In case you missed it or you're not following my boss Kem Meyer ... she recently delivered a keynote for the Dynamic Church Conference entitled "The underbelly of technology nobody talks about"
If your role has something to do with IT (and even it if doesn't) I'd strongly recommend you watch her presentation. Great stuff to chew on.
DC09: Kem Meyer Keynote from Fellowship Technologies on Vimeo.
Our entire Comm/Web/IT team recently retook the StengthsFinder test, this time using the new 2.0 version. (my prior results) This is a very valuable tool that I’d encourage everyone to use…especially among your teams. In fact it’s part of my hiring process … that’s how much weight I give it.
The Clifton StrengthsFinder measures the presence of talent in 34 categories called "themes." These themes were determined by Gallup as those that most consistently predict outstanding performance. The greater the presence of a theme of talent within a person, the more likely that person is to spontaneously exhibit those talents in day-to-day behaviors.Focusing on naturally powerful talents helps people use them as the foundation of strengths and enjoy personal, academic, and career success through consistent, near-perfect performance.
Below are my top five themes of talent, ranked in the order revealed by my responses to the Clifton StrengthsFinder.
How well do you think these themes describe me?Analytical
People who are especially talented in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They have the ability to think about all the factors that might affect a situation.
By nature, you can invent reasonably sequenced processes for performing various tasks. Having familiar patterns to follow makes it easier for everyone involved to handle recurring activities with ease and efficiency. You probably think favorably about individuals who rely on your processes day after day. People who say they cannot and will not use your system often irritate you. Chances are good that you generally rely on reason to determine how an event, decision, or condition led to an outcome. You usually desire to understand how things converge to produce the final result.
Deliberative
People who are especially talented in the Deliberative theme are best described by the serious care they take in making decisions or choices. They anticipate the obstacles.
Chances are good that you are likely to be the team member who is known for weighing the pros and cons rather than rushing recklessly to conclusions. You seldom make impulsive or rash decisions. Driven by your talents, you characteristically are quite reserved. You carefully consider just about everything you say and do. This explains to a large degree why you are happy to let someone else begin discussions. You prefer to listen to others talk.
Learner
People who are especially talented in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.
By nature, you prefer to work in groups. You are attracted to teams whose activities and challenges intrigue you. You usually give these matters your undivided attention. Instinctively, you sometimes dedicate yourself to acquiring specific types of knowledge or using particular skills. Maybe you are self-taught. Maybe you work with an instructor, trainer, coach, or mentor. You might embrace opportunities to expose your mind to new ideas. You might welcome the chance to practice new ways of plying -- that is, diligently practicing – a trade or a craft. Driven by your talents, you occasionally dedicate yourself to acquiring certain kinds of knowledge or skills. You might devote many hours to mental labor. Because of your strengths, you have little difficulty giving intense effort to projects, problems, or opportunities that capture and keep your attention.
Harmony
People who are especially talented in the Harmony theme look for consensus. They don’t enjoy conflict; rather, they seek areas of agreement.
You are hardwired to meet others' high standards. This is how you avoid having conflicts and disagreements with people. Because of your strengths, you resist the temptation of presenting yourself as an expert on everything. Even though you have worked hard to master various topics, disciplines, and skills, you wait to be asked before sharing your knowledge. Usually you refer people to highly trained individuals when you cannot answer their questions. Your commitment to obtain the correct information and solutions overrides your desire to impress others. As a result, your reputation remains intact.
Relator
People who are especially talented in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.
By nature, you are quite comfortable being honest about yourself with others. You harbor very few illusions about who you really are. Furthermore, you can openly acknowledge your mistakes and shortcomings. This is apt to distinguish you from most people. When you have nothing to do, typically you find something to do. Sitting around and wasting time does not suit you at all. It’s very likely that you offer guidance to friends who seek your assistance. While you enjoy being helpful, you probably avoid imposing your ideas on someone unless the person makes a special point of asking you to do so. Driven by your talents, you periodically consider skills you might upgrade to be a better trainer or coach. Perhaps you derive some satisfaction from helping individuals improve personally or professionally. Instinctively, you may be determined to share some of your knowledge, skills, or experiences with people. Perhaps you use this information as a coaching tool if you train someone.
To learn more about the Clifton StrengthsFinder and how you can discover your top five themes, visit http://strengths.gallup.com
3 of my 5 were unchanged … Analytical, Deliberative, Leaner … no surprises there. Harmony is new, but not a surprise after reading the full blown description. Relator was the biggest surprise. It certainly is me, but I would never have thought that was a strength. Hmm.
We have a big team meeting tomorrow to talk about our new results so I’m curious to learn how everyone else scored this time around. I’m also interested to dig into my “Personalized Ideas for Action Report” to get ideas on how to leverage these talent areas. Interesting stuff.
Wondering about practical events where you get tools and training for your team? WiredChurches.com workshops are teacher-led, classroom-style, one-day events. Boring they are not. You'll hear from Granger leaders about what works and what doesn’t. Practicums are facilitator-led, round-table discussions. It’s the sit-down, roll-up-your-sleeves conversation you’re craving. Not quite a support group but an informal, safe place where you can share and gain ideas from others like you.
NEW! Events grouped into two-day chunks. Make the most of your travel...come for one day or stay for two. NEW! Everyone gathers together for a half hour of worship on both days before breaking into individual workshops and practicums.
Events happening Thursday and Friday, March 5-6, 2009
Thursday
• First Impressions [Keep guests coming back]
• Kids [Creating safe, fun space for kids]
• Less Clutter. Less Noise. [How to get the word out]
• Pop Goes The Church [Leveraging pop culture in your church]
• Student Ministry Practicum [Reaching students]
• Worship Leaders Practicum [Leading worship]
Friday
• NEW! Lasting Impressions [Keeping guests engaged & growing]
• Maximizing the Arts [Unleashing the arts]
• Simply Strategic Volunteers [Finding and keeping volunteers]
• Web Strategy [Strategies to build an effective Web site]
• Technical Arts Practicum [Using lighting, sound & media]
One-price: Pre-register to get $20 discount rate of $99 per person, per day. Includes materials and lunch. Where & When: Granger Community Church campus, 90 miles east of Chicago,
9 a.m.-4 p.m. Thursday and/or Friday, March 5-6, 2009.
It's a week late, but here's the all staff email I sent out this morning ... a week after Justin joined our IT team ... better late than never right? Last week was pretty crazy with Leadership Summit so I have a better-than-lame excuse :-)
Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls...
If you missed the introduction at SWAT last week … it’s my most excellent joy to welcome the newest member of the GCC IT Team ... Justin Moore! Justin joins our merry band of geeks as our new IT Specialist. That means once he gets settled in, he'll be your initial contact for tech support issues as well as working on all sorts of uber kewl IT projects so amazing your head would explode if we told you about ‘em. So I will protect your cranium by refraining from further details. Yes, I’m just that thoughtful.
Here’s a few insider tidbits about Justin (and his wife Bonnie) ...
· Was born and raised “in the sticks” – Polk County, NC. And no, there is no town name – it’s just “Polk County”
(If you want to sound like a native, say “poke county”)
· Loves sweet tea and Sun Drop (if you don’t know the joys of Sun Drop, think “Mountain Dew, but sweeter and with more caffeine”)
· Always thought he’d marry a Southern Belle.
o Bonnie’s last address before us getting married was Brevard, NC.
o However, she was born and lived the first 11 years of her life in Lincoln Park, NJ.
o That’s right – married a Yankee!
· Justin and Bonnie have been to Russia 3 times for missions work … see http://www.wantmoore.com/archives/archives/category/missions/
· Strength Finder Top 5
· Big Dave Ramsey fans … Justin lead a Financial Peace University small group this past Spring at their prior church
· All their pets are named after techie stuff: Two cats, Apache and Pixel and female Chocolate Lab named Java.
o Yes, we’re “one of those couples” who call them our children. See http://www.wantmoore.com/archives/2007/11/19/happy-birthday-java/
Like the rest of the IT team, Justin has a blog and twitter … you can learn more about him via:
Blog: http://wantmoore.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wantmoore
So please welcome Justin (and Bonnie) to the team ... we're so excited to have them! …and please help convince them winter is a fun time in Indiana ;-)
Jason ... pondering a career in Men’s synchronized swimming … NOT! ... Powell
Jason Powell
IT Director
Granger Community Church
Ah life ... it's been one of those extended seasons in my life where it seems no matter what I try I can't keep up. Basically I'm living in a mode of the most critical stuff gets dealt with while all else fades into the background. It's not pretty or efficient, but it's working well enough for now. A number of you have emailed me various questions over the past few months ... I got your email ... I will reply ... it just won't be anytime soon ... sorry :-(
I've even stopped reading blogs for the past several weeks unless I get a ping via my google alerts ... aren't you curious what alerts I have setup? ;-)
I'm bummed I don't have more time/energy to be blogging more frequently, but I've found 2 outlets that feed my need to be "connected" with others in the church IT world ... IRC and Twitter.
IRC: Typically a few times each day I poke my nose into our Church IT Roundtable IRC channel ... it's basically an online chat room where a number of church IT staff and volunteers hang out. Here I can catch up on the latest news, ask questions, give answers, and just get to know better my fellow IT peers. A contributing factor in my recent hiring of Justin Moore was from being able to interact with and watch him interact with others in the channel almost daily since last winter. You can learn a lot about a person by hanging out in a crowd together, even if that crowd happens to be virtual.
So I'd strongly encourage anyone involved in IT (yup, we have non-church IT guys/gals joining us as well) to get involved in this virtual community. Together we can accomplish so much more! Here's a link you can bookmark that will take you to the chatroom with a single mouse click...nothing to install...that's about as easy as I can make it for you.
TWITTER: I know a number of you think Twitter is stupid and pointless...I did...then I started seeing it's potential value. And I'm happy to report it's return has been greater than I expected ... even moreso if you tie Twitter to your Facebook status (I rarely visit facebook anymore so this was a big plus).
So, I don't have/make time to create blog posts to keep those interested up to date on what we're doing IT wise at GCC. I DO have the time to blast out quick 140 character updates throughout the day. I've also asked for help via Twitter and gotten almost instant feedback ... even from vendors! Now that's service! I'm diggin' that 2 way instant interactive aspect of Twitter.
You can easily get overwhelmed by the amount of "noise" flowing back and forth in Twitter. You have to determine what your acceptable signal to noise ratio. My suggestion is to add people you "follow" slowly and strategically. And no, you don't have to follow everyone that follows you. I'm VERY selective in who I follow right now. No offense to anyone if I'm not following you (yet), but I've only got so much space right now :-)
So while you wait for future blogs posts ... you may want to follow my Twitter.
There ya go ... Twitter and IRC make me feel like I'm still able to contribute to the IT community even if time is scarce and their reach is not near as great as the number of people subscribed to this blog. There are other neat social aspects to of each of these as well, but I'm out of time for now to tell ya ...
Monday ... marked the 5 year anniversary of my employment at Granger Community Church! This past year has been the most challenging year on so many levels, but I wouldn't trade all the stuff I've learned/experienced. God, help me to grow as a leader.
Wednesday ... Justin Moore started work at GCC! We're are just so ridiculously excited to have Justin on the team. Fun and exciting days ahead for GCC IT! God, help me to grow more and stronger friendships.
Thursday/Today ... 15 years ago Kim and I were married in Auburn, IN! Kim, I LUV U!! God, help me grow as a husband.
*No Church IT Podcast tonight due to above anniversary :-)
Hey! Go find your office geek(s) today and give them a hug ... it's System Admin Appreciation Day! :-)
July 25th, 2008 (Last Friday Of July)
9th Annual
System Administrator Appreciation Day
http://www.sysadminday.com/ for deets
By request ... I'm putting our IT Best Practices document online for your viewing pleasure. Actual document can be found at the bottom of my prior presentation post. Feel free to modify it at will for your own purposes.
I also want to say a huge mega thanks to David Drinnon and team. I basically plagiarized everything I could from their IT doc over at Second Baptist ... with his permission of course! :-)
Last Wednesday I had the privilege of unveiling our new GCC IT Best Practices document at our weekly all staff meeting. I was also allotted a very short amount of time, 15mins, to go over the document and educate our staff on anything IT related they should all know or be reminded of.
It's very rare that IT gets center stage to present at an all staff meeting ... last time was when Indiana changed time zones back in March of '06! Being so rare, I had to ensure I covered all the key items I've wished I could publicly address to our entire staff ... however, in such a small time space only the essential items would make the cut.
The actual presentation took 17mins almost to the second ... would have been a tad shorter but 2 people asked questions ... how dare they! ;-)
It's amazing how much prep time it took to maximize those 17mins. Kem helped me filter the talking points down to 5 main areas. From there I easily had 6 hours of time invested in the content development and rehearsal. I rehearsed the whole presentation out loud a good 15 times ... timing each one and making notes along the way. Our senior management team gave me a unique opportunity and I wasn't going to waste it on poor preparation.
The presentation went off even better than I had planned. I made it fun, lively, and memorable ... and wow did I get great feedback from many folks afterwards. Several said "I didn't know anyone could make IT stuff fun!" :-)
I actually love presenting though I don't get to flex that skill very often these days ... don't forget I used to teach high school so I have a lot of experience being a "presenter."
I brought my laptop along to record the audio ... and for those interested you can listen to the entire presentation below. Here also are the 5 talking points I landed on ... ENJOY!
· Standardization: allows for compatibility, knowledge transfer, decreased costs and downtime and improved response time. You decide to purchase, download or install something that’s not on the list and don’t use IT…you’re at the back of the line. If you want team support, play by team rules.
· Purchasing: Centralization of all technology purchases leverages our church buying power and helps with support and compatibility. Even if you’re the one paying for it, IT is always a stakeholder. This applies to mobile phones, software, hardware, etc. IT doesn’t have to approve your every move, but it’s in the best interest of you and the ministry of GCC to include them in your decision making process. In other words, even if it’s a personal purchase, you’ll end up using it for work which makes IT a Stakeholder. Don’t cut them out of the conversation, it’ll hurt you and the rest of the team when you do.
· Security: Your login is YOUR login. Goodbye 'password' and hello 'passphrase'.
· File Storage: Server storage isn't cheap. Don’t store your personal music and photos in your My Documents. IT can help make recommendations on where to store your personal data.
· Support reminders: Don't send support requests to Jason or Ed. Use our support system to make sure your request is captured and tracked to ensure you get the best service. Also make sure you tell us when you're experiencing issues rather than letting it go for weeks until you're about to go postal.
UPDATE: by request here's the actual document: Download it_best_practices.docx or
Download it_best_practices.doc
* If the embedded audio doesn't work for ya try this
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