:: Teams
Teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped.
First, because teamwork is hard to measure. Why? Because it impacts the outcome of an organization in such comprehensive and invasive ways that it's virtually impossible to isolate it as a single variable. Many executives prefer solutions that are more easily measurable and verifiable, and so they look elsewhere for their competitive advantages.
But even if the impact of teamwork were more easily measurable, executives probably would still look elsewhere. Why? Because teamwork is extremely hard to achieve. It can’t be bought, and it can’t be attained by hiring an intellectual giant from the world’s best business school. It requires levels of courage and discipline—and emotional energy—that even the most driven executives don’t always possess.
:: Trust
The key ingredient to building trust is not time. It is courage. [<-- the money quote]
Trust lies at the heart of a functioning, cohesive team. Without it, team work is all but impossible.
In the context of building a team, trust is the confidence among team members that their peers' intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group. In essence, teammates must get comfortable being vulnerable with one another.
:: Discomfort and conflict
One way for a team to know if they are having enough conflict is for them to think about how an outsider to the team would feel sitting in on a team meeting. A great team will look at least a little strange to an outsider who isn't accustomed to the direct and unfiltered dialogue taking place. Like a friend invited to dinner at a close family's house, they would probably be a little taken aback, at least at first.
When a team recovers from an incident of destructive conflict, it builds confidence that it can survive such an event, which in turn builds trust.
When people self-identify and publicly declare their outlook on conflict, they become much more open to adjusting it to whatever team norms need to be established.
The leader is going to have to be ready to not only light the fuse of good conflict but to gently fan the flames for a while too.
:: Commitment
Commitment is about a group of intelligent, driven individuals buying in to a decision precisely when they don't naturally agree. In other words, it's the ability to defy a lack of consensus.
:: Accountability
Peer pressure and the distaste for letting down a colleague will motivate a team player more than any fear of authoritative punishment or rebuke.
The most important challenge of building a team where people hold one another accountable is overcoming the understandable hesitance of human beings to give one another critical feedback.
Help people realize that when they fail to provide peers with constructive feedback they are letting them down personally. By holding back, we are hurting not only the team, but also our teammates themselves.
:: Results
Results-oriented teams establish their own measurements for success.They don't allow themselves the wiggle room of subjectivity. But this is not easy, because subjectivity is attractive.
The Ember X team is having a little bake sale in Sunday June 9. Our team will be in front The Little French Market [get it - French...?] and this is part of old town Ellicott City's second Sunday market. 
Well, sort of, but not really.... About a year after Ember became officially official, an opportunity landed in our laps to host a good friend in our house during some weeknights. BB, parent of a student/leader/Ember Board member, who we knew really well, had an interesting career circumstance where he traveled here during the week for his job. So, for a few nights each week, he takes over the Ember international office.
::: World Languages Facts and Numbers
Kt - our older daughter's - creative revenue plan: lifeguarding. After over 40 hours of training, she is now certified to be a lifeguard for the local community association of pools. It's popular summer job for the high school students in our community and getting through the training alone says something about commitment, tenacity and your ability to float.
:: Skype with Teal Rapp, who gives an overview about camp, the context for Europe - how it's expensive and materialistic and how ministry is so different than in other contexts, and what does post Christian mean.
::: Breakfasts Around the World
My wife Deanna's creative revenue plan: calligraphy. Wedding invitations, place cards for a sophisticated dinner, invites for fancy events, or specific art work. All done by hand.
::: What the Steamship and Landline Tell us About the Decline of Cars
One of MB's creative revenue plans is this donation box. The context of this donation box is that it sits on the counter of a coffee shop that her parents own, in an affluent subdivision in Howard County called Maple Lawn. My guess is that most of the people that live in Maple Lawn aren't interested in organized religion or how Christianity might be in decline in Europe. So overall, I think it's pretty gutsy for her to put that out there in the first place.
Trevin and Amy dived into the idea of kairos moments and how they related to the context of student mission trips and the larger context of discipling students. This was a phenomenal session and I loved both the content and their style of delivery. The content was something that leaders need but maybe didn't quite know that they need - who doesn't want to learn about helping students mark pivotal times in their journey and making significant decisions in light of those moments. Their style of delivery was Amy explaining the concepts interspersed with Trevin telling his stories of traveling around the world and how those experiences molded his missions perspective. Some of this content was taken from Building a Discipling Culture from 3DM.
There were three breakout sessions of 20 minutes each, based on cross cultural tools. These are simple, reproducible tools that students can use to understand another a new culture and also tools that will help them navigate the culture that they live in. Our hope is that they help prepare these students to both be an agent of change this summer on their missions trip as well as here at home. The three tools were mapmaking, person of peace and redemptive analogy, which are all concepts in our core curriculum. A great resource for this is the book Tradecraft.
The final element was team building initiatives. I've been pretty impacted by the book The Advantage and the emphasis on the idea of trust. So when we were imagining this element, I asked Amy if there was a way that we could help teams explicitly learn to trust each other. We all know that trust is earned over time and experience so doing the same thing in an afternoon was a challenge. I think the exercises helped facilitate did that, but of course, we'll know at the end of the summer.
::: The Payphone of the Future
VL's creative revenue plan: Car detailing. In fact, he's already got a pretty legit business running that he started last summer. He's got the skills, the supplies, the financial model and the network already in place. 
This post is the 3000th post on this blog. Hard to believe and I wanted to sort of commemorate it. It has come a long way.
