Excellence In Leadership Conference - Day 1 by Pastor Sam Adeyemi: Sermon Notes

Two Outcomes from This Conference

There are two things to expect from these sessions:

1. Practical tools for changing your own thoughts and habits — and ultimately your life. Leadership begins with self-leadership. Personal success is the starting point.
2. A new level of sophistication in influencing others — to change their thoughts, habits, and ultimately their lives. When we do that consistently, we practically change the culture of a family, an organisation, or a nation.

The Verse That Changed Everything

Proverbs 21:20 — "There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man spendeth it up."

At a conference years ago, a speaker read this verse and said plainly: if you spend everything that is coming into your account, you are a fool.

That was not a comfortable word. But he continued: some people say the reason they spend everything is because the money is not enough. His response: it is not because the money is not enough that you are spending everything. The fact that you are spending everything is proof that your wisdom pipe is blocked.

That sentence landed with force. When he made that statement it was as if someone took a pipe and hit my head with it.

The first action taken on returning to the office was to request savings account forms from the bank, fill them immediately, and open a savings account. A budget was set for spending, and anything coming in beyond that went directly into savings. At the end of the first month, the amount saved was surprising — multiple times the expected figure — and it came from income that had always been there but had always been consumed.

The second month, income went up. The third month, income went up again. The pattern continued. What was happening internally was just as significant as what was happening in the bank: when money ran out previously, the feeling of being broke and poor followed. But now, when cash ran low, the knowledge of what was sitting in the savings account immediately cancelled that thought. There was money in the mind. You always attract the material equivalent of your most dominant thoughts.

Eventually it became automatic — a habit, not an effort. The same principle was applied to the organisation.

Thinking Changes Everything

When you change your thinking, you literally change your life.

When you change the thinking of a group of people — a family, an organisation, a business, a nation — you change the life of that group. For organisations, we call it culture.

Culture is formed when:

• A group encounters challenges
• They rationalise and profile solutions
• They test those solutions
• What works gets repeated over and over until it becomes unconscious

The human brain is wired to move repeatedly-done actions into the subconscious so that the conscious mind is freed to deal with fresh problems. That is how culture forms.

Peter Drucker said: culture will eat your strategy for breakfast. However beautiful your strategy, it is the people implementing it who determine whether it works.

Speaking to the King Inside Every Person

Inside every man is a king and a fool. The one you speak to is the one who responds.

Leaders who want to change culture must choose to speak to the king. When a church facility was broken into and items stolen, instead of tightening everything with fear-based security responses, the congregation was addressed at the level of conscience and responsibility. The stealing stopped.

Speak to the king. That is the beginning of a culture shift.