Tim Abbott

The seven deadly sins CEOs won't admit

For the last year and a half The Financial Times has been asking business leaders a few questions, including, "What are your three worst features?" On the BBC web site in "The seven deadly sins CEOs won't admit" Lucy Kellaway looks at the findings.

There seems to be a general trait of spinning failings as strengths. Control-freakery can be presented as attention to detail or passion for the core vision; impatience might be justified as sustaining a cutting edge or ensuring you ship on time. You think you're focused - your team see you as a bully. You know the kind of thing... you've probably struggled at some point with this kind of leadership. Perhaps, deep down, you know you're that leader.

Lucy writes;

"In the past 15 years of studying them, I've drawn up a list of the seven most common deadly sins. They are control freaks. They are vain. They are ditherers. They don't listen. They are bullies. They are afraid of conflict. And they can't do small talk. I suspect the real problem is they don't know what their faults are. A decade of psychobabble, coaching and 360-degree feedback has made no difference."

Ouch. I recognise some of myself in a few of those. But here's what I think is at the heart of the matter;

"It has not changed the most basic truth - people never speak truth to power."

Within CYO we've had a system for many years where team members have a pastoral mentor from local churches that they meet with once a month. These people are in first or second tier church leadership and have complete permission to speak to any other team member, including me, about any concerns they have. And any team member can speak to any of our trustees if they wish. Of course, as a first recourse we still encourage people to be open with each other, incuding about any behaviours that are challenging. But giving people an alternative safety valve helps them feel safe, and means I can't hide behind a positive spin on a negative behaviour.

How do you manage your 'blind side'?

24-7 Prayer looking for a new UK Prayer Co-ordinator

Andrea Percy has been the UK Prayer Co-ordinator for 24-7 Prayer for four years but is now moving on. Do you know someone who might be the right person to take up this vital role at the heart of this still growing movement? Here's the word from 24-7 HQ...

We’re looking for someone organised, enthusiastic and passionate about prayer to come and join 24-7’s UK office team, as our new UK Prayer Co-ordinator. This is an amazing opportunity for someone who wants to dive right into the deep end of/with 24-7 prayer.

Andrea Percy has fulfilled this role fantastically for the past four years – many of you will have spoken with her on the phone, or read her stories/articles on the 24-7 UK website, or met her at a gathering or meeting. We’re sad to say goodbye to Andrea, but we’re delighted at what God is opening up for her in home-town of Reading, and especially amongst the Reconcile community.

And as a result of all this, we now have an incredibly important role to fill… could you, or one of your friends be who we’re looking for?

The UK Prayer Co-ordinator supports and resources 24-7 prayer rooms around the UK. A lot of the work takes place via email and phone-calls, either from the new 24-7 UK office base near Kings Cross/London or from home, but it also often involves meeting and speaking with individuals, organisations and church groups.

There’s lots more to it, of course, but we’ve summarised the role around four main themes;
+    administration… supporting prayer rooms, managing databases, responding to emails
+    resourcing… maintaining and improving resources, and developing new ones
+    fuelling… gathering stories, writing articles, encouraging individuals and organisations
+    championing… representing prayer and 24-7 prayer, developing vision and strategy

So… we’re looking for someone organised, someone very capable with emails and office software. We’re looking for an enthusiastic and effective communicator, in both written and verbal forms, with individuals, organisations and churches. And we’re looking for passion. Lots of it. :)

This is currently a 19-hour a week post, for which we can offer £475 per/month (plus travel expenses to/from London). The post-holder will need to be within commute-distance of Kings Cross/London, because at least one day of the week’s work will be spent there, along with other 24-7 prayer (UK and International) staff. Other hours will be spent either working from home, or in various meetings. The post-holder will be line-managed by 24-7’s UK Director, Phil Togwell.

If you’d like to apply for the role, please send an email explaining your connection with 24-7 prayer and why you’re interested in joining with us, and include any further questions you may have as well, to Phil at phil.togwell@24-7prayer.com

The deadline for applications is Sunday 28th November, and we will try to arrange interviews during the following two weeks.

Oak Tree Coffee House

Oak Tree Coffee House is a Community Interest Company set up by our church, St. Luke's, in Colchester. It's across the road from the community centre where the church meets on a Sunday and is intended to be a resource for the community and a focal point for a range of community and outreach activities as well as a meeting place for the church mid week. It's in a perfect location by the main bus stops and on a busy pedestrian crossroads near to Tesco, small shops and the local Primary School.

The Coffee House opened on Saturday and was well patronised for most of the day. I made my first visit on Monday for a meeting about Street Pastors with a friend and was really impressed with the design and the standard of work. The big picture windows at the front, and the fact that they've resisted the temptation to pack too many chairs and tables in, gives the Coffee House a spacious feel and offers a wide range of seating options.

I was back in on Tuesday evening for the first meeting of a group of us planning community and outreach activities based in the Coffee House.

Then on Wednesday I needed to meet a local youth worker for a conversation about Chaplaincy in a local school and the obvious venue was, well, the Coffee House! We arrived during a slight lull, but by 3:30pm the place was packed again with mums and children, small groups and several girls from the local secondary school. The Coffee House has already become a focal point for many in the Highwoods area. We're excited by the opportunities it creates for new ways of engaging with the local community and making the gospel accessible to the people of Highwoods.

More photos on Flickr

On being CRB'ed for schools

In the last week we have had all of our team members CRB'ed for work in one of our favourite local schools. I posted a tweet about this, "Having the whole team CRB'ed for a school. It's not bureaucracy, it's belonging" which raised a number of positive comments and also some questions, so I thought I'd explain further. If you work in schools all this will be (should be) obvious, but you never know...

We have a very strong relationship with all the schools that we work with. So far they have been more than happy to have us in on the strength of the CRB checks we have done for our organisation. No activity is undertaken without being under the supervision of a member of staff, though for things like lunchtime groups or Sanctum this doesn't mean that member of staff is always present. We realise that this is an arrangement based on a strong relationship, positive history and trust on the part of the school, but it is up to them to make this decision. I know of other school workers who have had schools insist that they are CRB checked by the school before they come in to do anything, accompanied or not. I would add that there are schools, and the Sixth Form College, where, rightly, specific members of our team have been CRB'ed for their mentoring and chaplaincy roles.

However, my view of such matters was changed not by a school that wouldn't otherwise open its doors to us, but by one of the schools where we have always received a warm welcome and been able to do just about everything that counts as responsible schools work for nearly 20 years. There is a huge degree of trust and in many ways we are part of the team there. We are in the process of setting up a new lunch time group (about the fourth one we've run over many years) and during preparation for this we recognised that for much of the time we would be working without the direct involvement of a member of staff. As a result we asked that our team be CRB'ed by the school; something to which they gladly agreed. For us this marks a new level of 'belonging' within the school as this will create a semi-formal arrangement that gives us greater freedom to work with young people.

I now believe this should be our standard procedure with schools and was in the process of setting up similar arrangements when we learned that Essex County Council have in place a system whereby people CRB'ed for one school can work in other schools under the same CRB. All that is required is that you complete a form and present your Essex CC CRB and photo ID and within about 48 hours the school receives confirmation of your CRB check.

As schools workers we want to work to the highest standards, but there's always been the issue of CRB checks and the problem that, officially, they are not 'portable' (pending some revised Vetting & Barring scheme). The reality appears to be that most schools are prepared to recognise a CRB certificate as though it were portable. Whilst grateful for their flexibility and trust I've come to the conclusion that asking the school to CRB us isn't bowing to bureaucracy, but saying we want to belong, we're accountable, and we're here for the long haul.

Facebook musings

A couple of Facebook related posts caught my eye today.

In Zuckerberg: Non-Evil Non-Genius? Robert Wright reflects on the growth stages of Facebook, and how a sequence of largely unplanned developments became a killer strategy, levering the power of "positive network externalities" - basically, it's not what you do, it's how many people connect to what you do that counts.

 

While over at The Guardian Charles Arthur asks, Is your private phone number on Facebook? Probably. And so are your friends'. Be careful what you post on your profile people... I'm just saying...
h/t Dave Walker

Kevin Kelly on The Shirky Principle

"In a strong sense we are defined by the problems we are solving."

Wise word from Kevin Kelly on the way organisations and institutions can end up perpetuating the very problem they set out to solve.

For more detail linked to some great examples, see Clay Shirky's original post.

Youth work and social media: boundaries

Jon Jolly has posted here about the issue of how we set boundaries in our online interactions with young people, citing a forum discussion he kicked off at UK Youth Online.

Here are a few thoughts from our experience, which may have turned into a bit of a ramble, but here goes anyway.

Within CYO our approach is to attempt to replicate the boundaries that we set by, for example, not giving our personal mobile numbers. In practice this means using work email addresses rather than personal ones. When it comes to social networking we do not admit young people (under 18's) that we work with as friends on e.g. FaceBook. Although it hasn't come to it yet, if we felt the need to set up a social networking space, we'd do it in our professional rather than personal capacity. A social networking space in a youth work context will naturally appeal to the same good practice guidelines about how much you share with young people to preserve professional boundaries. So, what photos you post (if any?), what you say in messaging, how much info you add to your profile, how often you update it or are available for IM chat. The guidelines we follow in other aspects of professional youth work practice convert fairly easily to this kind of Social Networking as long as it represents our professional persona.

Most IM clients allow you to save the message log and if you're using instant messaging with young people I would suggest it's good practice to save conversations; just as one would log phone calls, make a record of texts sent / received and save emails.

Collective, the girl band that work in partnership with us, have set up a MySpace page to allow a level of social networking with young people they meet. In their case it's a bit easier and less 'personal' in that they always present themselves as a band and never as individuals, so when replying to young people's emails they sign off as 'Collective' rather than as the person writing the email. If you're the only or main youth worker then obviously this isn't an option - you've got to sign off as yourself!

As above, none of us, including the members of Collective, accept friend requests from young people. However, it's a feature of the internet that if they want to, anyone can find you. We had a very persistent young person who managed to follow a long and ingenious trail to find out personal details about one of Collective.  I would therefore advise anyone, whether working with young people or not, to be circumspect about what they post and where, youth workers especially.

We need to exercise care in what we post - this obviously includes things like blogs and Flickr accounts. There's a whole load of photos I haven't posted to my Flickr account, some for artistic reasons (!) and some because they include people and I want to retain absolute control over how / if I use them, who sees them and in which context. You don't have to post everything; know yourself and be aware of your motives, just as you would be in your work with young people. And be very careful about what gets uploaded to YouTube!

I blog with clear reference to my employer, CYO, and use my work email address, so although it's my personal blog I need to post with regard to the way what I say will reflect on CYO. Anyone can read it, including my Trustees and young people so I seek to post in a way that would not cause problems if one of the young people we work with came by for a look. This means no names of young people and often insufficient identifying information (e.g. name of school) to ensure that if you didn't know the situation already you wouldn't be able to derive missing information.

Any major flaws, or advice you'd add? You're welcome to comment here, but you could also pop over to Jon's blog or the UK Youth Online forum.

IJM

Yesterday I met with a good friend, Terry, who is Executive Director of International Justice Mission (UK). IJM is a growing human rights organisation that investigates and provides legal help for victims of injustice in many parts of the world. In many places, poverty excludes people from the justice systems that are available - IJM deals with cases of slavery, abuse, land grabbing, exploitation and state injustice against its citizens.

I'm glad to have been able to put him in touch with a few people locally who have skills or experience to offer.

I've worked with Terry before on some projects he was overseeing with Churches Together in Britain and Ireland as a 'mission accompanier'. These kinds of friendships are so helpful - I admit I'd probably be at a loss to know what to do if we swapped jobs (and I'm not sure how keen Terry would be to take on schools work in Colchester!)

Our shared observation is that issues of justice, particularly on a global scale, are a major concern to young people and the rising generation of twenty-somethings who are filling our churches and are increasingly active in stirring up awareness and doing what they can to bring about change.

 

Do your people have a stake in the outcome?

A pearl of wisdom from Phil Cooke:

The people who complain the most, are the people who have no stake in the outcome.

True in so many areas, including youth work.
See the rest of his post here.

Synchroblog: Church and Money - What if we had nothing

As an inter-church organisation we depend on gifts from individuals and churches to keep going, a bit like most missions organisations, whether at home or overseas.

We're so grateful to all those who give, one way or another, to enable us to continue to take the good news to young people in schools and elsewhere. But it becomes too easy to slip into thinking that if we only had "... this much more giving" we could do "... so much more." This may indeed be the way of God for us, new supporters that enable us to employ more youth and schools workers and undertake new projects to reach more young people, so we are unlikely to stop inviting people to give to sustain and grow this ministry.

But here are a couple of challenges that I never want to lose sight of;

What if our income has reached a practical maximum? Is our vision limited by what we can afford to do, or is it big enough, creative enough and trusting God enough to go beyond what finance can achieve and into what people, energised by God, can achieve.

And what if we had nothing. Would the vision within us still burn so brightly that we would find a way, somehow, to continue to do the work we do. Herein lies the ultimate challenge to stay close to the vision that guides us and the God who leads us. And it has nothing to do with money.

Check out other fine SynchroBlogs on the subject of Church and Money here:

The Check That Controls at Igneous Quill
Pushing The Camel:  Why there might be more rich people in Heaven than in your local Church at Fernando's desk
Sally Coleman at Eternal Echoes
Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz at Hello Said Jenelle
Zaque at Johnny Beloved
Walking with the Camels at Calacirian
Greed and Bitterness:  Why Nobody's Got it Right About Money and The Church at Phil Wyman's Square No More
Kirk Bartha at Theocity
Money and the Church: A Fulltime Story at The Pursuit
But I Gave at Church at The Assembling of the Church
Moving Out of Jesus Neighborhood at Be the Revolution
Money and the Church: why the big fuss? at Mike's Musings
Coffee Hour Morality at One Hand Clapping
Bling Bling in the Holy of Holies at In Reba's World
Magazinial Outreach at Decompressing Faith
Money's too tight to mention at Out of the Cocoon
Bullshit at The Agent B Files
The Bourgeois Elephant in the Missional/Emergent Living Room at Headspace
When the Church Gives at Payneful Memories
Who, or What, Do You Worship at Charis Shalom
Greed at Hollow Again
Silver and Gold Have We - Oops! at Subversive Influence
The Church and Money at Khanya