The White Hat

The white hat is all about information. "The facts, ma'am, and nothing but the facts" is what this hat is all about.

Facts are neutral. There are no feeling with the facts (feelings will come out with the red hat).

The goal of the White Hat is to receive as much information as possible. In a meeting or discussion, facts that would provide helpful guidance for a great decisions get covered up with feelings or side-conversations. By focusing on the facts, you are able to get all the necessary information out in front of you so you can take the next step of interacting with the information using the other hats.

The Point of the White Hat is to be practical.

Danger: too much information is paralyzing.

Examples:

"What are the budget figures for this line item?"

"What was the attendance for this past event?"

"What went wrong with the campaign?"

Leadership Team

My Leadership Team just finished talking about the book "Trust and Teams" by Jane Fryar. As one team member put it, "it ate our lunch". This is a great book which has great questions to help build teams in a religious environment.

Our next book we're discussing is: The No Complaining Rule. That should generate a lot of discussion as well as changing our whole climate of conversation.

Boy, do I complain too much...

Rule the Rules

I recently watched License to Wed and there was a hilarious scene where Robin Williams, playing a priest, is teaching kids the Ten Commandments. Great way to remember them:

God is #1

Cussin the Man is Outta Hand

Say N.O. to Envy

Sunday is God's Fun Day

Dad and Mom are the Bomb

Be Chill Don't Kill

It Ain't Neat to Cheat

Keep it Real, Don't Steal

It Ain't Fly to Lie

Covet? Don't Love it

Of course, now is the challenge to renumber them according to the Protestant numbering and come up with new rhymes. What fun!

Vision

Our church is attending the co::labs offered by Will Mancini. These co::labs walk a congregation through the Church Unique process. We have experienced clarity and have been affirmed that the vision we developed 1 1/2 yr ago is still clear, concise, catalytic, compelling and contextual.

The first step in the Church Unique process is to discover our Kingdom Concept. A Kingdom Concept helps a church to discover the unique actions that a church can do better than any other church around them.

The idea is not for our church to "copy and paste" Saddleback, Willow Creek or other growing churches. The assumption is that we should discover our uniqueness, focus on what makes us unique and do the best we can to live that uniqueness out in to our community.

Click here to discover our Kingdom Concept:

If you want a preview of the book, click here.

My leadership has been to 2 out of 6 sessions of the co::labs. We are very excited about this process and can't wait to dig into the other 4 sessions!

6 Thinking Hats: Intro

I am currently reading a book titled "Six Thinking Hats" by Edward De Bono and applying it to church, specifically to church meetings. In Six Thinking Hats, De Bono explains that while we are meeting, we try to do too much all at once: experience emotion, ingest information, create hope, inspire creativity and make decisions. Wouldn't it be great to separate all that out so that we have clarity and clearer communication?

De Bono asserts the following positives for this process:

* everyone in the group (regardless of intelligence, experience and knowledge) can provide input

* saves time (one company set aside 4 hours for a discussion on an important decision. Using this method cut their meeting down to 45 minutes with more buy-in from everyone)

* removes ego (Six Hats helps you to analyze and dissect ideas instead of people)

* provides clarity

What are the hats?

WHITE = facts and figures. Information here is neutral and objective.

RED = emotion. How one feels about a decision, idea or fact.

BLACK = weaknesses of an idea. This hat sees caution and carefulness in every idea. De Bono asserts that this hat comes naturally to many people.

YELLOW = hope and optimism. Seeing the positive aspects of an idea or thought.

GREEN = creativity and new ideas. Looking for growth and new direction.

BLUE = organizing the thinking process. Goals and step-by-step action items.

In future posts, I'll summarize each "hat" and how to use them.