This is maybe one of the most sadly prophetic Dilbert cartoons I’ve seen.  I love the humor of Dilbert, but I love even more the commentary on life, meaning, and contemporary leadership structures and practices.

The phrase “Can’t you find meaning in your personal life?” is a sadly tragic question.  Who in their right mind would actually ask it?

But some do.

Let me share a few ways in which I have heard the question “Can’t you find meaning in your personal life?” asked in different language.

1.  “We all don’t have to be best friends.” or the more overt “We’re not going to all be best friends.”

This is of course true.  No team has a requirement that everyone is best friends.  It’s not required, not necessary, and is a bonus when it happens.  But why say it?  Well – often it’s a defense mechanism against the feeling like you have to be something emotionally for a teammate that we either don’t want to be or that we don’t feel like we can be for them.  A lot of times it’s a way of saying – “Can’t you go find what’s meaningful to you somewhere else – you know in your personal life?”  I think there’s a kernal of truth there for all of us (we all need outside relationships from our work context), but we have to ask what we’re really saying to people when we have to state in this way that people should expect to have relational meaning primarily or only outside their work context.

2.  “Your expectations are too high.”

Striving, relentless ambition that is driven by narcissism is of course not a helpful or edifying expression of dreams and meaningful work.  However, many get nervous or don’t understand when some want to really inject a lot of themselves into a pursuit.  Maybe there’s a picture of what an event or project should look like and when someone is taking it to another level or aspiring to really invest in something meaningful to all in deeper ways than just tradition or the structures typically facilitate, people get nervous.

Many years ago I once heard from someone when I was leading an event, “Hey, we don’t need to re-invent the wheel.  This thing (event) will do what it does and this is what it will do for us.”  Total buzzkill for meaning seekers to hear, “It doesn’t really matter what you envision or what you invest – the program or event will do what it needs to do anyway whether or not you invest a lot or not. Just stay the course.”  Sometimes, our expectations can be high or unrealistic – but if the alternative is abandoning the meaning of the moment and the meaning in the process and the meaning in the possibilities – then I’ll take the unrealistic expectations every time.

The cost of abandoning meaning in our work is too high.

3. “Just do the training. It works.”

Whether it’s training, education, or other programs, there’s sometimes an invitation to abandon what’s meaningful in a lot of cases and just do what you’re told to. Training without meaning is indoctrination.  This is slightly connected to #2 above, but relates more to efficiency as opposed to expectation management.

I heard the above quote from a very influential and powerful person when I was young.  We sometimes can invite people into training, programs, or education in ways that don’t allow for what’s meaningful to them or that minimizes meaning.  In effort to get people on board, we may not create space for people to discuss culture, identity, or context and we can lean towards giving people the “principles” and pragmatic steps to success. We can bypass what’s often meaningful to people and focus mostly on what’s meaningful to the organization. We can, through our methods and training, be telling people that they should relegate what’s meaningful to them to their personal time. So training or input that is meaningful must come by way of double duty – having to put twice as much time in to really learn and grow in those things that impact the meaning of what we do.

This isn’t an indictment on anything specific currently.  The Dilbert cartoon I saw last week sparked memories of ways in the past in which I felt like I was being asked, “Can’t you just find meaning in your personal life?”

Wanting to redirect people’s pursuit of meaning to “somewhere else” is more common than you might think and all of us are tempted to do that ourselves sometimes.   The question is whether we will settle to influence and create environments where we are redirecting people’s quest for meaning elsewhere or whether we will embrace the opportunities to invest in meaningful moments and a meaningful future and not take the short cuts of self-protection or mechanical pragmatism.

Are there ways you find yourself being asked to find meaning elsewhere?

I want to continue on in my series of posts here with another baseball inspired post.  It is the sport of my youth so I just can’t stay away from it for too long.

Last week Buster Olney, ESPN baseball guru, tweeted out a statement to the effect that “There is no perfect defensive efficiency statistic in baseball right now.” He cited an example of my Chicago Cubs.  He wrote that based on the most widely used defensive statistic now, that the fourth rated defensive outfielder is Alfonso Soriano.  Say What???!!!!

Stats lie. And this one tells a whopper!

For context for non-baseball folk.  Soriano is BRUTAL as a left fielder.  He had a cannon for an arm, but the rest of the time it’s like watching a little leaguer try to make plays. He was a second baseman for a long time.  But he was horrible and was an error machine.  The Cubs paid him the worst contract ever and he’s been in left field for the last five years with the Cubs.  He merits his own bloopers special.  This gives rise to what I am going to call “The Soriano Effect.”

“The Soriano Effect” is when you are so bad at defense, that you don’t even end up in a position to make a lot of the same mistakes others make because you don’t even have the capacity to get there in the first place.  So your numbers look good, but only because you weren’t good enough to have a chance to make a mistake.

“The Soriano Effect” is at work in ministries and organizations. It happens when leaders take comfort in some measurement or statistic, yet a closer examination might reveal that the number really reveals a total lack of capacity in some other crucial area.

Take someone who is looking at their financial stewardship.  They look at their savings and feel awesome and they feel real good about their financial stewardship and responsibility. But a closer look reveals perhaps that they don’t give or tithe or donate money anywhere.  So at what first glance is financial responsibility, is actually hoarding and selfishness.  The success in one measurement was produced by a total lack of capacity in another area.

In my organization, some of the numbers of new staff to one of the ethnic specific ministries has been celebrated (and rightfully so) as the most sent into this ministry ever.  However, all of them are serving cross-culturally and none have been from the ethnic context itself.  It’s still worth celebrating, but it reveals that there still is a tremendous lack of organizational capacity to see folks from this ethnic background join our staff.  The success of one statistic hides the weakness or lack of capacity in another crucial area.  The potential danger is that the conversations would be directed by the celebrated stat and the needed conversations to build capacity in the other areas wouldn’t happen.  (This isn’t being critical, just illustrating the process. We have to celebrate, learn, and change all at the same time. Sometimes stats lure us into premature or naive celebration.)

And say you’re running a web site with a blog.  You get really excited by the number of hits you have over its first couple of months and you only look at that one statistic.  You feel good about yourself. But then you find out the real story is that it’s your mom and other family members repeatedly reading everything.  You have maybe a lot of hits, but the range and network of influence is exposed as being really narrow. This may be true for some Christian “evangelistic” web sites actually too, where hits are celebrated but they may be mostly coming from believers and those in the Church. “The Soriano Effect.”

So as you think deeper about measurements and statistics you might use, what areas or capacities might be getting “covered up?”  Do your numbers have the equivalent to a “photographic negative” that reveals a lack of capacity in some area?

The “Soriano Effect” can be great for rationalization and justification, but it doesn’t pass the eye test (or smell test if you prefer) for those that know what to look for.

Where are you seeing “The Soriano Effect”?

How do you guard against statistical deception when it is driven by an obvious lack of capacity in some other area of significance?

“Can’t we all just get along?”

This is one of those soundbites that I can always recall.  I can hear it like it was yesterday.  Maybe I can because this line was repeated perhaps more than any other from that time.  I remember sketch comedy shows, I think it was In Living Color, doing parodies with this iconic phrase. It was part of the common vernacular for quite a long while, continuing through today even.

Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of death, fire, and looting, this was a plea for the end of anarchy, hate crimes, and community destruction. I’ve often wondered looking back what “voice” was behind Rodney King during that famous press conference.  Was it the voice of the average person in these communities – that was being harmed through the lawlessness of a criminal element?  Was it just Rodney King – as the lightning rod of this whole thing who had to deal with the weight of serving as a catalyst for such destruction?  Or was it the message of the establishment, those who put King up to the task, who above all probably just wanted the violence to stop as fast as possible so that these could go back to normal (from a safety standpoint).

I’ve asked these questions not out of deep cynicism, but over time I’ve noticed that similar pleas are made all the time in the face of tension and conflict between those with power and those on the margins. I’ve wondered what “getting along” means, when in reality it means very different things to different people.  Normally, “can’t we all just get along” is the sentiment of those who don’t want anything to change and they just want to be rid of conflict, danger, and anxiety (which I understand).

A little over three years after the LA Riots, I spent over eight weeks serving and ministering in different locations throughout Los Angeles.  Spent a couple weeks downtown at homeless shelters, spent a couple weeks in South Central LA, Compton, and a couple other locations. I didn’t make the link at the time, but one of the factors that drew me to this was going through the riots.  I remember wanting to make sure at some point I visited the intersection of Florance and Normandy (which Denny was beaten and much of the initial activity took place.  I did visit that intersection and it had a strange historical feeling to it.

That summer, serving with Here’s Life Inner City Los Angeles and its various local church and ministry partners, was my introduction to both the concept of racial reconciliation as well as the nature of justice – not as an idea, but as a concrete longing and vision of hope and dignity.  It was the beginning of more intentional thinking about these issues – what does it mean to “get along” and especially when there are unpleasant or even maybe inappropriate expressions of pain and struggle sparked by the presence of injustice or oppression? It was a very significant summer for me on a few levels, but I find it remarkable that I still am recognizing some of the impact of that summer on me almost 17 years later.

Vocationally, I frequently find myself in between worlds.  No – that does mean I’m saying I’m bicultural. Not even close. I just frequently am having to see realities, decisions, and situations through both the majority culture lens as well as the ethnic minority lens. Obviously the white lens comes most naturally – because it’s mine. But I’ve grown in being able to recognize and see from the other vantage point as well, though I still routinely miss quite a lot.

What I’ve observed is that when tension breaks out, whether it’s at a local or national level and if it’s in a ministry or church or even secular contexts, and where there is systemic marginalization (or racism or oppression), there are versions of “can’t we all just get along?” that seem to pop up in the course of trying to work things out.  Now obviously, when buildings are burning and people are dying, there is a need to call for humane and constructive solutions, but King’s soundbite has a kind of typology to it and I’ll venture to offer a couple interpretations for this specific type which I’ll label as a “call to unity.”

First, “Can’t we all just get along?” (be unified) = “Can’t you just go along?”

It’s “Can’t all of you who don’t like what is happening in the grand scheme of things just go along with things and stop causing trouble?” This is where my suspicion of who was behind King’s press conference does come to play.   But the instinct for those in the majority is to keep things clean and efficient.  There’s a path of least resistance mentality that is often at work and the focus is usually given to eliminating the source of discomfort or minimizing tension as opposed to figuring out what a better future would look like (from the vantage point of those on the outside).

Second, “Can’t we all just get along?” = “Can’t we just go back to the way things were?”

This is a continuation of the above thought.  Wanting people to get along amidst various ethnic or socioeconomic driven tensions rarely involves the kind of reflection and conviction that results in a vision of a new future.  That would require such a tenacity and integrity of leadership that is rare.  It’s far more common to want to keep doing more of the same and just try to do it in a way that doesn’t set people over the edge.

There’s a heart check when it comes to majority – minority power tensions.  Do we try to keep things the same and just try to get everyone to cooperate and fall in line? (An obvious ethnocentric approach)  Or do we invest our energies into creating legitimate partnerships and sharing of power for the sake of a different future – the one we usually say we want, but often lack the resolve, awareness, and commitment to pursue.

All this to say, there’s still things to learn from the LA Riots and I’m still learning.  When people are not getting along, there are questions to ask first, before we start wanting to make them get along.  We need to be men and women who can ask those questions, those questions that get to the heart of what is wrong or unacceptable – for if we don’t there surely aren’t many that will.

This is the end of my series reflecting on the LA Riots.  Feel free to share your own reflections or share your own response to what the “Can’t we all get along?” call to unity means. Thanks for reading!

For those that tracked my last post, I’m taking a break from the series I’ve been doing on statistics, interpretation, and knowing to do some reflection on the LA riots which occured 20 years ago (as of Sunday, April 29th).

In my last post I shared some of my recollections of how I experienced the LA Riots as a high schooler going to school in urban Long Beach, site of some of the rioting activity.  In this post I want to reflect on more of my social context and how I processed the meaning of the riots…or didn’t if that be a better description

From age 10 to 18 in Long Beach I had a very diverse community of friends, mostly provided through the educational opportunities mentioned in the last post.  In high school that expanded even more so because of the addition of playing high school baseball as well in addition to the diversity of the academic program I was in.

Some of my fondest memories of high school were Friday afternoons in the fall.  I hosted a Friday afternoon tackle football game at the park near my house. There would be anywhere between 16 to 20 guys usually on Friday.  We’d beat each other up, we’d order pizza at my house, then we’d all head over to watch our high school football team play Friday night (we’d all usually be limping pretty good).

My mom has shared and spoken a couple times using these afternoon’s as an example of what was a big part of her own cross-cultural development. Every Friday in the fall she had a high school United Nations in her home of sorts.  If I could paint a picture – I remember once in high school observing that out of about 20 or so guys, there were actually 13 different cultures or ethnicities represented.  If you were there you’d have seen white, black, hispanic, Indian (South Asian), Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodian, Japanese, Filipino, and several others represented.  That was my normal for most of my adolescence.  And I loved it.  Looking back, God used those guys in my life in some great ways then and to prepare me for how I live and what I do now.

We could have been the poster children for what some wish was true for us today – the post-racial society. Except we weren’t post-racial.  We were 16, 17, 18 and doing life and we recognized cultural difference but rarely did we enter into those realities.  So none of us would blink if someone called home and instinctively switched into a different language.  None of us really blinked if we visited someone’s house and either had to take our shoes off or saw a shrine or anything else. It was normal to me, but my understanding was minimal. That being said – what we did experience put us light years ahead of the curve compared to what many our age at the time experienced throughout the country and I’m really thankful for it.

There were great friendships and a great loyalty with my friends, but I didn’t really know their stories – really.  I wish I had a greater capacity at the time to inquire and learn. High school is an interesting sub-culture (then and now I’m sure).  When in high school, we knew that we were experiencing something cool and at times even almost utopian.  We had several cross-cultural fair’s and celebrations on campus, culture and ethnicity was honored and lifted up like in few places at the time. But, at the end of the day – everybody usually goes back to their own worlds in which culture and ethnicity play a huge role in shaping and defining who we are.

So what does this have to do with the riots?

My junior year of high school a group of my friends and I (maybe about 7-8) had to do a creative project that reflected insights from the year’s literature we had to read.  The sketch comedy show ‘In Living Color’ was at the height of its powers at the time, so the idea was born to do something similar. So 7-8 of us 17 year old high school boys (at least 5 different ethnicities involved) began to create a half hour creative/comedic sketch of the year.

The riots had been one month earlier and as I remember, there were multiple things done that either mocked aspects of the riots (i.e. the looting) or even made light of some of the racist overtones.  Looking back, it’s a clear sign that we were all very much impacted by what we had experienced, but we perhaps were limited in our ability to grasp the realities of it.  I’ll give you the most clear example as it illustrates what I’ve been reflecting on.

Somehow in our project there ended up being a sketch that involved simulating the riots and in particular the centerpiece of violence in some ways – the Reginald Denny beating.  As one of the only two white guys in the group it was decided that I would drive my car into an area where others would be “rioting” and then they would pull me out of my car and pretend to knock me as the white guy senseless. Looking back, it’s a little uncomfortable for me I’ll be honest and it wouldn’t fly in classrooms today. It fact, it took a long time, maybe the full 20 years since to really even identify my honest response to “playing” Reginald Denny in such a sketch.  It surfaces things I was nowhere near being able to digest at the time. Much of what the LA Riots “meant” was obviously still being kept very distant from our engagement with it. I just see things so differently now than I did then.

I’m not writing this to indict what me and my friends did. We had a fantastic time at the time and it was very memorable from a friendship standpoint   But I think what it illustrates is that we didn’t know what to do with all the uncomfortable elements of the riots or the complex dynamics or elements to what had happened – so we made fun of it.  We as people do that sometimes – seventeen year olds maybe more so than others.

As I look back, the LA Riots were transformative for me in some ways – because I remember asking myself questions I had never asked before.  I saw dynamics (fear, greed, power, anger) that I hadn’t been as sensitive to before.  But it also wasn’t transformative for me at the time because I was still quite young and immature and lacked some of the tools to really understand the link between culture, ethnicity, wealth and power.

I would guess most, if not all, of my friends at the time now would have a different response or perspective on the riots and our engagement over it would differ greatly.  Society has progressed greatly (though not as quickly as needed in some places) in its awareness of culture and race and over time we’ve all grown up and probably all have had to wrestle with our own ethnicity in different ways.

I share this story or reflection because it’s a reminder to me that unity in diversity is not an external thing.  Cultural awareness does not necessarily follow from having a bunch of different types of people together.  My friends and I shared an experience, all within the context of our great diversity, that was awesome and it has no doubt shaped all of our lives as a result. I’m grateful to them frequently as I think of their impact on me.  They did contribute to my cultural awareness, but there were places we didn’t go and things we didn’t really learn at the time (which is ok, we were young) and that was exposed by the LA Riots in a lot of ways.  At one level, we were living the post-racial dream.  At deeper levels, we still were in our own ethnic paradigms and lifestyles with maybe limited range to really connect with other realities, which no doubt affected much of how we experienced things.

There were comedic images in the coverage of the riots – watching people try to transport huge TV’s on shopping carts or skateboards for one. There were so many images that if you lost context, could be extremely comical.  But what happened has grown less funny to me over the years.  A lot of real life pain and a lot of human sin spilled out into open. Lives were lost, livelihoods were ruined, and communities were ravaged.

We can live life in places where we want to believe certain things are true.  But events like the LA riots, or even more recently the Trayvon Martin case, draw out many of the underlying realities in society. In such moments we can enter into them and learn or we can distance ourselves through denial, hollow philosophy, or even humor. I see moments like this at different times of my life and I’ve responded in different ways. I hope I can continue to enter into the truth and the big picture moving forward rather than retreating into my own world.

Do you have moments like this that test your capacity to engage the larger truth of the matter?

What do you do in those moments?

In the next post I want to make some connections moving forward – using Rodney King’s famous exhortation, “Can’t we all just get along?” as a jumping off point.

It’s crazy to believe that the LA Riots or “civil unrest” was 20 years ago.  As the media has been starting to take people back to what happened 20 years ago, I’ve been reflecting a lot on my experience that week.  I’d love to share with you some of my reflections and invite you to share yours of what you may remember. This will likely be a 3 part series over the next few days.

It’s a fascinating exercise because looking back I see more and see differently than I did then.  I was 17 years old, a junior in high school.  I went to Long Beach Poly High School, an urban high school not too far from the downtown part of Long Beach, California.  Long Beach Poly is known for a couple things nationally – having sent more pro football players to the NFL than any other high school and also having produced no shortage of rap icons.  Snoop Dogg was there for a couple of my years in high school among others.  It was an extremely ethnically diverse school at the time, and even more so now.

Long Beach, part of LA county, is about 25-30 minutes southwest from South Central LA where the riots broke out.  But the riots didn’t stay contained to South Central Los Angeles and spread to a couple parts of Long Beach including the surrounding area of my high school.  An indicator of the strangeness and perhaps surreal nature of what was taking place is reflected in the fact that I had friends who spend much of that time helping their families protect their stores and I had other friends who did some looting. It was crazy.

I remember Rodney King, the video footage of his beating by white cops, the trial, the acquittal, and the great rage which had been brewing.  As a white person watching, the clearest and most vivid memory was seeing the coverage of the beating of Reginald Denny, a white truck driver who was pulled out of his cab and beaten unconscious.  As a white person, the truth of the matter was pretty evident and powerful – that could have been me.  That wasn’t the first time I had experienced racism directed at me as a white person, but it was the first time where I realized that if I were in the wrong place at the wrong time I could end up like Denny – that I could be harmed because of the color of my skin.

One of more memorable elements of that time was the decision to go to school the next day after the riots broke out in South Central LA.  For background, from fifth grade to twelfth grade I attended public school about 30 minutes across town from where I lived.  Part of the strategy for ethnic diversity and integration was the establishment of various academic programs in the more urban and predominantly ethnic minority communities.  At the time of the riots, while I was in high school, my youngest sister was at the Junior High I went to that was even farther away.  Watching the news, which showed where the rioting was breaking out with little mini fire icons over city maps, generated a lot of anxiety for some. It was a strange feeling for a while to see the fire icons “getting closer” wondering how bad things were going to get.

Many of the white parents chose not to send their kids to school the next day or day after, especially when they were sending their kids across town.  Looking back I find it interesting that my sister and I both didn’t blink and we wanted to go school, never really considering not going. I remember being asked if I thought I should take the day off because of the potential racial conflicts that were breaking out and as a white person I might be an object of racist hate or violence.  I blew that notion off without much thought, but I could tell at the time that there were a lot of nervous parents that day.

I remember vividly driving to school during that time with a couple friends and seeing buildings near the school that had been burnt down and signs of unrest that had spilled over into that part of the city.  Usually I felt very secure at the school and I don’t remember it being that different that day.  There was in fact a significant conflict or “fight” on campus that first day as I remember, but ironically it didn’t involve Caucasians. Life continued to happen while there was still a lot of chaos in the city at large.

When my sister and I got home, I remember my mom asking us how it was and if there ever was any moment where we felt fearful or threatened.  My sister, who was 14 at the time and in 8th grade, had the best response which we’ve laughed about ever since.  She said, “It was fine, no problems. The only thing really that wasn’t normal was a bunch of students yelling ‘We hate white people!’”  We get a kick out of my sister’s nonchalance at the time now, but I’m sure my mom loved hearing that at the time.

Looking back I remember two distinct emotional realities.  First, the great rage felt especially by the black community.  I understand the dynamics much more now than I did then.  Back then it was hard to understand the systemic realities and injustice and even hopelessness for many that true justice could be served.  The rally cry, “No Justice, No Peace” is about a clear a call for those in power to wake up and pay attention to a community as there can be.  Racism and systemic oppression were on display throughout the whole process, maybe most notoriously through the dispatching of many from the police force to “protect” Beverly Hills while there was great need to restore order where the riots had broken out in the inner city.  Power at work preserving itself again.

The second strong emotional reality was that of anxiety and fear among the white community.  I don’t know if I felt it as much because I was young, had grown up amidst great diversity, or what, but I clearly saw it around me.  White people aren’t used to being targeted in such ways and it was unnerving for most.  Part of the anxiety was because I don’t think most white folk then (and even now) were able to understand the underlying dynamics of why such hostility and anger finally boiled over.  So what was in many ways an angry response to real and perceived injustice, many whites interpreted as only racist lashing out by the uneducated poor and criminal.  White people were very fearful and anxious in general during that time from what I remember. They experienced the events primarily through the lens of “Are we safe?” as opposed to trying to understand what had driven people to such action and what this all meant.

The riots brought to the surface much of what had been there all along – and it’s with great confidence I can say that many white men and women missed what was truly at work in that time under the surface, even if much of the expression of anger in the civil unrest was in fact criminal and illegal. The criminal element should not have negated the pain of the community which was being expressed in many ways. This pain had been a ticking time bomb that the acquittals of the police officers set off.

When I look back, it seems surreal.  For a season it was extremely intense, then life went back to normal.  But the experience stuck with me, even though I didn’t have the experience or frame of reference that I do now.

I walked through that experience with an extremely diverse group of friends and the next post will focus on my reflections and memories of how the events and experience of the Riots was processed in that context.

Where were you? How old were you? 

What do you remember and how do you see it differently now than you did then?

I’ve been on a bit of a blogging hiatus due to directing the national staff conference for my ministry (Epic), but excited to try to get back in the swing of things and continue on in the series I started entitled “Stats Lie.” Here’s part six on the relationship between statistics, storytelling, and culture shaping.

Statistics and measurements play a pretty central role in the shaping or forming of ministry culture.  Most of us recognize this as it relates to the reinforcement of priorities, values, objectives, or the ultimate vision.  But there’s another way statistics and measurements influence culture and that is through storytelling.

Storytelling takes many forms within organizations.  Frequently it’s through short narratives or anecdotes. Those are explicit examples and easiest to identify as stories, representative narratives embodying success or our vision of what we are about.  But stats tell stories too.

One of the most important things we can remember when leading organizationally is that statistics reflect underlying narratives.  And a rule of narratives is that what stories we tell or don’t tell will dictate explicitly or wield subtle power over the culture of the community moving forward.

This is where I really like the work of Walter Brueggemann, who demonstrates powerfully in his writing the relationship between power and storytelling.  If we only allow positive stats or stats that help us feel good, then we are shaping a culture that will increasingly grow uncomfortable in assessing the status quo and current reality.

But there’s other ways too – when stats are only used in storytelling to motivate people to accomplish what is not going well, the use of statistics will increasingly shape a culture of performance, guilt, shame, or uncomfortable goal orientedness at the expense of meaning.

Statistics, as we use them to tell the story of where we are and where we are going, have the power to define our perception of our current reality as well as our perception of where we need to go.  Sometimes it’s what stats we choose.  Sometimes it’s how we interpret them.  Sometimes it’s how we communicate them.

There’s a stewardship of statistics that needs to be examined because they impact what we as people believe about ourselves as well.  In the numerical as well as conventional narratives shared, we can find ourselves internalize messages about our worth, our significance, our purpose.  Now while we know we should let those things be defined by stats or what we do – that’s what power does to people.  It wields a psychological influence that seeks to mold people to its version of “truth.”  We are all vulnerable to being influenced by organizational narratives, intended or otherwise, about what is of utmost value to the organization.

So the way we use statistics shapes organizational culture in more ways than just reinforcing organizational priorities.  We can create at least three kinds of dysfunctional cultures through our statistical storytelling. We can create…

1. “Doing” cultures in which workaholism and performance is lifted up and rewarded
2. “Anxious” cultures in which no goal is big enough and to rest or be content with where we are in time is viewed as unspiritual
3. “Lazy” cultures in which our fear of accomplishment, measurements,  and the stewardship of power leads us to avoid leading to hard places.

Statistics are storytelling and they need to be stewarded so that we can assess our own leadership and motivate others in human and ethical ways. Statistics do not just keep us “on track” but over time they wield an an existential impact on what people begin to identify as valuable and meaningful in both the organization and also life as a whole.

What kind of an impact do stats have on you? Do you find yourself slowly becoming defined by them?

How is your use of stats and measurements influencing the culture that you are seeking to shape?  Are they bearing fruit in keeping with both your objectives AS WELL AS your values?

This past week was the national staff conference for my ministry (Epic) which I had the privilege to direct with an awesome design team and the help of many. As part of the conference I helped put together an e-book from many of the different great writings from Epic staff this past year.

I hope you enjoy it if you ever get the chance to check it out. It’s starts with a series that we ran on the Epic Resource site called, “Nine Elements of a Servant Leadership Reproduction Culture” with an additional intro and conclusion to it.  Part Two is my friend and teammate Adrian Pei’s new article called “A New Kind of Charge: Reframing Contextualization and Mission.” Part Three is a collection of 23 blogs from Epic staff from 2011-2012. Then finally, there’s an article I wrote after coaching many of our staff last summer in an Introduction to Hermeneutics course on the connections between Hermeneutics and doing cross-cultural ministry.  It’s called “A Three Cultures Approach to Engaging Scripture and Cross-Cultural Ministry.”

Both mine and Adrian’s articles are drafts so feel free to pass on any thoughts.  All in all – 101 pages of resources from about 17 authors (all Epic staff and interns) in total.

The mobi version works if you have a kindle or a kindle app on some other device.  If you can’t upload it manually to your device, you should have a kindle assigned email that allows you to send it to your kindle app.  I included an epub as that’s a common format for many other ereading devices.

Right click and save as…..

Epic Resilient E-book Kindle Version (mobi)

Epic Resilient E-book    .epub format

And for the non e-reader folks….here the pdf version…

Enjoy!

We’re all attracted to shiny objects.  Some things just draw attention because they stand out and are a bit more flashy than others.  This phenomenon shows up in measurements too – some metrics have a real flash to them and carry an initial wow factor to them and in fact, the “shinyness” of some metrics or numbers can lead us to give something much more weight than we should when assessing overall effectiveness.

When you are evaluating talent or leadership potential, does one particular skill set get you more excited than other things?

About a year ago ESPN the Magazine ran an entire issue to “Speed” in Athletics.  One of the articles within that issue started off with the following quote:

“Speed always impresses, but few can outrun mediocrity.”
(Peter Keating, Feb 21, 2011)

The gist of the article was the way in which the recent use of statistical analysis (i.e. what was illustrated in moneyball) was illuminating the ways in which speed by itself was a very misleading quality or talent in assessing overall effectiveness and contribution to the team. One example was the surprising effectiveness of Chris Snyder, Pirates catcher and slowest man in the big leagues. Another example was the surprising overall lack of effectiveness of Vince Coleman, one of the baseball speedsters of my generation.

Coleman and Snyder provide a good contrast.  Coleman makes me think of a lot of the way organizations and ministries see leadership development and do leadership selection.  We sometimes can see one skill set that is producing immediate results and we can start to convince ourselves that they are the next go to people for the job.

In my world, those that can speak or teach up front are the ones that are seen as shiny objects. There’s plenty of people out there that have been promoted based on a surface level impressiveness.  As a result, we have a lot of leadership and ministry “Vince Coleman’s.” Not infrequently, once those people get in their new jobs that one skill set often isn’t enough and the other areas of deficiency sooner or later catch up to them if they’ve been leaning on one or two main talents to get by.  It’s a time honored problem in a lot of places where leaders get hired for a bigger job based on the success they had in another job that required a totally different skill set.  Success at one level doesn’t always translate to success on another.

Snyder reminds me of those leaders who don’t look flashy and don’t immediately impress, but the whole package is solid and results in long term impact.  While initial impressions might dismiss him as an impact player, a deeper and more reflective assessment reveals the true story.

Keating finished his piece observing, “Speed is cool. But sports don’t just reward inherent abilities; they reward the intelligent application of those abilities on the field of play.”

So context matters as does the maximization of skills and gifts within those contexts.

In leadership selection and development – let’s focus on overall impact and not just the flashy skill set and first impressions.

There’s something in this discussion that hearkens back to King David’s anointing as King when he was still a youngest child tending flock.  Samuel was drawn to the “shiny” thinking the more impressive looking men were the ones that God must want.  The Lord reminds him that while men look at the external, the Lord looks at the heart.  There was nothing “shiny” about David at that time, but there was a bigger story that made him the right person for what God was about to do.

What skill sets do you think are most deceiving?  How do you assess impact players at larger levels in the ways that lead to long-term fruit and effectiveness?

*This was initially posted on October 12, 2011, but it deserves a home in this “Stats Lie” series.

Did you ever see the Double Rainbow you-tube video?

One of the greatest things ever and a reason I’m thankful for the internet.  I’ll post it below for you if you haven’t seen it.

But it’s basically a dude in the outdoors who witnesses a double rainbow in nature and he’s beside himself and overcome.  He’s left to ponder the meaning of what he’s witnessing.  So the phrases “Double Rainbow” and “What does it mean?” are repeated often amidst weeping. There may be other influences at work influencing his mood and mindset, but that’s another story.

“Double Rainbow” is really a metaphor for interpretation and hermeneutics and the often subjective quest to understand the significance and truth of something, especially when the “meaning” is hard to squeeze into a quantifiable box.

A senior ministry leader who has been around the block said to me a few months back, “You know, I just can’t trust statistics if I don’t know what they mean.” Seems like an obvious statement, but most of us probably have tons of examples of ourselves or others being quick to react to a statistic without really understanding what it might mean…..really.

So what do they mean?  As mentioned in the previous post, sometimes the meaning can be obvious to all and close to self-evident. But there are dangers sometimes.

What about when we assume we know what it means, but we’re wrong or have too limited of a perspective to have a meaningful and realistic perspective?

What if we look at a stat and it just seems incredible and we start trying to interpret significance into something that might not be there?   Double Rainbow!

I wrote a section in “Five Majority Culture Postures Towards Ethnic Minority Ministry” that included the line, “Statistics without story usually create guilt and pressure.”  That was in the context of motivating people to action – trying to get people to do things without the relational connections or underlying heart adjustments.  But statistics without story also leave us in the “Double Rainbow” position because we can lack the contextual clues to draw out the meaning and significance of them.

Statistics need story to be meaningful measurements in ministry (and elsewhere as well). Without understanding story in and behind a situation, the way we use our measurements can become ethnocentric and maybe can even sabotage progress because of how we can try to squeeze others into our own structures and expectations.  Without story, we actually can judge or even dehumanize those in the reality we’re looking at because numbers tend to take on a life of their own. When we think we know what something means, but fail to recognize what those things mean to those living other stories we do damage.

A general example would be when we measure specific and tangible results but fail to take into account power dynamics and the everpresent forces that create hardships, challenges, and barriers that others on the “right” side of power don’t face.  Should you assess both situations equally? The stories are different and success will look different as a result.

Statistics can be used as a tool of power or they can be used to empower.  Oftentimes the difference is the commitment to understand story.  This means a grounding of our interpretation and our use of such measurements and results in a broader understanding of culture and context.  That means learning, humility, relationships, and intentionality.

We have to do the work to understand the whole – and not just measure the parts.   Otherwise, we might be left like the double rainbow guy to make up half-baked (in his case literally perhaps!) interpretations. Or worse – we’re left to make ignorant, biased, ethnocentric, or unethical interpretations or applications (See Pt 2: Tunnel Vision).

So let’s not get mesmerized by a statistic itself (Double Rainbow!), but let’s work to understand the whole so that our interpretations are informed by both the statistics AND the story.

How do you see story being important in measuring results and what does it look like practically to use both statistics and story to draw conclusions?

For the uninitiated:

And go here for a version that was turned into a song with production.

I titled this series “Stats Lie.”  And they do sometimes.

But sometimes they don’t! 

Sometimes we do.

But sometimes measurements are so clear and so powerfully self-evident that there’s not a whole lot that people can do to skew them. And there’s a whole lot of measurements we better pay attention to!

Say your blood pressure gets tested at 180/100.   How are you going to confuse that for anything else than you better get some help fast!

Say your gas tank is on E and the light’s on – you know you only have a small window to refill before you pay the price.

Say your checking account is lower than what you’re outgoing bills are.  Well – the numbers speak for themselves.

In all phases of life, we have measurements and we use numbers to gauge health or progress.  It’s a necessity and we can’t avoid it.  To avoid measurements is to either live in a world of wishful thinking (fantasy) or deep denial.

Those who reject responsible metrics are those who are rejecting adulthood, truth, and accountability.

Measurements, used properly, connect us to reality – and reality is our friend (if we hope to be leading towards any kind of meaningful future).   So just because some stats or measurements are somewhat malleable in the hands of leaders and people does not mean we should throw them all out the window.  You’ll find yourself lost if that be the case.

Several years back we uncovered the fact that a large percentage of our staff were significantly underfunded with also significant amounts of personal debt.  While it hurt us short term, would it do us good to ignore that stat or explain it away?  No.  We had to engage and do the hard work of leading into the exposed area of needed leadership.   And those efforts have paid off.

Some measurements are somewhat self-evident and there’s not a lot of interpretive work needed.  Most measurements in ministry leadership often do need a lot of interpretive work.  That’s doesn’t diminish the need for measurements, just speaks to the complex sociological and spiritual and human nature of how things work together systemically.

There’s more to come on things that affect the interpretation of statistics and thus the the theme of how stats can lie.  But know this – stats hardly ever do damage by themselves, it’s how they’re interpreted and used that can be good or bad.

And some measurements scream loudly enough to overcome even the most ignorant or biased perspectives we can bring to the table.

What measurements do you think are helpful and scream the loudest in your context?  

What measurements do you think are highly contextual and thus more subject to human interpretation?