Sports Illustrated published a feature not too long ago on the greatest sports dynasties of all time. And as you might expect, it prompted considerable debate among sports fans across the country. In fact, when sports talk show hosts face a slow day, they can always ask callers that simple question—what’s the greatest sports dynasty ever?—and the phone lines inevitably light up.
Fans from UCLA and North Carolina will want to talk college basketball. Pro basketball fans, depending upon where they grew up and how old they are, will make cases for the Celtics, the Lakers or the Bulls. Some will talk about football, college or pro. Others will defend the cause of more obscure sports teams—Iowa’s wrestling program or Arkansas’ track and field squad.
One thing all of these teams have in common is that they maintained success over time even when the makeup of their personnel changed. They didn’t rebuild; they reloaded.
In the past, I wrote about the “revolving door principle,” which is simply a way of pointing out that all organizations have gains and losses. Just like a revolving door in a busy office building, people are always coming in and going out of most organizations. Leaders who understand the dynamics of this principle build and maintain the best teams—the teams some might classify as dynasties.
Anybody want to build a dynasty?
As a starting point, let’s look at the phases of every team’s revolving door. This will provide the foundation needed for building and maintaining a great team.
Gain-Lose Phase
When you start a team, your gains are greater than your losses—at least when it comes to numbers. After all, you start with nothing. When a professional sports league adds teams or when a university athletic department adds a new program, finding players isn’t a problem. But the gains are not always good.
In the beginning of a journey, some people join simply because they see movement. They don’t know what’s at the end of the line; they just hope there’s a drinking fountain along the way. So while more people are coming in the revolving door than going out, some lack all-star potential and others are playing the wrong game.
Lose-Gain Phase
As a team begins to take shape, a good leader makes expectations clear and the people on the team understand the commitment required. When this happens, the losses are greater than the gains—at least when it comes to numbers.
But while more people are walking under the exit sign, the team actually benefits. It loses the uncommitted, the people who don’t really want to be there. And the team often picks up speed because it no longer carries so much dead weight.
Gain-Gain Phase
As a team picks up momentum from success, more people want to join. When a college football team goes to a post-season bowl game, its coaches use that success to recruit the best high school players in the nation. “Come here and play for a proven winner!” So not only is a growing team adding numbers, it’s adding quality—the best want to work with the best.
Lose-Lose Phase
The irony here is that the lose-lose phase generally happens to the most successful teams. Because of their success, they begin to lose people—their best people. Why? Because their best people decide to start their own organizations or because they become the target of headhunters.
In sports, this looks like a college basketball team losing its best player to the NBA draft—after his freshman season. In business it looks like General Electric under Jack Welch. Because it develops such great leaders, GE also loses great leaders. If you’re successful, everybody’s going to come after your best people.
If leaders understand these phases and know where their team is in the cycle, they can take steps to better manage the revolving door—to keep the best coming in and others moving out. Leaders who recruit well, train well and treat people well still lose people from time to time. But their team stays at the top.
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John Maxwell grew up in the 1950s in the small Midwestern city of Circleville, Ohio. John's earliest childhood memory is of knowing that he would someday be a pastor. He professed faith in Christ at the age of three, and reaffirmed that commitment when he was 13. At age 17, John began preparing for the ministry. He attended Circleville Bible College, earning his bachelor's degree in 1969. In June of that same year, he married his sweetheart, Margaret, and moved to tiny Hillham, Indiana, where he began his first pastorate.
While serving in his second church, Maxwell began to study the correlation between leadership effectiveness and ministry effectiveness. On July 4, 1976, while preaching at a service commemorating America's bicentennial, John sensed that God was calling him into a ministry to pastors. Within days after that event, pastors began to contact him, asking for his assistance in nurturing their churches. Over the next four years, on an informal basis, John helped scores of fellow pastors. Then, in 1980, he was asked to become Executive Director of Evangelism for the Wesleyan denomination.
Though his time at Wesleyan headquarters was productive, John soon realized that his deeper desire was to help pastors from numerous denominations. He knew that desire would be unfulfilled if he were to stay at denominational headquarters. As a result, in 1981 John accepted the call to return to the pastorate, this time at Skyline Wesleyan Church in the San Diego, California area. But he did so with the church's blessing to pursue his vision. The Skyline congregation allowed him to continue mentoring and assisting pastors even as he led them to new levels.
In 1985, as he continued to equip and encourage other pastors, John took the next crucial step in leadership development. He founded a new company called INJOY and created the INJOY Life Club, featuring a monthly tape for leaders. The fledging operation, established in the corner of a garage, was soon bursting at the seams. The INJOY Life Club tapes were received with great enthusiasm, and the number of subscriptions quickly increased from hundreds to thousands. Simultaneously, the demand for other resources and seminars exploded. Pastors from coast to coast were responding, and their desire for help was even greater than John had anticipated.
As the years passed, INJOY began demanding more and more of John's time. In 1995, he resigned from his position as senior pastor at Skyline following a very fruitful 14-year tenure. The church had tripled in size and its lay ministry involvement had increased ten-fold. Dr. Maxwell is in great demand today as a speaker. Through his bestselling books, audio and video resources, and major conferences, he communicates directly with more than one million people every year. He is frequently asked to speak for organizations such as Promise Keepers and Focus on the Family, but his greatest joy and desire is to help pastors become better leaders.
Because the need for leadership development knows no borders, John established EQUIP, a non-profit organization which trains leaders in urban communities, academic institutions, and within international organizations. EQUIP is also spearheading a movement which has enlisted more than one million pastoral prayer partners who covenant to pray specifically for those who shepherd God's flock.
John continues to seek new opportunities to help churches and church leaders. He knows that one thing is constant: the only hope for the world is salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, who gives life abundantly.