I’m a huge student of great companies and great leaders.

(I know that comes as a huge shock to those of you who visit here frequently )

Today our staff headed down to Financial Peace Plaza in Franklin to see what Dave Ramsey and The Lampo Group are up to.  Rated one of the best places to work in Middle Tennessee, I wanted to see how this organization stacked up to my experience at Zappos a couple of weeks ago.  I was equally impressed with The Lampo Group.  While not the outrageous experience of Zappos, the environment created by Dave Ramsey and his team made it obvious to me why landing a job at this organization is such a big deal.

What I observed:

• Sleek, neat, professional environment in EVERY area of the building
• Fierce loyalty to vision
• Constant celebration of milestones and successes (both for the organization and the people they serve)
• Relentless pursuit of excellence and growth
• A balance of confidence and humility
• Consistent recognition of God’s favor

These two quotes/formulas were displayed on their walls and give a great glimpse into the values of their culture:

“Focused intensity over time multiplied by God’s power creates an unstoppable momentum.”

“Momentum plus unity with the power of God creates waves over obstacles equaling emergence.”

As we wrapped up our tour, our entire staff was invited to pray with Dave before he began his afternoon radio show.  We circled up in the hallway and prayed together before he stepped into the studio.  What an honor!  I was amazingly moved by the power and influence this man has in our culture and how he is unashamedly pointing to this faith and the power of the Gospel.  So impressive!

What leader or organization has most inspired you recently?

Yesterday I was hanging out with a few of our staff for lunch and found myself marveling at the uniqueness of each of them.

In our random chatter I observed:

Matt – knows all things media and video.  He really does.  He was rattling off names of music video directors, which videos they have done, what video was their last big one, etc.  Then he switches gears and is telling me all the technical requirements for the screens, projectors, lighting, etc for the Easter set.  I understood only a fraction of what he was talking about.  I’m just glad that he knows.

Ashley – knows the English language better than any one I’ve ever met.  She can explain to you in detail a prepositional phrase, a dangling participle and all those other grammar things.  Ashley is our resident “proofer” because the rest of us really don’t have a clue.

Jarrod – knows music and worship inside out.  Apparently 80’s hair bands had something to do with him pursuing music.  He comes up with the most random 80’s & 90’s music trivia.  Then he’ll switch gears and talk about all the worship leaders he follows, the church worship sets he watches online every Monday morning and new worship music on the horizon.

Miranda – she’s a music buff too.  She and Jarrod can talk for hours and the rest of us chime in occasionally when we can connect with some song or artist.  Miranda is especially good with the chick bands.

I could do this for each of our staff.  Each of them have unique interests and giftings that make them “experts” in different areas.  At one point, when I was sitting with these four, I found myself frustrated because I couldn’t keep up with all of their discussions.  I wished I had the knowledge to contribute more, but then I was reminded that it’s ok not to know everything.

Embrace what you know.

You have been gifted with certain interests and talents.  Over the course of your life you have naturally gravitated to those things and have learned more about that interest and passion… whether it’s music, grammar, media ,or in my case leadership and organizational development.

I was reminded that I don’t need to know it all.  I need to embrace what I know.

What do you know?  What are you a natural expert in?  What subject can you discuss for hours?

In my “Create a Crisis” series I’ve talked about what a Thematic Goal is and what the process is like for creating one.  Today I thought I would reveal what our Cross Point Staff Thematic Goal is for 2009.

This year our thematic goal is about securing the foundation among our staff.  As I was praying and brainstorming our thematic goal for this year, I became burdened by the need to establish an even better foundation of trust and unity among our team.  Cross Point has grown significantly within the last 12-18 months on all fronts.  From increased attendance, to a new campus, to additional staff, to more ministries and programs, we have experienced a lot of change.  Growth so quickly has increased the pace of our days and the flow of our communication quite dramatically.  We have always been a very tight-knit team, but I began to see the potential for our trust and commitment to one another to become compromised if we didn’t turn up the heat in this area.

I knew what I wanted to accomplish among our team but putting it into a clear, concise and catchy thematic goal was a bit more of a challenge.  After a couple of months of pondering and prayer, we settled on this:

Thematic Goal: WE!

WE! represents our commitment to one another as a team and the ministry that God has called us to.

To describe and support WE!, I came up with five defining objectives which describe how we plan to be committed to WE! this year in very practical and tactical ways.

We Are Family – influencing and developing family values among our team.  What are the most critical family values that we need to instill?

We Need Each Other – clarity, communication, systems.  What do we need to do to create systems and communication plans that help develop clarity and candor among our staff especially between multiple campuses?

We Can Work it Out – focus, discipleship, stewardship, volunteer development.  What do we need to do to help our staff “work smarter, not harder”, “do more with less”, etc?

We Will Rock You – creativity, ingenuity, risk-taking.  How do we create a culture where innovation is at the core of what we do?

We Celebrate – How can we infuse celebration throughout our day-to-day activities?

To help communicate the goal to the staff, I purposefully tied each objective to a well-known song.  We played the song and shared the objective in hopes of creating a fun, memorable experience.  (Yes, it was borderline hokey, but it was fun and it worked!)

Over the next several months we will work through these objectives and infuse it throughout our organization in a variety of ways.  I’ll be sharing more soon.

In the meantime, I’ve got a Starbucks gift card waiting for the first person who can name the song (title and artist) that I used to help communicate each of the five defining objectives.

Last week I posted Part 1 of Create a Crisis where I shared how our team creates a “Thematic Goal” every year.  Today, I thought I would share more about the process we go through in creating our thematic goal.

The concept for creating a thematic goal is easy to understand and get excited about, but creating the thematic goal for your organization is more challenging… and living it out is even more challenging.

One of the key things I’ve learned about creating a thematic goal is that if you can’t quickly understand it and repeat it, it’s not going to work.  Simply put: KEEP IT SIMPLE!  It was very easy for me to ramble on about what I wanted to accomplish with our thematic goal this year, but putting it into an easily digestible phrase was another matter.  I literally agonized over this for a couple of months.  Let me assure you, creating a thematic goal is NOT easy.  It takes tremendous planning and processing to come up with something that you can clearly articulate, that can be grasped and repeated by your team and that you can reinforce repeatedly throughout the organization all year long.

I’m currently reading a great book called Leading Change by John P. Kotter.  In the chapter entitled “Communicating the Change Vision”, Kotter shares a list of key elements in effective communication of vision which I believe have great application to creating and communicating a thematic goal.

Simplicity: All jargon and technobable must be eliminated

Metaphor, analogy, and example: A verbal picture is worth a thousand words.

Multiple forums: Big meetings and small, memos and newspapers, formal and informal interaction – all are effective for spreading the word.

Repetition: Ideas sink in deeply only after they have been heard many times.

Leadership by example: Behavior from important people that is inconsistent with the vision overwhelms other forms of communication.

Explanation of seeming inconsistencies: Unaddressed inconsistencies undermine the credibility of all communication.

Give-and-take: Two-way communication is always more powerful than one-way communication.

These elements have become the guide rails for me as I’ve put my ideas for a thematic goal on paper.  Making it understandable, repeatable and FUN were critical for me in creating a goal that I could enthusiastically communicate to my team.

In Part 3 I’ll share our 2009 Thematic Goal, how it’s working so far and how we plan to weave it into the fabric of our staff culture!