Will Mancini

Last week I enjoyed an evening with Chris Willard and Tom Wilson who work with the OneHundredX family of ministries, Leadership Network and HalfTime.

Tom is currently the President of OneHundredX, a new company that was developed in a clarity process with Auxano. Before coming to this ministry Tom served for over three decades with Young Life, concluding his time as a VP of field operations. While talking shop on vision, Tom recalled a year when he made special trips to motivate Young Life camp counselors.  Currently Young Life has 20 camps that bring in over 90,000 students a year. 

One hallmark of the Young Life camp experience (from which many Christian camps take their cue) is the exhilarating welcome that campers get the moment they arrive. As a high-school sophomore, I visited Frontier Ranch and can still remember the thrill of the cheering tunnel of counselors who screamed like they won the lotto when we showed up. It was big. 

Over the years,  Tom said  he watch energy of the welcoming experience cool off. So one year, he decided to address it by systematically vision-casting at all of the camps. What did Tom say? He told them the creation story of the first camp welcome.  He reminded them of the deepest why behind the hype that had grown hollow. 

Early in the camping ministry camp counselors committed their precious summer time to serve the younger high school kids who would come in from across the country. The problem was, in the early days, awareness of the camps had not grown, and not every week of camp had campers. And if campers didn’t come, that meant more boring project work for counselors like painting fences and repairing sheds. With a drought of campers, the counselors began to passionately pray for God to bring students. All they wanted to do was to love on kids! After a few weeks an old beat-up van pulled up the mountain with a dozen or so brand new campers. When the counselors saw it, they were so excited that they spontaneously erupted in applause to God, ushering in the first unforgettable welcome.

One simple story of how it all started brought tons of meaning to the camp counselors that year. 

I just about lost it as I heard the story,  because I still remember the incredible welcome I received at Frontier Ranch. It made me want to be a counselor all over again! 

What about you? Hearing the why behind what we do is an easy way to refresh motivation. Where do the motions of ministry under your leadership need more meaning? What story can only be told by you? What story would people love to hear?

Like many leaders I want to lead a world-class team. But I don’t think you can without a core commitment to managing dreams. We talk a lot about managing people and we get specific by talking about their talents, personalities, resources, motivations and strengths. But what about their dreams? Are you as a leader so wrapped up in your own vision, that you don’t take the time to really see how the dreams of your top leaders, dovetail and intertwine with the organization?

Why is this important to me? Years ago I realized that my greatest convictions as a leader were formed not through postive modeling, but by the weaknesses of the leaders above me. Before starting my own ministry, I had served on many teams led by strong and effective leaders. But none of them demonstrated willingness or skillfulness in attending to my personal aspirations. Conviction created: I don’t want to be a dream-dumb leader.

Here is what I have learned thus far on my own journey toward managing dreams.

#1 Clarify your own dreams. You can’t have a meaningful conversation about the dreams of others without your own dreams clarified. In fact, so few people have ever really clarified their dreams, they will probably need you to model it as the first step of helping them access it.

#2 Connect your personal dreams to the organization’s vision. It’s very important that people see how organizations are vehicles to realize their personal dreams. Too many times, the agenda of the organization is something totally different from what your people daydream about. For some, “org-speak” even becomes a necessary evil. You’ll never hear it, but it is there and lives for years, totally disguised. You must manage the gap, and it starts by modeling it again yourself.

#3 Warning: If you can’t separate out your personal dreams from the vision of the organization you are leading, you may be too captive to the organization. I have been there myself and had to discover what I call a “healthy detachment.”

#4  Operate with a dangerous promise. I lead with the promise that if the vision I am leading toward is not in line with the dreams of my team, I will help them find a better fit in another organization. In the last 6 years at Auxano, I have helped two on my leadership team find more fulfilling roles. There is an important belief behind this promise for me. I believe that God is always going to provide for the dream-vision alignment, so if that alignment is no longer there, I WANT to help those people off the bus.

#5 Cultivate, cultivate, cultivate the conversation. My biggest disappointments in managing dreams come from assuming that its easy to have the conversation for my team members. The truth is, it is extremely difficult to foster this type of dialogue. It requires relationship, connection, authenticity, transparency, trust, etc. If there is fear, then game over. Hence back to imperative #4 above. Just remember you can’t just “have” the dream conversation, you must farm the conversation; plant seeds, provide water and tend to it.

#6 Start with satisfaction. Yesterday one of our teams met to talk about our direction and our next vision milestone. I started the time by asking each team member to describe which Auxano project, initiative or event gave has given them deepest sense of satisfaction. It was the best team time all year! This exercise does not automatically reveal dreams, but it creates a climate and provides clues for the ongoing journey of dream management.

#7 Be flexible and experiment. In the end people dreams cannot be realized if there is no organizational flex and flow. Only you can provide this. Also, you may need to operate with some tentative thoughts or aspirational probes. Don’t be afraid to tweak roles and responsibilities for a season. The best visionary organizations I have worked with are always willing to adapt leadership structure and key responsibility areas.

#8 Don’t let failures slow you down. Even in writing this post, I am more aware of my insufficiencies as a dream manager than anything else. But I keep pressing on.

There is a great line up of places to meet and get down and dirty with clarity. Here is where I will be hanging out and speaking in the next several weeks:

Verge in Austin is Happening NOW. This is the first conference to focus on Missional Communities. It sold out around 2000 folks. The good news is that you can attend the conference via live feed. Sign-up here. Why Verge?

• #1 Missional Communities are the next thing. We’ve gone from “mega” to “multi” to “micro”
• #2 Austin is a great town. (Especially for those who are truly free in Christ.)
• #3 This huge meet-up will be an inspirational high

If you want to meet there I will be coming late and staying over Sunday and Monday to spend time with Alan Hirsch with some other thought leaders. 

The following week you might want to check out the Churchplanters.com Conference in Atlanta. Why do I look forward to this conference each year?

• #1 Sean Lovejoy, David Putnam and company host a great event with focused content.
• #2 The vibe is real and raw- You’ve  gotta love the guts it took to plant a church in Andy Stanely’s backyard. You’ve gotta respect their results.
• #3 Mt. Lake Church and Auxano are partnering to launch an Atlanta based co:Lab 

I look forward to seeing your there. I will be speaking twice on Tuesday and hosting a lunch if you’re interested in the Vision co::Lab

One March 3rd, Leadership Network is bringing their next online conference experience to the masses. This time its called “Aha!”  Why attend Aha!

• #1 It’s totally free and you get to learn from comfort of home!
• #2 40 Aha moments all delivered under six minutes
• #3 Fresh voices will be highlighted, so get off the rock-star train. 

For Aha! I submitted one of my own stories entitled, “How a Funnel Changed My Life.”

While these are the next three, there are many others coming in the next few months where I would love to connect! More on these to come. 

• Cornerstone Alignment Conferences  This fantastic event happens in four big cities- the first one is March 16th in Indianpolis. 
• Large Church Initiative for Methodists in San Antonio on April 12-15th
• Exponential – My favorite of them all! April 19-22 in Orlando
• Q Gathering in Chicago, April 28-30 
• NACBA Conference in Orlando 

Leadership Network (LN) is an great organization, and they are doing more amazing stuff this year. Some of Dave Travis’s comments on their Learnings Blog have hinted to their 2nd big online conference, called Aha! Fresh Voices, New Ideas that will happen on March 3rd, 2010. Dave mentioned that the official announcement and details will be made early this week by Todd Rhodes. (Aha! Link is now up.)

What can you expect?  The same incredible format as their first online conference The NINES – a totally free online experience, with a mix of some great folks you already know as well as some new faces. Look for fewer total participants (40) and shorter clips at 6 minutes each. Contributers were asked to focus on a key learning and “aha!” moment in their life and ministry.  

Where did the name originate?  About ten months ago, I worked with LN’s team to distill down their six values. They named this conference after their second value. Here is the list:

1. What’s next? - We explore what could be.
2. Aha! - We create environments for collaborative discovery.          
3.  Positive deviants*  We work with the exceptional.           
4.  Generous relationships. We invest in the success of others.
5.  Results, results, results… We pursue BIG impact.
6.  JESUS  We strive to model Jesus in everything we do.

The mission of Leadership Network is to accelerate the impact of 100X leaders. See a fun little interview on LN- Ben Arment with Dave Travis.