Kem Meyer on Less Clutter & Noise

Three stages of a multi-site communications journey...

The question…

“How do we effectively communicate (vision, values and policies) within the multi-site model without adding layers of complexity?”

 

My answer…

When somebody figures out the answer to this question, let me know. Seriously! With multi-site strategy, the complexity factor increases greatly. It’s a constant process trying to figure out what’s non-negotiable for everyone and what’s unique to each campus. We’re early into our own first multi-site launch and each day it seems we discover a new “exception” to the rule. As nice as it would be to launch and hit the autopilot button, it is unrealistic. So, we take it as it comes and adapt as we learn along the way. Here’s three snapshots of the multi-site communication frameworks we’ve encountered through our multi-site journey.

Getting started (1)

The heart behind everything is to empower departments and campuses using “freedom within a framework”. The objective isn’t to boss everybody around with a list of rules, but to instead provide guidelines to work within.

• One web site, enews and bulletin template for the whole church. Although, each campus may have their own unique communication points on a blog or announcement reel, we use the same weekly communication vehicles for 20% of the content that affects 80% of the audience. While it’s not perfect, it eliminates the run-around to multiple sites and makes the basic information easy to find—regardless of the campus.
• Look for ways to produce it once and use it twice. Any place we can eliminate redundancies we try to do it to reduce time, costs and errors.
• Simplify the problem. Rather than react to everything as a complex execution, we consistently boil every project down to its core: “what do we want to happen as a result of this,” and work backwards from there.
• One team; multiple campuses. We all gather as one church, once a week for the all staff meeting.
• Adhere to the same Communication Values. Look for ways to bundle and simplify everything we do. Even though the next steps and ministry teams for each campus are very individualized and unique, we still look for ways to tie the next steps to the same major themes (e.g., the weekend series, volunteers, groups, etc.)

After the first year or so (2)

We’re trying to harness the power of a message and enhance the experience, not create a list of dos and don’ts. There’s a balance between centralizing efforts that maximize excellence and creating a bottleneck for the things that don’t matter. We’re constantly evaluating that contrast, tension and the multiple paradoxes.

• Scalability is the goal but scalability is not the same thing as duplication.
• The focus is mission not mirroring. .
• Community is a shared mission, expression is not.
• Value is communicated different ways to different people.
• Our church, and the community developed around it, is not contained in one box and shipped for use in multiple locations. We’re evolving our DNA to live multi-site as a ministry, not as an export.

Where we are now (3)

After working with a generalized framework for about two years, we’ve gained experience, clarity and advice – from - others. As a result, we recently finalized a working first draft of our Campus Constants to help usher us into the next season and future campus launches.

It’s a moving target, but this shared roadmap helps us all aim for the same bull's-eye.

Challenging each other to ruin lazy communications…

Last week I spent two intense days with a group of creative leaders and practitioners representing ten different churches from New York to California. We came from indie art, gritty cowboy, low income urban, exclusive suburb, bluegrass, hip hop, big city and small town communities. We’re an eclectic expression of methodologies, experience, philosophies, practices and contexts who will be spending the next six months together trying to get better at getting through.

I thought I’d share a few quotes I was able to jot down …

• "We are sometimes called to be a part of people's lives for a chapter rather than the whole book." @stevenstarfas
• "Don't forget what it's like not to believe." @stevenstarfas
• “It’s time to sunset that system.” @heyshan
• “Integrate family ministries instead of creating programs. Programs can actually fracture families.” @heyshan
• “Communicators should be curators.” @jeremyscheller
• “When your audience is already highly scheduled, don’t add more to their calendar. Work harder at creating avenues for them to find small spaces to respond to God.” @dgaff
• “You can’t cultivate great communication as a professional until you realize, as a human being, you’re not so different than the people you’re serving.” Mindy Owens
• “Communication is an art form, prepping the canvas for good art takes time.” @eyesofaith

Biggest communications challenge nobody talks about…

Yesterday, the smart and generous people at The Leadership Network and Catalyst sponsored The NINES online conference. Over 100 speakers had six minutes to share their best 'game-changing' moments. Here’s mine.

The biggest communication challenge that nobody talks about…

• The clutter we create when we overestimate what we have to say and underestimate how it’s going to affect the other person.

How to overcome it…

• Change internal M.O.
• Focus less on what we have to say and more on who we are saying it to.
• Personalize a message instead of pushing an agenda.
• Prioritize people instead of performance or policy.

Question to ask yourself…

• How can I change my communication style to release the best in others?

If you’ve got six more minutes to spare… Tim Steven’s shares his game changer, too.

More than 100 speakers, one-day, 6-minutes each, free…

I’m genuinely looking forward to The Nines Conference in less than two weeks.

Talk about the gift of inspiration, practical advice and encouragement—this year’s theme is GAME CHANGERS. Every speaker had the same task: take no more than 6 minutes to talk about the game changers in your life and ministry. In other words, what were the changes, mindsets or directions that made the biggest difference (personally or corporately)?  

Here’s a preview of a few of the game changers I already know about that will be shared at the event:

• Mark Beeson: Critics in your life? Don’t let anger be your downfall.
• Tim Stevens: How do you reach people who are indifferent to what you have?
• Me: The biggest communications challenge nobody talks about.
• Ben Arment: Divided classes in church: pastors and the business community.
• Eric Bramlett: Why does the church have such an aversion to risk?
• Wayne Cordeiro: Do you a hard time saying "no" because you love people? Stop it.
• Dave Ferguson: Which is the greater risk? Saying yes, or saying no?
• David Foster: If your marriage sucks, your ministry probably sucks, too.
• David Gibbons: How can you dive into the uncomfortable chaos?
• Gayle Haggard: You have to face your defining moments head on.
• Craig Groeschel: Less time leads to a better result.
• Alan Hirsch: See yourself as a missionary. Everything else will take its cue from that.
• Will Mancini: : You have to have people who are BRUTALLY honest with you.
• Dino Rizzo: Grow it small? No one wants to be Thumbelina Community Church.

If you don’t already have this on your calendar, might I suggest you TURN YOUR BRAIN BACK ON! In all seriousness, this is an incredible resource for you and your whole team. It’s not often (if ever) you have free access to some of the world’s best leaders and communicators. Have you seen the full line-up? Have you seen the BUZZ?

Don’t let discouragement pile up. Guard your heart…

For the past few weeks, I’ve been feeling an extra dose of discouragement. There’s nothing dramatic going down, no crisis or cause for alarm. It was just a convergence of real life happening all around me—people I love with broken hearts, minds, bodies, relationships and lives. It started to pile up and, in my gloom, I inadvertently started to focus on the circumstances and felt very alone.

Then, one day last week, I saw something on my morning walk that flipped the switch back to a productive place. A lone flower, brightly blooming among dirt, gravel and weeds. I felt like it was God’s little metaphor…

“You GO girl! There IS hope—I am with you. Are you with Me?” 

You know, there are times in life when stress and discouragement pile up. Without intentional guardrails, burdens can creep in, take over your soul and define your reality with helplessness, fear and hopelessness.

I'm engaged in the world around me—on purpose. I don't want to lose touch. There is good to be found. Work to be done.

On the flip side, I don't want to be so absorbed I lose my compass.

I’m rearranging my schedule to prioritize these key areas first, and the rest will fall into place.

• Sleep and exercise. Meeting a friend at the gym at 5 AM every day this week will most certainly get me to bed on time at night. It’s a domino effect.
• Focus and flow. A few times a week, I’m going to turn off email for big chunks of time to still my mind and engage on important projects that yield the biggest returns.
• Read and discuss. I’m launching two new book groups, one at home and one at work to keep learning new things with the people I’m doing life with.
• Faith and fuel. I'm listening to extra message podcasts throughout the week and starting each day with a new devotional to keep my engine running undistorted.
• Marriage and family. Pre-scheduling date nights with Mark and family nights with kids.

The action items might look different depending on the season, but that’s the highlights for this reboot. What about you? What does it look like when you rearrange your schedule to flee a rut? Leave a comment ... share your story. At the end of the day, I'll randomly draw a name from all the comments (Congrats to Andy Waggoner! He won the book drawing.) and give away a free copy of Mark Buchanan's new book Spiritual Rhythm.

Slides, notes & audio about social media & communication…

I thought I’d share some slides, notes and audio from a few of the workshops I’ve had the privilege to lead over the past few months. Hope it’s helpful to you (whether or not you were able to join us at Exponential or ECHO). It just might be the booster shot you were looking for today.

Social Media & Ministry

• Slides (PDF)
• Audio (58:08)

Less Clutter. Less Noise.

• Slides (PDF)
• Audio (1:01:15)
• Notes from Sara Corman
• Notes from Neil Ayers

Church Panel with Charles Lee, Carlos Whittaker and yours truly

• Notes from Tim Schraeder (Behind the scenes… here’s how he does it.)
• Video snippet (4:06)

Is your church having trouble funding its vision? I have good news...

Two friends of mine are declaring today National Funded and Free Day. Why? Because they’re so tired of churches not being able to support their mission due to money woes.

There are two realities. 1) Spiritually healthy churches, with solid leadership and faithful people can, will and are changing the world. 2) They deal with the same financial challenges as for-profit organizations but they don’t have the same resources available to them. (Not to mention the stigma they fight anytime they talk about money with their stakeholders; aka congregants.)

How do they overcome the challenges to fund the vision and change the world for the better?

Casey Graham and Joe Sangl are focusing the entire day TODAY (National Funded and Free Day) to help answer that question. And, to enhance the national holiday they just made up, they wrote a book to go with it. It’s power-packed with simple, digestible wisdom--achievable best practices you can act on right now.

You know this book has to be simple good considering it’s all about managing and increasing operational income and I’m advocating it. I, mean, really. Is that the type of stuff I usually talk about?

Thought I’d let you know—there’s a 5 FOR $50 special going on for the next 48 hours.

Plus, I’ve got one book to give away for free. Leave a comment if you want it and I’ll draw a name randomly at the end of the day.

Congrats Tim Archer! You just won a free book!

Imperfect is the new perfect. Transparency builds trust.

When I read about Jet Blue poking fun at themselves over the flight attendant incident, I remembered a place in Making Ideas Happen where Scott Belsky references two stories about the topic of transparency.

• Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, has spoken extensively about how Twitter has helped his company build stronger relationships both externally (with customers) and internally (among employees). He explained in a post on his company blog: ’Because radical transparency was part of the culture of tweeting, I decided to give it a try and be as transparent as possible, both for myself personally and for Zappos. What I found was that people really appreciated the openness and honesty, and that led people to feel more of a personal connection with Zappos and me.’
  
• Andrew Zolli, leader of Pop!Tech, spoke about how transparency has made him more organized. ‘I give up privacy. I’ve learned that no problem I might find embarrassing is unusual. If you’re willing to let people access your life, they’ll find what they need. I’ve open-sourced my life. My calendar, email and contacts are all shared with the organization. I’m highly transparent. You can see what I’m doing as a partner.’

I wholeheartedly agree and advocate that, using a mature filter, transparency in social media can be a powerful source of accountability for individuals and organizations. Over the past couple of years, I’ve talked about the benefits over and over.

• It simplifies my life.
• I share my life.
• There’s good Samaritans out there.
• Our parking lot is getting bigger.
• Charm school (testimonials).

Then, this morning on my walk, it came to me that—sometimes—it just might even be a spiritual practice.

• Rather than struggling to disguise or deny your weakness, allow Me to bless you richly through it. (via Jesus Calling.) ‘Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.’ 2 Corinthians 12:9

2nd session added for Communications Strategy Coaching…

A couple of months ago, I opened registration for a small coaching network to help encourage, equip and collaborate with people who lead and leverage communications strategy. (Get caught up on the story before reading the rest of this post…)

I have been trusting God to bring the right people to this experience at the right time. And, he has already blown me away. The response was so great, I opened up a second network (& picked the dates to coincide with two other coaching networks being hosted at Granger).

• Group A:   Sep 16-17, Nov 17, Jan 27, Mar 3-4
• Group B:   Oct 11-12, Dec 1, Feb 3, Mar 10-11

The network is limited to 24 seats (12 seats each) and 17 18 20 21of them are already filled with:

• churches of all sizes, expressions and areas of the United States—from Washington to California, from New York to North Carolina, from Minnesota to Texas and lots in the middle including Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Montana. 
• smart leaders with a variety of practical experience in marketplace, ministry and not-for-profit backgrounds—from video and web to graphics and media relations, from communications and community care to social media, from worship production to administration, from radio and tv to project management, from business and marketing to computer programming and everything in between.

There are seven six four three seats open in Group B for a limited time (Group A is sold out). I just thought you’d want to know; it’s a very unique opportunity. And, it’s a big commitment for everyone involved (myself included). But, based on past experience (see page 4), the return is immeasurable. It’s an extraordinary learning experience that leaves all participants changed for the better (myself included).

It might be the right time for you or it might be something you want to forward to someone you know. All you need now are the details and the application.

Communication as a vehicle not a destination…

Effective communication should move people.

Too often, we spend our energy and creativity focusing on deliverables as if they are the communicator. The best projects, pieces, technology and art we create function as a support tool for a macro message. Tools are deliverables crafted for a purpose. They simplify complexity, inspire people to action and empower people in community.

Tools don’t try to tell the whole story. They are a piece of a story. When we try to tell the whole story with a micro piece (Web page, design, technology, etc.) we horde control and fall in love with our own creation. This is a communication dead end.

I think the folks at SoChurch are illustrating some great examples of what it looks like to weight the purpose over the deliverable. Church communications…simplified. Details are still unfolding, but keep your eye on their blog. They’re releasing new screen shots on a regular basis and posting questions about what SoChurch is and what it isn’t. I’m getting more and more eager to get my hands on this tool.