Cause to Pause

Better late than never.

A little over a week ago the annual ACS Technologies convention took place in Louisville, Ky. Here’s some of my random thoughts:

1. IT Roundtable. Dean Lisenby always hosts this. This year it was opened to non-ACS customers. Guess what, we all have the same problems. Treading the line between “equipping for ministry” and “letting them do whatever they want”, between “securing the resources we have been entrusted with” and “hampering ministry”. That is what makes CITRT so valuable. Join it today.

   Lot of discussion on Google apps and who “owns” the data. If a staff person uses their personal Gmail account and leaves, gets hit by a bus, etc. then what? If you don’t provide easy tools, they will just find their own and guess what – you end up supporting them anyway.
   If you do “go Google” do you “go all the way and ditch Office” or use a combination approach?

   Darryl Hunter was there, as was Jason Powell and a host of GCC folks including Kem Meyer. Funny how when she spoke all the keyboards went silent.
   I am guessing there was somewhere around 45-50 people in the room.

2. For the conference itself, it was supposed to be completely different than previous years. And different it was. Each morning and afternoon there were three main sessions taught by teams made up of ACS users. Not employees. These classes changed the focus from “you can do ‘x’” to “here’s what we did, what worked, where the holes were and how we overcame them….or didn’t”. Instead of having someone who knew the software, but happens to volunteer in their church, – or used to work in a church; you have someone who still lives and breathes the same environment you do every day and but happens to use some of the same tools. Subtle shift, but big perception change. As big as going from “theoretical” to “practical”.
3. There was also a “main stage” in the display area that had the equivalent of “live 10 minute infomercials” to show the “what you can do” aspect. I give those presenters a lot of credit. That had to be tough as people would basically just walk by, but I was able to catch the ones I needed to and it helped.
4. There seemed to be less ACS staff there, but a lot more interaction. The set-up was less “convention/trade-show booth-y” and more circular.

My personal takeaways:

1. I picked up a lot more information on topics I had been over before. Stewardship and Communications strategy were the two big ones.
2. I left with some serious projects I would like to get moving on. Done right, it will probably keep us busy for about three years. One of which may be MobileCause or some other form of mass text messaging.
3. This was a much better format. It is hard to quantify “interaction” without a lot of surveys etc. but from a customer standpoint it was definitely higher.

The big one:

Monvee
Multiple keynotes this year, including from John Ortberg and the founders of Monvee. Monvee officially “came out of beta” the day before the convention.
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In moving a project or initiative forward, you better take a look at the environment you will be working in. When you have been working in a given group or company for a long time, it is easy to develop a closed mind and not take the time to analyze your surroundings. “Familiarity breeds contempt.” my mom used to say.

Local churches can be classified hundreds of ways, but the easiest is either “Departmental” where everyone lives in their own ministries, venturing out only when necessary. This can breed some wonderfully tight ministries with deep relationships. It can also lead to “silos” of information, duplication of resources and other challenges. (This chart assumes all ministries are valued equally. That is another post for another time.) Here, every bit of information has to travel across the silos. Sometimes those gaps can be hard to bridge.

Another class is more “Initiative Driven”. Here, the whole church seems to be running behind a clear, single goal. Generally a vision cast by senior leadership. The advantage is the apparent unity across the organization. The downside is these initiatives can (and often do) change frequently and may not be given time to mature before heading off on the next “adventure”.
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Next time you have something big to accomplish – by “big” I mean anything that involves other people – ask yourself three key questions:

1. What do I want to accomplish?
2. What is the environment I will be working in?
3. What will be required?

Seems simple enough, right? All questions you can answer without giving them a second thought, right? Therein lies the problem. Most projects fail due to a lack of clearly defined goals/expectations or failure to prepare for the inevitable variables. Attention to the three questions above will help eliminate that.
You see, when you answer those questions with little more than a passing thought, you don’t really answer them – and you leave yourself vulnerable.

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