applying Roose’s questions to organization to Lutheran schools: how are you surprising as a leader? How are you social as a leader? How are you scarce as a leader? These attributes—novelty, social outreach, and scarcity—Roose deems as crucial for leaders to possess in the future.
Roose insists that jobs which require connecting with people’s social desires, transfer of learning, and providing social and emotional experiences will be hard to be replaced by machines. So do these concepts permeate your school’s curriculum?
Roose notes that algorithms and “choice architecture” of major social platforms have created a culture of recommendation. As I reflected on this, I was intrigued: might we rethink how and what we “recommend” to our students, constituents, and potential students/families when we attempt to recruit them? How have we designed our “choice architecture” to create an inviting climate and school culture?
Roose maintains that people and jobs which can make special touch points and connections will still be in demand in the future. While “elbow grease” jobs will be phased out because of automation and AI, “handprint” jobs will remain viable and in demand. So what handprints are you leaving as an administrator on your school? How about the handprints your school is leaving on families or your community?
This book will stir you to think about what are the essential skills, dispositions, habits, and tools that your students must be equipped with in the future. Perhaps it might even spur you and your team to revise your curriculum and program outcomes accordingly. Roose references Daniel Goleman, for example, the psychologist who popularized the term “emotional intelligence.” Goleman recently indicated that focus—the ability to direct one’s own attention and to shut out distractions and outside noise—will be the key skill of the future. So how is your school doing in teaching your students to focus?
Perhaps after reading Futureproof you will feel affirmed that your school is already “futureproofing” students by focusing on Jesus and God’s Word. That’s a focus which Lutheran administrators and Lutheran schools have been dedicated to since the beginning of time and to the end of the age. Praise God!
Roose’ work is worth the read. His work will compel you to reflect upon how you are leading and what your school is already undertaking. God put you where He has for such a time as this—a time to prepare your team and students for a future which filled with daunting challenges and wonderful opportunities.
A true delight it is to read a book that exceeds your expectations. Craig Wright’s The Hidden Habits of Genius provides an incredible trove of rich anecdotes and research findings profoundly practical to one’s development in the areas of leadership, creativity, and innovation. The stories and insights on geniuses such as Aristotle, Louis May Alcott, Mozart, Johan Sebastian Bach, Albert Einstein, Nikola, Tesla, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Marie Curie, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Virginia Woolf, Steve Jobs, Lady Gaga, J.K. Rowling, Martin Luther (yes he does consider Luther a genius), just to name a few, are pithy, insightful, and delicious to consume. (You can get a few years’ worth of anecdotes for future chapels out of this book with the various biographic stories which show both the depravity of man and beauty of God’s ordered creation and universe).
In every chapter, Wright shares the research on what makes someone a genius as well as calls to action on how one can develop the habits of genius. While there is no promise or claim that one will become a genius by following his calls to action and prescriptions, these researched-based findings will, no doubt, equip you with tools and practices to grow in your thinking, creativity, and innovation.
Once you start reading, you’ll be hooked. Perhaps you will relate because you consider yourself a genius too…or perhaps not. Either way, it sure is fun reading about geniuses, past and present, and embracing some of their habits and dispositions for your own personal and professional growth.
If you’ve been on the lookout for a rich book on futuristic thinking, Margaret Heffernan’s Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future (2020) will not disappoint. While the book is deep with anecdotes and research, the strength of the work is how it is organized and how it leaves the reader with some concrete takeaways in regard to leadership dispositions and mindset. The chapters on “False Profits,” “Does History Repeat Itself?”, “Think Like an Artist,” “Cathedrals,” and “Who Wants to Leave Forever?” were especially provocative and sticky.
Despite the fact that Heffernan is a secularist, her findings and suggestions on scenario planning are practical and useful. She also makes the reader look at the critical and obvious importance of relationships from a new lens. If you want to be a school or organization that can embrace the “ineradicable uncertainty” of the future and thrive, Heffernan argues that you have to build solid relationships and friendships before epidemics emerge. As she notes from her research, survivors have something in common with one another—strong friendships.
Moreover, it was refreshing to read a book about futuristic thinking that didn’t regurgitate modern management methods or orthodoxies like Key Performance Indicators, targets, productization, metrics, and efficiencies. Instead she focused on preparedness over planning, relationships, the importance of being a conveyor-in-chief and interrogator of systems, and not waiting for the perfect strategic plan. Lutheran leaders and administrators would benefit greatly from this work and be reminded how uncertainty compels us all the more to seek the assurance and comfort of the One Who knows all things—even the future.
Accomplishing transformative change is more like treating a chronic disease than curing a rash. If you want to motivate people to change, talk about upward trends rather than what’s popular. To improve someone’s performance, ask them to give advice on something and join an advice club. Leaders must beware of the “what-the-hell effect.” If you are intrigued by these notions and ideas, and the research behind them, this book is for you.
Indeed, Katy Milkman’s How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You are to Where You Want to Be is a terrific read for anyone in the persuasion and change business. Easy to read, filled with short anecdotes and succinct research, and brimming with practical improvement science concepts, this book provides some helpful advice and tips which Lutheran administrators could immediately apply in their relationships with board members, parents, faculty, and prospective students/families. The chapters on Impulsivity, Procrastination, Forgetfulness, Confidence, and Conformity were especially helpful and insightful.