Kem Meyer on Less Clutter & Noise

Andy & Craig live at Granger Community Church

Tomorrow is the last day for early bird pricing to the one-day leadership event from Catalyst. This is a rare opportunity to get face to face, candid insight from two of the best leaders in America.

Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel will be coming to Granger Community Church for one-day only. That's right people: LIVE. They're promising to specifically address how to:

• Discover the key to creating and sustaining momentum in your organization.
• Identify and break through the barriers to momentum and overcome personal leadership lids.
• Leverage the three triggers which ignite organizational momentum
• Create a culture of continual improvement.
• Embrace a new approach to leading organizational change.

This is not your everyday event. Seats are limited. Make your reservation and save the date, Thursday, November 20.

I'm geeked.

Preventative maintenance

Make time to unplug in the middle of your busiest seasons. Don't wait until you burn out; by then it's too late. Mark Beeson reminded us today in a strategy meeting:

"Who you are is more important than what you do."

That statement is profound. It causes us pause to address the state of our soul and relationships in the pace of life.

• Find ways to get closer to God. Some things I'm trying right now.
  
• Evaluate your task list. Do your tasks directly connect to your priority commitments? When I looked at mine, I discovered I had scheduled a recurring family night but no date night. That was a miss. The date night should come first.
  
• Identify areas you will spend less time DOING and more time BEING. I know, it's a hard habit to break. Are you allowing time in your day to listen and watch with no agenda? Or, are you in a perpetual state of git-r-done? Admit it. You can't get it all done anyway so quit trying.
  
• Take a break. You think you can't afford to take the time off? I say you can't afford not to. In his article No-Vacation Nation, John DeGraaf points out:
  • While the United States may be materially richer than almost anyone else, we have the poorest health in the industrial world.
  • In 1980, we ranked 11^th in the world in longevity; now we’re 42^nd. We are twice as likely as Europeans to suffer from anxiety and depression.

Couldn't be a better time to take some of my own advice! Mark and I leave early Friday AM for a long weekend. He's taking me on my first trip to Las Vegas for a quick break in the middle of one of our busiest seasons. We're just going to hang out, focus on each other and enjoy some downtime. We're even leaving the laptops at home!

I'm Lijit...

A couple of weeks ago, the search widget on my blog stopped working. I went shopping for a new one, and per Tim's recommendation, I tried out Lijit. WOW! I love it.

It was easy to install, feature-rich and easy to use. As a blog reader, I'm happy with the search results. As a blog publisher, I'm happy with the stats. 

 

 

     

 

 

 

After using it for a week, I got a personal email from a Lijit employee thanking me for installing the widget. (You're welcome.) They were just checking in to see if the app was working ok for me and to find out if there was anything else I needed to be successful. But, here's what pushed me over the edge. Instead of some generic follow-up correspondence, they actually put some research into my content and briefly spoke to the specific subject I write about on my blog.

Subject: A personal thank you

Hello and good morning.

I would like to begin by saying that I like your enthusiasm and dedication to the church, it is really rare to see that these days.  I really would love to volunteer for a program in my community but, I don’t know where to start and how to go about finding a program and become active in it.  Any suggestions you have or resources you use would be most helpful. 

I am writing you today in order to thank you for installing the Lijit search application to your blog.  As a growing company, your feedback regarding the installation process is most helpful in order to better understand and address our users.  Also, be sure to check out .../kemmeyer/stats to see where your readers are coming from. 

Feel free to contact me with any additional questions, comments, and or concerns you may have.  Also, be sure to let me know what I can do for you going forward.

Thank you,

Jacqueline

Consider me a fan. It appears the people at Lijit really do care about making this a product that’s helpful for their customers, because they actually spent a minute getting to know a little bit about one of their customers. It doesn't take much effort, but sadly, that's SO rare these days.

Continuing Education

I've got two questions for you. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

1. What has been the best continuing education you've received? Can you name at least five places where you gained groundbreaking, specialized, practical or inspirational insight that still impacts your job effectiveness today? It doesn't matter if it was professional, personal, marketplace or ministry...if it left a lasting impression...it counts.
   
   In no particular order, these five immediately come to mind for me:
   • WOMMA
   • Westlake Bootcamp
   • PhizzPop Design Challenge
   • Willow's Leadership Summit
   • Help Desk Institute Annual Support Conference
   • Technical Writer's Institute
2. Is there a particular training, conference, class or deliverable are you looking for that doesn't exist?
   • I'm still thinking about this one. With blogging and podcasts, I have access to indirect mentoring and expertise that didn't exist a few short years ago. I don't feel the void for context or insight.
   • At times, though, I still find myself looking for more behind-the-scenes resources. The blooper reels of business and ministry, if you will. The "what not to do" is as helpful for me as the "what to do".

What about you? Answers to questions 1 & 2?

Conflicted...

I went online this morning for a little dose of my daily spiritual insight on Twitter. These two tweets showed up in my feed one right after the other. I'm so conflicted...do I talk today or not??

 onethought OneThought TALK: The more talk, the less truth; the wise measure their words. - Proverbs 10:.. http://tinyurl.com/5ewp4t about 1 hour ago from twitterfeed

 tpmorgan "Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. but the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it." life change = people talk.

Bullets from my airplane ride...

Read the November 2008 issue of Fast Company magazine on our flight from Phoenix to Dallas. Here's the things that caught my attention:

• Advertising. Sam Ewen, guerrilla marketer, says don't advertise to tell the consumer what to desire but rather advertise to cause the consumer to generate his or her own desire. Creative Mischief.
• Do you know where your lappy is? A laptop is stolen every 53 seconds. More than 12,000 laptops disappear weekly from U.S. Airports alone. According to the Computer Security Institute, the average large company lost almost $3.9 million last year to laptop and mobile-device thefts and another $4.5 million on the confidential and proprietary and confidential data stored in those machines. Computrace is now included in the motherboards of all major manufacturers' notebook computers (including Dell & Lenovo). They charge $99 a unit for a three-year contract (companies pay a much lower bulk rate). To Catch A Thief.
• Happy employees make companies money and change the world. According to Kenexa, turnover among managers who feel pride in their company is 21% lower than among those who don't. CEO Rudy Karsan says "When you are in a job that you enjoy and you're good at it, you're not just a better worker. You're a better spouse, a better parent, a better citizen." Kenexa's researchers show the stats: companies with higher employee satisfaction scores had 700% higher shareholder return. The Employee Whisperer.
• Speaking of fostering a great culture. "Our goal is to prepare students not just to solve problems, but to find problems worth working on," says George Kembel the D.school's executive director. Mission Critical.
• Bad powerpoint disaster. NASA determined that a root cause of space shuttle Columbia's crash was the Debris Assessment Team's Powerpoint predicting foam damage. It was so jammed with bullet points and shorthand that it was practically indecipherable. Presentation Pep Talk.

What we DO. What we DON'T do.

We typically do at least one volunteer message series per year. We cast vision about the catalytic impact serving has on an individual's spiritual growth.

However, the actual promotion and message series is only half of our preparation efforts. We spend as much time, if not more, making sure we're ready when people show up and say "I'm interested. How might I help?"

One of the ways my teams prepares for volunteer prospects is to clearly communicate up front what to expect. This is important because, as people evaluate the opportunities for serving in their church, they have preconceived ideas about what various teams do. Without context, they may end up frustrated when they're not able to serve the way they pictured.

Since every person has their own idea about what a role on the "communications" "graphics" or "web" team looks like, here's an example of a summary we created a few years ago about what we do and what we don't do.

The Communications department is involved with what you read, touch or click beyond the auditorium. We believe excellence honors God & inspires people. One of our primary goals is to simplify everything our audience sees or touches, to make their life easier and more rewarding, in every aspect of their engagement with Granger Community Church.

Content

What We DO:

• Pithy, short, quips, bullets and easy, scannable copy; maximum 2-3 paragraphs in length.
• Communicate context and information for next steps: message series, classes, events as well as volunteer and connection opportunities.
• Share stories about life-change.
• Support all-church vision and reinforce core values.
• Provide an opportunity to “drill down” online for more information.
• Address felt-needs and insider information “at a glance”.

What We DON’T DO:

• Fiction or poetry.
• Detailed or journalistic accounts of each ministry/event or full-length testimonies.
• Be all things to all people
• Leisure reading publications or newspapers.

Graphics

What we DO:

• Provide concepts, creative rationales and graphic deliverables for print and online mediums.
• Design tools to help remove barriers and support desired objectives.

What we DON’T DO:

• Design for cool-factor alone or because everybody else is doing it.

Web

What we DO:

• Use admin panel to make regular content changes on four to five primary pages on GCCwired.com.
• Develop new pages using templates.
• Continually review the site to ensure it is functioning well based on our vision, goals and objectives (i.e., keep the “main thing the main thing”)
• Generate interest and leave them "wanting more" so they'll take their next step.

What we DON’T DO:

• The heavy lifting (e.g., design from the ground-up, major functionality programming, etc.)
• Try to be all things to all people (e.g., telling the whole story online, constantly creating new pages contributing to the bloated navigation of a “big” website).
• Lots of scrolling or “deep diving” on our site navigation.

Team Affinity

• We are here to serve and need to model servant-leadership. Egos have no place on our team. No matter how great the talent, we will not tolerate lack of preparation, chronic lateness/missed deadlines, lack of submission to leadership.
• There is an overall ministry, communications and technology strategy in effect — it drives all the elements for promotions, Web, enews, print resources, etc. There is a reason for everything. If you have comments, observations, ideas or opinions…please let us know. We value your input and encourage you to share your thoughts with us, but do not cause dissension or confusion among the team.
• We are a church that models and expects encouragement from and for each other. Negativism, criticism and complaining are not embraced.

People want to make a difference with the time and talents God has given them. This simple tool respects their time. It helps them screen us before they go deep and get frustrated they've wasted their time. At a glance, they can decide if this team is something they want to say yes or no to.

2nd grade student council speech...

I'm on the road this week and just got an email from Easton. He wrote his student council speech tonight and wanted me to see it. It doesn't get any better than this.

As Student Council representative,  I would help classmates get along and make friends.  I would try to stop fighting and help the kids be friends.  I can introduces kids to other kids. We can work together on art projects and help those who are struggling in math.  I want to play with my friends but also those who are lonely in gym class and at recess.

When a new kid come to our class, I would be friends with him or her.But it does not have to be only me, but it can be another classmate becoming friends with him or her too.

Secondly, I want to help people that have illnesses in school and in the hospital. If I'm your Student Council representative, I would show them love by sending them get well cards. Maybe we could make the cards in art class so that we do not have to buy them.

Third, I hope that the Student Council will make money for our school's play ground and gym equipment.

Easton Meyer

P.S. Even if I don't get voted to student council, I'm going to do these things anyway.

Lasting Impressions

I recently got the chance to read an unfinished manuscript for Mark Waltz’s new book coming out December 8, Lasting Impressions (you can pre-order your own copy).

The book reads like a conversation with Mark. I love that. I felt like I was sitting in the room next to him with a cup of coffee while he transparently shared things he’s seen work and bomb in church efforts to connect people. Connections. It’s so loaded. It affects everything.

“At Granger there are people serving on our traffic teams who are still fighting overwhelming addictions. There are women in Bible studies who don’t know how to love their kids in a healthy manner. There are men in technical arts who aren’t convinced Jesus is who he claims to be. Every weekend people who are cheating on their spouse, their taxes or their sales reports return to a service to hear how much they matter to God. They are where they are. We must meet them there.”

There is no perfect answer or one plug and play solution for a church to address this reality. But there are great insights that apply to all of us, if we’re open to keep watching and learning. To pull, not push. To create space, not invade space.

“We can easily make our approach--our programs, services, classes and groups—more important than the people we want to help. When we do, people feel disrespected, insulted and parented. We are not responsible for people but to them. Being responsible TO our people is quite different. And incredibly freeing.

• When I’m responsible to people I understand they have a choice. When I’m responsible for people I think I should decide for them.
• When I’m responsible to people I know they must figure out their next step. When I’m responsible for people I try to tell them what their next step is.
• When I’m responsible to people I allow them to bear the brunt of the consequences for their own chosen actions. When I’m responsible for people I assume the guilt, or worse the shame, for them.
• When I’m responsible to people I engage in their journey, offering encouragement and teaching. When I’m responsible for people I try to direct their journey, never allowing them to wrestle, mess up or make a wrong turn.
• When I’m responsible to people I talk to God on their behalf. When I’m responsible for people I talk to people a lot on God’s behalf.”

This book covers everything from small groups, to weekend programming, to volunteer strategies, to web sites and more. I especially appreciated how each chapter ended with questions for my own personal reflection and action steps; for me as an individual and for my team. It moved the conversation to a vehicle I could use, not just read.

This is great stuff and I can’t wait for the book to come out. 

Computer cartoons

Cleaning out my email, I found these. Wonder what I was saving them for? I have no idea. But, I couldn't bring myself to delete them without posting them first for posterity.