Creating a healthy staff culture is something that over the past couple years has been written extensively about. Leadership, Teamwork, all play a role. Even just saying or thinking those words bring John Maxwell to mind.

The Question. – How do you effectively assess the health of your staff team?

Now, I’m a big fan of systems, and efficiency. One of my frustrations in leading teams, staff and peers has been in determining where/how I should be spending my time so that it has the biggest positive impact on the team. To add to that questions is to also determine the impact my action has on the overall staff health of the organization. I have found it much easier to determine a staff need, versus evaluating the effect addressing that need will have on my organization.

For example let’s assume an organization scored low on both these two example questions below.

Staff are satisfied with their salary and benefit packages?

AND

Staff recommend this organizations programs and services to friends and family?

If you only had time to address one issue, and yet both concerns seemed pressing, which one should become your priority.

Possible Solution

Over the past four years our church has been partnering with Best Christian Workplace Institute in helping us assess our staff health and culture. In addition to providing a great assessment tool, their biggest help to us has been in showing us which staffing questions/concerns have the biggest impact on overall staff health.

We’re still making mistakes, still learning, but are also having a lot more fun along way.

Feedback?

So, how do you do this at your organization. I’d love to hear and learn from your experience.

Loving the journey.

Judah and I had the opportunity to spend an evening together recently and all we did was talk about Star Wars, play Star Wars and watch Star Wars. The only time we didn’t do something related to Star Wars was when I wanted to watch my hockey team play out the remaining 10 minutes of the third period. (they lost)

Judah decided this was boring and declared, “I’m going to go make some fun.”

Here he is “making some fun”

I love watching my son play with his Star Wars toys. Everything is so real for him. He literally does create a preferred reality to his current one. (He didn’t like watching the Oilers lose) Like most children, he goes and “makes some fun” when there is none for him. He creates this world where he gets to live out being a hero and save the princess. Simply put he decides to choose change and then acts on it.

Why does our willingness to create a better narrative, create a better story for our lives seem so much more difficult as we get older? I know we can, I know I can, but the willingness to do so….Are you willing to go and make the change you are thinking about?

“A powerful truth is…if you know you’re not living a good story, do what a writer would do. Grab a blank piece of paper and start writing. Amazingly God has given us blank pages, our lives are blank pages that we get to write our story on. Start writing a better story.”

~Donald Miller~

There’s no better time than right now to “go make some fun”.  I love how God uses our kids to remind and teach us each and everyday.

I love being a Dad!

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you need a file and you don’t have a usb key on you, or you forgot to email yourself ahead of time?

I love having information and files at my fingertips. I also love having my files backed up, and I want it all for free.So, who can do this all?

Introducing dropbox.com

Here’s what I love about this simple service.

• Free (you get 2 GB free initially)
• Great for backing up files
• Super easy to use. (This is a big deal, because a lot of online backup tools are not so user friendly)
• *This is awesome — keeps a history of all file changes (30 days) so that you can undo “mistakes”
• Refer your friends and get additional storage space (its free for them too)
• Love the service and need lots of storage space fast (they offer paid upgrades)
• Ability to share your dropbox folder across your network(great for shared resources in a home or office setting)
• Replaces the need to email files to yourself, use a usb key, rename files so that you keep copies of older versions, etc, etc.
• Works on Mac! (works on windows + Linux as well)
• Web access and iphone app accessibility.

Check out the video tutorial below to see how simple this truly is!

Action Step:

• Sign Up Today and benefit from this free service
• Sign Up Today and help me get some additional storage space (Update: I am now capped in additional free space, but you should still sign up!)

4 Steps to reading this post. (Yup, this requires some time and work)

• Read 2 Peter chapter 1. (ESV version of this text is here)
• Check out the awesome 6 minute video from Granger Community church below.
• Re-read 2 Peter chapter 1. (ESV version of this text is here)
• Write down what stuck out for you. Meditate on that this week and act accordingly.

For me, this is what I loved, felt challenged by, and what stuck out to me:

• A great history lesson on Nero, the burning of Rome and how the Christians suffered because of it.
• Incredible context on 1&2 Peter. (I will never read these books the same way again)
• A good reminder that I have never had it “that bad.” That was incredible suffering they endured for Christ’s sake.
• I love Peter’s passion to be constantly reminding other believer’s of the faith, hope, and power we have through Christ.(2 peter 12-14)
• To also share and be a “reminder” of Christ’s good news to others. (it’s funny to me how easy it is to separate being a disciple and disciple maker)

So, what stuck out to you?

Malcolm Gladwell is by far one of my favorite authors. He recently released his new book, What the Dog Saw.

Besides being a very insightful researcher and author, he is also one of the few authors to have all four of his books on the Best Seller list. Incredible considering his first book came out over 9 years ago.

As a speaker he is just as insightful. C-Span recently did an hour long interview with him. So, if you have some time and like Gladwell, you will enjoy the interview.

I have been reflecting on the special moments when my kids look at me. I thought a quick video would be a good reminder for me the next time I don’t pay attention to the depth behind each expression my child shares with me. During the process God met me. I love how He interrupts our journey to speak and remind us of truth. For me it was that even though I quickly forget the special moments He gives me with my kids, He has never forgotten anyone of the expressions of my face when I look to Him. He is faithful, He sees me, enjoys me, is proud of me, and loves to laugh with me. He has never forgotten.

I hope that my kids will always know how much their dad loved and loves them and that he treasures every moment with them.

I trust that He will also encourage and remind you of special moments with Him and others.

A big shout out to Carlos Whittaker and this post. It was the still images in his video that started me down this road…

So I realize that my blog is often on the “heavy” side.  So I thought I would try and write some more about things that happen with our family. So, here’s how I impressed my kids with some totally useless knowledge.  They did have fun with it, even if it only lasted for 5 minutes, but Dad was “cool”…not that we do things to be “cool” , right?  :)

So, what fun, but useless tricks have you taught or shown your kids. i would love to hear them so I can impress my kids further with useless skills.

Should be fun to read.

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Video: 6 Mins

At the end of the day it’s all about this. I wonder if I am really doing enough. I realize its easy to feel guilty convicted, etc, etc. I think that’s good, this should convict and hopefully we listen and obey His call for our lives. On a side note Naomi and I have often discussed adoption. This video actually pushed me to finally pursue it.

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