Funeral Perspective
I attended two funerals last week. I’ll admit I don’t like the reality of death. The Scriptures are clear – God created us to live forever. Instead death stole into the world, not as a welcomed friend, but as an enemy. So I have biblical support for my strong dislike of death.
But, though I despise death, I’ve come to appreciate funerals.
First, I appreciate funerals for the reasons we have them – they provide an opportunity to grieve our loss, to celebrate the life of a loved one, and to be with family and friends.
Yet there’s one more reason I’ve grown to appreciate funerals. It’s the serious perspective that can be gained, whether we like it or not, when we come face to face with death.
These funerals were for two very different people who died at two different places in their lives, one at the end of what we’d call a good long life, the other passed in mid-life. As I sat quietly in each service I asked myself two perspective giving questions. Each question had an eye on my potential funerals – one at the end of a long life and the other, more immanent, at mid – life.
The first question was simply “who’d be at my funeral and why”? The answer’s very revealing about the significance my life has had on others – whether it was positive, negative or neutral.
The second question is “what would be said about me?” Again the answer shines a needed light, showing what, if any, difference I made in the world. It also points to what I did or didn’t do with the gifts and abilities God gave me throughout my life.
So last week I not only attend two funerals, I had a needed perspective checkup on my life and how I’m living it.
Running for Clarity
For years I’ve been a runner. I run because it’s a simple, inexpensive way to stay in shape. Running is also an excuse to be outside, regardless of the weather. As such I’ve never owned a treadmill because, when I’ve had the opportunity to use one, I’ve found them to be well… torturous.
I have also discovered another significant benefit of running – when I run I find better solutions to pending problems, gain new perspectives on relationships, have better focus on a message that needs delivering or pray with more clarity.
The only reasonable explanation I’ve heard for this phenomenon is that running, with its physical rhythm of moving and breathing, especially outside, clears the mind of the clutter that can so easily cloud our thinking.
When I’ve had periods when I’m not running or not running much, I see a decrease in the quality of my thinking, especially around complex issues. On the other hand, as I look back on the last 30 years of my life, I can almost connect every good decision I’ve made, or idea I’ve had, to a run I’ve taken.
Now running isn’t for everyone. But doing something that includes the following three elements is a must if we’re to have any hope of experiencing clarity of thinking:
Rhythmic physical activity
That’s so simple to do it requires no thinking to do it
And keeps any potential distractions away
Such things as biking, walking, swimming or rocking in a chair (my 2nd favorite activity after running) can create the right combination of these elements as well.
So whatever the activity, making the effort to do it on a regular basis will de-clutter our minds and give us the clarity of thinking that’s necessary to deal with the complex world in which we live.
6 Questions Every Organization Needs to Answer, Part 1
Over the last week our staff and board reviewed our answers to 6 key questions every organization should answer. They are the highest level description of the destination and the guard rails every organization needs to assure long-term effectiveness.
Here are the 6 questions we reviewed and the place SpringHill provides the answers:
- What do we believe to be true? Statement of Faith.
- Why do we exist? Mission
- What’s important to us? Core Values
- What makes us distinct? Philosophy of Ministry
- What do we want to achieve in 15, 20 or 25 years? Big Hairy Audacious God Goal (BHAGG)
- What do we want to become in 5, 10, 15 years? Vision
The answers to the first 4 questions focus on the “now” and need to be a present reality within the organization. Thus they are the guard rails that keep the organization from getting off track.
The last 2 questions are future focused and provide the organization’s long-term destination. These answers need to be guided by and consistent with the answers to the first 4 questions.
All the answers should be treated like the Constitution of the United States – slow and laborious to change. Why? Because any change needs to appropriately involve every stakeholder group of the organization, and this takes time. If the answers keep changing it’s because the questions have never been truly answered.
Not only is it necessary to answer these 6 questions, it’s absolutely essential that the answers drive everything else in the organization. Every decision made within the organization is to be subservient to the answers to these questions. That’s why these answers are so important, and why they should rarely change.
Finally, we believe answering these questions not to be, a an act of calculation, but an act of discovery, a discovery that will pay richly in a long future of effective ministry.
To see SpringHill’s answers to the 6 Key Questions click here.
The All Staff Meeting
Eileen Zilch discussing some Key Indicators We just finished one of our 3 yearly All Staff Meetings this morning. We do one at the end of each of our three “seasons” scheduled along each of our three yearly Board of Director’s meetings. The meeting allows the entire staff to hear and interact with the same information that our board receives, including the results of the previous season and a look ahead to the rest of the year.
The meeting has evolved over time, moving from something that might be compared to a locker room speech to a more businesslike model. We continue to try to balance being “businesslike” and having that pre-game locker room feeling. Depending on the meeting we tend to lean one way or another.
The tone of today’s meeting clearly leaned towards more businesslike. Part of the reason was the large number of items on the agenda.
Our standard agenda includes:
Performance against our goals (see our weekly huddle goals –click here)
Progress on Key Initiatives
Ministry highlights and stories
President’s message (content varies meeting to meeting)
One other topic
We share the presentation responsibility among our management team. Today we had 7 different people present. Our goal is to share information quickly and succinctly allowing time for questions and comments by staff.
One of our biggest challenges has been the growing number of staff who have offices outside of Evart, MI. We’ve struggled finding reasonably priced technologies that would effectively include remote staff. Today, by using GoToMeeting, we had our best “technology” meeting yet, marked by a relatively high interaction between people in 6 locations. Not perfect, but less costly than people driving to the location.
Finally the highlight of these meetings is the simple fact that the entire SpringHill team is “together”, which, for me, is always a great thing.
The 360⁰ Evaluation
Recently I initiated a 360⁰ evaluation of my leadership. I did it in response to a recommendation in the book What to Ask the Person in the Mirror and after discussing the topic with my peer learning group.It’s important I understand my leadership strengths and weaknesses including any blind spots I might have. Knowing this information is especially critical in light of SpringHill’s current and future growth.
As I expressed to the folks I asked to participate in the evaluation, I do not want my leadership to be a hindrance to SpringHill reaching its potential. Because the truth is, the effectiveness of an organization is always less than or equal to the leadership capacity of its chief executive, never greater.
So if you’ve ever contemplated having a 360⁰ evaluation of your leadership, consider the following recommendations from my experience and the experience of my peers, in helping make the process more fruitful and productive.
- Have an outside human resources professional administer the evaluation on your behalf.
- Use a reliable and valid 360⁰ process. I used The Center for Creative Leadership’s evaluation tool. It’s proven and compares your feedback to a database of 100,000’s of leaders from around the world.
- Don’t make it part of your performance appraisal, it’s better used for developmental purposes.
- Initiate the review; don’t wait until someone initiates it for you. You want feedback sooner than later and not when someone (like your boss) thinks there might be an issue, because, in that case, it might be too late.
- Be open to all the feedback and be prepared to make changes.
Feedback isn’t always easy to get and receive, but as Proverbs 10:17 says “He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.”
The Symptoms and the Cure for the Out of Control Schedule
This week I met with my friend and advisor Bill Payne. The topic I sought his input on was prioritizing and managing my time. It’s become a bigger challenge as my job continues to evolve in light of SpringHill’s growth (see my post Time – One of Most Valuable Gifts). As always, Bill provided wise and practical input.Below are the symptoms I’ve been experiencing over the last year and some of Bill’s wisdom to help cure the out of control schedule I’ve had. As you read, ask yourself – “are you experiencing any of these same symptoms?” If you answer yes, then join me in trying some of Bill’s input for yourself.
Symptoms:
My time and schedule feel like they’re being driven and managed by everyone else but me.
I’ve had barely enough time to do all that I need and should do in my role.
To accomplished both what I need to do and what everyone else has expected me to do, I’ve cut short or cut out such things as exercise, sleep, house and home projects, reflection time and planning, time with friends and even, I hate to admit this, at moments, time with my family.
The Cure:
Block out time in my daily and weekly schedule as “no meeting” times to assure I have space to do both the important things and the things only I can do.
Trust my team to do their work and to do it well.
Stop trying to please everyone by saying yes to everyone’s requests and begin to say no in appropriate ways. Bill promised that saying no becomes easier the more you say it.
Then stop feeling guilty when I say no.
Finally, stop over playing my desire to please, a good quality I have, until taken to the extreme – which is trying the impossible – to please everyone all the time.
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.
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.
