VISION EVAPORATES

Vision is the big picture of the preferable future you are painting for your organization or team. But vision evaporates. People simply have so much on their individual platters that here is no way or them to keep the important things constantly in the forefront of their minds. That is the job of leadership. One organization when compiling all forms of communication with their employees for the last year found that only 1% of it was about the visionary company-wide change initiative they were about to undertake. Huge stop sign there, uh?

I am working with a church in South Bend right now that has just gone through the challenging process of crafting a clear and articulate vision statement.  No one would have ever calculated the important ripple this would have throughout the ranks for leadership into the congregation.  The excitement and ethos this is creating is nothing short of remarkable. But without this great vision being spread around, talked about, hired to, and the tape measure of success it will simply evaporate like the morning dew.

What is the cumulative exposure your team has had to the mission and vision? Never minimize the now famous trickle-down effect.

How often do you assess mission drift in your area? Here is a crucial leadership task. Ruthless, frequent evaluation keeps the troops from wheel-spinning frustration and precious time waste.  How often are you evaluating what you do in your ministry areas and initiatives against whether it advances the cause of vision accomplishment?

How often do you point the way for your team? Vision evaporates and without constant vigilance here, fuzzy thinking will set in. Many will tell you vision casting is THE fundamental leadership necessity.

How often do you make others on the team cast the vision? This is forced 3rd party learning. This shows how well you are pushing vision out into the rippling concentric circles of your team and organism.

New Discourse for Our Day

Realize that old communication patterns are less and less effective in the new (postmodern) world, and discover new, appropriate models of discourse.
Brian McLaren
The tectonic plates shifting beneath our feet are not only signs of subterranean movement but of a new emerging landscape that will require new maps. Every quadrant on both sides of the sacred/secular line, a line that shouldn’t even exist,  tells us “story” is THE postmodern way to communicate. Points and principles aren’t as effective as they used to be. Experience wins the day and story is experience.

Of course, Jesus is the master storyteller captivating the masses with parables, allegories, and illustrations. Here are five pointers toward a new rhetoric for post modernity:

1.    Words will have to be authenticated with a life-story. Authenticity is necessary in the crucible of the experiential 21st century. Practical transformation is “story” proof.
2.    Truth will be just as important but it will be clean, simple and with an earthiness often illusive in today’s cumber-some techno-babble and christianese.
3.    Our new narrative will allow others to enter in and tell their own story and see how they are part of God’s overarching story. This will allow a left brain/right brain balance and be more inclusive, compelling and creative.
4.    We will seek to move away from the propositionalizing tendency that reduces the biblical story to a bunch of biblical stories with the same weight as Bill Bennett’s Book of Virtues or Aesop’s Fables.
5.    We will recognize the power of the biblical narrative is to invite us to constantly reinterpret our life story, with all it’s brokenness, pain and incompleteness against the wholeness and hope bringing narrative of the biblical story.  It is this that makes Christianity unique.

REMEMBER THE THREE C’S

Don’t confuse openness with ownership. Owning a vision comes through labor intensive repetition. There is no other way. Many are open – only the repeatedly exposed fan come to own it.
Max DuPree

For some reason the importance of vision falls on hard times periodically. But I have to say, I am a fan. I still don’t know an organization or church that accomplishes anything without some vision. Every church I am working with these days is getting big bang out the hard spade work of reflecting on their vision. So a couple questions for you as you think about this topic.

Are you certain on the big picture for the organization and your area? Is it clean, compelling and creative in your mind? If not re-tool, revamp and reconsider. In a word or phrase – what is your role in implementing the organization’s mission? What do you do day in and day out that moves the team toward the summit?

CLEAR – You must have crystal clarity on your organizational and departmental mission. Are you totally certain and exacting about your role? Is your time missionally invested? Clouds and haze shroud moutain peaks. If you aren’t sure of the direction, the expedition will die on the mountainside.

COMPELLING – Can you paint the picture to others? What colors do you use? Most of our palettes are black and white with a few shades of gray for variety. Brainstorm a new color scheme. Think bigger. No one will give their life to summit a molehill.

CREATIVE – How many different ways can it be said, preached, illustrated, graphic-ed, and slogan-ed. One of your jobs is to make sure your fellow climbers don’t nod off to sleep due to the numbness of boredom. Missional freshness is a monstrous leadership task and essential to a successful climb. How much time and how do you log fresh, exciting, and creative ways to point others to the peak?

The Retention Factor

All great minds have learned how to learn and how to retain.

John Gardner, Harvard Professor

Why do some people just seem to have great memories and others of us struggle to remember where we put our car keys (well that could be an aging issue there)? The answer? All of us remember what we deem important and then store away for recall. While everyone has unconscious ways they store and retrieve important items, here are some of the strongest tips for peak performance in recall and using information you are learning or reading. And can I share with you a secret…I didn’t make these up, I was taught these by two people who I thought were genius and had amazing memories.  You know what they told me?  Both said, “I am not a genius, just disciplined at remembering what I want to remember.”  That is a big nugget.  Was it Einstein that said “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration?  Well there you go…start some new habits.

1.    Take the 3rd party learning approach as much as possible. This means learning and reading as if you were going to teach the same material to someone tonight.
2.    Within 48 hours of learning something you want to seal in your memory go find someone and share it with them. No one available? Tell the cat. And you know what I hate cats
3.    Associate a memorable key word or phrase with that material, and place in a visible location for 1 week.
4.    Review your new learning once a week for 4 weeks. People don’t review.  You don’t review you won’t remember, it is that simple.

If you diligently do these four things your retention will dramatically rise and people will think you are a genius. The kingdom implications are enormous – your command of scripture, leadership principles, parenting nuggets to pass on will surprise even you.

The Fine Balance of Life’s Ecosystems

The main ecosystem threat is inevitable entropy.
John Lyons
An ecosystem is the balanced harmony of outputs and inputs that provide a healthy environment for life to flourish. As with all ecosystems, an imbalance in the output/input ration and you are looking at trouble. The tendency of all systems to move to lower energy and greater disorder is called entropy. Look at your office, your kids bedrooms, your staff leadership team, or your vocational context. The law is universal, that is why it is called the second law of thermodynamcis

I continue to hold up Robert Quinn as the most insightful guy on all this entropy stuff. He says all humans, like all systems, have two and only two choices, slow death (entropy) or deep change. The problem is we want easy change. But that isn’t on the menu of options. It is slow death or DEEP change.

Spiritually speaking our spiritual lives and vocational world are constantly going to lesser energy and higher disorder. Every time that happens we are facing a balance problem – in ecosystem terms the outputs of the system are exceeding the inputs. How do we intercept spiritual entropy? Make a list of outputs and inputs into your ecosystem….then answer these:

1. What are the 3 biggest entropy producers in your life?
2. What 2 things could you being doing that would significantly increase your ecosystem balance?
3. What 2 things could you curb or cease that would make room for your two new high leverage entropy fighters?
4. When will you being your two new things and who will keep you accountable?
5. What current inputs need to be incased? Decreased?
6. What earmarks alert you to imbalance in your ecosystem?

The Bose Speakers in Your Mind

The internal dialogue that goes on inside of our heads is the greatest determiner of our outlook, performance, and expectation level. The silent self-talk floating between our two ears has deafening impact on our self-perception and ability to change what over time, has come to feel like “our fate”. But here is the liberating and powerful truth of it all – all of us control what mental iPod tunes play. Through conditioning from coaches, school teachers, parents, siblings and employers, we have certain sound waves that get lots of repetitive play; some detrimental, others beneficial. The source of these MP3 brain downloads is much less important than the hard work of purging the archives of those “downers”. Here is a prescription:

1. Do a “waking hours” thought audit. Every time you find yourself listening to dialogue you find less than desirable, note it in print. One or two days of this and you get the idea real quick.
2. Identify any patterns that you see emerge. By and large our own thoughts are something less than affirming and bolstering. Are there certain times of the day your thoughts are less or more on target? How impact by moods are they and vice versa, how does that self talk impact your moods?
3. In response create a mental trigger list. These are key thoughts, quotes, biblical references that act as counterpoints to the cycling iTunes that keeps playing.

On a more proactive tact, create a daily quotes list that allows you to pre-program your thinking for the day.

Book Resources: Joan Borysenko-Minding the Body, Mending the Mind. Tara Bennett-Goldman - Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Mend the Heart.

Myths of Continuity in a Discontinuous Age

The sea change of structures, technology, and speed mean equilibrium as you know it will never reappear.
P. Drucker

Drucker makes clear that the myths of re-established homeostasis and a return to business as usual will perish with the modern world. The following myths linger in much of our thinking, and as a result, keep us tentative and conservative in our initiatives. If we embrace the idea things will never be the same, we will take the opportunity to help create tomorrow and not tread water hoping it never arrives. Here are the myths we need to let go of and truths to embrace:

There is a critical mass that once reached will make it easer. From the size of your team to the amount of income this will be false every time. With an increase in any critical mass area you increase complexity, maintenance and potential time sucking problems. Embrace and assume it never gets better than this moment. You will work more effectively, create and accomplish.

Once my skills and knowledge are developed I will be more comfortable. Not true. The need for skill development far outpaces our ability to acquire them. Instead embrace the feel of doing it on the fly. Learn to love exhilaration, not frustration.

Pace is the problem – I just don’t have time. Welcome to reality and it won’t be getting better. Leverage your effectiveness by shrewd and ruthless selection of the truly important. This is a key every successful leader will mention to you. LASER FOCUS.

Placing the Catalyzing Question

“There are few things as powerful as a well placed question.”
Bobb Biehl, Founder of the MasterPlanning Group

In his book Jesus Asked, Conrad Gempf notes that of the 67 different story units in Marks Gospel where Jesus is questioned about something, in no less than 50 of those units he responds with a question. Not a particularly new insight but one that nonetheless helps us understand the right question are the tillers or the earth of our soul, they create self exploration, and a sense of journey.

Questions catalyze the questioned one and provoke some real soul searching . Questions reveal our desire to learn from the one questioned, and demonstrate our desire to hear their story and take interest in their space. I challenge you to develop a battery of questions that you have on the tip of your tongue. You will be surprised at the life development happening at subterranean levels. Here are couple gems for starters…

• What is the most important thing you’ve learned this month?

• Best book in the last 6 months?

• Best blog you read ?

• How can I help you most right now?

What are some of the questions you have learned to ask that help you get growth mileage?

making dents

“Great groups (teams) hope to make a dent in the universe”
Steve Jobs, Founder of Macintosh Computers

This quote may be even more significant in light of the announcement of the iPhone and the way Steve framed the announcement. I am sure by now you have seen the actual announcement feed on the Apple site. But let’s reflect a bit on his statement about teams.

Great teams flare like a rocket, are propelled with power toward a previously unexplored destination and leave behind a residue – a residue that bespeaks their synergism and creativity. We too hope to make a dent in the universe; a dent of divine design and immense proportion. Divine because dents not bearing God’s perfect pressure are annoying flaws detracting not adding to a person’s beauty. Immense proportions because any life moved closer to the kingdom has traveled a huge chasm over sin, selfish inertia and enemy enticements.

To build on islands of health and strength we must create healthy environments where experiments can be conducted, fuels tested, maps into space charted and rockets eventually built. This will be as exhausting as it is exhilarating. What new habits of health are you committing to walk out that will make you’re a better dent maker? What kind of dent are you hoping to make? What is its size, shape and on whom are you to make it?

Rockets are designed and built by taking intentional steps in the context of team. Will you commit to facilitating the most exciting rocket building environment possible and to do all you can to make a dent with those teammates you lead and in the lives of those with whom we are called to travel. That is the journey we are called to facilitate, that is the journey we as leaders must consider taking every day.

Ontological Coherence

Alan Mann in his very provocative and often controversial book Atonement for a Sinless Society says, the typical postmodern experiences shame as a dominant part of their self understanding, and shame is “our failure to live to an ideal that we have held for ourselves, is an experience of self deficiency. What the postmodern craves, therefore is an ontological coherence– a wholeness of being that always seems to be out of reach.”

I have been pondering this for some time now. Do you think that is an accurate evaluation of the pomo condition? Is that the typical postmoderns self understanding?