In life you need mentors, and you need models. Models are the people you want to emulate. I recommend that your models be dead. I’m serious. You don’t know how people are going to finish up. A lot of people start out like bottle rockets. They look great, but then the last half of their life is chaos. That can be quite devastating.

In my life, I’ve had at least three mentors: my father, Billy Graham, and Peter Drucker. They each taught me different things. Peter Drucker taught me about competence. I met him about 25 years ago. I was invited to a small seminar of CEOs, and Peter was there. As a young kid – I was about 25 – I began to call him up, write him, go see him. I still go sit at the feet of Peter Drucker on a regular basis. I could give you 100 one-liners that Peter has honed into me. One of them is that there’s a difference between effectiveness and efficiency. Efficiency is doing things right, and effectiveness is doing the right thing. A lot of churches – not just churches, but businesses and other organizations – are efficient, but they are not effective.

Another important thing that Peter has taught me is that results are always on the outside of organization, not on the inside. Most people, when they’re in a company, or in a church, or in an organization, they think, Oh, we’re not doing well, we need to restructure. They make internal changes. But the truth is, all the growth is on the outside from people who are not using your product, not listening to your message, and not using your services.

© Fortune, March 21 2005