Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit--Juliet Funt

(At the Global Leadership Summit for some leadership training for the purpose of getting more Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes to children around the world.)

At last year’s GLS I taught you how to reduce busywork and this year we have a chance to go deeper into that.  We start with a story about my travel photographer husband who just did a book on Cuba. When we go to Cuba we stay with Marcos and every day is a celebration for him.  When we got there we found out the hot water tank was broken. Marcos told us he had installed in our apartment an “electric shower”. We all went to look at it and taped to the shower head with wads of electrical tape with wires hanging out. I said, “Isn’t it a little dangerous?” He said, “The electric current is broken in between the drums. The water droppy-droppy-drop and the current breaky-breaky break so you are no electrocuted.” That night before we tried the shower we said goodbye to each other. My husband got in the shower and when the water went on the lights went out. I found out the colloquial name for this contraption was the “widow maker”. I realized that the casualness of everyone around me is what made me comfortable in that shower.

Casualness can pierce your resolve and make you compliant. The area where this is most important to me is in the area of busyness at work. We are casual that we are wasting the time of smart people and that casualness is killing us.

I want to take you by the shoulders and teach you how to build a true culture of simplicity. We’re just at the leading edge of this change now. In our larger companies we see them do 3 things

--technology improvements

--reorganizations

--

these are bricks but they are missing the mortar. The mortar is the human mindset that is the key to making simplification real in a company.

Three behavioral blindspots

Conformity

Compulsivity

Control

Conformity—symmetric inertia= nobody changes until everybody changes so nobody changes

Candid Camera—produced by my father Alan Funt – best conformity examples you’ll ever see—(example of people facing backwards in elevator)

This mimicry is called social conformity

As a leader run all your actions through the White Space 50/50 rule—when you see yourself following take a small safe contrary action.  One small safe contrary action can start a new trend.

In the old days we women would talk and talk and in the end a quilt would be created. So, ladies, find a girlfriend with whom you can vent and “drain the well.” Someone who can just hear you.  THEN you go to the man in your life and say, “Hello, I have nothing to say to you.”

Compulsivity--Unnecessary communication at work will be reigned in by compartmentalization.

2D versus 3D communication. 

2D includes texting

3D are meetings, phone, being together

If you push 2D into a 3D medium you waste time. If you push 3D content into a 2D medium you waste content.

The Yellow List = a document you keep for each person you work with. You stop before you communicate to them and ask if this needs to be communicated right now. If not, put it on the yellow list for later.

Control—Watch other people do things wrong while you do nothing and this breaks the cycle of control. My new hobby became watching for stupid people doing things wrong so I could NOT be helpful to them. Leaders—“hands off”. While you are practicing that, practice second tier delegation.

2^nd Tier Delegation—in delegating to the 2^nd tier you build the next generation. 

The 4^th “C” is Compliance – I’m going to give you a take-home tool.  White Space refusal strategies—21 ways to train yourself to say “no” – go to whitespacegls.com

Memory is a funny thing. There will be some time when the only thing left in an organization is people’s memories of what you have done and of you.  Legacy is something that is yet to be written but to which you hold the key.  Use the bricks but don’t forget the mortar.

Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit--Craig Groeschel--How To Become a Leader People Love to Follow

(Here at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit to learn how to become a better leader to get more Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes to children around the world.)  Here's the first talk by Craig Groeschel--

It’s my honor today to welcome leaders from around the world—130 countries in 60 different languages. 

We are gathered today to help one another become leaders that people love to follow. We believe when the leader gets better everyone gets better. 

You might say, “I’m not really a leader.” But leadership is simply influence.  You have the capacity to be a strong leader. If you are a parent, a friend, a new employee—you can be a leader. You don’t have to be in charge to lead. You don’t have to have a title to lead.

profound humilty + furious resolve=good leaders  We can learn from each other. Everyone is welcome here. I only ask we show respect to one another today.

We’re going to say some prayers and sing some songs but I ask you to be respectful and open.

We will strive for excellence—giving our best and demanding the best from others. We will apologize when we get it wrong. We will speak up for those who have no voice. And we will get better, because when the leader gets better everyone gets better. At the end of our time together your vision will be stronger; your heart for people and God will be Stronger.

Let me ask you a question. How many of you have ever worked for a leader that you love? If your boss is here raise your hand high! 

In my first real job in sales I had a sales manager who would yell at us and then hug us. He said he did it because he loved us and it didn’t make me feel safe.

Then I went to work for a man I trusted and I would do anything for him. I felt valued and trusted.

A poll of 4,000 leaders when asked how they could improve…they said they need to get better at finances and technology.  The pollsters then interviewed their employees and asked them what their leaders needed to improve on and the employees said they needed to be better at leadership and emotional intelligence.

Leadership—Where are you taking me?

Emotional Intelligence—How are you treating me?

How do you become a leader everyone wants to follow (not that everyone loves.)  You may be popular if you’re respected but you will never be respected if you are only popular.

What are the 3 feelings you experience under great leadership?

--you feel valued

--you feel inspired

--you feel empowered—someone trusts you and believes in you

How do we as leaders create an environment where team members feel valued, inspired, and empowered?

What qualities do you need to be a leader others love to follow

1) A heart to care—you will never be a leader others love to follow if you don’t truly love people.  

Summarized in these 4 words: 

--I notice.

--You matter.

Good employees don’t leave bad organizations; they leave bad supervisors. The number one reason people leave is because they don’t feel valued.

--Appreciate more than you think you should. Then double it!!

I started giving ‘knuckle bumps’ to employees that we called a ‘gold star’ and I started getting notes from the spouses of employees thanking me.  Say, show, and write your appreciation.  Never rob them of the blessing of knowing you care.

Focus on the others. You-Centered leadership.  Some leaders will make you think they are important but the best help you know YOU are important.

2)  A Passion to inspire—inspire comes from “in spirit” inspiring is more of a pulling out of them what is already inside of them.  Employees who describe themselves as “inspired” are more than twice as productive as those who call themselves

--charismatic speeches are only one tool to inspire others—not the most important tool. Found 33 different attitudes of leaders that inspire.  (Bain Inspiration Leadership Model) – work to find the unique qualities your leaders have that would inspire others ie. optimistic outlook; posture of humility; consistent follow-through; generous with recognition; consistent empathy;

One quality stands above the rest—Centered Leader

What is a Centered Leader?—secure, stable, confident, fully engaged, internal values in alignment with their external behavior, guided by values, driven by purpose, obsessed by mission

Bain Research—all you need is 1-2 well-developed strengths to inspire

--When passion meets inspiration an obsession is born

3) Willingness to Empower—The best leaders unleash higher performance through empowerment and not command and control.  If you think you need to control everything you are the one in the way of progress. You can have CONTROL or you can have GROWTH but you can’t have BOTH.  It’s important what we give to them and how we give it.  We don’t just want to delegate tasks, because when we do that we’re creating followers.  Instead, we want to delegate authority so we create leaders. 

--How do we do this?  As leaders we make only the decisions that only we can make and delegate the rest deeper into the organization.  The better you become as a leader the fewer decisions you make.  Start making only 25% of the decisions you are making now.  The strength of an organization is reflected by how deep into it people have the ability to say yes.

--You have to trust people where they are; The best way you can find out if you can trust someone is to trust them.  If you don’t trust your team you are either too controlling or you have the wrong people. Either way the problem is yours to solve.

Let me talk about the qualities of Jesus as a leader.

Heart to care—Jesus loved to sit next to the worst of the worst. He reached out to those that religion rejected. He spoke truth and love.

Passion to inspire—He said I came to serve not to be served. This is humility and resolve. He cast vision—I am come that you could have life and life to the full.

Willingness to empower—He selected people everyone else overlooked; he trained them, gave them feedback, trusted them, let them mess up, coached them and let them get better. He gave them authority to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

Great Commission—told them the assignment but trusted them with the ‘how’

4) Courage to be real, transparent, vulnerable, humble & confident even when you’re scared to death.

People aren’t looking for a leader who is perfect but one who is real and vulnerable. You don’t have to be like somebody else, you don’t have to be smart or perfect, but you do have to be real. People would rather follow a leader who is real than one who is always right.

Where We Stand

Yeah, I know...I haven't posted in over three weeks again. I feel like I just make my way day by day from one event to the next without a lot of down time. In the midst of the chaos of house guests and a road trip and OCC responsibilities I see God blessing in new ways every day.

Sometimes I worry that I'm losing my focus on Operation Christmas Child. I mean, what I really want to do these days is buy clothes for boy babies, look at pictures of my grandson (and soon pics of my grandsons-to-be, and steal as many kisses to Sam's sweet-smelling baby head as I can.

Still, the date for our 10th annual packing party looms ever closer--only 44 days away now!  Last night I tallied the prep work we need to accomplish before that day.  My count showed 150 cartons with 48 packs of crayons in each one to be separated and bagged, 250 more reams of paper to count, fold, and bag, several hundred tote bags to roll and rubber band and boxes of fillers to sort.

Then, when we get all that done we're going to add pens, pencils, toothbrushes, and bags of crayons to the previously bagged paper to make school packs. We're trying this for the first time this year as an experiment with no idea whether it will make things easier at the packing party or just mess up the flow of the assembly line. Meanwhile, what we DO know is that it's going to be a LOT more prep work than we've ever done before.

Praise God, though, because today we had another packing party work day. It was the best-attended one of the summer with more than 60 people coming throughout the day.  They bagged 55,296 individual crayons and counted and folded 50,000 sheets of paper.

AND one of our volunteers brought a donation from a local knitting/crocheting group.  Look at this great collection of handmade stuffed animals, hats, fingerless gloves, and crocheted flippy flyers. How cool are these!

Whew! I feel a lot better about our progress than I did 24 hours ago.

It will be interesting to see how many paper/school supply kits we can assemble in two more work days. We really need to get them all completed before the week of the packing party because we have to devote those days to assembling the 30,000 boxes.

Oh, another answer to prayer--we got confirmation that a local public school will bring a busload of high school students on 9/11 to help us assemble boxes for three hours--what an amazing blessing!  Now I need to figure out some ways to make that tedious task more fun. Anyone have any ideas?

Forty-five more days until we stand on the other side.

Crazy for Cra-Z-Art

Yikes! Our packing party is just a little over two months away and the amount of work still to be completed before that weekend is astounding.  Makes me glad our sovereign God is in control of all of this.

We were blessed this year when the back-to-school prices on crayons hit the stores the week after school ended.  For once I was excited to see the stores "rushing the season"!  For a number of years now we've used the Cra-Z-Art brand that are priced at .24 a pack at back-to-school prices.  I'd prefer Crayola, but the Cra-Z-Art are adequate and allow us to bless twice as many children.

Our amazing Walmart manager, Charles, ordered the crayons for us and 12,000 boxes (250 cartons of 48 boxes each) were ready to be picked up last Monday without a hitch.

I was blessed with my husband and our friend Myron to help transport them and grateful for the Walmart employees who helped with the loading.

We completely filled three vehicles and thanked God for keeping the rain from falling until we had all the cartons moved to the storage container.

That evening four team members gathered to get a start on dividing the boxes of 24 crayons into three bags of 8 crayons each.  It's tedious work but by giving each child a nice pack of 8 crayons instead of an entire pack of 24 we are able to bless more children.

My husband, Jim, and I spent quite a few hours this past weekend getting 10 cases of crayons put into bags.  To keep the crayons from rolling around in the piles I used three empty opened boxes to sort the three piles.

I discovered it goes faster for me if I sort them pretty much the same way every time.  First put a dark crayon (there are 2 blacks and 1 brown) into each pile.  Then each pile gets one blue, then one green, then one orange.  There are two purples and one purplish red in the next round and then two red and a purplish red in the next (done in the opposite order so the purplish red ones don't end up in the same pile.)  The next round has a light crayon in each pile (while, beige, or yellow) and the last has a light green and two pinks.

After they're sorted, I push the boxes over to my husband who bags them while I take three empty boxes and sort the next one.  Then we trade boxes again.

The system let us move pretty quickly, but I found my shoulder muscles got tense and painful.  Even stretching wouldn't relax them.  I needed to find a more ergonomic position.

I tried sitting on a pillow for a while, but it was awkward. I tried a stool, but it was too high.  I know, this is sounding like a Goldilocks story.

Finally I settled on standing but needed to get a surface that was waist level so I put two boxes on the table to make it the right height.  Hey, whatever works.

So far we're up to 13 cases sorted and bagged.

We have a work day coming up on July 18th.  Pray we get lots of volunteers...

Because this is really crazy!

Energy of Encouragement

Encouragement is difficult to quantify. Sometimes the smallest word can give encouragement beyond what you'd imagine, and God can bring encouragement from the most unlikely places.

Personally, this week I feel God's been giving me amazing gifts of encouragement.  It started last Monday with an encouraging one-on-one call with my Operation Christmas Child regional manager, Bill.  Later that day another boost came with a Facebook message that offered the possibility of a busload of local public high school students coming to help assemble boxes the week of our packing party. I mean, sometimes in the middle of the night I wonder how we're going to fold 30,000 boxes in four days so even the possibility of a large group to help got my heart beating faster. (Keep praying this works out.)

I wrote on Tuesday about how a couple came to my door with four boxes of beanie babies, and on Wednesday we had a terrific packing party work day.  Over 60 people from the community came out and worked together to assemble 4500 jump ropes, 2550 bags of crayons, and hundreds of packs of folded paper in bags.  When you're wondering how all the work will get done, this is a huge encouragement.  Not only that, 269 more stuffed animals were brought to the work day pushing our stuffed animal total for the week to a crazy 1,584!

On Thursday we got a call we'd been praying about for several months giving confirmation that the church that served as our Central Drop-Off Site will continue this year. Yahoo!  Praise God! Now to pray in a Central Drop-Off Team Leader.   Jim and I were blessed to have dinner that night at Presque Isle State Park on nearby Lake Erie with Steve, our friend from Samaritan's Purse donor ministries.  To know their whole staff has been praying for our need for a Central Drop-Off Site was a great encouragement.  I can't think of anything that's a greater boost than knowing that others in the Family of God are interceding for you.  You can tell in this picture we were having a great time...

Friday's yard sale safari yielded only three stuffed animals--a long way from the 1,500 we're praying for.  I was encouraged, though, as I did some cleaning and saw evidences of all God's faithfulness in answered prayer from past months and years while I filed old meeting agendas and read through notes from past Connect conferences...well, yeah, my cleaning gets derailed a lot, I'm afraid...but sometimes you need the encouragement more than the order.

I thought I'd be the only one on safari on Saturday but was encouraged with an early-morning phone call from Donna telling me she'd be on the hunt after all.  She faithfully searched and found 300 stuffed animals.  Meanwhile, I only bagged 161.

Late on Saturday afternoon I got a surprise colossal dose of encouragement with a call from my fellow-area coordinator friends, Cliff and Sheryl Hartsfield.  Turns out they were driving to Canada from Maryland and were going to be just a couple of miles from me. We made plans to meet for a quick dinner at Chick-fil-A.

It's hard not to be encouraged when you share with other OCC friends about all God is doing for your teams and in the ministry as a whole.  We talked about how most of us who are leaders in OCC aren't high-powered executive types with strong leadership skills.  Some are, but most of us are just bumbling along while we trust God to do things we never imagined He could do in us and through us. And, in our weakness He gets the glory. Wow!  It's so encouraging to know it's HIM and not us getting the job done.

Cliff and Sheryl topped it off with another surprise--they brought me 50 brand new stuffed animals to add to the week's total.  It's not easy to give to another what you really need for your own packing party, so they blessed me incredibly with this sacrificial gift.

As I left Cliff and Sheryl I headed to Pam's house for a mini work day with our team.  Only Pam, Amanda, and I were able to get together but we had some much-needed laughs while we completed (well, almost completed) about a thousand school packs for our boxes.

That brings me to this morning. Not only did I have the encouragement of receiving Donna's haul of stuffed animals that brought us to 516 for the weekend (keep praying for another 984 by Friday) but Charles the Walmart manager who attends our church approached me and asked how many boxes of crayons I want to order.  Guys, whenever someone approaches me so I don't have to make a phone call it's a glorious day!

But, wait...it gets better. We've been praying for God to enlarge our OCC team.  So there I was in the women's restroom...in a stall...when I heard the familiar voice of a newly-retired missionary call my name and tell me she wanted to talk to me.  A minute later we met at the sinks and she said, "People have been asking me what I'm going to do now that I'm retired and I'd really like to work with Operation Christmas Child." Wow!

We talked briefly and I sent her the application information this afternoon. At the risk of "poisoning the process" and falling even lower on the high-impact-scale I promise not to get too excited yet. Still, it was certainly a banner way to end an energy-filled week of encouragement.

God, you really are so good to me.

Series of Miracles

When you think about it, life is just a series of miracles...every breath, every beat of the heart...miracles every one.

And my Operation Christmas Child life, too, has been a story of miracles.  Sometimes it's just kind of crazy how God answers prayer in the most intricate ways.

My continual prayer this year has been for God to provide enough items to adequately fill 30,000 boxes to bless 30,000 children.  I don't know what each of those things will be but I'm always keeping my eyes open for them.

For some weeks now I've had my eye on some nice fleece blankets at a local store.  I've also been doing everything I can to earn reward points to spend at that store that will allow me to get extra items for free.  A few weeks ago the price of the blankets dropped to $1.59 and I got 15 of them but by the time I had more reward points they'd raised the price of the blankets back up to $3.00.

This past Saturday I had $11.86 in points that were expiring and I also had a special coupon for $30 off a $50 purchase.  I wanted to buy a certain Fisher Price toy to take to my grandson on Sunday, so I figured I'd spend my points on that.  By God's grace, though, I found that toy (brand new and in the packaging) for $1.00 at one of the yard sales on Saturday. Miraculous.

So I headed to the store with my coupon and my points, loaded 17 blankets in my cart and took them to the service desk to check the price.  I expected them to be $3.00 and was surprised when the clerk conferred with a manager and said the price would be .79 for each blanket. Another miracle.

I hurried back and filled my cart with the 13 remaining blankets and got seven 6-packs of wiffle balls to get my total over $50 so I could use my $30 coupon. Back at the service desk the clerk began to ring up the blankets and said, "Huh, they're ringing up at .47."  I ran back and got three more packs of balls and ended up with a total of 30 blankets and 60 balls for just $22 of my free points.

Week by week we've been praying for stuffed animals and seeing God bring them to us in some miraculous ways.  I was talking to my OCC regional director yesterday about this, and he asked, "Well, how does God provide them. Does He drop them off at your door?"  Yes, sometimes He does!

This morning a couple came to my door with four boxes filled with brand new beanie babies--170 of them.  Their donation brought our total to 1,307 for this week.  We're still praying for 193 more by this Friday and waiting to see how He provides.

Just because he's so stinking cute I have to include a picture of our sweet miracle grandson, Sam.

 And because we have a God who always goes above and beyond, let me share with you the exciting news that Sam is getting two cousins in October.  Our youngest daughter is pregnant with miracle twin boys!

Just another in a long series of miracles.

Sometimes You Know

Well, we still haven't received that last inch of snow we need to put us into first place for the snowiest winter...but you just never know.  It could still happen. God's been doing some crazy things up here in Erie.

Each week I've been posting on Facebook and asking those who read the post to join us in praying for a weekly goal for stuffed animals.

Last week we prayed for 1,000 and God blessed us with 1,093.  This week on Friday evening I gave the challenge to pray for 1,500 and now, just two days later, God's answered with 1,260 already.

Sometimes you just KNOW God is on the move.  On Saturday when I headed out on safari I left earlier than usual because one sale in my area had a starting time of 7:00 am.  That sale didn't have any animals but that listing is what got me out early and led me to be the first shopper at another sale. At that house the woman who was arranging toys on a table said, "Aren't you the lady who collects stuffed animals?"

"Yep, that's me," I answered.  Then she moved closer to me and dropped her voice to a whisper.  It seems she had four large garbage bags of stuffed toys hidden in her husband's truck.  She wanted to donate them to me but didn't want her children to know it.  So we made clandestine plans for me to drive to a spot two blocks away where I met up with her husband and transferred the bags to my van. It was all comically 'cloak and dagger' but I got 200 more beautiful animals because God put me at that particular place.

Incidentally, one of those four bags also had a baby toy I'd been trying to find for my grandson and had not been able to locate at a good price.  I mean, you can't beat free.  (Just to be clear, it's not something that would fit in a shoebox.)

When I leave one sale I always pray about where to go next.  After all, God knows where those animals are hiding.  So as I prayerfully drove away from one sale heading in the direction of another, I saw a sale that wasn't in the newspaper listing.  They had a blanket on the ground in front of the house (sometimes a place people place their stuffed animals) so I turned around and went back.  Well, they had a lot of animals priced very low.  I ended up with three bags full for only a few dollars.

By the end of the day I'd accumulated over 400 by God's grace.  My other safari hunters were blessed also, and I left church this morning with 15 more bags of animals and sorted this afternoon to get that total of 1,260.  It will be interesting to see how God brings the other 240 we're still praying in this week.

I managed to get all the animals cleared out and the house cleaned before tonight's OCC area team meeting.  Eight of us prayed and talked and prayed some more.

There's a lot up in the air right now. We're still lacking a confirmed Central Drop-Off Site for shoeboxes from our area this year.  I'm not sure where it will be but God knows we need it and I'm praying the promise of Phil. 4:19 over it.

Our team has dwindled, we lack coordinators, and I'm having a hard time keeping up with all I know I should be doing but so often lack the will to do.  And when I do actually try to accomplish something that condemning enemy loudly whispers my failures--"If you didn't procrastinate so much you wouldn't always be hurrying," or "If you'd just do the work of recruiting, selecting, equipping, and developing leaders then everything else would be EASY," because, of course "It's all your fault."

And...just like that...it's winter again in my heart.

But I'm talking truth to myself again.  Because despite my myriad of weaknesses compounded by the sin that "so easily besets me" I really do KNOW God has called me to this. And I know He is hearing my prayers and those of so many others who pray day by day for 11 million shoeboxes to be packed worldwide in 2018.

Sometimes when there's so much you don't know you just have to remember what you do know.