Normal Rockstar

Parents & Email Productivity

My parents have been in town this week which has been fantastic. We've done some touristy things, eaten plenty of ice cream (my mom is where my love of ice cream originated), and even worked some on the house/yard one day. So I've been somewhat unplugged from blogging this week - real life relationships are STILL more important to me, believe it or not!

However, a couple of days ago I posted on my Blogsites.biz site about an email management system developed by a guy named Merlin Mann (he blogs over at 43Folders). If you're like me and have a ton of email coming in every day, this will be an extremely helpful tool for you to deal with your email in a quick and efficient fashion and not be bogged down in your inbox all day. Click here to read the post - then start implementing it and let me know in a couple of days how it's working for you.

Blogging Seminar at re:Create

Well, re:Create is in full swing, and the blogosphere is definitely alive and well. If you're at all interested and want to know what you are missing, go visit any one of these blogs - they're all blogging from location:

Ethos
John
Rich
Carlos
Justin
Chad
Bethany
Nathan
Pat
Mark
Whittaker Woman
Bobby

I'll be popping in and out throughout the week as there's plenty for me to do work-wise before I go on my first cruise next week (and we get paid to go - what a sweet deal!). During the blog seminar on Monday, someone asked this question:

"Why should I blog?"

Well, the answer is really simple: in this, the Free Agent Nation (author: Daniel Pink... get it, read it, live it) we live in, your blog will often act as your resume. Employers these days are looking at blogs, MySpace sites, Facebook profiles, and all sorts of other places online to find out about their potential hires. So be aware - not only do your friends and family read your blog, but quite possibly your current or future boss and co-workers.

Fast Company has a couple of articles on their website that talk about the importance of your blog and being aware of what you're putting out there for the world to see. Here are two articles of interest:

Use Online Networks to Find Your Star Employee
Joblogging (if you're going to read one, read this one)

If you don't have the time to read an article, here's some brief pointers from David Teten and Scott Allen's Joblogging article:

"Here are a few simple do's and dont's to keep in mind:

  * A blog is forever. Even if you delete or edit a post, many people will have already read it and possibly commented on it, and an archive of it may be available in many other places. If there's any possible negative consequence of something you might post, it's best left in your head.

  * Make sure that all your posts are technically accurate. It's much better to err on the side of fewer, higher-quality blog posts, than many blog posts that do not represent you well.

  * Be "personally professional." Blogs are by their nature informal and personal. If you're overly formal, you may not connect well with other bloggers or potential readers. On the other hand, venturing off into every dark corner of your life may not sit well with prospective employers.

  * Don't list your blog on your résumé unless it is relevant. If you're seeking employment as a risk management analyst, list your economics blog if you have one, but not your political rant blog.

  * Make sure your blog is reasonably attractive and presentable. It is part of your personal appearance every bit as much as your résumé, your clothes, or your hygiene and grooming.

  * Read and connect with other job search and recruiter bloggers. You can get relevant, current tips to help with your job search, share leads with others in the same and similar fields as you, and connect with recruiters who specialize in the type of jobs you are seeking. Use your blog both to build and leverage your network.

Chick-fil-A & Truett Cathy

Last year as a band we did a couple of radio promotional events at Georgia Chick-fil-A restaurants. We had a great time visiting with the people who came by the restaurant to meet us, get a CD signed, or get a picture taken with us; we had a great time visiting with the radio station personnel who were our gracious hosts for the day; we had a great time eating Chick-fil-A food (for breakfast and lunch!). However, what most intrigued me were the conversations I had with the restaurant owners - Operators, as they're referred to in the Chick-fil-A world. so much so, in fact, that when I saw the book Eat More Chikin: Inspire More People, written by Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy sitting on the counter beside the "Cows in Shining Armor" calendar, I decided to purchase it (and, true to Chick-fil-A style, the Operator refused to take my money for it). That was late last year - I was finally able to get to it in early January and finish it off. Quite an interesting book - Cathy is definitely not a literary giant, but his story is amazing - he continues to build on an already amazing legacy. Let's just start here: Truett and his wife have been married for over 50 years. They have 3 children, 12 grandchildren, and more than 120 foster children. Yes, you read that correctly: more than 120 foster children. Many, many years ago Truett realized the importance of loving parents in the life of a child and started looking for ways to influence hurting children by inviting them into his home. One of the ways he has developed to do this is through The Winshape Foundation, a non-profit organization developed simply to "shape winners".

Near the end of his book, Truett tells the story of a girl named April, who came to live in one of his foster homes at 8 years of age. When she was 14 she wrote a speech about "Grandpa" for a school assignment. Truett arranged for April to present her speech to The Newcomen Society, a foundation that recognizes achievement in American business, when they awarded him membership in 1997 and invited him to address the members. April wrapped up her speech this way:
Truett Cathy, the businessman, inventor, and benefactor, is not my real grandfather. you see, it is my privilege to call him Grandpa because I am a WinShape kid, sort of an adopted grandchild of his. I have learned from Grandpa the importance of hard work, practicing your beliefs, and helping others. I strive to be a graddaughter who will make him proud. I hope that by hearing some of his story today that you will be encouraged to be like my Grandpa. Thank you, and eat more chicken.

There's plenty more I could go on about - the story of Chick-fil-A is really quite remarkable (get this: chicken wasn't even served in the first couple of restaurants Truett owned before Chick-fil-A. The Chick-fil-A sandwich came about by accident!). Truett really knew how to hire great people and then took care of them - that has always been one of the keys to the success of his business. Here it is in a nutshell - wrapped up in the core message delivered at the very first Operators Seminar in 1971:

Build the business.
Guard the brand.
Take care of your people.
What counts in this business is not how much money we make or how much chicken we sell. What counts is the difference we make in the lives of others.

This is applicable not only to those who owned Chick-fil-A restaurants in 1971 - this is applicable to us all today. Just replace "how much chicken we sell" with whatever you do - "...how many people we get in church on Sunday morning", "...how many houses I get built, "...how many CDs I sell" - you fill in the blank. You'll be surprised at what happens when you start to think of the well-being of others...

Gallup Strengths Finder

My wife and I spent this past weekend at a artists' retreat with World Vision (definitely more to come from that!). We had a great time reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. I was thrilled to find that a new friend of mine, Jon Ramsay, was not only a fellow musician and marathoner but a passionate student of leadership development! We became kindred spirits instantly, and we haven't even known each other a week yet!

The thing that really got us both fired up was a book called Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Cunningham and Donald Clifton, both researchers at the Gallup Organization. The premise of the book is that to effectively manage personnel, the best approach is to focus on enhancing people's strengths rather that try and eliminate their weaknesses. The authors have analyzed results of interviews conducted by Gallup of over 1.7 million employees from 101 companies and representing 63 countries, resulting in the formulation of 34 positive personality traits. Here's the best part: printed on the inside of the cover is a code for a web-based interactive questionnaire developed by the Gallup Organization that allows readers to instantly discover their own top-five inborn talents.

I stumbled upon this book when my wife was interviewing for a position. They gave her the book and required her to complete the questionnaire so that they could see her gifts and make sure that she would be a good fit for the position. I was so impressed with the accuracy and usefulness of the results that I bought my own copy of the book so that I could take the questionnaire too! It was pretty cool - and was neat to show Jon both of our top 5 and hear him marvel at how well our areas of giftedness complimented each other (we knew this already, of course - that's why we got married! - but it was definitely affirming).

I will be headed up to MN in the next month where I will hopefully get the opportunity to spend some time with some of the gentlemen who are involved in educating and implementing the principles of this book. I will post some more once I have been able to meet these guys - in the meantime, let me strongly recommend that you go out, buy this book, and start discovering your strengths!

Gen Y on the cover of USA Today

I've been toying with the idea of writing a book over the last couple of months, and last night I took the first step towards that end. A good friend of mine who happens to be a literary agent flew into Nashville yesterday for some meetings this week, and we were able to connect for an hour or so and shoot the breeze, get caught up on each other's lives, and chat about this crazy idea of mine. He was very helpful and encouraging (thanks, Don!) and gave me plenty of food for thought. We decided that the target market for the book would be those ages 18-35, or my generation - makes sense, doesn't it. Here's the crazy part: I picked up a copy of Monday's USA Today in the lobby of the hotel before Don came down for future perusal. Well, I finally got around to it this morning, and much to my surprise, the lead headline in the Money section read: "Generation Y: They've arrived at work with a new attitude" (read the full article here).

It was a great article - really insightful into the way Generation Y will impact the workforce. Who is Gen Y? Bruce Tulgan of RainmakerThinking Inc. says this: There is no consensus over the exact birth dates othat define Gen Y, also known by some as echo boomers and millennials. But the broadest definition generally includes the more than 70 million Americans born 1977 to 2002. Generation X was born roughly 1965 to 1976... Narrower definitions put Gen Yers as those ages 16 to 27, born from 1978 to 1989.

I love the lead sentence of the article, written by Stephanie Armour: "They're young, smart, brash. They may wear flip-flops to the office or listen to iPods at their desk. They want to work, but they don't want work to be their life." Further down in her article she quotes Tulgan as saying: "Unlike the generations that have gone before them, Gen Y has been pampered, nurtured and programmed with a slew of activities since they were toddlers, meaning they are both high-performance and high-maintenance. They also believe in their own worth."

Generation Y - my generation. These are my peers and those I am passionate about helping. What a cool confirmation from the Lord this morning as I sat down to start to flesh out what this book will actually look like. This could be the start of a long and exciting journey. It's time to tackle one more item on my "things to do before I die" list...

Good to Great: Part I

I have been putting off this first installment of my Good to Great series under the auspices of not having enough time to sit down and actually write. I got so far as to grab a couple of books - Maxwell's The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and George Barna's Leaders on Leadership - from the "Leadership" shelf of my personal library and a couple of papers I wrote on the subject in college, all with grandiose intentions of writing a well-referenced commentary worthy of publication in the likes of Fast Company or Leadership Journal.

That was a month and a half ago.

So here I am; enough is enough. With only my computer and my marked up, beat up copy of Jim Collins' bestseller, I present to you Part I of my mini blog series of thoughts and reflections from reading and putting into practice Good to Great. (You know what's funny? As I read through this last paragraph, it almost sounds like you, the reader, have been knocking down my proverbial door begging for me to get started on this, and I've finally given in to your demands. The fact is, most of you probably stop in because you're related to me or like my band and don't care a lick about Level 5 Leadership or Hedgehog Concepts. That's a humbling thought...)

Are You Fully Engaged?

You are what you repeatedly do. - Aristotle

I woke up at 4:45am this morning to go to the bathroom, and by the time I got back into bed, my mind was racing knowing I had to get up in an hour and get ready to leave again for the weekend. So I decided that instead of tossing and turning for the next hour trying to get my mind to slow down, I'd do something productive and get this post taken care of and out of the way - besides, I've got a 12-hour drive today to catch up on missed sleep!

I'm not avoiding the next installment in my series on the book Good to Great, I promise. In fact, that's another thing I'm going to work on today on the road. The problem is that I keep having "I need to blog about that!" moments! Take last night for example: my Tuesday morning small group (including fellow bloggers Brock and Auny, Randy, Mark, and Chad) got together on a Thursday night with our spouses to watch a DVD of a session from the Willow Creek Leadership Summit by Dr. Jack Groppel, co-founder of LGE Performance Systems Inc. (soon to be known as The Human Performance Institute), a company who's mission for the last 25 years has been to systematically identify and train the skills that people require to perform effectively under conditions of high stress.

The session was pretty incredible. Dr. Groppel based his talk on a book his co-founder Dr. Jim Loehr co-authored in 2003 called The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal.From the LGE Performance Systems website: "The book introduces a groundbreaking new paradigm based in the understanding that managing energy, not time, is the key to full engagement and maximum productivity. Because human beings are complex energy systems, full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy -- physical, emotional, mental and spiritual."

Good to Great: Introduction

I live a two-faced life in many ways. One face looks like a rockstar - traveling the world in vans, planes, and tourbuses (only on extremely rare occassions), playing in front of thousands some nights, hundreds and tens other nights (more regularly than our tourbus travel), and scribbling my name illegibly on posters, CDs, t-shirts, pants, shoes, lampshades (only once so far!) in the name of an autograph. My uniform consists of t-shirts purchased at thrift stores (if I buy them) or ultra-hip vintage clothing stores (if the record company buys them) and jeans - the more holes and the rattier they look the better. Little sleep, long drives, frequent stops at gas stations, the ever-present search for free wireless internet, hotel rooms, and deep conversations with my wife via cell phone (as deep as you can get!) are some of the things that accompany my life as a "rockstar". [Sidenote: I'm also reading So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star by Jacob Slichter, the drummer from one-hit-wonder Semisonic - the book is linked in my sidebar. This is a must read for any musician dreaming about getting a record deal and being a professional "rockstar".]

My other face is one of a businessman. I am one of 4 primary shareholders in a 6 year-old start-up company that has done business in over 10 countries. We are currently in the process of refining our vision and re-examining our current team, moving people into positions that may better suit their abilities or simply replacing them all together with individuals and companies better suited to help us pursue our vision, among other things. This is an exciting time for us - one of new beginnings and new opportunities, new faces and new energy, new dreams and aspirations... A landmark time in the history of our company where years from now we'll look back and point at this time as the time we as a company went from good to great. This side of my life is characterized by days behind a desk replying to email, leaving voicemails and anxiously awaiting return phone calls, scheduling and attending numerous meetings, fielding phone calls and requests from all parts of the country, reading industry periodicals and websites in an effort to keep up on what's going on and where our particular industry is heading, thinking up different scenarios with the help of my solar-powered calculator in order to make sure salaries are paid, bills are kept current, and capital funds are available when needed... among other things.

One of my passions and the things I've been wanting to use my blog to explore is the whole area of leadership development - I thrive on building into people and helping them marry their passions and abilities to their work and watching as they find fulfillment in what they do from day to day. I have really been impacted as I read Jim Collins' book Good to Great - in fact, as a company we have used a lot of the information from this amazing piece of research in our whole self-examination process. In the next few weeks I am going to take you on a journey with me as I look at some of the things that really stood out to me in Collins' research and how they will affect my life, both as a rockstar and as a businessman. I trust that you will learn some new things that may help change your life and bring you fulfillment as well. Hang on for the ride!

Should Christians Care about Being Influential?

I love it... there's controversy on the blog! The following comment was posted yesterday in response to my very first blog entry:

Why are you so concerned about trying to be influential, about following a certain formula to make you that way? Why does this matter so much to you?

Maybe blogging will make you influential, maybe it won't. That's not the point. The people who come to read this blog are for the most part going to be people like me, people who like your band's music and as an extension of that are interested in what you have to say. I think what you have to say might be valuable because of the little I have seen of who you are. You take the time to read emails from perfect strangers and respond to them, and what's more you state up front that you like it, which invites more emails.

You are influential to people like me, for we can see at least a part of your heart, and that is something worth following. People didn't respect Mother Teresa because she set out to be influential. She was, and still is, influential because she set out to emulate God, because she lived out the gospel through her life, and because she wasn't afraid to share what she thought when people asked her... Know what my favorite part of this blog is so far? Your pictures. It's obvious that you love your fiancée, love your friends, and love your family. And yeah, lots of people do, but that makes you real, that makes you human, and that is the part I care most about. Because now I am ready to hear what you have to say. So what is it? - Chicagobanana

Great thought-provoking questions! I love this one: "Why does this (being influential) matter so much to you?" Let me turn it around and pose this question to you, the reader: Why does being influential not matter so much to you? It seems to me that Jesus is pretty clear about calling His disciples to be influential:

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. Matt. 5:13-16

Salt and light look different for all of us: for Mother Teresa it was exercising her gift of mercy and taking care of the sick and the poor; for the apostle Paul it was exercising his gifts of teaching and leadership by writing nearly 2/3 of the New Testament in the form of letters sent out to encourage, challenge, exhort, and train the early church (here's a question worthy of discussion: would Paul have been a blogger in today's technologically-savvy culture? Post your thoughts...); for my mentor Randy it is exercising his gift of giving by pursuing excellence in the world of watercolor painting and sending his profits to start-up churches in eastern Europe... the question I think we all need to be wresting with on a daily basis is this: how am I being salty today, and what am I doing today that will help me keep my saltiness tomorrow?

In the Christian view, the pendulum has swung back and forth, from the doctrine that the meek shall inherit the earth to Max Weber's perception (set forth in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) that, among the Calvinists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a sign of being among God's elect is success on earth. As a general statement it seems unexceptional to say that Christianity has not necessarily despised ambition, although it has tended to view excessive preoccupation with ambition for worldly things as misguided. - Joseph Epstein, Ambition, 1980

Pursuing influence - "ambition" - simply for the sake of being influential is idolatry. Pursuing influence for the sake of furthering the Kingdom and spreading the Gospel is a command:

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." - Matt. 28:19-20

We Are All Ordinary People... Right?

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. - C.S. Lewis

In In, But Not Of, talk radio host and writer/laywer/blogger Hugh Hewitt writes, "Our utter dependance on others is so obvious and so complete that it is as invisible as oxygen and just as necessary... You're fooling yourself if you think you made it or will make it on your own." This is a tough concept for many of us to grasp in North American society today - most of us would actually be offended if we were told we were dependent on someone else. Dependence is seen as a sign of weakness - we are encouraged by the media to be Lone Rangers, seeking love, fortune, and recognition on our own... and when we get bored or the current source of x dries up, we have been conditioned to believe that it's completely okay to "look out for #1", to "move on to greener pastures", and to "do whatever makes you happy", regardless of the potential damage it could do to the well-being of those around you - some close, and some simply acquaintances.

Let me use my world as an example of this dependence on other people - in fact, let's take my day today. I woke up at 3am in Michigan and promptly went back to sleep en route to Chicago, leaving my life and the life of my bandmates in the hands of our bass player Glenn as he drove us to the airport. From 8am to 5:15pm my life was in the hands of various pilots, air traffic controllers, and airport crews as they flew, did maintenance checks, screened baggage, and ensured that we all arrived in Regina, SK safely, on time, and with all our bags intact. At 8:45pm I will be depending on the production team at this particular event to have read the technical requirements our management team sent them (there's some other people I depend on!) months ago concerning instruments, amplifiers, stage setup, etc. so that they can have everything ready for us to provide an excellent concert experience for 4000+ kids. At 11pm my career will be in the hands of Dave our sound guy as he coordinates the production team, ensuring that we sound as good as possible, while my income for the month will be in the hands of Jessica our road manager as she oversees the volunteer team selling our merchandise and makes sure that everything is set up for a meet and greet after the show. I have been counting on the faithfulness and love of a woman thousands of miles away all day as I travel across the country playing music while she works diligently at home planning our wedding, explaining to people where I am this week, and taking my phone calls at random times from random, often extremely distracting environments, always telling me how much she loves me, how proud she is of what I do, and that she can't wait for me to get back home. And finally - probably around 2:30am tomorrow morning, I will be depending on my host to provide me with a warm, quiet place to lay my head and get some much-needed rest.

And that's just the people I will be depending on today. Tomorrow it starts all over again - some of the characters will be different, but the same glaringly obvious point remains: I am and will always be dependent on other people.

So do me a favor: when you wake up tomorrow morning, make a point of paying attention to those people in your everyday world who you are dependent on and pay just one of them a special compliment. Then tell us your story - how you think it made them feel, and how it made you feel. Remember Lewis' quote: there are indeed no ordinary people - so don't treat them like that!