Introducing WILLCO

What's this blog about?
A few years ago, I started thinking of a book I wanted to write, and for a long time, it was entitled "I Want to Be the Mayor." I don't know if that was ever a true statement, but it captured the essence of what I was thinking at the time. I wanted to write a book about how I would govern if I were elected.

My methodology was pretty straightforward: using the Bible as my starting point, I was going to research what God has to say about being the leader of a city, and my initial emphasis was going to be on Wisdom. Once I finally got serious about doing some reading/research, some more concrete ideas started to form, and WILLCO was born.

WILLCO stands for Wisdom, Integrity, Love, Leadership, Continuous improvement, and Optimism.

The first three terms/themes are what I think are some of, if not the, most important characteristics a leader must have. As I searched the Bible and other sources, these traits kept repeating, so I decided to nominate them as my foundation. During the course of writing the book, I may change my mind, but for now, that's what I'm going with.

The final three are what I think are some of the most important ingredients for worthwhile governance. As an Air Force officer, I've had a fair amount of training in leadership over my 20+ year career. I know that a good leader is absolutely critical in any successful enterprise/initiative, and I've seen good and bad... mostly good, but very few great. I have also been blessed to have continuous process improvement (CPI) as my main AF job for most of my assignments since 2007. Before that, I was exposed to a lot of tools and techniques, but I didn't know what to call them. Optimism, which I use somewhat synonymously with a good attitude, is undervalued in my opinion, and there is entirely too much criticism form the realists (what skeptics call themselves) with entirely too few actionable solutions.

Methodology
I plan to use this blog to develop my thoughts using these activities:
- Researching of the Bible
-- What does it say about each topic?
-- What are some good examples of individuals from the Bible who got these things right?
- Researching secular history/contemporary figures/examples to agree with and contrast what the Bible says
- Developing a model for decision-making/governance based on the research
- Identifying issues of our day, running them through the model, and stating where I stand on each
- Proposing the improvment methodology and basic initiatives that I would execute if elected

Whether people read/comment or not, I'm going to use the blog to develop my thoughts in the open. I would love to hear what people think and will even incorporate their perspectives into the final work (with permission, of course).

I'm looking forward to the journey...

God bless,
Matt