Double Filet O Fish

My birthday was yesterday and guess where we celebrated?  At McDonalds!  When you have kids, your birthday is no longer your own.  Actually, I wanted to try the double filet o fish and it was yummy!

Check out this hilarious vid (well, it made me laugh)

Long and Short Meetings

What was the longest meeting you've ever attended?

(mine: 5 hours @ a church council mtg once a month...thankfully, not at the current church I serve!)

What was the most effective meeting you've ever attended?

(mine: 45 min @ a youth mtg to chart out service ideas and actions)

When you compare the two, did you notice how preparation, focus and input ahead of time affected the length of the meeting?  How?

Death by Meeting!  That's what Patrick Lencioni's fable concludes: that we're killing ourselves by meetings all day long.  My experience of meetings is that they turn out to be all talk and no action.  This is very frustrating to try to get things done.

I came across a post by Seth Godin re: meetings and how to make them more effective and productive.

Some takeaways from Seth's post:

1. Schedule meeting in incriments of 5 minutes: this would be interesting to try out.  It would force us to keep the meeting moving, not get bogged down on one item, and cover items succinctly.  It would also force people to be prepared.  If you find it hard to share everything in 5 minutes, check out the book Say It In Six!

(Well, of course the book shows you how to share your thoughts within 6 minutes and with a 5 minute timeframe, you'll have to really hone your skills!  But you get the idea...)

2. Remove all chairs: I've heard of this and have tried it a couple of times with great success!

3. Short Email summary: I take this to the next level and use Google docs with my teams.  Every member of the team can interact and add their progress and thoughts on a project.  The doc can be easily accessed by anyone else on the team.  Then, when it comes time for the meeting, all the thoughts and ideas have been posted and the meeting can go beyond the initial "idea-share" and getting to the action of "how are we going to proceed?" During the meeting, the doc is updated in real time based on our conversation.  Ideally, though, I'd love to jump on Comapping so that it gives my team an accurate picture of how our brains process information.

Mind Break

Click here to check out this video.  Not only does it give your mind a break but it also has a great beat to it!

Solving any Problem with a Picture

I drive my staff crazy because I'm always drawing pictures during meetings, discussions and while I write out sermons (click here to check out this blog post of Billy Chia; a buddy of mine who thinks through sermons by using pictures).  I have a big whiteboard in my office which I use constantly and I have computer programs that help me mindmap (Freemind, Visio, etc) but two problems:

1. After I sketch my thoughts out on the whiteboard, I can't print it out and have a hard copy of it.  I have to manually copy everything from the whiteboard down to a piece of paper.  I don't have one of those fancy machines that takes a pic of the whiteboard and instantly prints it out.

2. If I use computer programs, the are much slower than my train of thought.  My mind is racing and thinking out loud but the computer programs force me to slow down way too much.  I spend the bulk of my time orienting my thoughts to the program, which inhibits creativity and problem solving.

I finally figured my solution thanks to Dan Roam:

Dan Roam was recently in Las Vegas doing a presentation for Microsoft outlining the basic philosophy of solving any problem using a picture.  Click here to view it.

A tablet laptop and a simple pen and I'm a dangerous man...

Are you Communicating to share Information or Inspiration?

When you have the opportunity (or curse) to stand in front of people and talk, do you revert to sharing information or inspiring the group to greatness?  Which one would you rather do?

For 49 weeks in the past 5 years (I get 3 Sundays off), I have had the opportunity to communicate in front of people.  You think it would be an awesome opportunity (which it is) but sometimes it is tough to be inspiring and heart-provoking week-in and week-out.  It's much easier to share an information dump than it is to inspire and paint a picture of a better future.

Andy Stanley's book "Communicating for a Change" outlined a great system for communicating and recently put his thoughts in a Leadership Podcast:

"Effective Communication"  .mp3

A few things strike me:

-Plan out my messages in advance: I've started to do this by planning out worship themes for the whole year.  This has helped chart what sermons looks like from week to week.  It certainly has helped me remember the message since I'm marinating on it for longer than 3 days.  But I still need to work on getting the details of my sermon movement worked out ahead of time (this will certainly give my .ppt person smiles!)

-Tangible item: For every sermon, I think of questions and thoughts for the people to take home with them so the sermon lasts longer than 30 minutes.  I encourage people to talk about these questions over their lunch or later on in the week.  Now my challenge is to give them something tangible to take with them as a visual.

What about you?  What changes do Andy's insights cause you to make when you're faced with a public speaking setting?

What Do You Make Time For?

In an exercise from Pencil Dancing, there were 2 questions that rocked my world.

Question 1: What things do you make time for?

My Answer: My family, connecting with people who don't know Christ, Trinity, Columbia Counseling Ministries, Toastmasters, and Reading

Question 2: What things do you need to make time for that would increase your creativity?

My answer: running/walking, rock climbing, taking an art class, visiting a museum.

Now the task is figuring out how to carve time out to add in my answers from question 2.

What about you?

If you had to narrow down the items you invest your time in, what would that currently look like?

If you wanted to increase your creativity or productivity, what would you need to make time for?

Friend Wheel

Found this feature on Facebook that shows you the web of relationships that you have with your Facebook friends.  It searches for how many connections your friends have with each other and color codes them.  Check it out:

The names on the left have lots of connections with each other and the names on the right have few connections with each other.

So I ask the question:

If you were to map out relationships at your church, office, family, etc., what would it look like?

And, what would you do to change it?

The Little Things...

Little things make a huge difference:

-new paint on the walls

-saying 'thank you' to someone who wasn't expecting it

-carving out time from your busy day and surprising someone you care about by being with them

-shiny floors

-washing the car

Those were little things that I experienced (and did) last week which made a big difference in my life and in someone else's life.

What "little thing" will you do this week?

Let me know...