“Shannon has been my trusted partner from the start of The A Group, and I am so excited to have her step into an even greater leadership role,” said Maurilio Amorim, founder and CEO of The A Group. “We can clearly measure the way our business has improved with Shannon involved. I can think of no one better to fill this role as we continue to move forward and grow.”

Maurilio will continue to serve as CEO of The A Group, providing leadership, vision and consultation, while Shannon will increase her role in managing business direction and daily operations in conjunction with overseeing the marketing and branding divisions of the agency.

“I am so honored to accept this promotion and look forward to stepping into this role,” she said. “I love The A Group and take such personal pride in its success. I hope to continue to strengthen our company, the quality of our work and the services we’re able to provide our clients.”

Shannon joined The A Group in 2001, after serving in several non-profit and marketing leadership roles, including the director of development at ReConstruct Inc., executive marketing consultant at Impac Services and marketing manager at New Century Technology. At The A Group,  Shannon has worked with clients to develop their brands, overseen the publication of several books and helped create and implement marketing strategies for a variety of churches and non-profits.

Shannon’s passion for the world became even more personal this summer when she and her husband Joel adopted two little boys from Ethiopia. Shannon, Joel, their two daughters and two new sons live in Franklin, Tennessee.

Dave comes to The A Group from Thomas Nelson, where he served as Senior Director of Marketing in the Non-Fiction Division, guiding marketing efforts for books from authors such as William J. Bennett, Mark Driscoll, I am Second, John MacArthur, and Marcus Buckingham.  Schroeder also oversaw the marketing for the Max Lucado Brand, which included New York Times best-sellers 3:16 The Numbers of Hope, Fearless and Outlive Your Life.

“We are familiar with Dave’s great work through our relationship with Thomas Nelson, and we couldn’t be more excited to have him join our team at The A Group,” said Shannon Litton, executive vice president. “His skill set and experience will be instrumental as we expand our marketing division and the services and expertise we’re able to offer our clients.”

Dave hails from St. Louis and holds a degree in marketing with a minor in history from the University of Evansville. Prior to working at Thomas Nelson, he worked at Swank Motion Pictures, promoting major film releases from Walt Disney Pictures, Warner Bros., DreamWorks SKG, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, MGM/UA, Paramount Classics and IFC Films.  While his career has taken a slightly less cinematic turn (though, we do have a bunch of characters here at TAG), Dave still enjoys reading books about history and quoting random movies, as well as spending time with his wife Brooke, two little daughters Madelyn and Ainsley, dog, Sir Winston, and cat, Addison.

We are so excited about the expertise and energy Dave brings to the team, and we know he will be a great fit at The A Group. Or, as they’d say in the movies, we think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

These core values are more than just posters on a wall or words on a website. These helped form the DNA of  these businesses and have everything to do with the environment we create internally. We take our time to hire someone at The A Group, so managing them is an easier process.

C is for Character
Character is a foundation of any success enterprise. Therefore you cannot have an organization with high ethics if your employees (or customers, for that matter) lack integrity. This should be an obvious one, but you would be surprised of how many people find “gray areas” where there should not be any.

C is for Competence
A successful enterprise is formed by competent people who know their job and do it well. As I heard Jim Wright, CEO of Tractor Supply Co say, “If you have a C player, help him to become a B player or set him free.” Without competence your character is only able to keep you in the game for a little while. You will never be competitive with a bunch of mediocre people around you. Leaders who cannot get beyond hiring smarter, more talented people than themselves will stunt growth and lead struggling organizations. That’s specially true of churches.

C is for Chemistry
The team must function as a team or the entire organization suffers. In the past I made the mistake of not paying much attention to chemistry with disastrous results. I had competent people who couldn’t get along and the tension in meetings was terrible. I also had to fire a few clients along the way because we just didn’t get along. Every conversation was a push back and every project was a painful exercise in “not screwing up” instead of a partnership into creating something great while having latitude to fail along the way. If there is no trust, grace and collaboration, you might have a mob, but you do not have a team.

What’s the best or worst team you have been part of? Why?

If you’re in sales (I believe we are all in sales of one form or another), consulting or ministry , the sooner you figure out the best way to communicate with each of your clients or potential clients, the more you can get done.

Here’s 5 different communication styles or languages I have categorized over the years:

1. The Verbal Processor. He wants to talk through all decisions and ideas. There’s a lot of talking that goes on during your exchange with a verbal processor but not form you; it needs to come from him. At the end of a conversation you might be exhausted, but the verbal processor is just getting warmed up.

2. The ADD. (Attention Deficit Disorder). The sooner you get to the bottom line the better. This person often cannot focus on details and minutia and quickly disengages from you if you’re too detailed. Sometimes you’ll be in the middle of a sentence and they’ll say: “hey, look–shiny.” More than once I’ve had great strategic conversations walking through a mall with an ADD leader. The change in pace and scenery helped him to stay on topic for more than 10 minutes.

3. The ADD Texter. Yes, some of my clients have such difficulty focusing that they can’t even stand reading through emails, much less sitting through meetings. They love sending and receiving quick text messages even for important subjects. These folks usually love Twitter.

4. The Mental Processor. They are difficult to read. They might agree or disagree with your point, so it’s hard to keep the discussion moving forward, since there’s usually not much discussion. With this person, you should make your best case and then follow up a couple of days later as they’ve had a chance to think through your proposal.

5. The Face-to-Face Feeler. Some people don’t do well with phone and even teleconferencing. They need to feel the warmth of a visit and reconnect emotionally with you. For them the success of the project or idea is tied to how they feel about it and about you. I can’t tell how many times I’ve heard “this just feels right” when embarking into a pretty large project where the details were either sketchy or non existent altogether.

What other communication style have you experienced?

A couple of years ago I started having problems with number 11 (in case you don’t know, number 11 is your right left canine tooth). My dentist told me to “baby it” and gave me a special rinse with a special syringe so I could work on it morning and evening. And I did. I traveled all over the world with my extra rinse flossing, brushing and taking care of my under-performing tooth. I even learned to chew my food on the right side of my mouth. I did it for almost two years.

What I did not realize, however, that the rest of my teeth weren’t getting enough love and attention from me. They continued to carry the heavy load and maintained the bright smile. But all was not well.

Even after all my care and attention number 11 did not make it. It had to be removed and a bone graft and  implant  put in its place. After all of that drama my dental hygienist said I now needed  “deep cleaning’ my gums because I had neglected the rest of the guys. So hundreds of dollars later and two sessions of blasting, prodding and whatever else “deep cleaning” does, I’m on the road of recovery.

Too frequently, we manage people the same way.  Instead of giving our attention and resources to those who are doing well so that they can do better and accomplish more, we tend to spend most of our time and effort with the under performer. We look over their shoulders, check their work constantly, we don’t trust them with much, and they take the bulk of our preoccupation. Often the result is the same as my number 11 tooth: they ended up gone and the team weakened from our neglect.

Have you ever spent a lot of time and effort with someone only to see them not make it? What happened?

One of the toughest lessons in life for me was learning the pace in which people are able and willing to change. I’m not sure that I have a full grasp on it, but I have made strides since my early 20s when I entered the workforce. Back then the world was much simpler. Things were a lot more black and white than they are today.

If it’s broken, fix it.

If it’s is not a good program, then kill it.

If it’s not making money, replace it.

If he’s not performing, fire him.

If you’re screwing up, stop it.

If you’re struggling in your faith, get right with God.

Easier said than done. Much easier said than done.

While my goal remains the same, to get people to where the need to be, my tactics have changed over time. I still evaluate the road ahead but I also take in consideration the individual and/or the organization’s willingness to pay the price to change and its ability to move forward.

Sometimes I meet with the reluctant leader who knows he needs to make a change, but is still not sold. Small steps, easy and often irrelevant wins most likely will bring the person along before any strategic move is made.  At times I meet leaders who are more than ready to charge the hills with a bold new initiative whose team are not ready or able to handle it. Those are tough conversations, but they need to know the true cost of their vision before embarking in a tough season of disappointment and potential high turn over.

I’m not a patient man, but I understand the pain that personal and organizational change can cause. I have seen it. I have experienced it. So today as I walk with leaders young and old, I’m thinking like a coach, “how far can I really push them? How much ground can we cover during this season?”

 Have you been frustrated with a boss or friend because they were not willing to make a change to what was so obvious to you? How did you handle it?

No one would ever accomplish greatness without challenging the status quo. The inner drive to take us beyond where we have been, beyond our own perceived limitations comes from within, and I believe is from God. But even this part of our divined-inspired nature can be corrupted. In this case, replacing our God-given drive to become better at who we and what we do, to grow, and even accomplish the impossible with the search for happiness and significance is the difference between personal growth and ungrateful discontent.

Please, don’t settle. Keep pushing. But also realize that there is not a pot of gold at the end of your personal-accomplishments rainbow that will make you happy. Our achievements cannot do that. While they can bring a certain amount of joy into our lives, their enjoyment is temporary at best. Soon we’ll find ourselves discontent, yet again.

Recently I was struggling with some of my personal goals. I finally had an honest conversation with myself and began examining the motivation behind them. I had put too much weight on the pay off, knowing that even if I accomplished all of them, they could never give me the satisfaction I needed.

Have you ever pursued something (even a someone) that turned out to be a disappointment? How did it impact you?

There are several traps of  such reasoning:

It sets the wrong expectations. You will enter an organization at the wrong level. Your first job defines what level of player you are. You do not want to be the “cheap” guy. Trust me on this one.

It’s not sustainable. Even if you project is successful and the client loves the results, you have set an unrealistic expectation of cost, timelines and services. When your next bid comes in at twice the price of your first, your new client will balk. “They’re good but not that good.”

It prevents you from doing your best work. When you’re scrapping to get things done, working late hours, doing things on “the cheap” you cannot do your best. Lacking margins and the budget to get the job done properly will hurt you later. The client will not give you grace because of all the extra effort. More likely they will give you grief for the extras they expected you to do.

The  law of inversion always applies: The least profitable project has the most demanding client. This happens to me all the time. The project that you are doing mostly as a favor where you have very little or no profit turns out to be the project from hell.  You end up losing money, patience and your religion by the time the project is finished.

Next time you feel the urge to lower your prices, compromise on your timeline, just to “get in,” think twice. Better yet, don’t do it. If your work is good and you’re worth it, win the business on your strengths and not by creating artificial, unsustainable, unreasonable expectations. That’s often a lose, lose situation

Have you been burned by trying to take on a project or client in order to can exposure?

While I understand that sometimes God calls us to do the impossible, to pursue goals and dreams that most people will never understand, I believe that God gets blamed for people’s fears, insecurities, and downright incompetence. Really.

Borrowing more money than you should, hiring the wrong person for the job, mismanaging people, failing to do due diligence on a deal, are not spiritual issues. They are management and leadership problems.

We don’t need to pray about firing an employee who has stolen from the organization, but leaders often agonize about letting people go who don’t perform, are not loyal, and who steal from the ministry by constantly robbing everyone by their lack of contribution or negative attitude. There’s a big difference between being ruthless and uncaring and being passive, fearful or disengaged.

There’s a misguided martyred syndrome that religious leaders tend fall prey of in order to hide the their lack of management and leadership skills. Sometimes I want to say: I hate to break it to you, but it’s not God allowing Satan to test you. This is your mess. Own up to it and let’s fix it.

Have you ever seen management problems spiritualized? What happened?

It’s all about the message. Unlike any other industry, the Christian message is key to product development. If you don’t understand, relate, and more importantly, believe in the message, nothing else matters. If the power of the message is not there, then you no longer have a compelling reason to sell your product and you are competing in the same crowded waters as everyone else. Your focus then, has to be on price, packaging and marketing–the product becomes a mere commodity. At this level your uniqueness is gone and you have to do your best to outsmart the big players of in the secular arena.

It’s also about the audience. There’s a big difference in creating products that you hope people will buy and creating product you believe will change their lives. One is a simple product. The other is a personal mission. The motivations are years apart. Most of the Christian industry businesses have been started by churches, movements, and individuals whose goals have first and foremost been to resource God’s people with music, literature, tools that would enrich their relationship with God. They sprang up from a revival, from a movement that swept across the land, from a vision given to a man or woman to make a difference. Along the way they found a way to monetize their resource and make the organization sustainable.

The day the focus becomes solely on profitability, market share and the bottom line, the very reason a Christian business has for existing begins to die. The internal culture changes. It has too. The mission that once wanted to resource now wants to sell. The visionary who wanted to enhance the lives of believers is now replaced with the executive who needs to deliver dividends to his stockholders. After all his very job depends on it. And so the culture changes.

I’m not naive to think Christian businesses don’t face the same issues other business do. No matter your foundation, whether Christian or secular, if you are not profitable or at least sustainable, you won’t be around, period. Good business practices help every one. But if you remove the heart and soul of an organization and replace it with people who don’t believe, understand and cannot relate to the original vision, it will not succeed. And if it does, I guarantee you, it will no longer be a Christian business.

How do you feel about this? Am I being unreasonable?