Mark Greene from LICC spoke at the Stronger Conference. He spoke about his 30 year career in advertising, and although not explicitly a Christian at the start growing in faith through his life experiences.
The talk spoke about various topics ranging from:
1) Modelling godly character
2) Make good work
3) Minister grace & love
4) Mould culture
5) Be a mouthpiece for truth & justice
6) Be a messenger of the gospel
I liked the story where he spoke about a young lady who spotted a problem in the workplace, which was that the people in the team didn’t get on well and didn’t speak to each other which was having an impact on the departments objective. The took the initiative to have a “Tea and Biscuits” check in the pantry area of her office every morning. The developers came for the free tea and biscuits, which sparked natural conversations between the team members, where they continued the discussions on their line of work. After the young girl left, the team members returned to not communicating with each other impacting their work - and to resolve this the management hired a consultancy company in an effort to help the team get along. Unfortunately, the consultancy company’s workshop hosted by the departments management took place in the evening, causing team members who didn’t get along to miss time with their family to attend the workshop. This story highlighted the importance of modelling good character and also ministering grace & love. The young girl in Mark Greene’s story created meaningful change, and saved the company a lot of money through her small action.
There were a lot of takeaways, but my final takeaways from his talk was how leaders who take a company from unsuccessful to successful had a common character trait - humility. And there is a contrast between those who become CEO’s who do not have a character of humility. CEO’s who take companies from poor monetary performance to strong performance (according to the findings he analysed?) had a consistent character trait of humility. He did also say that having expertise in your particular area is obviously very important too.
Overall this was an engaging talk by Mark Greene.