I was in a staff meeting today that got me thinking about the power of words.  We have  been taking a staff engagement survey the last few years as a way to measure the development of our culture.  In our meeting today we went over some of the results and our senior pastor got up and said some pretty amazing things about our HR director and his efforts to create an amazing work environment.  After his glowing words, he went on to say how proud he was of the staff for our individual commitment to being led and each of us trying to making it the kind of place we want to work.

While he was talking, I kept thinking how great it was for the staff to hear him say these things, and how potentially uncomfortable it made him feel.  It seems way easier to be flippant or make a joke than to say something heartfelt and positive.  For me, it feels weird to say “I’m proud of you.”, but I never grow tired of hearing it for myself.

When was the last time you told a volunteer that you were proud of them?  That you were amazed at the job they had done?  When did you last tell someone that they were an essential part of the team?

For me, I assume that people know this stuff, which is stupid.  If I need to hear it, why wouldn’t everyone else, including the people I work with?

After our staff meeting and realizing that I need to be better about saying positive words to people, I had a meeting with someone (you know who you are!) and I told them “I will keep repeating myself, and saying these true statements about you, so that over time you believe them and that you will know that I believe them too.”

In the moment it feels weird to say positive things.  “I am proud of you.” and “Way to go!” need to be said and they need to be heard.  So say them, so they are heard.

 photo credit: Anemone Letterpress

photo credit: navonod

There seems to be a teeter totter in the world of production that tips between being flexible and being rigid.  Most shows and concerts that I go and see fall into more of a scripted version of production.  Weeks or months of planning, multiple rehearsals, a few concerts in front of a test audience, until finally, one day, the show actually happens; then it happens the same way over and over again.  What you get is a predictable, reproducible experience for people in city after city.  I go to one of these shows and drool over the precision achieved to create moment after moment.

Why do I drool?  Most of us working in the world of church production know why.  We very rarely have the luxury of tweaking something to that level of detail, to get the chance to live with something long enough to figure out what is working and what isn’t.  Usually by the time we’ve learned that information, it is time to move on to the next event.

In our own services, we can also be dealing with this idea of the “Spirit moving”; trying to be open to what God might want to do in our services and following it.  This is great, except we need to have some level of planning in order for the production not to be totally distracting to what is trying to happen in the service.

Because of this, we do sound checks, mark locations on the stage for lighting to focus on, and have accurate scripts for the video team to follow.  The question for me at any given moment is where do we strike the balance between being flexible and being pre-planned?

The answer is obvious…it all depends.  Each element we do, each moment in the service requires us to look at the teeter totter and decide what matters the most.  If it were all up to most production people, the rigid side would sit way back and force the teeter totter down.

For our services to be successful, we need to learn the art of shifting our weight forward and back; sometimes leaning into something, sometimes sitting back.  Give and take; pushing for a plan one moment, flying by the seat of our pants the next.

Thankfully, Dave drives with the top down!

On a rare beautiful day in Chicagoland, I noticed a person driving a sweet convertible with the top up.  I was offended.  Seriously.  You have the audacity to own a convertible and when the weather actually permits, you choose to leave the top up?  Too much work?  Didn’t feel like it?  Please.

If you have a car with the ability to have the top down, put it down.  Let me see you enjoying your investment.  Let me long for your life.  Help me live vicariously through you.

Since then, I have been keeping track of the top up/top down ratio.  How many people have a convertible, but drive with the top up verses down?  It also woke me up at 3am.  While I was staring at the ceiling wondering if I would be able to get back to sleep, I had a thought:

When people look at my life, what is the “convertible with the top up” equivalent?

How am I squandering whatever I have been blessed with?  I think about my family and my job and wonder if I make choices based on “too much work” or “I might mess up my hair”, that I am missing out on the experience that is right in front of me.

When I think about my life and the choices I make, I often am reminded of the parable of the talents, and I am not interested in being the one dude that buries my talent in the ground because I am afraid of losing what I do have.  I want to make the most of what I have.

I want to live life to the fullest, with the convertible top down.  When people look at my life, I want to be living a life worth emulating.  I want the wind whipping through my hair.

In what ways are you living a stingy life?  How can you take advantage of all that you have for something larger than your own comfort?

photo credit: TehLonz

A little over a year ago, right before the start of the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, we had what’s called a “brown out”; basically a dip in the electrical supply.  It wasn’t enough to kick us to UPS power, but enough to crash some of our lighting equipment.  That’s when every production person’s favorite moment happened, people turned to glare at the booth, wondering when things would be fixed.  Meanwhile, I am in the front row wondering when is a good time to panic.

For those of you who know me, panic isn’t really my thing, so instead, I realized that we had the smartest people in the building working on the problem, so we’d be up in running as soon as possible.  In the time it takes Windows to reboot, we were off and running again.

I am continually reminded each weekend that mistakes happen.  The reality is that stuff happens; stuff that we can’t plan for.  In my opinion, there are 2 different kinds of mistakes:  ones that happen because I wasn’t prepared, and those that just happen.  I have a lot to say about being prepared (I am a former Boy Scout after all), but this post is mostly about the mistakes that just happen, that are outside of our control.

There is no way to stop these kinds of mistakes from happening, but there are ways for us to manage them and ourselves when they do.

How you respond matters.   When things go wrong, what do you do?  Do you panic?  Do you get angry?  Do you solve the problem?  Do you shut down?  Do you blame someone else?  In the heat of the moment, people are looking to you as the expert to see if you are panicking.  They will take their cues from you, the person who can hopefully fix the problem.  Definitely go after the solution with intensity, but there is a difference between intensity and terror.

Learn from the mistake.  After the fact, when things have settled down, ask yourself a few questions:  Did I miss something in the planning process?  What could I have done better to avoid this from happening?  Is there a way to change a process to prevent the same thing happening again?  Whatever it is you learn, take that information and inform your boss immediately.  If your boss is anything like mine, production is a bit of a mystery, so when something doesn’t go well, all they know is that something went wrong and that you need to do something about it.  Help them understand (in non-tech speak, please), what happened and what you are going to do about it.

How you handle yourself when mistake happens is a chance to build or destroy trust with your leadership and your team.  Whether it is what you do in the moment or how you adjust afterwards, you have an opportunity to become a better leader and a better team player as a result.

the infamous cue book and cow bell

I was in a meeting yesterday where we worked through the details of the upcoming Willow Creek Association’s Global Leadership Summit.  We had 3 hours scheduled to go through 2 day’s worth of content, but by the time it was all said and done, we had been there for 5 hours.

At a certain point, I was thinking to myself “Are you kidding me?  Do we really need to have a meeting that is almost half as long as the event itself?”  Once I got over my impatience, I was able to see the value of the conversations we were having.

Many of us are in similar situations each week (maybe slightly less complicated), where you are having to hammer out every little detail about your services.  How many vocalists?  What will be on the screens during announcements?  How do we get a drama set in the same exact spot as the band?

As a production person, figuring these types of things out is what I am about.  Many of us want every detail laid out for us, and for nothing to change.  I don’t know that this is realistic, so over the years I have concluded a couple of things.

My job is to prepare like crazy.  If I can nail something down, I will.  If we can know how many verses and choruses of a particular song, let’s write it down now.  I am going to do a line check before the band arrives.  I am going to watch the video all the way through to make sure it plays right.  I am listening to the music so I know how to program the lights before the on-stage people get there.

Here’s the kicker for me.  I go into every production with the expectation that I am going to be about 80% prepared.  With some hard work, I think we can know about 80% of all the things that will happen.  I am going to go after every possible detail I can know.   No one else knows what I need, so I will look under every rock for the last scrap of information I can find.  If I can help it, I am going to kill it on 80%.

For those of you good at math, what about the other 20%?  There will be 20% unknown.  In my opinion, this 20% is unavoidable, and necessary.  Seeing something in the room for the first time and realizing it isn’t working.  Adding a song at the end of the service because the Spirit was moving.  A power outage at the beginning of a service.  These things happen and if we are ready for the 80%, we’ll have capacity for the unknown 20%.

Going into this year’s Global Leadership Summit, I know that we are 80% ready.  And that is about all we can expect.  I am proud of my team for how prepared we are for the 80%.  I also know there is 20% hanging out there, that we won’t know about until it is happening.  I am also proud of my team for how we will respond to the 20%.

What  can you be prepared for and what do you need to be OK not knowing?  Do you need every detail?  

photo credit: schrierc

The other night, I went to an informational meeting for my kids school.  I generally don’t go to these with high expectations for technical excellence.  However, this meeting was more annoying to me than normal.  I know I shouldn’t complain that much, since I didn’t get out of my chair and fix the problem…I’m trying to have boundaries and not get sucked into something I don’t have time for…anyway.

The mics didn’t work.  The lighting kept getting shut on and off.  The video kept switching between PowerPoint and someone closing windows to open other windows.  The Quick Time files weren’t full screen, and you couldn’t really hear it.  This is a laundry list of the stereotypical production value at most functions.  There are some very fundamental violations going on here.

Unfortunately, it gets worse.

Over half of the night’s content involved showing several lengthy video clips of a message given by a pastor.  I am sure the content was amazing.  Unfortunately, the mic sounded so terrible, with feedback thrown in for good measure, that it is almost unintelligible.  Here is a man who has prepared like crazy to give a talk that he was passionate about in front of close to a thousand people, and nobody can really pay attention because he doesn’t sound natural and the feedback keeps coming in and out to remind people how bad the production values really are.

Now add on top of this, his message has been video taped and rebroadcast to our event of several hundred.  His message is diminished because of the missed production values at the original event on top of the awful production values at our event.  I kept thinking about the missed opportunities for his passionate message because simple foundational production values were ignored.

What you and I do matters.  If you ever wonder if doing a line check, or spending time training your ears matters…it does.  If you get tired of your attention to detail going unnoticed or your insistence on changing batteries after every use falling on deaf ears….it matters.  Everyone in the room that night was groaning when each video clip started.  They know what bad production is.  Transparent production is just that:  transparent; invisible.

Take pride in the fact that all these things matter to you, and relish the idea that no one talks to you about  it.  It matters.