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 Truth about Faith and Planning
In Christian organizations we often live in the tension between faith and planning. The tension comes because we believe faith and planning to be polar opposites.
Christian history is full of stories of “great people of faith” who did miraculous things for God. We want to be a part of such stories. On the other hand, it isn’t nearly as appealing to be part of a story centered on a cold and calculated plan, professionally executed. Instead we want to “let go and let God” and become part of a “miracle”?
We want to be like Peter who stepped out of the boat to walk on the water but too often we ignore Nehemiah’s thoughtful and intentional plan to rebuild Jerusalem’s wall, or David’s strategic vision and preparation to build the temple. Did David and Nehemiah have less faith than Peter? Or how about this question, would you rather walk on water for a few seconds or rebuild a city or build God’s dwelling place on earth?
I know my answer; I want to do something significant and lasting. And to do something significant and lasting requires planning, preparation and vision. And it also requires prayer (re-read Nehemiah) and faith (re-read David’s temple preparation).
Like Nehemiah and David, God has called us to be stewards of our time, resources, gifts and abilities. As a result, a good steward plans and then assures those plans align with their master’s intentions. And the beautiful thing is, the better the stewardship, the greater the opportunity of being a part of a miracle.
Therefore we need to stop seeing faith and planning as polar opposites, instead we need to see them as essential companions in our work. When we do this, God will do His greater work, allowing us the possibility of being a part of a miracle that’s significant and lasting.
Submitting to the Mission
I’m reading Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen’s new book Great by Choice where, for illustrative purposes, they compare the leadership styles of the two Antarctic explorers, the well-known Robert Scott and the lesser known Roald Amundsen, who raced each other to the South Pole. In particular, Collins and Hansen references Roland Huntford’s fantastic book The Last Place on Earth – Scott and Amundsen’s Race to the South Pole.
I read The Last Place on Earth in 2009 and immediately appreciated it as both an important historic account as well as a great study in leadership. It combines the two types of books I love to read – history books and in particular biographies of historic characters and books about real life adventure. The Last Place on Earth takes a historic look at one of the great adventures of all time – the story of the two men who raced to be the first to reach the South Pole.
I won’t repeat Collins and Hansen’s leadership lessons (you can read their book) but instead share one leadership observation and one conclusion I drew from The Last Place on Earth.
The observation – Scott ended up being the more celebrated of the two explorers though he failed in his mission which ended in his and his team’s death while Amundsen, the first man to the South Pole, is largely unknown outside of historical and exploration circles.
The conclusion – if a leader submits all, including their own personal ambitions and recognition, to the fulfillment of the team’s mission they’re more likely to be successful. At the same time they’re more likely to be unknown or forgotten because they made accomplishing the mission look easy while doing it with less drama than those who failed.
My Pastor Day
Terry Prisk 
Steve Andrews 
Eric Russ and family My wife Denise called Tuesday my “pastor day” because I had the opportunity to hang out in metro Detroit with three dear friends who are also inspiring pastors and incredible leaders – Terry Prisk, Steve Andrews and Eric Russ.
My first stop was with Terry Prisk, a long time SpringHill partner and leader of The River Community Church. Terry and I meet every few months to share, challenge and encourage each other in our respected leadership positions. As usually happens we exchanged books we’re each reading knowing we’ll discuss their respected contents the next time we’re together.
Next I had the opportunity to have coffee with Steve Andrews from Kensington Community Church. Steve’s a former SpringHill board member and current member of our strategic planning team. In these roles, as he did once again in our time together, Steve’s spoken into my life by challenging me to think big about SpringHill and its place in God’s Kingdom.
I ended my day near downtown Detroit with Eric Russ, a current SpringHill board member, who leads Mack Avenue Community Church. Eric and I spent our time together riding in the “Mack Truck”, an old pickup truck used by the church. We toured the neighborhood where his church ministers. I’m inspired every time I’m with Eric but never more than when I see the community, people and work he’s committed his life too.
As I drove home from Detroit I thought to myself “what a great day”. I also thanked God for each of these men and the significant impact they’ve made on both SpringHill and on me. In my final thought of the day I searched for answers to this question “how can SpringHill and I better support them and their churches in the incredibly important work they do in the communities they serve?”
Why Do You Spend Your Precious Time…?
Yesterday we had one of our three yearly “all staff” meetings which follow each of our three “seasons”. Our agenda’s consistent for each meeting – we review the results of the completed season as well as the anticipated results of the upcoming season and year.
It’s an opportunity to celebrate and pray together as well as ask questions, make suggestions and assure we’re aligned as a team.
We want these meetings to be fun, informative, causal, real and helpful in achieving our goals. We speak frankly and with full transparency about how we’re performing and what’s needed in the months and years to come.
At the end of this particular meeting, as a first in many discussions related to the task of re-articulating SpringHill’s vision statement, I asked our staff to begin to think, reflect and pray about the following three questions (taken from What to Ask the Person in the Mirror by Robert Steven Kaplan –see my 10/23/2011 post) .
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What do we (you) hope SpringHill will achieve in the years ahead?
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What’s special about SpringHill?
- Why do you spend your precious time and energy working for SpringHill?
Over the next several months the answers to these questions will become key inputs into our vision re-articulation.
But today I asked our team for some impromptu answers. Their responses were moving, inspiring, stunning and made me proud to be on this team.
Here are just three of many answers (paraphrased) to question 3 our staff shared:
“I’m able to fulfill God’s calling in my life of creating cool and inspiring environments that God can use to transform lives.”
“God changed my life when I was a SpringHill camper, now I can help create the same life transforming experiences for other people.”
We have a great start to this important task of brining new clarity to the SpringHill vision.
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Drawing Our Mission
Mission statements are normally expressed in words. But yesterday I had the opportunity to articulate SpringHill’s mission through a drawing supplemented by words not used in our actual statement.
As you can see from the photo I’m no artist but my lack of talent didn’t diminish the power of this exercise. The power came in the challenge of thinking through how to communicate our mission in a drawing as opposed to the words of our statement. This 20 minute process provided me a different perspective on a mission we’ve had for decades.
During the act of illustrating I began to see the role the SpringHill Experience plays in the life of a young person in a different way. Having a mission statement that’s often referred to and memorized can lead to a bit of staleness – illustrating it made it fresh again.
Which led me to, once again, affirm the importance of our mission and the need to assure its continuing effectiveness.
The exercise also provides an alternative way to communicate our mission to our key constituency groups by providing them with a fresh perspective as well.
So on my “list of ideas we need to do” from this week with the Chicago 7 (a peer learning group of CEO’s from similar camps) I’ve added “#15. Have our marketing team create a quality illustration of our mission.”
By the way our peer learning group’s meeting this week’s at the very cool The Leadership Studio at Muskoka Woods in Ontario Canada. It’s CEO and a close friend, John McAuley, is a part of our group and facilitating our time together. If you and your organization need a place for a retreat where you can do some great work you need to check out The Leadership Studio. I guarantee you’ll come back with more than just a drawing of your mission statement.
The Underappreciated Work of Making Vision a Reality
We’re enamored with strategic thinking and vision casting. Most leaders want to be seen as strategic and visionary thinkers who cruise around at 30,000 feet. We value this skill set so much that we make heroes out of these same leaders.
But I’m convinced that being just a visionary leader isn’t nearly enough. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not minimizing the importance of these skills – creating strategy and vision need to be a part of any leaders work. Too often, though, leaders spend too much energy on vision and strategy and too little energy on tactics and execution.
We often look down on tactical work and the execution of strategy because we misread people like Steve Jobs and credit Apple’s success to his vision and strategic thinking.
But if you’ve read any of the 100’s of recent articles and blogs about Jobs after the announcement of his retirement as CEO you see a different picture. What you find is a leader who spent much of his time in the “trenches” working on the details of new products – in other words doing the tactical work. This is what made Jobs truly visionary. It was his willingness to do the hard, everyday work required to assure that his vision and strategy succeeded.
So as a leader my goal’s to spend only a small percentage of my time on vision while spending most of my time working side by side with our staff, board, supporters and volunteers in the hard work of making our vision reality. Because at the end of my time at SpringHill, if anything’s written about me, I want it to be said, not that I was just a visionary, but that I led an organization that turned its vision into a world transforming reality.
