Will Mancini

Vision Sunday 2010 from Hillsong Church on Vimeo.

If communicating vision is important to you, then consider listening to this 25-minute vision casting experience with the attached evaluative tool.  What makes this Hillsong vision casting piece uniquely effective?

• The visual medium is fantastic
• It’s invitational tone is incredibly engaging
• The substance of life-change is palpable
• It’s kingdom driven rather than church driven
• But, the kingdom values don’t dilute the church’s  identity
• The testimonial “weaves” don’t  fragment the power of one visionary voice
  
• It forges bold newness and continuity with the past

 Before hitting play, here are two recommendations;

 #1 Listen to the entire 25 minutes in one sitting. I was moved the most at 22 minutes.

#2 Listen with the Vision Casting Spider Diagram from Church Unique. You may want to do this as a team exercise.

Team Exercise:

 Listen to the video as a team.  Write down the most powerful phrases, metaphors, and stories to you as they corresponds with the six elements of vision on the spider diagram. Discuss them as a team, and how your team can improve their vision casting skills this week.

More free resources from Church Unique

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.

I am working with a small group of church consultants and thought leaders from different disciplines to integrate learnings from “movement phenomenology” into how we think and help the local church. The group is called “Future Travelers” and Alan Hirsch is leading our process. 

Below are links to other encounters I have had with Alan and some new nuggets from today:

• Alan’s primary thesis: Every believer contains within themselves the potential for world transformation.
• Our goal is that every believer is a church planter and every church a church planting church
• Are we in the “people of God mode” or “professional mode?”
• How can you improve on Jesus’ plan of discipleship? He said, “Die.”
• If we don’t get Jesus right, we create a toxic system, that produces toxic people.
• If you want to reproduce, you have got to be “reproduce-able.”
• With disciples you can go places, with consumers you can’t.
• We must act our way into a new way of thinking not vice versa.
• We engaging a people group, we can’t preempt the gospel with our version of church (structure).
• The church is a “scratch and sniff” experience of the Kingdom.
• Incarnation is how the God engaged the world. He doesn’t overwhelm us, he invites us.

RELATED LINKS

What are the Six Aspects of Movements?

My Single Favorite Quote from Alan Hirsch

Notes from Coaching at PGF Together

A Free E-Book with Contributions from Alan Hirsch

Here is the video from the Verge Conference on the six ingredients:

Over the last few years I have enjoyed attending and speaking at conferences.  Yet staying on mission for me means having to miss some. Now with twitter, you can have an entirely new experience of attending a conference virtually. In fact I have found a new reality that twitter creates, enabling a preferred experience to watching a conference on DVD.  I call this new reality anEmotional Resonance Spectrum (ERS).

So why do I call it an ERS?  If thousands of people attend a conference, then hundreds will be tweeting. This stream creates an entirely new snapshot and experience of the conference. (I am not saying “more” or “better” but definitely new.) Imagine that every minute you receive from 5 to 30 short responses from people that include:

• Favorite quotes
• Bursts of emotion (good and bad)
• Questions
• Humor
• Web links to related content
• Links to typed summaries on blogs
• Side commentary from notable leaders
• Gateways to side conversations about content

Here are some huge benefits that emerge from watching a conference using a tweet stream. (It kinda reminds me of looking at “reality” through the vertical streams of random green digits in the movie The Matrix.)

Absorb the conference while multi-tasking: It’s easy to keep a tweet stream up while working at the computer on something else (for example I typed this while attending Leadership Summit 2009) Or, you can check what’s happening on your phone at a stoplight while running an errand.

Enlarge your perspective on the teaching: Every person or team that attends a conference has built-in biases. Watching the comments of hundreds provides radically different perspectives that enlarge my own.

Feel the collective soul of the conference: I am a quote junkie, so certain phrases will always get to me.  BUT, I love watching what touches the heart of the collective soul of the conference.  Some quotes are repeated and retweeted scores of times, while others are a single burst. This learning enables a unique discernment as I serve the wider body of Christ through my consulting. What struck a chord with attendees of the Leadership Summit  last year? Dave Gibbons said, ”Your failure is your platform to humanity.”

Follow up on the content that most interests you: Last year as the conference ended, I looked for summaries of all of the talks via blogs referenced in the tweet stream.  I saw two that I followed up with- Tony Morgan’s and Dave Ferguson’s. Keep in mind there are two kinds of summaries, aggregators and specialists.  An aggregator (like Tony Morgan) are masters at building info hubs and they do it fast. A specialist, like Dave Ferguson (in this case a senior pastor), summarizes the conference from his point of view. By the way, I plan on following up on one of the speakers (Gary Mamel) and will purchase his book today on my kindle.

Build relationships and extend your influence: I traffic in the arena of clarity and vision.  Several people yesterday attending the conference tweeted references to me and my work.  For example a guy named Kevin tweeted, ”Jessica Jackley just nailed the clarity and uniqueness quotient for Kiva. @WillMancini would be proud. #tls09″  How cool is it that I get to have a conversation with Kevin, even though I am not at the conference. Another example is that Bill Donahue and I, a staff guy and Willow, were able to comment and critique publicly on one of the speakers quotes (again while I was typing this).

When it’s all said and done, I am somewhat hooked on attending conferences via twitter. Sure, it may not replace being there, but this is a learning strategy I will engage for now.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

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