Can People Truly Change?
“Past performance is the best predictor of future performance.” I learned this fundamental truth about people back in my days as a corporate recruiter. It was drilled into me through the interview training I received and built into the selection processes we used, the same selection processes used in many organizations today.
Yet, I have to admit, there’s been many times when I didn’t want to accept it as true. I wanted to believe people can change. That their past behavior doesn’t mean that’s how they will act in the future.
I’ve, at times, ignored this truth, because I wanted to trust people when they said they’ve changed. But, almost every time I’ve turned my back on this truth, I’ve regretted it.
Why? Because the truth is the truth – past performance is the best predictor of future performance – because most people don’t change.
But can this be the only truth about people? Is this the last word about what we can expect from others, from ourselves?
The answer is no, it’s not the only possibility. People can and do change. It’s rare, but it’s possible. But the second truth is this – people do not change by themselves. It requires something significant to happen to a person for true change to take place and cause a break from their past.
That “something significant” needs to go deep and rattle a person down to the core of their being, and in that place, true transformation happens. And always, at the center of this “something significant” is Jesus Christ, because it’s God who ultimately transforms lives, who grants people a lasting break from their past.
This is why I’ve committed my vocational life to Christian camping. Because Christian camps create those “something significant” experiences, where God steps in, goes down deep, rattles the core of a person, and leads them to a place of true transformation where the past is no longer a predictor of the future.
The Huddle and the Scoreboard
Every football team develops a plan for each game. The game plan informs the coaches which plays to call and the huddle is the “meeting” where this decision’s communicated to the players. The scoreboard informs the coaches, players (and fans) just how good the game plan is and how well it’s being executed. Based on the scoreboard, coaches and players make mid game adjustments.
Many organizations have implemented their own version of a huddle and scoreboard to help their teams “win” their game. SpringHill is into its second year of its weekly huddle and scoreboard. Both have helped our team quickly see the score, make the necessary adjustments and then “win the game”. It’s not a stretch to say that both the scoreboard and huddle are two contributing factors as to why SpringHill had its biggest year in its history.
Our huddle is open to all staff but the official “players” are members of our management team who have the responsibility to record the “stats” in the scoreboard and report them in the huddle. Our scoreboard includes the following statistical categories, measured against stated goals:
Camper Experience including spiritual impact, Net Promoter Score (NPS) and safety
Camper registration
Fundraising
Finances
After the huddle each manager reviews the “stats” with their own teams, so within a few days the entire SpringHill team knows the current “score” and can make adjustments in their game plans. We’ve added another tool in 2012 – a bi-weekly Huddle Report that’s emailed to all staff and summarizes the huddle, the scorecard and other important information our team needs.
We used three books in designing the SpringHill huddle and scoreboard – The Rockefeller Habits, Death by Meeting and The Great Game of Business. Each provided great perspective and input.
At SpringHill, we like to keep score, and we like to win, and the SpringHill huddle and scoreboard helps us do both.
False Hero Worship
Our Michigan Facilities Manager, Joe Yahner, calls the celebration of work and projects done at the last-minute, false hero-worship. He mentioned it in an impromptu conversation he, our Retreats Manager Eric Woods and I were having about Winter Teen Retreats preparation.It’s a great description of an all too often occurrence in organizations large and small, including, in times past, at SpringHill.
False hero-worship happens when organizations confuse procrastination, the lack of planning and the accompanying last-minute scramble to get work done, with good planning and execution. When organizations and leaders make this mistake they reinforce the wrong behaviors in their teams. Instead of encouraging great planning and execution, leaders send a message that they value being behind with two minutes to go, and the lack of planning and procrastination which causes it.
It’s like making heroes of fire fighters who start their own fires, and then celebrating their great fire fighting. We become so addicted to the adrenaline rush of fire fighting (or watching fire fighting) that we inadvertently encourage fire starting (lack of planning and preparation).
And if adrenaline highs is your goal then good, thoughtful and intentional planning followed by calm and professional execution of the plan, offers very little excitement. It only offers great, sustainable results at lower organizational and personal costs.
Great planning and execution also offers the deep satisfaction of knowing a job, the entire job, from beginning to the end, has been well done – so well done that the work looked easy (even if we know it wasn’t).
So Eric, Joe and I had our own brief “celebration” in the Trading Post of the good planning and great work done by our team. And based on the first two retreats, we’ll also be celebrating another winter of great ministry.
Wisdom is Supreme
“Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding”. Proverbs 4:7This week our Development team received wisdom. It cost us three long days away from our families and the office, but it was worth every minute.
Actually, it maybe the best 3 days of any professional investment I’ve made in a long time. Not because of the subject matter – yes development and fundraising are incredibly important for ministries like SpringHill – but because of the wisdom of our seminar leader Bill McConkey of McConkey Johnston International.
Bill has been a development professional for 50 years as well as a local church pastor for over 40. He sits on boards of well-known and significant ministries while continuing both his consulting and pastoral work. Bill embodies wisdom.
Which had me thinking, why is there such a serious lack appreciation in our culture for true wisdom and its sources?
First we need to understand wisdom. Wisdom is the accumulated learning and knowledge one has gathered from personal experience or the experience of others. The two key words are “accumulated” and “experience”, both of which can only happen over a long period of time, such as a… life time. By implication then, the only truly wise people walking the earth are those who’ve been around a long time and those who have learned from them.
Which is why our culture doesn’t value true wisdom, we don’t value the people who have it. There’s a bias against older people because they’re not always “current”. Bill McConkey doesn’t own a computer, thus never does email. So it would be easy to dismiss things Bill has to say, but oh, what a mistake that would be (could it be that Bill’s wiser because he doesn’t have email?).
So beyond all that I learned about fundraising this week I also reminded of my need to be with and around wise people, those who’ve traveled life for a long time, because “wisdom is supreme”.
Jim Collins & Great by Choice
Mark Olson, SpringHill’s former President, was the first to introduce Jim Collins and his work to SpringHill through the book Built to Last.It was in reading Built to Last that I became a fan of Jim Collins, and it certainly wouldn’t be far off to say, over the years, that I’ve become a disciple of Jim Collin’s research/writing. Since Built to Last, I’ve read all his books, have had our key leaders read his books, then continued the practice Mark started of applying the books’ principles to SpringHill.
After 15 years and 5 books, both Collins’ concepts and terminology have become part of the SpringHill culture. Read our strategic/ministry plan and you’ll see how Collins’ work has impacted and influenced SpringHill.
In an effort to avoid becoming an organization that is always chasing the “flavor of the day” we’ve been intentional about staying consistent in using Collins’s concepts and terminology. We acknowledge there are other good management consultants who use different terminology and have their own twist on strategic and leadership concepts. But we believe it’s counterproductive to switch, mix and change language within a culture, in the name of being cutting edge, when the underlying principles are similar or the same.
Finally we’ve stayed with Collins and his work because, unlike so many other experts and their books, the concepts derive from rigorous research not anecdotal evidence, opinion or folk-lore.
Which brings me to Collins’ new book (written with Morten T. Hansen) – Great by Choice, it’s another “great” work based on “great” research. Many of SpringHill leaders have already read it and a number of our department teams, including my leadership team, have plans to carry out the appropriate concepts into SpringHill.
So once again, Collins provides timely and relevant insight for organizations and leaders looking to stay or become “great”. I highly recommend it.
Time – One of Our Most Valuable Gifts
If I learned anything in 2011 it’s that time isn’t just my most valuable resources, it’s a gift.
It’s a gift because it’s part of God’s creation. It’s one of God’s most valuable gifts because (along with space) it’s the context in which we experience all His other good gifts.
In the book What to Ask the Person in the Mirror (see my post) Robert Steven Kaplan recommends leaders do an audit of how they spend their time. Sensing, that with the growth of SpringHill, I was beginning to lose my grip on this gift, I did a time audit in November and early December.
I accomplished this audit by carrying around an Excel spreadsheet with a list of key activities I do, or should do, during a typical week. Then I marked down, in ¼ hour segments, where I spent my time. I did a tally at the end of each day and at the end of the week. After the first week I made adjustments in the spreadsheet to better reflect where I was actually spending my time. It was a simple process, requiring little time and, most importantly, it was enlightening.
After five weeks one major theme became apparent – the time I’m committing to my work has increased as SpringHill has grown. The trouble is, if this pattern continues, one day I’m going to run out of time (time being a finite resource), which could result in me becoming a hurdle instead of an aid to SpringHill continuing to reach more kids in more places more effectively.
This result would be unacceptable. So I’m taking intentional steps in 2012 to do a better job with the gift of time God’s given me. (See my post on questions to ask yourself in preparing for 2012).
What will you do with your gift this year?
10 Questions to Ask Yourself about 2011
Every year over the Christmas holidays I take time away from work and spend it with family, doing needed projects around the house, and readying myself for the New Year. One exercise I do in preparation for the upcoming year is to set personal goals, as well as layout plans to achieve those goals.
As in any goal setting exercise, I always begin by evaluating the past year. After a conversation about 2011 with my good friend Jack McQueeney, Executive Director of the Navigators’ Glen Eyrie Group, he sent me the following list of thought-provoking questions to help me evaluate 2011 and plan for 2012. I share them with you in hopes that they’ll be as helpful to you as they have been for me.
- What is the greatest lesson you learned this year that you never want your kids to forget?
- How might you have behaved or acted differently this year if you had to do it over again?
- Looking back over the year, what did you set out to do that you didn’t do and why?
- What key discipline did you live out this past year that had a significant impact on your life? What was the impact?
- What are you most proud of this year?
- What were the key surprises (good or bad) that happened this year?
- Which relationships in your life grew this year and which regressed?
- If you could go back to the beginning of this year, what piece of advice would you give yourself? Why?
- Looking back, what was the overarching theme for the year?
- What will be your overarching theme for next year?
Are there other questions you’ve found helpful to answer in evaluating your life? Please share them with us.
Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings
As I read The Lord of the Rings for something like the 10th time I was once again reminded of the great wisdom Tolkien shares as part of the story. Below are some of my favorite quotes, many of which I’ve looked to and shared with others when they’ve seemed most applicable.
“I wish it had not happened in my time.” Said Frodo. “So do I” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live in such times. But that is not for them to decide. All
we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”“He deserves death.” Deserves it! I dare say he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
“Handsome is as handsome does.”
“You have come and here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.”
“All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wonder are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken: The crownless again shall be king.”
“He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”
“It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill.”
“Despair or folly?” said Gandalf “It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope.”
“The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yes such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”
“You have come and here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.”
“To cast aside regret and fear. To do the deed at hand.”
“The treacherous are ever distrustful.”
“Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.”
“The houses of the dead are no places for the living…Authority is not given you to order the hour of your death,” answered Gandalf.
“Despair had not left him, but the weakness had passed. He even smiled grimly, feeling now as clearly as a moment before he had felt the opposite, that what he had to do, he had to do, if he could, and what whether anyone
ever knew about it was beside the purpose.”“The houses of the dead are no places for the living…Authority is not given you to order the hour of your death,” answered Gandalf.
“For it is said in old lore: ‘The hands of the king are the hands of a healer.’
Defining “Best”
In my last post I addressed SpringHill’s goal of having the best team by being an organization that the best people want to be a part of. But as I’ve thought about the word best and how it’s commonly used I may have misrepresented our goals. So let me clarify.
The word best typically implies comparison. To be the best means you’re better than everyone else. That’s not what we mean at SpringHill when we talk about being the best.
When say we want to be the best team we simply mean we want to be effective in fulfilling our mission and achieving our goals and doing it consistent with our core values. In other words being the best means we are faithfully delivering on God’s calling for us and doing so in the way that honors Him.
This is also same the spirit in which we use the word best when applying it to people. It’s not our goal to have the “number one” person in a particular field or profession on our team. Instead our goal is to have the right person. We use the language in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great where he says “great organizations have the right people on the bus”.
The right people are those who’re committed to our mission, embrace our values, embody the SpringHill Experience, fit our culture and have the skills and abilities to help our team be successful. There may be more talented people in the world by comparison, but for SpringHill, if they don’t meet these qualifications, they’re not the best.
So you can see we’re not into comparisons, except for the one that really matters – the comparison of ourselves as individuals and as a team to what God’s called us to do and who He’s called us to be.
The Key to Becoming a Great Organization
Photo by Denise Perry at the SpringHill Staff Christmas Party What’s the single most important factor in a successful organization? At SpringHill we answer, without hesitation, people. Winning organizations must have the best people in the right roles working effectively together.
To this end we’ve committed ourselves over the last 10 years to becoming the kind of organization that the best people want to work for. The logic’s simple – if you want to be a successful organization you need the best people. To have the best people doing the best possible work you need to be the kind of organization that attracts, retains and inspires great staff.
Now it’s one thing to say you want to be the kind of organization that attracts the best people, it’s another to be able to objectively say you’re making progress to that end. We faced this issue at SpringHill so decided a number of years ago to use an employee survey tool through the Best Christian Workplaces Institute (BCWI). It’s a proven tool that provides survey over survey comparisons and benchmarks against other organizations on key factors measuring organization health.
We take the survey every two years, not to win an award, but with the goal of identifying areas for improvement as well as areas we need to assure remain positive. It has become the “Key Indicator” of our organizational health and our impetus to continue becoming the best possible place for the best people to work.
And our logic’s held true. As our BCWI scores have improved, indicating our improvement in organizational health, so have our other key measures including: annual campers served, camper retention, financial measures and most importantly our key spiritual measures of our campers and staff.
Oh yes, we just took the survey and I’m thankful to announce SpringHill’s selection once again as a 2012 Best Christian Workplace.
