Visionary Jazz
Max De Pree
Rarely does too much vision tire a church out.
—Max De Pree Many years ago at Herman Miller, Inc., we invented a product that revolutionized the office world—the open office. When we were ready to introduce it in 1968, however, our sales department said, "We can't sell that. That's a dumb product. Nobody will want that." To get that product to market, we had to bypass our own sales department! One key person in the sales department, Joe Schwartz, thought the open office was a work of genius. He said, "I can sell it. This is absolutely needed." Joe invited facility managers from major corporations to come together for two days of meetings, and he asked them on the first day what problems they faced. When they arrived for the second day of meetings, he restated the problems they had talked about the day before. Then he showed them how this new system could create solutions to their problems. They began to buy the product directly from him—bypassing the normal sales process. Joe is retired now, but his ability to capture a vision helped change the office furniture industry worldwide. Most of us tend to see life the way it is, not the way it could be. It's somehow simpler to see life as though we were looking into a mirror. Seeing reality is difficult day by day, and it's even more difficult to see it five years from now. How can we be leaders of vision, and how can we help those in our churches become followers of that vision? Carrying a vision
Some people have a gift for being visionary, but most of us don't. A leader, however, doesn't have to have a gift for vision or be the author of the vision. Vision can come from a number of sources. But the leader should be the carrier of the vision—explaining and illustrating it. Leadership, ...
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