I’ve previously let the air out on twitter about how much I dislike hyper-blogging. Hyper-blogging is forced blogging. When you blog often with little new to say. When you keep bombarding with messages, until no one can hear them anymore.
Hyper-blogging is rampant. One of my favorite marketing minds, whom I look to for wisdom, puts up new posts, sometimes twice daily. Why? He doesn’t have an overwhelming amount of new ideas. Rather, it’s the same basic principles tweaked in new ways. I can get excited about this for a few weeks, but it quickly fades. The over-stimulation of even having to clear my RSS reader every day is annoying.
I think there’s a point at which you need to stop the bombardment of messages. If you’re blogging daily, or for those of you who are blogging multiple times daily, you need to know something:
You don’t have as much to say as you think you do. You’re message is like a fine cocktail. Putting it out there too often is like diluting it with water: It’s losing it’s flavor…and effectiveness.
This graph below is just for me, by me, based on my own personal tastes of the bloggers I love to read. No matter how much I love your content, I’m not going to devote all my time to it. I’ve got other things going on in life. I think you need to find your sweet spot.
Share your message less often, and strive for higher impact.
Yesterday, Sarah and I celebrated our 9th anniversary.
I picked an amazing dinner spot at Ciao Bella. She picked a slow chick flick (me, two other guys + 100 teenage girls). Together we had one of the most fun, relaxed and thoroughly enjoyable anniversaries we’ve ever had.
Our marriage has really strengthened this year. We turned a corner in France that we’ve struggled to get around for years. It’s exciting.
Along with just having fun, we talked about some goals we have for our marriage for year #10.
Pray together more (needs to be quantified)
Serve more (needs to be quantified)
Define our first official budget ever!
Take a real vacation, this year and ever year (I’m praying for a miracle that we’ll spend our 10th anniversary in Italy or at least on a beach)
Get a nice espresso machine to change my starbucks habit from buying drinks to buying beans.
For the first time in a long time, we feel more purposeful in our life. Like we’re heading in similar directions, even if we’re not on the exact same path, we holding hands and smiling at each other.
Being bankrupt, gives the freedom to have creativity bloom
Employee Engagement
How do you let the uniqueness of the employee match up with the uniqueness of the customer.
Highly engaged employees lead to better engaged customers
It takes someone leading that authentically cares about the people they’re leading…
Leaders get into leadership because they want affirmation of themselves.
True leaders get their joy out of seeing the leadership qualities of others come out.
Once again: Marcus Buckingham rocks!
The Biggest part of the job of the CEO: Staying engaged with the people that make the difference.
Motivating Leaders: Find your leadership base
do you believe in it?
how are coding what you’re doing? (are you masking what you really feel about your work).
Results
Oriented
Work
Environment
As long as you get the job done, there isn’t going to be someone there to check up on you all the time…who cares if you’re in your desk, not getting your job done, if you could sleep in and get your job done…AMEN!
Brad’s freeshot:
dissipate the lines of faith. de-compartmentalize faith, and let it be your life.
Thoughts:
Brad seems like a humble guy for running a $40 billion company
People matter to Brad. Without his investment in people he’s nothing. Where’s my investment in people, and how will I take it to the next level..presumably through conversation, huh?
Brad is in Minneapolis, perhaps he’d love to get involved in a ministry that seeks to transform lives in North Minneapolis.
Leaders aren’t born, their leadership skills are uncovered.
How many 25 year old women here the voice of God tell them they should take on the prison system?
Not many, I’d guess.
Catherine Rohr, overall else, seems to be a person who takes joy in being called to do work in the hardest places.
The Vision: She looks for proven entrepreneurs in the prison system. (Insert chuckle). The key is to find people who really are sick and tired of their old ways. First, she breaks down the tough guy barriers. Then puts them through business boot camp.
Then they graduate, get housing, job placement, medical insurance, and then they help them start the business ideas that burgeoned in prison. She achieves a single digit return to prison rate.
Unbelievable.
“These guys have been takers all their lives. Now, 70% of them give back to the program with financial donations.”
-Catherine Rohr
This creates the multi-generational community impact we’re all looking for. These guys get out, turn around their life and turn around their families too…
The message for the inmates
We can be broken and still be loved.
Handling Criticism as a leader:
Don’t let emotions over the criticism get in the way of the business.
Ask if this is legit feedback. If it is, engage it. If it isn’t, ignore it.
Keeping from Burning Out:
scheduled down time
have no privacy, sacrifice privacy and gain acountability
If there is time when someone doesn’t know where you are during the day, that’s a problem
Fundraising
Connect your heart to the issue
Model the behavior, give back to the organization personally.
If you want money, just ask.
Final Words
Reconnect with your calling and pray, “Bring it on God” and watch what he’ll do.
My Thoughts:
Catherine grabs life by the …. and lives.
What’s my call…Sometimes I think I know, but I get preoccupied with the junk of life rather than being focused on the purpose that God has put in me.
Transformation is within all of our reach. God says so. Are we willing to be used by God, rather than using God.
The SwellHouse advertises mass-customization. In essence, it’s mass produced, with the ability to quickly customize it to your modular needs…It essentially comes as a bunch of boxes that get shipped from the factory, bolted together on site with all the energy, plumbing and information systems hidden away in the cavities.
I like the standard design of this house. The “S” model as the call it, has sliding panels and walls that merge the inside world and the outside world by creating courtyards on the inside of the building. They use stand “green” practices and materials to make this house have a smaller environmental footprint, aside from the smaller footprint of the factory produced modular building process overall.
I love that Bill genuinely feels the weight of leadership at his core. You can tell that it’s not just fluff for him.
A few of Bill’s axiom’s that hit me:
“If it feels funky, engage.”
This is me to a fault
I need to extend this by saying, if it feels funky, engage diplomatically.
Great leaders have the courage to call out when things are heading in a God-inspired direction, I want to grow in this area.
“Sometimes, leaders have to call fouls on themselves.”
I’m not impervious to being out of line, in fact, I’m pretty good at it.
I need better discretion in how to handle issues that arise.
Perhaps it just comes back to diplomacy again for me.
I realize, based on this talk, that I need a more clearly defined process for making leadership decisions.
I tend to fly off the seat of my pants making decisions based on past experience and my own “knowledge base.” While that includes a history of strong Biblical teaching, I rarely just crack open the book when facing a hard decision. In the end, I tend to trust the leadership skills God has been building in me, but I think he’d love it if I took a deeper look into his word first. Then consulted others, rather than living only in my personal leadership box.
Teaching leadership, unapologetically, from a Christian perspective.
Rom. 12:8
Starting off with general Bill Hybel’s candor….
Do you have a framework that helps you arrive at an effective, God-honoring decision?
Questions Christians tend to ask:
Does the Bible say anything about this?
What would smart advisors, advise me to do? (A story of the young king seeking out wise counsel…he took the advise of the young advisors…hint, hint.
What experience have you had that would inform you about these decisions?
Is there a prompting of the Holy Spirit that I need to be paying attention to? (When you’re instep with the spirit, it leads to life and peace.)
At some point, leaders have to make decisions. Leaders cannot be decision averse. For good decisions, you thank everybody, for poor decisions, you take the blame.
Some Leaders learn how to compress all of the above into Leadership Axioms for their up-coming decisions…Nuggets of wisdom…proverbs…
“The best way to destroy my enemy is to turn him into my friend.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Promote a clash of ideas”
“Reward your best performers, get rid of your non-performers.”
– Colin Powell
Are you composing your own leadership axioms? You should. You should coin, complete, and implement them for yourself.
One of Bill’s famous axioms:
“No matter how many times you share it, no matter how passionate you are, Vision Leaks.”
“Get the right people around the table”
“Facts are your Friends”
– Hybels
The circles of the Willow Community:
Explorers, Beginners, Growers, Christ-centered
The chasm between Growers and Christ-centered folks is enormous. The potential for change is huge for people who no-longer see their life as their own, but as wholly given to the activity of God in the world.
“Leaders have to call fouls.”
“Sometimes, leaders have to call fouls on themselves.”
“When things feel funky, engage.”
– Hybels
Every once in a while, your church needs an action plan that will take your breath away. Dream big vision, then teach it, unleash it and experience it.
Today, I’m attending the Willow Creek LEAD Summit 2008. This was one of my highlight conferences from last year. Marcus Buckingham changed my life last year. As well as Richard Curtis and Colin Powell’s messages.
This year, very exciting, my own pastor and supervisor, Efrem Smith is at the Summit talking about the Church and Reconciliation. Can’t wait to hear how it goes. Pray for him today as he prepares for his message.
*If you want to send text questions during the summit, send questions to: 72265
It was an honor full of joy and sadness to celebrate and say goodbye to Taylor Stephen Ward tonight.
Taylor was a young man with abounding compassion and love, complex struggles and demons, and effervescent virtue and grace.
The line of visitation went out the sanctuary doors, the lobby doors, and spilled onto the streets. The front parking lot, the back parking lot and the side streets were lined with cars. The church pews, the balcony and the overflow seats in the lobby were full at Brookdale Covenant Church.
For a young man who struggled to know that he was loved, but had un-ending compassion for others, his story is made complete in the lives he touched and the stories he left implanted in the hearts of others.
There were hundreds of people there trying to find a way to make goodbye make sense. And yet, in the tragedy of the moment it all made sense. It makes sense sometimes why the hardest thing you could ever want to hear, has to be heard, has to be felt deep in your gut and your heart. The loss of Taylor to so many people who didn’t know Jesus before tonight, went home believing that they shared a Journey with you, and it led you back to the one who loves you infinitely.
As pastor Steve said, you are finally free. Normal, never, but free forever.
Countless people had their story changed because of you.
It’s been a long day. I put in a 9 hour day a the office. then came home and ate dinner with the boys and put them to bed, then started working for another 4 hours.
Finally got to hang out with my wife for a half hour and just talked.
The big struggle for me today was being simultaneously aware of my strengths and weaknesses and the battle royal going on between them. I dream about the big picture, and the management of the small details drives me flippin’ crazy. I have huge dreams tempered by the lack of people to fill niche roles within my ideal staffing structure…It’s just me. I’m managing IT which means purchasing tech, strategizing, networking, security, troubleshooting and more. I manage communications which means bulletins, website, promotions, graphics, announcements and more. I manage a bookstore, that has an amazing team of committed people. At times, I have my hands in media worship design…And my heart is in strategy, big picture, big vision, where are we going and what does it take to get us there?
I’m not trying to whine, I promise, just sharing why there’s a thousand webs of information blasting in my head all day…
Last week, I created a multi-nodal org chart that includes all areas I want covered with staff or volunteers. It was mind-blowing. I sometimes feel like I bit off more than I can chew. And my dear friend Neeraj asked me today…
If you don’t do it.. then who is out there that will? If your answer is nobody.. then you know who it’s on?
That’s an invitation that I warmly accept with great hesitation…
I guess it’s on me. I guess it’s on you. I guess it’s on us to decide whether or not we want to be a part of pushing this big rig forward…
In addition to being an Apple Fanboy, I’ve now become a Michelle Kaufmann fanboy.
I wish I could find a plot here in the city, and order up one of these beauties. The Sunset Breezehouse is exactly what you’d imagine: A place for the breeze to flow.
Outdoor/Indoor living are seamless in this model. There’s literally a glass door, an entire wall of glass doors or clearstory windows in every room…even in the bathroom in some models…could be dicey. Outdoor living space with decks and verandas built right into the plan are also included.
The prefab/modular nature means you can also build to suit your needs. just add another section as needed. MKD also uses sustainable materials as available and factory building processes. Rather than workers driving to a buildsite everyday…and delivering materials to the worksite everyday…everything goes in bulk to the factory where it’s built assembly line style…it’s the IKEA model…reduce transportation and material waste and drastically reduce the build time as well. Good for you, good for the environment…
Next week, we’ll check out the SwellHouse from the Office of Mobile Design.
Twitter.com is not just fluff. There’s a fair share of “Making a sandwich” and “drinking my seventh Starbucks,” there’s also a lot of useful ways to use Twitter.
A few ways i’ve seen Twitter be a useful little web app.
Comcastcares - Comcast has a person on twitter who scans twitter for complaints about Comcast. I’ve done my fair share in the last 3 months. Comcastcares actually responds, and apparently is a customer service big wig who can make things happen and get problems resolved. This is a great customer service tool, even if you’re usually pissed with the service by the time you make a post on twitter (tweets as us nerds call them)
I put up a post on twitter about how I love getting food from our CSA share (community supported agriculture - we own a share with some friends and get a bag of veggies straight from the farm each week). One of my twitter friends was interested but had never been able to get connected to a farm before. I was able to quickly pass on info to her and hopefully she’ll be supporting a local farmer soon too.
A while back I posted on twitter that I was working on some new web strategy ideas. A twitter friend, and well respected authority on the issue, responded that she would review my strategy docs and give feedback. It was very helpful in framing this new project.
Had a friend who needed a recipe for chicken breasts. Hit reply, great dinner.
Book suggestions
Music suggestions
Software suggestions
Idea sharing
Link sharing
Useful work-related connections
All in 140 characters or less. This stuff really is useful…
I’ve got a new homemade recipe over at Tastyplanner.com
Sarah said it’s one of the top recipes I’ve ever made…I loved it too.
It’s easy, but I do suggest slow cooking the chicken. I came home for lunch and tossed it in the oven, then just took it out when I got home later in the day.
Sometimes we get stuck in the rut of thinking the church should have one look, one feel, one experience, one message that hasn’t changed in two thousand years. The reality is that even Jesus put his message in context for the people he was communicating to. When he talked to fisherman he used fishing metaphors. When he talked to farmers, he spoke of the grains in the field.
Dogma is the hard and fast rule. The way things were, and to the dogmatics, the way things should be. Context is the variable that is constantly changing. The mold isn’t fixed. People are different. People who live a mile apart can have tremendously diverse contexts. Things that were once solid, welded, defined, are now taking new shapes and providing flexibility in our experiences.
The Gina Project at BMW represents an aggressive shift in thinking about how we can experience our environments. The user defined experience is going to change the way we do things. Even in the church. Whether it’s through providing content at the touch of button or having our people be a part of developing content and the community around it.
Are you flexible? Are you ready to reach people in their context? Put your innovative foot forward and think about how people experience Christ in your community, or how they could? Be there.
If the church really is the body and Jesus the head, then we should have in mind the human way of doing things. Responding and anticipating the felt needs of our communities.
Taken this weekend at the park with Elliot, Levi, Mommy, Daddy, Erin and Ezra. What a great park, right on the edge of north Minneapolis. Also, a few shots from Daddy’s day with Elliot and Levi at LegoLand at Mall of America… The extended gallery…
Time Capsule will be my new wireless network at home. It will also be the first layer back-up for the family photos, the music library, and all those Redwire Files that are just waiting to be zapped by a hard drive crash. Still need some redundancy and offsite back-up, but I’m excited about this first layer being accomplished with the style and intuitive usability of an Apple product.
