Systems For Success

Turning personality conflicts into complements that create healthy relationships and positive outcomes is a powerful process that is within the reach of every person in every family and team. It starts with this basic belief system. The people who are in our family are there for a purpose.  They are there to complete or balance us in some way. The people we work with in business are there to make your work and life more effective.  Because of this, it is worth investing time to understand the unique strengths and contributions each person in our family and each person in our business team can best make to create great relationships and outcomes. Three Keys to Better Relationships in Family and in Business Understand your own unique behavioral strengths. This is the key to personal growth and finding roles where you will be most effective. Recognize and respect the behavioral strengths of others. This is the key to effective interdependence in families and in teams. Learn to blend the differences between peop

What if you could have the one ring that rules them all? What if you could leverage the one force that influences everything in this world? Those of us who are leaders in the business world, have an incredible opportunity to make the world a better place…much more so than we typically think about or believe.   Virtually everything we can see that is man-made was made by someone who had a vision to start a business, and that business provided income so that people would have jobs, and those jobs created incredible blessing. When you make money you serve everybody, you bless everybody. Everything that is not in its natural state is there because somebody had a vision they turned into something that would bless somebody, something that would give value to someone. There's nothing like the impact of a business that provides jobs. All the employees then contribute to society. Those jobs create incredible blessing to society. Even a plumber with two can change the world!  The process of making money is a way to mak

Finding and keeping a passionate, lasting and fulfilling marriage relationship does not have to be an elusive dream.  It can be your reality if you are willing to make finding and unconditionally loving your spouse the number one most important project. Listen as our daughter, Chelann, interviews Shelley and I about our marriage.  She asks us key questions her generation of entrepreneurs wants to know about how to find and keep a passionate and fulfilling marriage relationship.  We hope these unvarnished stories and learnings from the failures and successes in our marriage will benefit young and old alike. Some of the questions we answer in this episode:  How do you know you’ve found “the one”? What are the core characteristics/traits to look for when choosing your spouse? Why do confident men sometimes become cocky when they’re around a confident woman? How can women start empowering men to be MEN instead de’MAN’ing them? What do we wish we would have known in year 1 of our marriage? We held nothing back i

Business leaders build a better world on three levels. The first level is simply building a good business that provides value to people.  Second, they go beyond basic business expectations to do things in and through their business that provide extra benefit for people and communities. On the third level, business leaders intentionally use their businesses as a platform to make a transformational impact on society, to literally rebuild the world. If you are in business, you are already on Level 1. You are already building a better world just by doing good business! Level 1: Building Your Business At the most basic level, when you build a business you play a vital role in meeting people’s needs and thereby building a better world. If you do nothing but build a business that meets needs well and makes a profit doing so, you not only provide a product or service that society needs, you create the resources that put food on tables, roofs over heads, and kids in school. Even better, if you create a healthy culture

Keys to Healthy Accountability Is it possible to hold people accountable in a way that is healthy for relationships?  Why has accountability received such a bad rap?  Why is it such an unpopular subject? Many people have had bad experiences with unhealthy accountability that feels more like control, judgement, manipulation and even punishment. It is not your job to punish a spouse, friend or employee for not doing what they are supposed to do.  It is not your job to force him or her to stop or change the unhealthy behavior.  Accountability is not about trying to make someone else be or do what you want. You are not responsible for your partner’s actions or decisions.  If you have permission or request from your spouse to point out when they get off track from something they want to do, your job is just to point it out, not to control or cajole them. What he or she does with that information is out of your hands. Healthy accountability starts with a servant heart. It starts with, how am I here to serve you?  I

What if what you are doing in business right now is actually the most powerful platform you could possibly have to make this world a better place? Think about that!  In what other world could you find a better opportunity to impact every element of society?  Let me explain. I’ve spent the past thirty years straddling two very different worlds: the world of building businesses and the world of building churches. I have been involved in starting businesses that serve many people well. I have been involved in starting churches that serve many people well. My prevailing paradigm over the years was that the world of building a business to create happy customers and the world of building a church to create happy followers of Jesus were very separate and distinct. Of course, I tried to take my faith into the work world, and I tried to take some basic business savvy into the church world. In reality, though, it seemed quite normal for church and business to be very different spheres. As I entered the second half of m

Money is not important enough to let it control our life! So why not learn how to control our money so we gain more control of our life?  But money is like water.  It's a valuable resource necessary for life that can easily slip through our fingers.  The key is to not let it slip through our fingers without our permission. In this round table discussion, we share some of the things we have done to build money management paradigms and processes into the fabric of our individual and family finances.  We reference The Gienger Good Stewardship plan that we developed to help debt proof our family and give our kids a solid financial foundation for their adult lives.  Several times in this episode, we reference the following introduction to the plan which we used when we first presented these concepts in our family: The Gienger Good Steward Plan Gienger Family Mission Statement:  To courageously lead generations of people to become devoted friends and sold out followers of Christ. Gienger Family Vision Statement:  T

What would it be worth to you and your family if you had a process that you knew could help you leave a harmonious world changing legacy for many generations? Your family legacy includes all that your family holds dear and wants to preserve in future generations. In this episode, you’ll hear the content from a presentation that I have been doing recently at conferences for wealthy families.  I share a strategy and case study illustrations from my own family as I’ve spend the last 16 years trying to figure out how to create my own multi-generational legacy. Sixteen years ago I met a man named Greg Gunn who asked me a question that rocked my world.  He said, “Lonnie, why do you invest so much time developing and implementing clear mission, vision, values and strategy for your business but you don’t take the same intentional approach to leading your family?” I honestly had never thought about it that way.  I didn’t even know where to begin leading my family that strategically.   So what I am sharing with you in

Relationships are the carrier of all success in life and in business. So why not plan and implement specific systems that will develop the relationships that are important to you?  Why not be as intentional about the practices that develop healthy relationship as we are about the practices that develop healthy bodies or healthy businesses? Why do we focus on relational systems?  Because relationships are the primary mechanism to carry your family and business legacy to multiple generations. Children don't rebel against authority, they rebel against lack of relationship.  How is that teenagers will do everything their favorite coach or favorite teacher tells them to do? But they don’t listen to their parents? Why is that?  Because that relationship is important to them.  How is that teenagers will live under authority of their friends or the gang and yet they will live in rebellion to their parents.  Because the teens don't rebel against authority they rebel against lack of relationship.  Those relationships w

Our latest learnings about how to accomplish big dreams and goals by setting a plan of action, and following it. In this family round table discussion, you’ll learn what we’ve discovered about how reaching goals takes a systematic approach to planning & action. QUESTIONS DISCUSSED --Think of some big dream or goal you’ve had that felt so massive that you didn’t know if it was possible, but you ended up finding a way to accomplish it? What was the dream or goal? Why did it seem overwhelming when you first set your sights on it? What did you end up doing to break it down into actionable steps and discipline yourself to make progress? What did you learn from that process? --What do you think keeps people from setting or effectively pursuing big, important goals? --What has helped you personally move past your hesitations to accomplish big goals? --What is the most effective system you’ve currently found to break down your big dreams or goals into action plans that help insure regular progress? What are some

Your personal mission statement is about the contribution you want your life to make in this world.  Values define who you want to be.  Mission declares what you want to accomplish with your life. If you have listened to the last episode on values and taken action on it...you’ve taken some time to think about and hopefully write down your personal values… In that episode I recommended that you take some time to think about how you want to be remembered by the most important people in your life in terms of the guiding principles that affect how you interact with people — how you live your life. Who you want to be. Your personal mission statement takes that a step further now. You’re values answer the question of how you want to be remembered in terms of character. Now think of the same relationships categories in your life and ask yourself what you would want the key people in your life to say about what you did in your life — your contributions, achievements, and experiences. ROLES What would you want your sp

Clarity on your personal life mission is one of the most powerful things we can do to insure a life of real meaning and significance. Once you have defined your personal values you need to determine how your LIFE MISSION will represent those values. Your personal mission statement defines the impact you want your life to have on this world — the overall purpose for your life. It describes who you want to be and what you want to do in your life. There are a lot of people who go to work day-in and day-out, putting in long hours of hard work, who never feel any personal connection with their work, much less any personal reward. They feel dissatisfied, directionless, without purpose. They don’t have all of the elements of their lives working together toward a common purpose. If you have ever experienced absolute joy and satisfaction in the midst of circumstances, a project, or other opportunity, prompting you to say, at least in your heart, “I was made for this,” then you understand what it’s like to discover you

Identifying and living by your core values has more to do with creating sustainable success in life than what most people realize.   Here’s why: True and lasting success is based on who we are way more than on the goals we set or even the goals we accomplish. Sustainable success in all areas of business and life is based on who we are. Character is the creator of who we are. Therefore character is the creator of all true and sustainable success. The foundation of character is knowing what you stand for and standing for what you know.  Therefore, the basis of character is knowing and standing for your personal values. What are Personal Values? Our personal values are your standards of ethics and behavior.  They set the boundaries by which you live your life.  They are the overarching system for how you define success in your life. Our values affect every area of our life:  physical, mental, social, emotional, spiritual, financial and certainly our business life. Values are not practices.  They are guiding pr

Stories about a backpacking adventure and what it takes to stay course toward accomplishing our dreams despite the inevitable and unknown obstacles and challenges that get in the way. The key in backpacking?  Following a map!  The key in life?  Following a strategic plan. What’s that? Simply put, it’s a map to turn your dreams for your life into reality.  It’s a way to turn your dreams for your business into reality, your dreams for your family into reality, your dreams for your health into reality, your dreams for your finances into reality. In a sense, it’s a like creating a recipe for success.  Big picture, strategic planning is the process you’ll use to actually get what you want from life. You’ll use strategic planning systems to build your ideal life, your ideal family, or your ideal business. How Does It Work? First you define what critical focus AREAS are most important to your life, your family, or your business at this point in time.  So, if you are in business you would decide what areas are import

An inside look at a powerful system for success that our family has been following now for about 15 years.  It has helped us expand our vision and achieve dreams that are bigger than we ever thought we could.   It’s a system for success that I’m pretty sure you won’t hear much about in many other places. But this has been a critical process for us individually and as a family. Like many good things in my life, I learned about this process from a mentor who had focused on success in this specific area of life more than I had. I will be forever grateful to my family coach and good friend, Greg Gunn for opening my eyes to this life changing system for success.   In this episode all eight of us gathered around the table for a fun discussion right after we finished our 15th Annual Gienger Family Goal Setting Retreat.  What is that?  Here’s how it works. We all get together as a family at the beginning of each new year to celebrate our successes in the last year and set goals for the new year. We start with a a f

Create Your Game Plan for Success In this episode we’re talking about developing the game plans to create success in different areas of life.  Most people would just rather play the game…or watch the game.  That’s a lot more fun than creating the game plans.  But winning the game starts with a good game plan and then playing to the plan. Creating the right plans and the right plays…or as we like to call it, systems…are key to accomplishing your dreams and goals. Can you imagine any sports team entering into competition without adequate preparation — or a game plan? Can you imagine showing up for the first day of practice and the coach saying, “Here’s your game schedule for the year.  Your position is written on the first page.  Just show up on time for each game and we’re gonna figure out how to whip the competition as we play.” Sounds crazy?!  It is!  Yet that’s how many people go through life every day. The failure to PLAN — to prepare a game plan — is one of the main reasons so many people fail in key ar

How to Turn Your Grandest Visions for Your Life into Realities Why is it that some people just seem to get everything they want in life?  Great relationships, plenty of money, great health and time to enjoy it all?   And why is that other people who seem to work equally as hard or seem to be equally deserving constantly struggle with a life that is always far short of their ideals? This podcast grows out of a deep conviction the grand design for life is that everyone should have an equal shot at achieving the success they want in all areas of life.  This podcast is based on the proposition that anyone who really wants to, can actually learn and apply some next steps that they can take to move toward their dreams for success in any area of their life. This podcast grows out of a deep belief that our grandest visions for any area of our life are most likely to become reality when we understand and implement certain universal principles and processes that create success in any particular area of life….when peopl