Mike Walker Creative

For anyone who knows me, I love leading change and I love leading turnarounds. Which is to say I like walking in to situations that are running/working at less than optimal, analyze them, and get them working at their most efficient. Whether it’s teams, business models, or whatever I like being able to work on a turnaround. 

One of the things I have found important is having the proper balance to the team of youth, experience, people who have been with the company or department for a while, and those who are fresh faces with fresh outlooks. Each situation is always a little different depending on the needs and goals. 

I came across an interesting story the other day about Josiah Wedgewood. Most of us have heard of Wedgewood China, but I never knew the story till recently.

Josiah was born in a time when you learned your families trade, apprenticed at it, and then opened your own shop. This was during the 1700’s so we are talking about trades like blacksmithing and pottery makers.

Josiah learned his family trade of pottery, but didn’t want to be the average company so he took on some new spins to the trade in firing the pottery, glazing it, signing his name to it, and then selling it at 4 times the amount that everyone else was.

As his business grew he had to bring on more help. Here’s what I found to be interesting. In bringing on more help he hired only the untrained. He found that it was easier to teach the untrained than it was to unteach them first. 

I still contend that in MOST, not all, situations today you need to have a balance of experience versus youth, but I think it’s an interesting thing to consider when building or rebuilding teams. 

I have found it best that if you have some people that have experience or have been around a while, if they will jump on board, they can be a huge asset, but when leading change you really need to do some things to spur the change and movement.  Fresh faces and ideas are always key….so are establishing some very attainable goals, and quick short term victories to establish a belief in the process. 

If you do have a young team. Don’t just give them the reigns. Let them do their craft, but they still need leadership. Teach them and train them. Over time they will take your team and organization to a new level, but it requires the time investment on your part.

As summer official started last Friday and I’m looking to the fall, I find myself in a state of evaluation. What I am sorting through is how to take what has happened so far this year and build on it. For me the process begins with figuring out where we are, what are the needs upcoming, and then taking inventory. Whenever I take on a project I always look around to see what I have and don’t have as resources…sometimes its gear but the most valuable thing to me is what people I have available. People solve problems. For me this process is not just merely a matter of having bodies, but what skill sets do they bring to the table as compared to the skill sets needed for the upcoming project/challenge so that we can appropriately address the challenges at hand. Often times I may or may not have the right people with the skills, but they have the potential to learn it…OR…they have it in them, but no one has drawn it out yet…I am always looking for those people. While working in the church this evaluation process always helped me figure out who was already at the table and who needs to be there over the next few weeks/months. It’s an interesting journey, but one that never fails to set teams up for success. And God has always been faithful to bring the right people at the right times. I’ve had the privilege to work with some great organizations this year and as we dive into their project needs we inevitably take inventory. When you look at your team what do you find, and who is ready to do more?

Throughout most of the 90’s High End Systems was one of the top names in concert moving lights. In recent years I have been fairly critical of them as I had more problems with them on shows and, other than Catalyst and DL2’s, I haven’t seen much from them in the way of new product lines that I was excited about.

I came across a press release announcing Barco has acquired High End Systems. Barco has long been a leader in innovation in the projection and LED market. This union could be real interesting.

Read more here.

Bill Hybels has always been a source of leadership and inspiration in the local church. I was recently referencing one of his talks to a client of mine which made me want to find it to hear it again.

He was talking about what he thinks people who walk in the doors of a church are asking of their church.

-Move me
-Scare me
-Inspire me
-Convict me
-Stir me
-Anger me
-Surprise me
-Ignite me
-Thrill me

“Do something, just don’t leave me the way you found me.”

Powerful stuff…..how different would our weekly services be if we took that attitude? It’s easy to get locked in to the weekly grind and start plugging in songs and coming up with cute gimmicks to get people to walk in the doors, but at the end of the day we really just need to seek to make sure people don’t leave the same way they came in.

In most events and churches I walk in to one of the first things I hear is “we want to be more creative”. Living in a creative world I am all about it and I am all on board. That being said, my first questions back are always, how are you doing with the basics? Do you have a good sound system? Are your operators doing a really good job? Do you have the necessary components of a lighting or video system? Do you have the people and the tools to pull off getting more creative?

Without the basics handled your creativity can get real messy.

I think some times we get caught up in pulling off creativity and forget to be consistent. It may seem counter intuitive, but you must allow your consistency to be the foundation for your creativity.

In every event I work with I always go back to my basic principles:

1 - It has to sound good. This means the PA must be dynamic, have good response and coverage for the venue.

2 - It has to be lit correctly. This changes event to event depending on the desired goals (live event, broadcast event, theater, concert, etc..). Some basics would include that the wash lighting has to be even. There has to be an adequate amount and the correct fixtures for both wash lighting and scenic lighting. Another thing I am a stickler on is color temperature. It has to be consistent through out the rig.

3 - When using video, the screens have to be big enough and bright enough for the room. This varies on the room size and production layout. The color temperature must line up with the lighting for a good capture. I do on occasion like to use LED, but I am still a fan of projection and with todays bigger and brighter projectors, in most applications projection is still the best and least expensive option. When the budget allows I think HD makes a huge difference. Because the resolution is so high you can actually get away with smaller screens that going SD.

Video is one of the conversations that can get quite lengthy so I will leave it here to start.

These are just some of the basics that I go back to, because without a solid foundation the creativity won’t stand. Now you have to have the right people on board in order to make all these things work, but if you don’t first have the right parts…pulling off the tricky things off gets tougher.

I came across this post from Tony Morgan and I thought this post really had some great things to say about creativity, specifically as it relates to artistry within the church.

I think you will enjoy it.

7 Reasons Why the Church Needs Artists

1. Only through art can we know God more fully. A person encounters God as an artist before he encounters him as a theologian. We have reduced God’s primary interests to truth and goodness. We must remember that beauty is a primary of interest of his.
2. We must see God’s world more truthfully. Only seeing one theme is insufficient. Artists must help people see both the brokenness and the promise of renewal.
3. We must embrace God’s salvation more completely. Art as morality dictates that we should create more than just “religious” art. Everything is to be redeemed. Everything is worthy of artistic representation.
4. We must worship God more humanly. Because of the image of God, humans make art. Humans create. No other organism on earth does.
5. We must believe God’s promises more confidently. We are blinded to the glory that is here now. With art, you encourage and enlarge hearts to believe the impossible.
6. We must proclaim God’s kingdom more powerfully. Truth has bigger muscles in art.
7. We need to meet God. The primary place where we experience God is in our imagination–the intersection of our mind, emotions and will.

Bill Hybels has long been known as an innovator and risk taker as the Senior Pastor at Willow Creek Community Church. He really pioneered the “seeker movement” starting back in the 70’s.

In recent months a lot has been made of the “Reveal” study they did as a church. Much has been written about how Willow Creek is “repenting” and changing their model.

In a recent video interview Bill addresses, for the first time, all the talk. It sounds like to me that he is as hungry as he ever has been to reach people “far from God”, and he has always been a guy who is tireless and tenacious. Sounds like the seeker church is still very much alive and kickin….

Check out the video…great stuff!

I came across an article that speaks to one of the great problems in the local church today, how to reach the next generation.
check out the article….does your organization have a plan to reach the next generation?

Read it here.

I came across an old Macintosh laptop I used to carry with me when I was doing concert tours. It was my first link to the Internet. I think I still have the original version of AOL for mac on there…it used to take FOREVER…but…while I was on the road I was in a different city every day and people in the office were sometimes there and sometimes out and about the country so staying in touch was a huge deal.

I can still remember logging on and the little box that would appear in the center…it started with dialing, then connecting, then it would let me know it was communicating.

With the movement of multi-location churches the 2C’s are more important than ever…Connect and Communicate. No matter what field you are in or what department you work for we are all going 100mph in different directions and these two principles can’t be said enough.

This became even more apparent to me years ago when I moved offices out of the media offices at the church I worked for, and into another building where a lot of the other church staff was located. I noticed I felt immediately somewhat disconnected from my staff. I had to make a concerted effort to make sure and spend quality time with each of them.

The thing I am trying to drive home with them is this…take time for each other and talk. It’s easy for us to get caught up in our own world and not realize how it affects the entire rest of the organization. We have to be intentional about connection and communicating.

Relationships, when done right, build trust, trust builds confidence in the team, confidence as a team produces growth. It’s been cool to see people from the different departments roll up their sleeves and work together a little more….all it takes is a little bit of connection and communication.

Is your organization scalable?
One of the hottest conversation pieces in recent years has been satellite, or distributed church.

There are a couple of things to consider when thinking this through. It goes way beyond location, methodology, etc…the biggest question each church has to ask is, are we scalable?

I heard a leader once say that he wanted an entire department duplicated. It sounds great doesn’t it? The problem is that not all elements of an organization are easily replicated or scalable.

I recently had a great chat with a peer that I have a ton of respect for who was a media director at one of the largest churches in the country. He and I share a lot of similar views and he had a some great articulation on the subject. He said, “The thing that you have to understand in scaling in any organization is that DNA is not scalable, but processes are”.

Great, so what does that mean? We have all worked with and for leaders who have that “it” factor. You can’t really describe it. You may love it or hate it (or them - jk). At the end of the day they have this quality that enables them to do things that others cannot. It’s in their DNA; it’s that thing that lends credibility to their “gut reaction”. You cannot teach this. You can have people come across your path that, if they have it, you can help them learn how to use it most effectively, but you can’t put something inside someone they aren’t born with. Imagine for a moment trying to teach someone who is tone deaf how to sing…. they are born with it or they aren’t. Leaders are the same way, they have it or they don’t.

The other piece of the conversation is that processes are scalable. Ok, so what things are those? Understand that in discussing this that I am by no means putting one job above another, some are just more easily replicated. For example, most parts of accounting are very process driven. There is a process to it and you just repeat the process over and over again…still very important, but more easily replicated.

One of the trends in children’s ministry through the years has been to have curriculum developed and subscribed to. Your lesson plans are planned out for you. For a small fee you can have it delivered and you rely on some high-energy people who care about kids to take the stage elements over and a few somewhat skilled people who can operate lighting and DVD players and you are good to go. Again, I am not putting any position down as they are all important, but the fact is you can easily reproduce this model and it’s not nearly as easy to replicate an Andy Stanley or Robert Morris. It’s DNA versus process.

One of the more fun things I have done over the past couple of years is help organizations figure out what about them is scalable and where they might have some challenges to overcome, as well as provide solutions to help them out moving forward.

In the next few posts we will look in to some things to think about as you are looking at your organization.