Get Over Yourself

This post certainly strikes a chord with me, Matt. “Before I can even process what I’m doing or thinking I’m on to the next thing.” Yeah, that’s me. While there is certainly an aspect of getting over myself, to share well requires reflection, intentionality, and often an invitation…at least to start. I’m realizing that sharing well is a skill that is developed and honed over time. When I look at some of you guys that are always showing up in my Google Reader (Russ, Brian, Ken, Keith, Benson, etc.) it can be hard to think I have anything additional to offer. But I think all of you have been doing this a while and were perhaps encouraged at some point to share something you mentioned in a conversation. True?

I’m thinking right now about how I can get my immediate working groups/teams sharing with each other and, dreaming big, our region. So maybe my question back to you, Matt, is how do you think you will get your ministry team in PDX to learn to share well? How would you/others encourage people to start to develop a culture of sharing?

I should have read this article first. I just commented over in the “Evangelistic Engagement” room about video in evangelism. My comment corresponded with the them of your article. Share the wealth of knowledge. We can do it in ways that allows others to personalize our ideas. If we can get over the fact that our “baby” might need to be tweaked in order to have a greater impact someplace else (e.g. a different context) then the Great Commission advances and God is glorified. I might add … guilty as charged

Matt, really good challenge.

Darren, I can learn from you. I’m learning a lot from you younger folks.

We need to balance the need to know and the need to share. Both are needs. We tend to feel the need to know very strongly. But as a member of the body, we also have a need to share. We grow. We develop. The body grows and develops when we share.

How do you share? How do you help others on your team share? I’ve found that sharing needs to be pretty painless and effortless, a part of our normal workflow each day. So, what ideas can I learn from you all?

I’m concerned the issue can be framed in the wrong light when we characterize it as needing more time to share.

I think it’s more about changing our behaviour and how we do things than lobbying leadership for the margin to do an additional.

At the outset, yes, it might take more time to share, but the behaviour change needs to take shape in context of what we are already doing.

- Vow to never send an attachment to your team again. Everything in google docs.
- Put the agenda in a wiki instead of an email
- Write a prayer in your blog instead of your journal.

Those are all things that don’t require your leaders permission or a lot of extra margin.

Matt, thank you for leading us in this healthy discussion.

Darren – I resonate with your hesitation. I started my blog less than eight months ago and really wrestled with if I had anything unique to share or could afford the time it would take to add another feed and space to my life. In the end, Seth Godin’s book Tribes influenced me to just go for it and mobilize a tribe if I was really serious about seeing change in the world. In the end it’s worked out well and surfaced all sorts of people and information that has really moved the ball down the field in my job and personal development.

Darren – I don’t know you from Jack but by looking at your profile for 15 seconds I can see common areas of interest and overlap. I’d benefit greatly from interacting with you. Don’t worry about using all the tools or getting it perfect. Just start and I think you’ll find it’s a lot easier to add-value to others than you might imagine.

great thoughts matt! thanks for this post!

gah i was hoping there was a youtube video of clay shirky’s keynote at sxswi this year. but i did take notes on a google doc! see link below.

in regard to sharing he said this:
Goods (money): unnatural for us to share, have to fight it, feel bad afterwards

Services (walk across street w old lady): easier than goods, feel good afterwards

Information (directions): easiest one of all, feel good afterwards

napster changed music from goods to information!

* can i have your cd?
* could you make me a tape?
* can i have the file?

my quote, not clay shirky: painless sharing is frictionless sharing–if i can copy and paste a public link instead of digging into my hard drive, surfacing the document, attaching it an email, sending it to you, then you having to open/convert the doc then i’ve successfully shared.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgxkk95q_525dqjx45hf

one phrase that’s been thrown around alot around our campus is “avoiding business as usual.” this is usually used as we think about ministry and questioning if a particular event or what have you is really the best thing to do/spend resources on and not to just do it because that’s what’s been done in years past.

i’ve been trying to think of ways to apply this to more than just ministry but in how we function as a staff team ect. one thing i’ve been trying to figure out how to do is after every staff meeting there always seems to be three or four new e-mails in my box where someone took notes on something like an evaluation for something or planning or something similar. these files that are made are taken so that next year if we decide to do something again (for example a fall retreat) how can we avoid making the same mistakes, what worked well, and the like.

what would be the best way to have these files readily available to everyone so that next year when we’re talking about fall retreat and trying to figure out how to maximize the event we have notes taken from last year and we can see

“ran out of swedish fish the first night… next time get more”

we’ll know not to make the same mistake. i guess my question is what’s the most user friendly method for this? is dropbox the end all in cloud computing and file storage? i’d like to maximize user friendly-ness because a majority of the staff would rather staple their hands together than try to learn a “complex” system.

jake those are some awesome questions you asked.

at chico i have moved to managing some of the “feedback” info you’re talking about (swedish fish) to our ministry google calendar.

it’s not the most user friendly way of compiling data but guess what? if that event is on the calendar you can be sure everyone on our team is going to see it and buy some swedish fish.

fall retreats, first four week events, any yearly event (we do a barn blast) i would highly suggest storing at least 3 positives and 3 negatives to in the google calendar event.

I wonder in the true spirit of a new open source CCC world that 3-5 people form their own task force (don’t wait for someone above you for permission) and come up with some concrete recommendations for how we can collaborate together. Whether it’s google docs, GCX, google wave, dropbox or some other undiscovered tool the important thing is not the TOOL! I think the new CCC structure wants us to innovate, create and LEAD. Someone take the initiative to say, “I’ll lead..who’s with me???”

And we’re so glad you started your blog, Russ. At least I am. I always enjoy your posts because I find it quite helpful to my own life!

I, like Russ, didn’t think I really had anything to share that’s new – and maybe I don’t. But I still have things I’ve been thinking about and learning and, as a new staff (just finished my first year), I figured there are probably some other up & coming new staff who are/will be working through some of the same things I am. So I followed some of the advice I got from Russ (and ) and decided to publically talk about these things in case other people could benefit. And that’s what I’ve started to do at .

woops. XTML fail. I meant to say: “So I followed some of the advice I got from Russ (and Chris & Julien) and decided to publically talk about these things in case other people could benefit. And that’s what I’ve started to do at Stir/Agir“

I’ve only got like 3 posts so far, but lessons I’ve learned in productivity – I’ve found that that was a huge lack in terms of our “training” as new staff. Managing everything is very different than as a student in my opinion, and so I had a rough start with that.

There are some other tips & tricks that I want to share (using twitter & YourFlowingData to track stats [Thanks Russ!]; how twitter has improved my discipleship relationships) and explore.

Since I’m going back into MPD this summer, i’ll probably talk about that, too. Mistakes I made last round & how I’m improving on it this time around.

Mostly… I just often have tons of ideas in my mind and I figure if any of them are good maybe if I actually talk about them & put them “out there” someone might pick up on it and it might go somewhere. Here’s to hoping.

Jeff, I really liked your approach here. It encouraged me.

Because sometimes I get uncomfy with the “everybody share” encouragement – though I urge it, and I certainly agree with what Matt said in his post.

But I think my concern comes from seeing some college ministers attach an authority to their methodologies that isn’t called for. They don’t simply share what they’ve done, seen, thought about, or theorized. They go the next step and extrapolate their situation too broadly. And that’s one thing we must not do: Assume that any other campus won’t require contextualization – perhaps even contextualization we haven’t imagined.

So then that leads to 2 questions for Matt (and anyone else): How do we help the learners do better than copy-and-paste? And remember, I’m not just asking about Cru contexts, but the many who want to learn (in churches, particularly) and yet haven’t even come close to considering anything BUT a copy-and-paste approach?

And how do we help the sharers to respect the wide diversity of the field – and share without assumption, even if they haven’t seen that diversity or experienced it?

I get to enjoy the privilege of working closely with Matt on the newly formed Portland Metro staff team. I am realizing that I am not very good at what this post is about. I don’t often take the opportunity to share what I am thinking and learning….atleast not with other staff.

I really enjoy sitting across the table from a student and talking strategy and about my thoughts on ministry philosophy. However when it comes to other staff I subconsciously think to myself that because they have been accepted on staff in the first place they probably have it all together and know what they are doing. Besides, I came on staff with CCC to see students lives changed, not to worry about how other staff are doing things.

But as I have grown in my staff career I find myself desiring to interact/teach/train staff more and more. I am excited to create a culture on our team here in Portland that beginning from the first day a new staff reports, we often ask the question “what do you think?” and “how do you think we could do things better?”

Matt, you mentioned the MSU team has a weekly time of collaboration. This sounds great. Also I think new staff often feel overwhelmed as it is, that they don’t know how to collaborate well.

Are there any other thoughts or ideas on helping new staff understand that their opinions and thoughts have value and are needed?

Justin, your comment has really good insight in it. Time is often a forgotten factor in our immediate-focused world. We all grow through our career with CCC, however long it is. In the early years, we’re just trying to learn the skills, learn the methods, figure out which way is up. Think about all the things a new believer has to figure out about the Christian life. Much is by rote mimicking others in the early years. This is normal. It’s kind of like early childhood in which kids mimic the way parents talk and walk and hold their spoons and speak about others. This is the time of dependency.

But over time, the basics become second nature. That’s when the growing of Leadership skills really kicks in. That’s when it’s important to start testing out your own ideas and sharing them with others to see what they think. That’s when questioning is normal, often trash-talking the status quo. Think about adolescence and middle and high school. Even college years. It’s when we try out our own thoughts. It’s a time of independency.

Eventually we move into an adult world in which we learn how to be our own person but to value and respect others also. We learn how to collaborate where we can share our ideas while valuing others. We can give and take without our identity as a person being challenged. This is interdependency.

The challenge to us as leaders helping others develop is to help the process along over time. Recognize the stages. Accept where people are but also help them keep developing.

I really connected with the Greenleaf quote that Brian Virtue used in his post on self-directed leadership development. The measure of our servant leadership is how well others develop as servant leaders. How well do they move from dependency through independency and into interdependency.

[...] Justin posted a very insightful comment in a different discussion thread called Get Over Yourself. I and others responded. I’m repeating the (slightly modified) response here since it’s another part of the Solitude as a Path discussion. You can read the full interaction here. [...]

Matt – I’m a little late to the Blogference! But, great thoughts. Just wanted you to know that I have quoted you a few times in the past few days (in e-mails) on what I think is THE issue right now in regards to innovation in CCC – “The question we need to answer is how to take all those random ministry documents and put them into a format or application that is available to everyone and easily accessible. …plus some organization would be helpful when we’re looking for it 12 months from now.”

It seems like, from the top down to average staff, that there is an increased push to share resources which I am THRILLED about. But I think I haven’t done much about it (in the way of idea sharing) b/c I’m not sure the time invested will be worth the pay off (i.e. – not many people would see it, be helped by it).

Would love to hear any additional thoughts on the best way to facilitate widespread sharing (web-based solution). Have you heard of any tools since this thread in April?

I wonder if we can make something (or adapt something that already exists) out there like creativemyk.com – a Christian design site that takes user submitted designs and allows people to give feedback and help make ideas better. I agree that the Wiki is so cumbersome and the search so bad that I never use it.

Would love for CCC to follow LIfechurch.tv and create incredible content to give away for free (their resource site is also a good model: http://www.lifechurch.tv/resources ).

hey guys just saw these new comments.

i’m in the very early stages of planning a digg/like button for ccc resources.

much the same as digg/like–you can attach the button to any CCC resource, vote it up, and allow for the users to determine the value of the content, not the website or platform.

perhaps i can get a beta version out in the near future and test it in a limited fashion to see how it would work out. from my conversations so far w a developer it wouldn’t be too expensive.

what do you guys think?

Matt – I just started following your blog a few weeks ago and had seen that post which had spurred some of my thoughts on this. I like the Servolution site in particular because it has categories on the right, making it somewhat easy to find things that relate to what you’re looking for. For us we’d have Evangelism, Discipleship, Sending, Leadership Development, Movement Building, Cru Talks, Publicity, Team Development, etc. And then probably another section for Staffed, Metro, Epic, Impact, etc. And I like how the best of the best (regardless of category) get voted to the top and have a prominent place on the site.

And I totally agree on ease of use. Especially when it comes to the less tech savvy. But for anyone, if it’s not quick and easy to 1) upload and 2) find resources then it won’t get used.

Brian – definitely love that idea – what do you mean by early stages? As in just talking to a web developer? Where would this button be added (to an existing site or new one)?

I like Behance’s options to sort by Featured, most viewed, most discussed, most liked. That way the powers-that-be could still spotlight Featured resources (like iTunes free song of the week does. Really the entire iTunes store is an example of that. The bulk of the page spotlights “Featured” items and celebrity playlists, etc while the right column is reserved for what users determine is popular) while the rest of the spotlight goes to what users determine is valuable. In fact, let’s design a site that looks just like the iTunes store – pretty and functional, extremely easy to find what you’re looking for.

As I think about what I need as a CD/MTL, I occasionally will go to the Wiki b/c I’m specifically looking for something on evangelism or how to explain the evangelism model. But I don’t think that’s our #1 need in CCC (if so, as you said Matt, simply having a better search engine would fix that problem).

But I don’t usually go to a blog or website because I’m looking for something specific. I spend way more time reading guys like Seth Godin or Michael Hyatt (or y’alls blogs) because the insightful thoughts cause me to think differently & innovate. I would constantly check a (hypothetical) Cru resource site to hear what the latest and greatest innovations are in campus ministry – whether it’s related to sending, evangelism or anything that works (like you said Matt, a la the 250). Now that I go back and look at your original 250 post Matt, I guess not much different than what you were saying. But I think we can figure out a way to incorporate more than just one topic (say, evangelism) into a resource site.

The main bottleneck I see in all of this – is it would likely be a full time job for someone to moderate/filter this content and maintain a website. Manpower is lacking. I know Lifechurch has an entire team working on their resources/tech stuff.

But maybe not – it could just be a network of “volunteers” putting in 5% of their week to keep it going (like the Dan Pink examples of wikipedia, Linux, etc). I’m in! By volunteers I mean mostly staff but also true volunteers. I have a guy here at the U of Arkansas that interned with us for a year and is now working full time in the workforce. He’s a web-development genius. And very motivated to help us out in any way possible (for free). He’s just finishing up a complete redesign of the CruDoctrine site (yet to be put up) and just made an amazing database for us (that hopefully eventually will be rolled out nationally).

I also think http://www.creativemyk.com/ is a good site with user-submitted content that seems to be a combination of critique (you can submit designs that are still works in process that they’re trying to get feedback on to make better) and sharing resources for free (“finished” works that anyone can use). And it’s a clean, nice looking site.

And if you go to the gallery you can sort by different criteria to find what you’re needing: http://www.creativemyk.com/gallery.aspx

hey guys great thoughts.

the problem w the like button is that it’s so temporal, and FB “owns” the data.

a ccc like button could be added to any page that contains a resource.

the lowest hanging fruit in this is the existing sites that CCC maintains.

we could instantly see if people are using these sites–my guess is yes, but not in the way many staff think.

many of our resource sites assume you have all the time in the world to find something, and that you like downloading resources that you may never use.

tim the curation you noted is THE biggest piece–that’s why i’m hoping to get some sort of ccc button out so people can see the power of users determining what’s valuable.

i’ve been thinking about what it would look like for volunteers/staff/etc to curate the resources as they come in–and formatting them for the web.

i’ve always been a fan of pdf’s but as someone brought to my attention that are difficult to edit. things like this seem small but for those on the field all of these little things add up to huge frustrations as you already know.

as for the development i’ve talked w a guy about how, just haven’t taken action.

this is motivating me! thanks for the insights.

I added this the other day but since I posted twice in a row it got lost in “awaiting moderation” purgatory:
I also think http://www.creativemyk.com/ is a good site with user-submitted content that seems to be a combination of critique (you can submit designs that are still works in process that they’re trying to get feedback on to make better) and sharing resources for free (“finished” works that anyone can use). And it’s a clean, nice looking site.

And if you go to the gallery you can sort by different criteria to find what you’re needing: http://www.creativemyk.com/gallery.aspx

Brian – I like that idea – if there was only a “like” button I could click next to your comment

And then would we have a central page that would collect/highlight all the most liked resources/articles? Or I guess initially you would just see them on your stats page?

How are PDF’s difficult to edit? They may be less pretty when you copy and paste them into Word but that’s the price you pay for adapting it. Am I missing something? You mean like difficult to edit posters/design or just written text?

This company has a different take on the like button. In general, I can’t imagine in a million years it being able to take on Facekbook and win (I would never use it).

But I like the way it recommends things. What if we eventually could set it up to where when you log onto the Staff campus main page it had a few recommended resources for you (based on what you have “liked” before). So if you’ve liked a few article on movement building, it would recommend the most popular movement building article next time you are on. That is adding a little complexity (building a recommendation algorithm) – but just a thought.

Here’s an article on the site: http://mashable.com/2010/07/12/getglue-stats/

It looks like you can look at what other people have “liked” which might be useful (but again, making it a lot more complex). Like I said before, it seems like the logical place for this to land (speaking REALLY hypothetically here) is on the staff campus page – to not add another page people have to check (therefore making it less likely they would use the tool). Again – just wondering what you, Brian, have in mind for your like button (as far as the user interface).

Also kind of cool that it mimics Foursquare and letting people win “top user” for different categories. Therefore encouraging people to “like” more things I guess?