SpringHill’s Journey to Discovering Its New Vision
As I said in my last post, my goal for the process of discovering and articulating SpringHill’s new vision is that it would be a shared vision. Meaning it would be understood, embraced and committed to by the entire SpringHill community.
To this end we’re taking the following intentional steps on our journey.
In small groups or in one-on-one meetings, I’ve asked our staff, board and other key constituents to answer these three questions (taken from the book “What to Ask the Person in the Mirror”):
What do you hope SpringHill will achieve in the years ahead?
What is special about SpringHill?
Why do you give your precious time and energy working for SpringHill?
Then I summarized all the answers into prevailing themes and created four example vision statements incorporating these different themes.
The next step is to meet once again with staff, board and other constituents to ask for their thoughts on the themes and the four example vision statements. The goal is to hear what’s on their hearts and minds, and to seek for God’s voice in theirs.
Next I’ll prayerfully consider what I’ve heard, in light of the reality of the world we live in, SpringHill’s history, and our understanding of the future. From within this context my goal, God willing, is to articulate our new vision.
I’ll present this vision, along with 3 to 5 key strategic thrusts necessary for the vision to become a reality, to our Leadership team for their advice.
Then I’ll present a final vision, the key strategic thrusts, and the supporting thinking, to the Board of Directors for their adoption.
Finally we’ll share our new vision and the key strategic thrusts with our staff, followed by a full roll out to our greater constituency.
Then all we have left to do is make the vision a reality!
Thankful for Faithful Supporters
After a four-day business trip to Indianapolis Denise and I took advantage of the spring like weather in northern Michigan and walked around camp (last weekend we snowshoed around camp). As we walked around Copper Country I reflected on the incredible support SpringHill has received over the decades.
Incredible support comes from incredible people who believe in what God has done and is doing in and through SpringHill. They align with the answers to the 6 key questions I’ve been writing about over the last couple of weeks. There’s a mutual commitment to making the answers to the 6 key questions a reality.
It’s important to understand that at SpringHill we include in our definition of supporters – volunteers, prayer partners, ambassadors, and donors. Every person who falls into one or more of these categories is absolutely critical to our effectiveness. We’ve been blessed over the years to have many people in all four groups.
While in Indianapolis I, along-side Craig Soderdahl our Regional Vice President and Kate Wilson our Regional Development Representative, met with friends of SpringHill who included corporate donors, long time supporters , former and current board members and staff, and over dinner, a group of future camper families, prayer partners, ambassadors, volunteers and donors.
Each meeting in Indianapolis was a powerful reminder of the essential role our supporters play in SpringHill today and into the future. The walk around Copper Country reminded me of the critical role our supporters have played over the years. So whether it’s past, present or future, on this early spring day, I’m deeply thankful for our supporters and what they’ve done and do for SpringHill, kids and Jesus.
An Antidote to Signing Day
Jonathan I began writing this post on the most overhyped and, in some ways, the saddest day in our sports calendar – the college football “signing day”, where kids become national heroes based on nothing more than their potential.
So as an antidote for yesterday’s craziness, here’s a snapshot of high school athletics which, no doubt, reflects the experiences of most student-athletes and their parents.
My wife and I have watched lots of high school basketball over the years, but this season has been one of the most enjoyable. The reason is, for the first time, we have two of our sons playing together on the same team.
Our sons, Mitch and Jonathan, play for the Northern Michigan Christian School’s junior varsity team. Mitch plays up front and Jonathan plays guard so they’re often on the court at the same time.
Seeing them interact in such a competitive, high pressure and public situation as a high school basketball game, tells us a lot about their relationship as brothers. And here’s what we seen – they’re completely honest in their communication with each other. We’ve watched them have intense discussions after a bad play in a way only brothers can and we’ve also seen them affirm each other after a good play with what can only be described as brotherly love (not a bad model for our working relationships).
Mitch We’ve also have daily talks around the kitchen table about their team, the practices and the games. There have been challenges, heartbreak and victories, all of which they’re sharing together and we’re sharing with them as parents (what will I do in a few years when this is all over?).
So if you’ve been doubting the sanity of high school sports, remember ESPN has nothing on local, home town high school sports and the lifelong learning experiences they give young people like our sons Mitch and Jonathan.
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.
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.
The Blessings of Integrating Our Personal and Professional Lives
Saturday night Denise and I had a chance to bring parts of our two families together – our immediate and our SpringHill families. In particular we had 18 members of the SpringHill family from the Indianapolis area join us to watch our daughter Christina dance in her first Butler ballet – The Nutcracker.
We had dinner together at a local Butler hangout, Binkley’s, and then went to the evening show at Clowes Hall on Butler’s campus. For Denise and me the entire evening was a blessing and a blast.
Afterwards I thought about how so many people seek a separation between their work and their personal lives. I understand this desire but not always the degree people can take it.
Because there’s something wonderful (maybe sacred is a better word?) when there’s a healthy integration between our work and personal lives. It’s what Denise and I experienced Saturday night. We experienced a great blessing when SpringHill staff, board members and other supporters enthusiastically celebrated with us Christina’s first Butler Ballet.
And it turns out to be more than just one evening, because we have these incredible friends who now know Christina, live near her and will be available to her (and us) during the rest of her years at Butler.
And this would not be possible if I kept a strict separation between my work and personal life.
Yes, it’s healthy to be able to step away from our work, but to build artificial walls between work and personal life isn’t, and often keeps us from receiving the blessings of an integrated life.
To strike the right balance between these two parts of our life requires wisdom, prayer and reflection. But when the right balance is struck, as it was on Saturday evening, it’s hard to imagine living any other way.
Hangin with the SpringHill Family
We often talk about SpringHill staff as “our team” but when we speak about staff and camper alumni, volunteers, donors, ambassadors, board members and ministry partners we tend to speak in terms of family. The SpringHill family’s large and diverse and I’ve grown to love and appreciate it more every year.
Part of my work includes spending time with SpringHill family members both when they attend a SpringHill Experience and with them in their homes, their places of work and at their favorite coffee shops and restaurants. The places where we meet are as diverse as the members of the SpringHill family which makes being with them one of the most enjoyable parts of my work.
For example, this week I’ve had the opportunity, along with Todd Leinberger our Great Lakes Region Vice President and my wife Denise, to spend time with these SpringHill family members:
Scott, a successful commercial real estate business owner, a competitive tri-athlete and a very active member on a number of ministry boards
David (in photo above), who’s responsible for all the tire, wheel and jack engineering globally for Ford Motor Company
Paul and Cindie, long time friends of Denise’s and mine from our church in Grand Rapids. Cindie works with teenage moms and Paul owns a wealth management and financial advisory business
Our friends Scott and Karen who’ve given much of their lives to a number of global ministries and businesses
And later this week Denise and I will have dinner and see Butler University’s Nutcracker Ballet with 18 of the SpringHill family in Indianapolis (look for my next post)
Every time I have coffee, lunch or dinner with a SpringHill family member I’m blessed because I learn something new, gain greater perspective on SpringHill and better understand the world in which the SpringHill family lives and works.
Keeping Your Eye on the Ball
I grew up playing baseball, basketball and football (in which for many years I was a receiver). One of the most common instructions I’d heard from my coaches, regardless of the sport, was “Perry, keep your eye on the ball.” This meant, whether playing third base or wide receiver, to focus entirely on the ball until I had it completely in my control.This instruction, on the surface, seems to be easy enough to follow, except for that linebacker ready to put a hit on me the moment I touch the ball, or the man on second base waiting to advance to third as soon as I made a throw to first. Then what became easy was to “take my eye of the ball” and try to see, at the same time, more than just that ball coming my way. When I did this it almost always led to me missing that ball and still getting hit or the guy still advancing to third.
Keeping my eye on the ball required discipline, focus and courage. It’s probably why I heard so often my coaches yell “Perry, keep your eye on the ball” and why it’s now burned forever into my consciousness.
Looking back I’m thankful for my coaches’ consistent instruction and the fact that their words continue to be front of mind now that the “sports” I’m participating in have changed and become more significant. Mishandling the ball, be it SpringHill’s mission, vision and values, the stewardship of my health, my role as father and husband or my relationship with Christ, has significantly more serious consequences than that ground ball that went through my legs.
And it requires even more discipline, focus and courage, three qualities I continue to ask God to provide so I will never take my eye off these important balls.
