Organising a retreat/advance

Seth Godin's most recent blog post is provocative enough for me to consider putting it on all the blogs I write. This one for starters....

How to organize a retreat:

He prefers to call it an 'advance' because 'retreat' is too negative. [I won't tell him that I've been saying this for years....] He goes on to say:

There's a tremendous opportunity to create events where people connect. Unfortunately, it's also easy to turn these events into school-like conferences, not the emotional connections that are desired.
You can create an advance with a team that knows one another from work, or even more profoundly, with a bunch of independent thinkers who come together to energize, inspire and connect.

And this is where he really starts to jump in with innovative ideas, none of which I'm going to copy here: instead, go to the blog post and read it thoroughly, particularly if you're planning any kind of advance, whether it's for your leadership team, or your entire church. You'll find something amongst his mix of ideas that'll provoke you to be different.

Fear.Less

In a recent post Seth Godin points to a new online magazine called Fear.Less. It's well written, has half a dozen interesting contributors from a variety of fields, and can be downloaded, or read on your browser, or printed out. All for free.

The magazine promotes itself this way: fear.less is a free online magazine that empowers people through unique stories of overcoming fear. From entrepreneurs, business leaders, artists and scientists to survivors of extreme experiences, these stories demonstrate the hidden potential we have to confront our fears and come out victorious. Fear.less is our answer to an emergency.

Okay, so why am I mentioning it here, since there's no particular Christian connection in it? Well, firstly in each case the contributors discuss overcoming a fear or failure in their life that could easily have debilitated them for the future. Secondly, it's a biblical principle that fear is something to be overcome, or it will be your master.

Thirdly, it's a prime example of what magazines might look like in the future. I don't think that future is here yet; not quite. Paper magazines are still rampant, even though large numbers of them are losing money, and increasingly they have more ads than content. (fear.less has more content than ads.) Depending on the state of the Internet in the next ten/twenty years, this could be the way magazines go. Far more economical to produce, environmentally more friendly (I think!) and accessible to larger numbers of people - or just to a small group that wants to read about those particular issues.

Check it out. You can read it online in your browser, or download it or.... And it's just as classy-looking as anything you'll find on your newsstands.

Using PowerPoint Effectively

Seth Godin doesn't like the way most PowerPoints are used and has been saying so for several years.

Here's his summary of how to use a PowerPoint effectively - it sounds good to me.

Here are the five rules you need to remember to create amazing Powerpoint presentations:

1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
2. No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.
3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions.
4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.

Read his more recent post on the subject: PowerPoint makes us stupid.

Photo by Gareth Saunders

On the other hand

Yesterday Seth Godin was telling us that big events were over, passé, done with. Today...however...

There's always another side to a story - and today Seth is telling us we should have big events - very big events, as big as possible. He gives his reasons, but the one particular thing he says that's important in this is:

The challenge comes when we institutionalize the event and make it normal.

There's a heap to think about in that last statement.

Photo: Scott Beale

Forget the Big Events

In a blog post called No more big events, Seth Godin does one of his provocative statements and says that we should now be able to avoid the following - for example:

• The annual review
• The annual sales conference
• The big product launch
• The grand opening of a new branch
• Drop dead one-shot negotiation events

He says the reason we should now avoid them (perhaps we should always have avoided them) is that they just don't work. They don't work because "big events leave little room for iteration, for trial and error, for earning rapport. And the biggest reason: frequent cheap communication is easier than ever, and if you use it, you'll discover that the process creates far more gains than events ever can."

Hmmm...worth thinking about in terms of anything you attend at the moment?

Being Passionate

In a recent piece called, Phoning it in, Seth Godin talks about whether you're passionate about what you do or not. (He doesn't blame you if you're not, by the way. Not everyone can do what they're passionate about for a living.)

Why this post is interesting to this blog is because he begins by saying:

I was talking to a religious leader, someone who runs a congregation. She made it clear to me that on many days, it's just a job. A job like any other, you show up, you go through the motions, you get paid.
I guess we find this disturbing because spiritual work should be real, not faked.

(Note the use of the royal 'we' here - intriguing.) He then goes on to equate spiritual with passionate - which may not be the best equation - but nevertheless points up something that people in church leadership need to think about. Do I do what I do because God told me to, or because I felt called to this, or because it pays my wages, or because I really am passionate about it - quite apart from the spirituality of the calling.

If, even on the worst days, we can't say we're passionate about what we do, then maybe it's time to go on a retreat and spend some time reflecting on how we got where we are, why we do it, and should we keep on doing it?

And just a thought that is somewhat connected to this: if we asked older, retired ministers who they kept going during their long careers, and why they didn't experience burnout, what do you think would be their answers?

In other words, is burnout a symptom of our current worldview rather than a hazard of being a Christian minister?

[Totally unrelated, but we're told on the news this morning that the increase in fraud isn't driven by the recession, but by greed. It's great the way the news always tells us what we already know!]

Evangelism

I don't think I've mentioned Seth Godin's ebook, What Matters Now, on this blog (although I have on another I write). The book is laid out in single page 'essays', some detailed and some succinct, and they come from a wide variety of authors. I was taken with this one, which is entitled 'Evangelism' because it almost entirely shows how evangelism should be done.

It comes from Guy Kawasaki and since the book is free, I'm sure they won't mind a bit more promotion by my quoting this section in full. (I haven't yet quite thought how 'downloading' the product applies to Christianity, but I bet there's an application somewhere.)

The future belongs to people who can spread ideas.
Here are ten things to remember:

1. Create a cause. A cause seizes the moral high ground and makes people’s lives better.
2. Love the cause. “Evangelist” isn’t a job title. It’s a way of life. If you don’t love a cause, you can’t evangelize it.
3. Look for agnostics, ignore atheists. It’s too hard to convert people who deny your cause. Look for people who are supportive or neutral instead.
4. Localize the pain. Never describe your cause by using bull shiitake terms like “revolutionary” and “paradigm shifting.” Instead, explain how it helps a person.
5. Let people test drive the cause. Let people try your cause, take it home, download it, and then decide if it’s right for them.
6. Learn to give a demo. A person simply cannot evangelize a product if she cannot demo it.
7. Provide a safe first step. Don’t put up any big hurdles in the beginning of the process. The path to adopting a cause needs a slippery slope.
8. Ignore pedigrees. Don’t focus on the people with big titles and big reputations. Help anyone who can help you.
9. Never tell a lie. Credibility is everything for an evangelist. Tell the truth—even if it hurts. Actually, especially if it hurts.
10. Remember your friends. Be nice to the people on the way up because you might see them again on the way down.

Guy Kawasaki

Is the Church acting this way?

From Seth Godin's blog - a post called 'You don't have the power'

A friend is building a skating rink. Unfortunately, he started with uneven ground and the water keeps ending up on one side of the rink. Water's like that, and you need a lot of time and power and money if you want to change it. One person, working as hard as he can, has little chance of persuading water to change.

Consider this quote from a high-ranking book publisher who should know better, "We must do everything in our power to uphold the value of our content against the downward pressures exerted by the marketplace and the perception that 'digital' means 'cheap.' ..."

Hello?

You don't have the power.

Read the rest of the post (at the link above) - maybe this is something worth considering in relation to the church. Does it have the 'power' to keep on doing the same things it always did, or to stop people from moving forward in a different way? The uneven skating rink is a great picture - like an updated version of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We'd hate to call you reactionary, but...

In a recent post, Seth Godin lists twelve things that are typical of almost all news programmes on television - and aren't they familiar. (Which is why I don't watch much television news.)

Regrettably, almost all of the same twelve points can be typical of any group that's stuck in a certain mindset....some church organisations, for example, where emotional reaction is more important than careful thought.

I was going to list those of the twelve that most obviously relate to this, but on further reading of the list saw that pretty much all of them relate...!

1. Focus on the urgent instead of the important.
2. Vivid emotions and the visuals that go with them as a selector for what's important.
3. Emphasis on noise over thoughtful analysis.
4. Unwillingness to reverse course and change one's mind.
5. Xenophobic and jingoistic reactions (fear of outsiders).
6. Defense of the status quo encouraged by an audience self-selected to be uniform.
7. Things become important merely because others have decided they are important.
8. Top down messaging encourages an echo chamber (agree with this edict or change the channel).
9. Ill-informed about history and this particular issue.
10. Confusing opinion with the truth.
11. Revising facts to fit a point of view.
12. Unwillingness to review past mistakes in light of history and use those to do better next time.

And lest you think that I'm never guilty of any of these: I confess that I've hit every point on the list at some time.

Value

And without wanting to overload you with Seth Godin, here he is again, this time telling us in about two minutes, where value lies in social networking, and where it doesn't.




We've talked a lot - and with enthusiasm - about facebook, twitter, and so on. These things are of value when there are real connections. Yes, it's great to have lots of facebook friends, and lots of followers on twitter - but in both cases there has to be a connection that makes the friendship and the following real. And that does happen: not with everyone, but certainly with some.

Decency and Grace

In 1 minute 15 seconds, Tom Peters (with a coda by Seth Godin) talks passionately about two words: 'decency' and 'grace.'



Of course, they're at a business conference. And of course they're talking to business people. But isn't it refreshing to hear them saying what they're saying - with such fire!

Bowling Alone, Tribes and Facebook

Robert Putnam, in his book, Bowling Alone, claimed that Generation X people were disinclined to join community organisations. He said, ‘social capital has eroded steadily and sometimes dramatically over the past two generations.’

In an article entitled, Social Tribes: from Bowling Alone to Facebook, Tamara J. Erickson disagrees - at least in part. She says this generation is very closely tied to long-standing friendships, rather than becoming involved in social groups where friends have to be made. These are sometimes called ‘urban tribes.’ In fact, ‘tribes’ is the in-word (Seth Godin has written a book based on it).
So what about Facebook, Erickson asks? She has some interesting stats. You may not be asked to join as a ‘friend’ of one of your children, but the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the 35-54 year olds, with a 276.4% growth rate. Not far behind is the 55 and over demographic with a 194.3% growth rate.

From my small experience of Facebook in NZ, I would say this is happening here too.

Yet again there's an opportunity for the church to be innovative.

Spiritual business

In a kind of going-against-the-flow post, Seth Godin notes:

Spiritual business is an interesting concept. Is what you do all day at work part of who you are? Is it possible to be a deceitful crook all week but a good person on the weekend?

Can you succeed financially by acting in an ethical way?

He goes on to explain that though there are even more unethical business people out there than ever, they don't necessarily succeed - people with ethics will progress.

In a competitive world, then, one with increasing light, the way to win is not to shave more corners or hide more behavior, because you're going against the grain, fighting the tide of increasing light. In fact, the opposite is true. Individuals and organizations that can compete on generosity and fairness repeatedly defeat those that only do it grudgingly.

I like the idea of increasing light - wonder where he got that from?

I'm still officially on holiday - back next week - but this particular post caught my eye.

Tony Morgan and Seth Godin

I'm on holiday at present, and will be until the end of January. So things on this blog will be a little slower than normal in terms of new input. However, as I come across things, I'll try and add them.

Just read the latest post on Tony Morgan's blog. He says, I just reread All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin. We discussed it together with the dudes in my coaching network on Friday. Here are some highlights that jumped out to me this time around [with my thoughts in brackets].

I'm not going to reproduce the post (it's fairly short) here. It's worth checking out, not only for Godin's usual sharp-minded points, but for Morgan's brief notes about they apply to the church. And they do.

As always, the comments are worth reading too.

How applicable is this to mission?

Seth Godin on Selling Ideas

On his blog today, Godin talks in terms of selling ideas to companies (book companies in particular), but what he has to say is interestingly applicable to the job of enabling mission.

Two points he notes:

1. They have to be in the business of buying ideas. Thus a Trust that has money may be interested in ‘buying’ the idea of a particular kind of mission, and then funding it.

2. They have to trust you. Some businesses that appear to be interested in buying ideas won’t necessarily trust you to be the person to present an idea. Entrepreneurial people who will see the big picture, who can grasp the vision, are more likely to be in tune with you.

Godin notes: A company that likes buying ideas has a process. They make it relatively straightforward and they have no upside in stealing from you. A company that isn't in that business puts up barriers. They troll around trade shows looking for ideas to take (and there's nothing legally or morally wrong with that, imho).

And:

if you have an idea for a company that doesn't know how to buy it, move on. And if you want to be in the business of selling ideas, find an industry that has experience buying those ideas.

Substitute your own mission funder, or your Presbytery, or even your congregation for 'business' and 'company', and see how Godin's points apply. The full blog post is here.

Seth Godin on Power Points

As someone who's recently had to come to terms with how to put together power points, I was interested to see what Seth Godin, that guru of business and marketing and pretty much everything else, had to say on the subject. Probably as you'd expect, he isn't happy with most power point presentations, and obviously feels they've replaced ordinary everyday contact with the audience. His first 'step' is:

Don't use Powerpoint at all. Most of the time, it's not necessary. It's underkill. Powerpoint distracts you from what you really need to do... look people in the eye, tell a story, tell the truth. Do it in your own words, without artifice and with clarity. There are times Powerpoint is helpful, but choose them carefully.

He presents nine steps (I'd say bullet points, except that for him bullet points are very short) and throws out a lot of our current ideas about power pointing. Check him out.