A Crash Course in Bus Driving

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins reports his findings on what it takes to be a great organization. One of the things he points out is that you have to have the right people on the bus and in the right seats. It is important to have the right people who are in the right place based upon their giftedness and abilities. We want people to be in their "wheel house" so they can swing away and do what they do best. You don't have to micro manage the right people, you just set them up for success and let them work their magic!

There are times in the history of organizations when the bus becomes stuck and the engine will not start. Those are the times when you have to get off the bus and push!

A number of years ago, my wife and I were camp counselors. One of my jobs was to take the day campers back to town at the end of the day. It was pretty straight forward; load 40-50 kids on the BIG BLUE BUS and drive them to the park in downtown Vero Beach and wait for their parents to pick them up.

On one particular day, I completed my mission and stopped at the grocery store on the way home. When Donna and I got back on the bus... You guessed it, the engine would not start!  Being the strong, young and cocky husband, I decided that I was going to push start the bus and impress my young wife. I KNEW that if I could just get the bus moving inertia would take over and the engine would start.

Donna had never driven a stick shift vehicle of any kind, so I gave her a CRASH course on how to hold the clutch in until the bus began to move and then pop the clutch. I gave her specific instructions not to let the engine stall out once it started.

I managed to get the bus moving and yelled "Pop the clutch!"  Amazingly the engine started and the bus began to chug away from me. It suddenly dawned on me that I never explained to Donna how to push the clutch back in and disengaged the transmission. To this day, Donna still remembers the look of panic on my face as she watched me in the side view mirror. I ran after the bus, jumped through the doorway, changed places with her and stopped the bus. We still laugh about it to this day!

Sometimes you just have to get out of the bus and give it a push to get it started. You've got all the right people and they may even be in the right place, but the bus is not moving. You can find a new direction or a new path, but you just have to get the bus moving again. Trust me, the more people you have to help you push the bus, the better! Inertia will take over!

So surround yourself with a great bunch of people! It makes pushing the bus a lot easier!!

In Search of Meaning: The Grinding Out Our Faith

"There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another: but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school."  (Thucydides - The Peloponnesian War)

I found this quote in a book about education reform. In order to reform education, we must make sure the foundation is strong, solid, and impervious to elements that would make it weak. True education is not free nor is it cheap. It is expensive and worth our best effort both as a teacher and a student. One must sacrifice expedience for experience.

An education cannot be given, it must be earned. Learning can be frightening because it involves failure; we learn best by making mistakes. If we equate learning only to an honor roll or a test score we have lost the meaning of such things as tenacity, responsibility, accountability, discipline, and human connectedness.

Some of the strongest metals come from the hotest furnaces. So it is with education; it is forged in the furnace of human interaction and personal discipline. As wisdom literature says, "as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17).

It would be idealistic to presume that we can protect our children from the ugly side of humanity. Yet we must instill in them such things as virtue, civility, strength of character, and a deep personal faith. With these qualities students can confidentally face the challenges of a world that is in need of strong and stable leadership.

"Consider it all joy, my bretheren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of you faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."  (James 1:2-4)

Have faith, God is only perfecting what He started in us!