Over the past couple of weeks I have been asked by several people what I do to attempt to stay aware of what’s happening in the world. My confession is that I am not as broad a thinker or nearly as curious as some of my colleagues. You can get buried alive in information, so I have felt compelled to focus most of my attention on aspects of life that seem to make a difference in the shaping of our individual and societal reality. Consequently, I focus on a few specific areas of interest: leadership strategy and application; the health and development of children and families; worldview content, expression and development; media penetration, messaging and presentation; life transformation; cultural trends; and faith movements.

As restricted a window as that may be, keeping up with that is easier said than done. But I have developed a routine over the years that has become comfortable for me, based on spending the first couple of hours of each day scouring a select group of sources through the Internet. Those sources are not always trustworthy and are certainly not ideologically compatible, but they provide me with a sense of what’s happening and alert me to trends and conditions to keep an eye on. I have a blend of “conservative,” “middle of the road,” and “liberal” sources that I follow, to stay attuned to the different perspectives people bring to the table.

Specifically, I pour through the online content of 6 newspapers, 4 blog sites, 7 magazines, 6 marketing research organizations, RSS feeds from 18 websites. In all, that’s exposure to about 41 sources of input. Among them, 35 provide daily coverage, 5 do so weekly, and 1 is a monthly. (These do not include a series of publications I also read faithfully related to personal interests, primarily sports and music.) The pool of sources changes occasionally, but generally remains intact over time.

One of my numerous weaknesses is that I have a very poor memory. To combat my forgetfulness, I capture a lot of the material in a personal database that I have been keeping for many years. Last year’s summary of the more important findings ran almost 800 pages (single-spaced, formatted into a single continuous paragraph per report, a format I prefer for storage). It is a searchable database that comes in handy on numerous occasions throughout the year when I need information for writing, speaking, praying, teaching, researching, and reflecting. Many of the ideas I’ve had over the years for national research studies and books have been sparked by data from this large and growing body of information.

What is your strategy for keeping up with current realities? Do you have any particularly good tools for organizing and storing and sharing the information that intrigues you?

By the way, the amount of time this process consumes each day is one of several reasons why I do not participate in Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. (Or, as my friends and colleagues know, turning on my cell phone…) Perhaps I’m incurably old school.

How does God intrude in your reality? With me, He seems to enjoy allowing me to dig a very deep ditch that I am incapable of climbing out of on my own strength. That invariably enables Him to show His creativity, power, and love as He comes to my rescue. That’s exactly what He did – again – in the course of my developing this book. I had taken a pedestrian approach, crafting a chapter by chapter recitation of what my world-class leadership interviewees had shared. There was nothing wrong with the material itself, but the presentation was limp.

And that’s when God planted a wonderful creative idea in my brain: string all the like comments together, creating a virtual conversation. At first, the idea seemed a bit absurd, but when I began testing the concept, it flowed a lot better than I expected. After I’d spent the two weeks writing the book, nobody could have been more pleasantly surprised with the aggregate result than me. The product not only delivered a substantial amount of wisdom about leadership, but it was provided in a relatively smooth and playful way.

Beyond the format, the experience of speaking with 30 great leaders and leader developers was deeply enlightening for me. The joy wasn’t always the information they imparted; sometimes it was what I observed them doing that modeled the principles they championed. For instance, some of the most important personal lessons in leadership were:

• Great leaders motivate people by seeing and retelling compelling stories that relate to the vision to which they are committed
• A leader rarely changes a person; he/she simply figures out how to get the best results out of who they are, and who to team them with for the greatest productivity
• Leadership analysts tend to focus on how leaders articulate their ideas; yet leaders more often succeed because of how effectively they listen than because of their speaking prowess
• The world is increasingly complex and challenging: leaders help make sense of the world, often by reducing the complicated and misleading to a simpler, logical understanding
• Individuals who are popular pander to public opinion; genuine leaders expect to become unpopular, choosing to do what’s right and necessary rather than what’s expected and safe
• The probability of success increases if the focus is on the outcomes rather than who gets credit for those results
• If you are not clear about your vision and values, and passionate about the corresponding convictions and goals, success is not likely
• No leader is the “complete package.” There will be times when the chief leader must allow other leaders to provide direction under given circumstances to compensate for the chief leader’s weaknesses
• Leadership is a collaborative process; it’s less about what the leader does than about what he/she facilitates through others
• Great leaders recognize that all people have great worth; the leader’s task is to maximize their delivery of the unique value each person brings to the party
• Leaders get what they measure and what they tolerate
• All great leaders believe they have a moral responsibility to take care of people
• Do not attempt to lead people unless you are prepared to pay a significant emotional, physical and spiritual price

As my mentors taught me, part of learning is applying the information gleaned, so that’s the daunting task before me now. But how much better off I am today than before this process began; now I have a clearer understanding of what it takes to get to the next level.

I hope you take some time to read this book, and that you both enjoy and feel challenged by it. The men and women featured in it “get it” and they went to great lengths to share it with you. Seriously ponder the lessons they offer. I think you’ll find it well worth the effort.