We’re in Prineville, Oregon this week connecting with some of the families that partner with our ministry. This means limited internet access, so I brought along all the books that I’m working through right now. Here you go…

• God Space – Doug Pollack This was a freebie at our national staff conference that I’m just getting around to. I think the evangelism principles could be helpful as we launch a ministry in post-Christian Portland. Brian Barela just happened to post an interview by Doug here.
• Making Ideas Happen – Scott Belsky This is the book of the summer for me. I can’t get enough of the principles in this book, but I’m also wired to eat this stuff up.  I think every operations minded person should read it…scratch that, every person who leads a team should read this.
• The Speed of Trust – Stephen Covey This is the son of Stephen Covey of 7 habits of highly effective people fame. Staff in our region are about to start discussing this book via a private facebook group, should be fun! So far in the first 30 pages I’ve had multiple aha moments.
• The Narrows – Michael Connelly Crime thriller fiction scariness.

There you have it! What are you reading this summer?

I was looking back at a couple of video’s while brainstorming for the future of the Campus Crusade for Christ ministry in Portland and this one jumped out. Feel free to use it for ideas. I helped make it a few years back while I was on staff at Montana State University. I am so blessed to see lives changed and more than ever I’m committed to reaching students for Christ.

I’ve been ranting on sharing the wealth of our ministry expertise with each other for a while now. Having the technical ability plus the belief that sharing what we’re doing with other campus ministers could be incredibly helpful to seeing the Great Commission fulfilled is a key growth step for Campus Crusade for Christ. I think we’re headed that direction. Here is what Ken Cochrum, one of our national leaders, had to say about it.

I live in the city…

I pass people that are homeless everyday. I overhear conversations about addiction. I pass people on the street that look a little scary to me and sometimes act a little scary. I hear about the sex slave industry that’s taking place at the mall up the road from my house. Humanity is definitely broken.

How do I respond to these things? How is being exposed to these things shaping me? Here’s what I’m learning after two months.

• I must guard against ever being hardened to the reality of how broken humanity is…because then I’ve forgotten how great my Savior is.
• Caring for people means I throw my Getting Things Done mentality out the window.
• I’m thankful to raise a kid in this environment. The conversations we’ve had already are gold.
• My conversation with my neighbor might not mean much to the city, but it might mean a lot to my neighbor.

After two months in the city, I can already see the Lord at work in my heart. There is adventure outside my door everyday. All I have to do is step into it.

Reminds me of this poem I heard at Catalyst this spring. Check it out.

Cloud computing is a term used to refer to online platforms that store information for you. Simply put, it means that you have information/documents/resources/calenders/contacts that are accessible by you any hour of the day from any computer.

The value of this hit home as I was getting my computer replaced for about week recently. Thanks to the Cloud I was able to get to everything I needed to work from a different computer. Here are the highlights, perhaps some of them will work for you…

• Dropbox: Dropbox is the bomb. You can install it on your computer and it works like another drive. Just drag and drop documents. You can synchronize computers, which I do with my wife, so that a certain CCC file can be accesible by both of us at any time.

• Google: Because I had iCal synched with Google calender I didn’t miss a beat. This took some time to set up initially, but it was totally worth it. You can also use Google documents to store documents and share documents easily. Also Google reader became my new best friend so I could keep up with my RSS feeds.

• Hootsuite: I use this twitter/facebook client quite a bit and because it is web based I can log in and see all the same settings instantly from any computer. No need to reset columns. Worked like a charm.

After a week with these things it dawned on me that these could benefit a team’s ability to collaborate easily. Not only are they all free, but you don’t have to be technology genius to benefit from them. What do you think?

Photo courtesy of tipiro

There’s a certain intangible I want to be true of myself and the people on my team. I can’t completely put my finger on it, but for now I call it the ability to be a hustler. Seth Godin calls them linchpins. Whatever the name is here are the characteristic’s I’m thinking about.

• Sincere desire and motivation to move ahead on tough projects.
• In all areas not content with the status quo.
• Constantly evaluating things and dreaming about making them better. “What if…?”
• Initiates change, relationships, projects, ideas, etc.
• Works hard, but can rest well.
• Doesn’t wait to be asked to do something. See’s the opportunity and acts on it…get’s things done.
• Asks great questions  and constantly learning
• Energized when discussing how to make vision succeed

Is there a better name for this intangible characteristic? One of the bigger questions in my mind right now is how can the leadership development in our organization foster this? Any thoughts?

P.S. Shana Brennan was my inspiration for this blog post. She demonstrates all of these characteristics to the max. I want to be like her when I grow up.

Recently I had debilitating computer problems. Running the gauntlett of customer service was not something I was particularly excited about. Although computer problems are a pain in the patuki, Apple made it as easy as possible. Here’s the things I appreciated about the experience. (Keep in mind I paid for Apple Care last year so everything was free)

• With their online site you can schedule your service call or have them call you immediately. Brilliant! No waiting on the phone for hours.
• Everyone I talked to was an American. Not that I don’t value international service, but there was no communication barrier at all. Helpful when dealing with technical info.
• Tracking me with a case number and generous note-taking they immediately scheduled a Genius bar appointment at the local Mac store and I didn’t have to explain myself again.
• I don’t know what Apple’s hiring methods are, but they do a great job of hiring the right people for the job. Every customer service expert was a great communicator, friendly and incredibly knowledgeable.

Yep, something broke on my “infallible” Mac and even though it was a pain to be without my computer for a couple of days I was pleased with my Apple customer service.

What I learned about Apple was that customer service wasn’t an afterthought. They value the customer’s experience of their company enough to make the process great. Although Apple isn’t perfect I’m starting to understand people loyalty to their brand.

What does this teach us about people experience with our organization?

In life there are important things and there are urgent things.

I’ve heard that some people struggle with letting the urgent take over their lives.  I can’t believe you weak people struggle with that! If you were like me…a rock of intentionality and eye-of-the-tiger discipline, you would never deal with that.

One of the tips in Scott Belsky’s book Making Ideas Happen is to create two to-do lists. One for the urgent items and another for important ones.

Long-term goals and priorities deserve a list of their own and should not compete agains the urgent items that can easily consume your day. Once you have two lists, you can preserve different periods of time to focus on each.

For me it’s a matter of stewardship of my time.  I’m gonna try this tip and rearrange my process of planning and see how it goes. Let me know if it works for you.

Photo courtesy of Noca

With the release of the iPhone 4 today comes another round of “what’s next?” with smartphones. Basically they function as little mobile computers now and are becoming more and more integrated in how we function day to day.

So this got me thinking. My laptop is an integral part of my job. Without it I cannot complete work that is necessary. In fact it’s basically required to own one on staff with Campus Crusade. So when is my smartphone going to move into the same category? Maybe a better question is when should we move it into the same category?

100 x 0 = 0

50 x 2 = 100

If the impact of our ideas is, in fact largely determined by our ability to stay organized, then we would observe that those with tons of creativity but little to no organization yield, on average, nothing.

- Scott Belsky – Making Ideas Happen