The September Whirlwind
This has been the longest stretch I’ve had in three years between blog posts. I have no excuses except its September which means two things. First, September is when we transition out of our busiest season at SpringHill – summer – and move to catching up on all the things, both personal and at work, that didn’t get done during this busy season. Things like those pesky yard and house projects which I got started but now need to be finished before the snow flies.Second (and the real reason for my sporadic posting) I went on two fishing trips to northern Ontario, Canada (Camp Anjigami) this month (I know you don’t feel a bit sorry for me on this one and, frankly, you shouldn’t). One trip was with a large group of SpringHill friends and other was with long-time friends from college. Both trips were excellent, full of fishing, food and fellowship but not a lot of writing (or sleep for that matter).
But I’m now back at it, thankful for the break, but also energized for the great fall ahead.
So here’s a few of my take-a-ways from this September –
- It’s always good to step away from regular routines or disciplines, even healthy ones like writing. Even a marathoner has a rest days.
- There’s something very special about being with good friends in cool places, doing fun, adventurous activities. It always gives me a deeper appreciation for my friends and for my life.
- Finally, going someplace and actually disconnecting from the world is incredible. Everyone should try it; it’s good for the soul.
So yes, God willing, I’m back in the digital saddle again and looking forward to writing about the life ahead.
High School Sports Part 1 – When Smaller is Better
With fall comes high school sports and for the past 7 falls I’ve been oh so thankful our kids attend a small class D school. Why? Because all of my kids have had every opportunity to participate in all the sports they’ve wanted to. You see at small schools, everyone who wants to be an athlete can be, and anyone who wants to be on the team, is on the team.Even this fall, our youngest son Jonathan, decided he wanted to play soccer again but also try cross-country. So our school’s coaches and administration have worked it out for him and 3 other students to “dual sport”. This is an incredible opportunity for Jonathan to find out how much he really likes running without giving up his spot on the soccer team.
In addition, Jonathan, along with his brother Mitch, can play a sport all three seasons, to be a “3 sport athlete” if they choose. And this is true of every student in our little school.
Now it’s also true that being a “three sport” or “dual sport” athlete doesn’t create specialized athletes who might have a better chance to play Division 1 (though Class D athletes do play Division 1). But many of our students have opportunities to play Division 3 and NAIA sports in college if they choose. And the reality is not many students who specialize in a sport at larger high schools end up playing Division 1 or 2. So the truth is there’s nothing lost in being a well-rounded athlete, but so much to gain.
But why I’m really thankful each fall, isn’t because my kids can be three sport athletes, but because the small school environment allows high school sports to be what they’re supposed to be – opportunities to learn life transforming lessons outside of the classroom. It seems that this purpose is so easily lost when winning and scholarships become more important than providing opportunities for as many students as possible to learn the valuable lessons that sports teach so well.
Gaining “Buy In”
It’s the start of the football season and if you follow it you’ve heard ongoing discussions about coaches beginning their first season with a new team. It seems that one of the most significant indicators of a new coach’s success is the “buy in” the players have in the new coach’s system.It’s the same with every organization that wants to fulfill its mission, to be effective or just plain wants to win, leaders must move their team from a posture of compliance to one of commitment. Great teams need people willing to sacrifice and passionately pursue its plans, priorities and direction.
The question is – how does a leader gain “buy in” and have committed staff, not just compliant staff? The answer’s too long for one short blog post but here are a few essentials that I’ve discovered over the years.
First, you need people who want to be committed to something bigger than themselves. People who just want a job will never move to “buy in” but will always just go through the motions to keep their job.
Second, when you have these kinds of people on your team you need to treat them as thoughtful, committed adults, as partners in your organization’s work. People willing to commit to something bigger than themselves expect nothing less.
Finally, your organization needs to be about something worthy of a person’s commitment and passion. Its mission, values, vision and its impact in the world needs to be great enough for employees, investors and other constituents to be willing to sacrifice to see the organization succeed.
So you see buy in isn’t just about great coaches, it is about the right players and effective leadership, all working together for a cause the entire team believes in.
The Stupid Bucket and the Smart Bucket
In one of our last summer staff meetings two of our summer camp directors, Jason Hoffer and Matt Casburn, challenged our staff to finish the summer strong. They did it by using a simple but memorable illustration. They told our staff “everyone carries around two buckets – the ‘smart bucket’ and the ‘stupid bucket’ – and every day we can take something out of one of these two buckets.”The question they asked was “which bucket will you grab from during the last days of camp, the stupid one or the smart one?” The message to our summer staff was clear – you’ve been taking from the smart bucket all summer long, so don’t start grabbing from the stupid bucket in the last weeks of camp, meaning don’t start using poor judgment and making poor choices when all summer long you’ve used good judgment and made good choices.
And Matt and Jason, being the leaders they are, made this brief dialogue funny and, more importantly, memorable. So memorable in fact that, over the final days of camp, I heard numerous summer staff half-jokingly and half-seriously saying to each other “don’t take from the stupid bucket” or “let’s not do a stupid bucket thing”. Some of our staff even bought two buckets to remind every one of the two options they had before them.
It’s a sign of great leadership when you can give your team a warning or directive that isn’t threatening or demeaning, but instead funny, memorable, and effective because it gains your team’s commitment, not just their compliance. And even better is when the message is continuously repeated by your team creating a climate of self accountability and encouragement in making the right choices.
So what bucket will you take from this week?
T-shirts and Stretch Goals
I love summer camp and always hate when it’s over. I especially miss watching God transform the lives of campers and staff. But I also miss watching our team perform during these crazy weeks. They’re committed and talented people who create incredible experiences.One of my favorite moments from this summer was watching our team go after the goal of having 25% of our campers pre-register for 2013 summer camp. You see in the past we’d only open up registration months after summer camp ended. A couple of years ago we decided to test whether parents would sign their kids up for next year’s camp at the end of their camp session. We tried some things and had some success, but nowhere close to what we desired.
So instead of giving up we set a stretch goal of 25% pre-registration without a clear plan on how we’d achieve it. What we had were some t-shirts to give away to campers who signed up for the next year. So our Indiana overnight team created a plan that would generate excitement on the closing day of camp with the goal of moving parents to sign up for next year. The plan included having all professional staff wear one of these t-shirts, promote pre-registration during the closing rally, and have highly visible tables at key locations so parents could easily pre-register and receive a t-shirt before leaving camp.
So what was the result of our Indiana team’s Week 1 efforts? We pre-registered more kids than the total number of 2011 Indiana pre-registrations.
Word quickly spread throughout SpringHill and over the next few weeks our other team’s implemented similar plans with similar results. Today, at our two overnight camps, we’ve pre-registered close to 35% of our campers, easily exceeding our stretch goal of 25%.
And that’s why it’s one of my favorite summer camp moments. Because I love when teams set stretch goals, create simple yet effective plans, work the plans and then share their successes so that others can succeed as well.
It’s also one of the reasons why I’m already looking forward to next year’s summer camp.
The Uncomplicated Rule
If you want to lose weight what’s the one best thing you can do? Take the stairs? Eat more grapefruit? Take diet pills? Lift weights? Run farther or eat better?The truth is if you really want to lose weight there’s only one thing you can and need to do – eat fewer calories and carbohydrates than you use. As a personal trainer friend of mine once told me “you are what you eat”. Research has continually demonstrated that exercise programs, special diets, and supplements, though marginally helpful in losing a few pounds, will not, by themselves, bring you to your proper weight, only eating the right amount of calories and carbohydrates can you get to you there and stay there (though exercise has other essential health benefits we shouldn’t ignore).
It’s what I call the “uncomplicated” rule. The uncomplicated rule goes like this. Almost always the simplest, most straight forward and common sense solution to a problem is usually the best one. Why? Because most problems are not as complicated as many people (and companies) want us to believe. Simple problems, like being overweight, require uncomplicated solutions – eat less.
But why do we believe our problems are so complicated that they require complex and magical solutions? Because people’s problems are opportunities for marketers to offer products and services that solve our problems. But to convince us that need help in solving our problems they need us to believe our problems are too hard or complicated to solve on our own. You see simple, straightforward and uncomplicated problems don’t require complex and costly solutions but instead require simple ones (which don’t sell well and have poor margins).
So next time you’re faced with a problem or have a goal you want to achieve, look for the simple, straightforward and uncomplicated solution, most likely it’ll be the one that brings you to the place you want to be.
Is it “Burger Island” or “the Island”?
It’s the last week of summer camp and Sunday evening I indulged in my last meal at “the Island” or, as so many people now call it, “Burger Island”. As I sat there enjoying my burger (and brat), beans and great fellowship with our resident staff and volunteers, I couldn’t help but wonder “how did the name of this sacred place so inadvertently, so unintentionally (or maybe it was purposefully and maliciously) changed over the years?”It’s like the name of the White House slowing changing to the POTUS’ Crib, or The Rose Bowl becoming PAC 12 Field, or Saint Peter’s Basilica becoming simply Pete’s Crash Pad. Sacred and important places shouldn’t have their names change slowly over time without some forethought, right?
(And yes, you can tell, it’s the last week of camp because I’ve drifted into thinking such “high level and strategic” thoughts, all of which will have serious implications for the future of …. uh, well, such things as t-shirts and property maps)
So what’s a leader to do in such a situation? How does one undo years of slow creep? How does the popular name get change back to the right and proper title? Should nature take its course or should one fight to maintain what’s right? (OK, maybe I should be asking myself “why would a leader spend more than a minute on such things?”)
My course of action? I’ll do what so often happens in leadership today – I’ll take a poll and find out what’s the most popular name for this sacred place, and then I’ll make that name the one I endorse.So tell me is it “The Island” or “Burger Island”?
How the Mighty Fall
In Jim Collins’ helpful book “How the Mighty Fall” he describes the following tell-tale signs of an organization in the first stage of decline from “greatness.”- “Success, entitlement, arrogance: Success is viewed as ‘deserved,’ rather than fortuitous, fleeting, or even hard-earned in the face of daunting odds; people begin to believe that success will continue almost no matter what the organization decides to do, or not to do.
- Neglect of the primary flywheel: Distracted by extraneous threats, adventures, and opportunities, leaders neglect a primary flywheel, failing to renew it with the same creative intensity that made it great in the first place.
- ‘What’ replaces ‘why’: The rhetoric of success (‘We’re successful because we do these specific things’) replaces understanding and insight (‘We’re successful because we understand why we do these specific things and under what conditions they would no longer work’).
- Decline in learning orientation: Leaders lose the inquisitiveness and learning orientation that mark those truly great individuals who, no matter how successful they become, maintain a learning curve as steep as when they first began their careers.”
I consider making a regular and honest assessment of SpringHill (and myself) against these markers one of my top priorities. I have no doubt the moment I stop the self assessment, both I and SpringHill, have taken the first step towards decline.
For Me, Against Me, or for Yourself?
Jeremie Kubicek, President and CEO of Giant Impact, challenges us in his thoughtful book, Leadership is Dead – How Influence is Reviving It, to imagine what the effectiveness of our leadership would look like if we were truly “for others” before we were for ourselves or our organizations.
“Think about it this way: people around you are either for you, against you, or just for themselves. While there may be variations on these three motives, this concept generally holds true…
(Now) take out a sheet of paper and make a short list of the people in your life (business, home, family and so forth). Answer this question for each: ‘Is this person for me, against me, or for himself/herself?’
Revealing isn’t it? Now turn the tide. What would they say you were to them? For them, against them, or for yourself?
The reality is that the majority of people are self-centered. Rarely are people against you. It’s more that they are for themselves and totally driven by self-interest. It’s human nature. Most people I know are in survival mode day-to-day, doing whatever they can to take care of their families and their businesses and organizations. I fall into that mode, and it’s likely that you do too.
What would happen, though if you intentionally demonstrated that you were for the people on this list? You would see amazing changes transpire in the lives of those around you if they knew you were invested in their success as well as your own.
Imagine yourself becoming so significant in other people’s’ lives that you are not only memorable but also valuable to them. Imagine people believing that you want the best for them and understanding that you are for them. Imagine that they open up to you, enabling you to wield true influence and have an impact. Imagine experiencing, as a result of these things, the fulfilling relationships you’ve dreamed of at work and at home.”
The Lesson in Eclipsing 19,000 Summer Campers
“By the summer of 2019, 19,000 kids will attend one of six summer camps.” It was 1997 and the SpringHill board and leadership had just updated and approved the ministry’s strategic plan using Jim Collins and Jerry Porras’ book Built to Last as a guide.
Collins and Porras’ research revealed that enduring organizations had a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” (BHAG). The “19 by 19” goal, as it was soon to be called, was SpringHill’s BHAGG (we added the first G – God – to our definition).
Now understand, in 1997 SpringHill’s board and leaders were people of talent and faith who wanted to do something significant for kids and Christ’s Kingdom. And the “19 by 19” goal reflected both this desire and the best information available to them at the time.
Yet today as I write, here in the summer of 2012, we just eclipsed this “19 by 19” goal. Please know I’m not sharing this with you so you can be impressed or congratulate us for handily beating our goal, but instead to demonstrate a point about goal setting that Collins and Porras doesn’t address.
In goal setting we tend to be overly optimistic about short-term goals and overly pessimistic about long-term goals. The main reason for this phenomenon is that we tend to think of the future only in the context of what we know in the present. For example, our staff and board knew and understood overnight camping but could not possibly have foreseen the dramatic demographic changes that would lead us to begin our Day Camp ministry nearly 10 years later (this ministry has played a significant role in our beating the 19 by 19 goal seven years early).
The lesson we learned, and then implemented in restating our BHAGG back in 2003 was that a visionary goal isn’t based on a “calculation”. It’s bigger than that, so big that we’d have no any idea how it would be achieved. The goal needed to be big enough “to leave room for God”, as one board member put it. Today our BHAGG is that, by 2025, we’ll have 260,000 people a year experience SpringHill.
Now, to be completely honest, only time will tell if we got this long-term goal setting thing right and whether the next generation of SpringHill leaders will judge us as fool hearted souls or Saturday morning sand baggers.
