Podcast Episode 4: Ladies and Gentlemen, Your RX26 Keynote Speaker | Ep 216

Description

Excellence isn't a feeling; it is a system built from repeatable habits and reinforced culture. On this major episode, the team covers recent AI news, a brand-new event for the Community, and the big reveal of this year's conference keynote speaker!Jon catches us up on Claude Fable 5, the ChatGPT super app shift, and the Rock AI Summit on July 7 at 10-11:30am PT. He shares a security warning for anyone evaluating AI tools for their church data.Then Emily announces the man who built the most admired service culture in the world, Horst Schulze, co-founder of The Ritz-Carlton, and RX26's keynote speaker! He turned excellence into a repeatable system and a global standard that led the Ritz-Carlton to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award twice.Jon introduces Ministry by Design, a framework for applying that same thinking to how a church moves someone from unknown to known, engaged, serving, and leading.Visit the show notes to find all the resources talked about in this episode. Don't forget to join the new Rock Cast Rocket Chat Channel to see what other churches are saying about this episode.

Transcribed Content

Hi, guys. Welcome back to ROTcast. Thanks for joining us today. We have a roundup of AI news from the past couple weeks, and we're gonna dive deep into the AI Summit. Hopefully, you've heard about that on our socials. And then we'll wrap up the conversation with a name from Rx twenty six that's going to turn heads. John, do you wanna catch us up on the latest? Yes. So, hopefully, this news is still fresh by the time you get it. Last week, Anthropic launched their latest model, Fable five, with Mythos to a select few people. Fable five is open to everybody. And so that's an amazing model. It's a huge transformative leap. I personally didn't get a ton of time with it, but the few things I did do with it were really impressive, , one shotting new whole websites to get redesigned, and it did a great job. So the things you can need to know, super powerful, double the price. So plan for that budget. Everything we've been talking about budgets is is the same. Also, way that they release the the way you pay for it is gonna change. So before these models are part of your monthly subscription, this one will actually not be that way. You'll have to pay for your tokens as you use it, which is probably the path going forward for all AIUs. I think they're just kinda testing the waters a little bit with this. Obviously, there's some pushback from many people about some of the limitations they put on the model, but I think if you dig deeply and realize they're probably temporary, they they do make sense. That is until the government stepped in and shut the whole thing down. Right. So the report was that Amazon kind of told them told the government that this was unsafe and that there are ways that they could backdoor it. If you hear what Anthropic says, it's not a big deal. These are small things. Who do you trust? I don't know. It's probably above all of our pay grades. But that kinda set the Internet on fire. I think the big thing in general, watching some of the limitations they put on Fable five and this whole weekend, is, , not to get overwhelmed. I mean, things are gonna change. Everybody's responding. Everybody's trying to do their best with a whole new revolution, and this revolution's happening at the speed of light. So I think we need to expect some of these things, sit on the sidelines, be interested, dig deep, think about it, but not to get too bothered by it. For somebody who's not keeping up with every single model release, what's, , the one sentence takeaway here? The models still have the ability to get better. , we've been told for maybe a year that model quality will probably diminish a bit over time, and it's still there's still room here for for for major improvements. That said, if we don't get access to Fable five, say, for, let's say, three months, that's ridiculous. So probably, , be three days. I still think the updates to Opus are more than enough to do amazing things. So I think we should just be focused on how to use these models, keep our eye on what's going on in the in the industry, but, again, not to get too bothered. Just to watch some people on Twitter just, it's as if their life was coming to an end. Yeah. It's , hey. If you don't the way the way Anthropic's rolling this out, , just put your comments out there. Be honest, it gets so dramatic. I mean, they'll respond, and I think they are trying to protect us as best as they can. So but also OpenAI, and not to be quieted by news, has last week announced that chat is dead and that they're taking ChatGPT and completely rearchitecting it to make it a super app. Oh, wow. So no longer is it just ask question, get answer, ask question, get answer. They're really seeing it as the app that does everything where you go to to do everything, check email, do everything. And I think that's really interesting. Yeah. So the whole market's moving toward, , agents doing things, not just having chat, draft, and polish things. Right? And that's the conversation we've been having about Rock. Yeah. And I think it shows, again, the two parts of AI that we need to keep our eye on. The models, which we saw big changes from Claude, and the harness, which is what OpenAI is basically talking about. And you have to keep your eye on both because a good harness without a good model is not good, and a good harness I'm sorry. A good model without a good harness is also not good. So it's really both of those working together. And that is exactly what we're we're working on. So Yep. We have the new AI summit coming up, which is when we get to finally release and talk about and go into detail about what we're building in Rock. And that's July 7 online, free. Attend. It'll be recorded. So if you can't make that, , you can catch the recording. And it's gonna be a a really good deep dive. I would put out a note. It's gonna be for both technical and nontechnical. Mhmm. Nontechnical people probably get a lot of the first part of the session, but then we are gonna dive pretty deep into technology. So just wanna make sure that, , it's stated that it's for both audiences. That's great. Trying to kill two birds with one stone or one meeting. Mhmm. I think there's a a few things I I kinda wanna dig a little bit deeper into, , our AI strategy on this. It's taken us a little bit longer to get this, released, and that's because early on, we had to make a decision. Is this technology going to be a plug in, or is it going to be a part of core? And, , I think in the beginning, we were just a little bit unsure. But the more we dug into it, the more we were certain that this had to be in core. This could not be some paid add on to Rock because we feel , as as we talk in this podcast all the time, that AI is a significant part of what we do, and how could we gatekeep that as not part of core? So that caused us to have to slow down because as we've committed to, we will not put new features into minor releases, so we had to wait for the major release. And that's nineteen, and nineteen was just just shipped. So it's generally a really powerful tool, not only in its own sense within the product, but it also allows you to push your data out to any AI tool through MCP, which is really important. And everything in Rock, you can extend it. And we do that through primarily Lava. Eventually, you'll be able to write your own native code, c sharp, to write to write your tools and skills. But initially, you can get started with Lava. And, honestly, you may not ever have to have anything else but Lava because it's just so capable. Exciting. And we've been writing our own internal tools and skills with that. It also comes with significant documentation, which takes a while. Sometimes I look at what other people do, and they get to do it without documentation. And it sometimes it's a it's , I wish we could do that because no one likes the right documentation. But But people do to rely on it when they need it. You have to have it. I mean, but it's just it's just not one of the joys in life. Yeah. Mhmm. And so Just to just to restate, because this is so important, we already have hundreds of sign ups. Yes. So it's already getting lots of momentum within the community. So just remember July 7, ten to 11:30PM for this virtual demo. It's the event of the summer. Everybody will wanna be there. That's awesome. And, John, which kind of leader should attend this? Anybody, I would think. I mean, I think as they're important, they might tap out in terms of, , okay. This is getting too technical, and I think that's fine. , as soon as it starts to get technical, I would probably just it's fine to leave. I don't think we're ever once we go once we'd we'd make that transition to technology, we won't be trash transitioning back to more higher level. To the vision level? Yeah. And so is there any particular point of, , AI adoption inside the church that's required for them to attend? No. I don't think so. I think that varying on your level of skills, it it'll be more or less I think you're there's gonna be a lot of AI words flying around. But Great. And you can't you're never gonna learn the words until you get, , indoctrinated into those words. But it is something that is in '19, but it's not fully in '19. So we're we're rolling it out to a few select churches just to make sure everything's working just right and that the and that the guardrails are are good. So, yeah, definitely come for that. I I do think there are a few other, , tools that are are coming out that are are trying to get access to your data. Actually, there's a breadth of tools all over the place that are trying to get to be your AI tool of choice. I think when we look at that, though, it's important that we understand how to select one of those tools wisely. So a few things I'd just throw out there. You have to think about security. Security has to be the first class of of who can get access to this data. Your church data that lives inside of Rock is probably the most important and sensitive data inside your church. Unless you have some kind of counseling tool, it's there's nothing more important than this data or or more securable than this data. So so security has to be first and foremost in our minds. Also, AI should never have direct access to the database. So if your AI tool is using SQL to get access to the data, that's a very dangerous thing. AI should have to go through managed code to get to your data, and that helps ensure that security is taken into account, but also that the business logic is taken into account. Mhmm. The database just represents the raw data. But above that, it's a whole bunch of business rules, and you need to make sure that AI respects the business rules. Otherwise, the AI can do a good job in inferring your table structure, but it had no idea, , what's valid data and how that data should should be there. And, that's what we've done. All of our tools run through our managed code, run through all the managed business rules that the UI does. So that helps ensure that everything is exactly what it is. That managed code also acts as kind of a gatekeeper just to make sure, hey. What AI, what you're doing makes sense. So anything that goes against your Ross the Ross SQL is probably unless you're building just, , one report view only. Maybe. But even then, you're bypassing security a 100%. So what's that one question you should ask an AI vendor if they're trying to sell you on their product? What's your security model? There you go. And how do you get data access? Probably, if you need a second one. I think if you're not look doing those two things, it's really AI malpractice. It's a quick win, but it'll have regrets. Remember, AI does make mistakes. Mhmm. And I think if you give it that middle ground that has to go through your your managed code, you're giving it a little bit you're you're you're getting protection there. Right? So you can decide. Is this does this seem right? Your code gets to decide that. Yeah. This is definitely a great one to share with decision makers at churches, and try and equip this little segment so it'll be easy for people to send to their leaders. Thanks for, , talking about AI, catching us up. There's a lot moving forward with the community. Yep. It's very exciting to hear. Emily, can you turn us towards the main topic for this conversation? Yes. I've been really looking forward to this one. So before we start talking about the who, right, because we're gonna drop a name that I think people are gonna know and be excited about, let's talk about this first. I think most ministries and churches treat excellence as a feeling. Right? But the person that we wanna talk about today actually treats excellence as something you can build, you can actually measure it. So it's, , tangible, and you can repeat it. So at the Ritz Carlton yeah. That probably gave it away. Right? The excellence was something that was never left to chance. It was something that was built into the systems of the way they worked. And I think that has a lot of application, for churches. So the person we're referring to, if you haven't guessed yet and I see some people on our socials have been guessing. Mhmm. Some correctly. Yeah. It's been fun to see that. Yep. Is Horst Schulz. So he is the cofounder and longtime president of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Group and later followed, helped found the Capella Hotel Group. So he's got a lot of background experience. He's also written a well known book called Excellence Wins. And that's kind of a summary of all of the things that he's built and learned when it comes to excellence and hospitality, which is a lot. He definitely has the chops to talk about this because Ritz Carlton is the only hotel company to win the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award twice. Oh. And that's a very high standard to hit. That's not some just hospitality hotel, , little check mark. So, what is his approach? It's based on engineering. It's not based on charm. , you think about hospitality sometimes and you think , oh, it's just the niceness. It's the twinkle in the eye. It's someone being nice. But it's actually a very engineered response when it comes to Ritz Carlton. He he built it. Yeah. , for somebody it sounds luxury hotels wouldn't apply to our audience of churches on tight budgets. So why does it? Well, that's a great question. But I would say, , in his book, it's his observations aren't really about luxury or about money. It's really about consistency and about discipline. Right? Excellence is doing ordinary things well, consistently well every time, regardless of who's doing it. Yeah. And, , I think how does this apply to churches? Well, that's what they want to happen, right, when it comes to greeting their people and moving their people, from I just walked in the door for the first time to someone that's actually leading in their ministry. And his organization and his books have become one of the few companies that we actually put into our training for our organizations. Yep. So Ritz Carlton is one of the slides that we show, and, , I love his his quote is, ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. And we talk about that a lot with our staff, and there's just so much that that you can learn from that. It's gonna be great to have him on stage. Yeah. For those of you who've not read the book, his basic core idea in that book is that standard beats intention every day. Inconsistency is what he believes kills excellence. It's not based on an individual person. You have to have, , this systems thinking applied to hospitality, which is a topic that we've been bringing up more and more here in the podcast. Good intentions, he says, produce inconsistent experiences, but standards produce really reliable ones. That's everybody's job. And he talks about a couple cool things I wanted to point out in his book. One of them is this daily lineup concept. So they have 24 important customer service, standards. And every morning, every shift actually, on every property, they hold a department wide standup where the leader brings up one of their 24 company standards, talks about why it's so important, and then applies a recent event that's happened in the life of that hotel to that standard, and they talk about it. So they're building in this repeatable understanding and they're anchoring the value of that to people's, , actual experiences, and that really reinforces their standards. So it's repetition plus story that helps anchor that for people. And I think what he understood that most leaders miss is that people don't drift from your standards because they forgot the rules. They drift because nobody kept connecting them to the ideas behind the rules. Mhmm. People don't relate to orders and directions. They relate to motives and, , objectives. , what are we trying to accomplish, and how do I feel about that? Yeah. I love that daily stand up idea. Yeah. A small practice that if you just stick to, it'll have a great outcome. Yeah. Absolutely. Doable for small teams. Yeah. And what's funny is I think we often rely on, , our onboarding training for volunteers or staff. Hey, we'll tell you about our vision, our culture, what we're trying to accomplish, and then we hope that it sticks. But in reality, when I was on staff at a church, our senior leader, John, I'm sure you remember this, used to say that vision leaks all the time. Right? So if your vision is being approached only in your onboarding experience, I promise it's leaking. So Schultz designed this system. Right? He's taking people, as I mentioned before, from a stranger walking through the door to a loyal guest. And that's where I think it connects to churches. Because people in churches come in unknown. They're visiting. They might be nervous when they walk in the front door, and we're trying to help people become disciples and and maybe even, hopefully, leaders inside our ministry. So understanding how excellence is something that can be systematized and reliably brought to people is very important for churches. Most churches have the desire, the intention, but many don't have a blueprint. And that actually leads to something pretty interesting, John, that you've been working on. Yeah. So for the last few months, just kinda drawing some of the lessons over the last almost twenty five years of of working with churches, especially as we pioneer into new spaces within Rock, trying to understand, okay. So Rock is a tool, but, , what's the process here? How do we help people do exactly what Hortz is talking about? What is a blueprint? And so, I've been working to put together a blueprint, something that, I'm calling ministry by design. This isn't something that is, necessarily a spark thing. It's just something we hope to just put out there for everybody. It's it's just some thoughts and some theories, some structure. I think people would probably find that there's nothing incredibly novel about it. I think its novelness is probably the fact that it exists, and and it gives you a basically a blueprint blueprint. It takes all of these concepts and gives you something that you can kinda pattern off of. So that's something we're gonna be talking about at Rx. It's it's there. It's, again, it's not it's not enforced. We're trying to take some of these concepts and build it into Rock. And really, what it tries to describe is how do you take someone from being completely unknown at your church all the way through to being a leader in your church, as well as some other important side support processes providing care and discipleship. But basically, again, a blueprint, you need something to latch onto. And I think most churches, there are some, but most churches don't have anything. They're just kind of grasping at individual concepts from different churches and not a holistic blueprint. Yeah. And what I really about this is that it takes a a it's not turning a church into a, , a corporation. Right? Right. It's taking a person who's maybe nervous showing up for the first time and helping them take their next steps and helping them know what to do because someone designed a path forward for them. Yeah. And it's not something that tells you, you have to have this course and then that course. It's more of , hey. You need to take people through these phases and make sure you get the phases in order and making sure as you plug in your ministry approach that you understand that, okay, this class, what is its primary purpose? Is it to move a person from this step to that step? But I think that oftentimes, we just put these programs in place. And we have goals for them. In fact, we might have too many goals for them in some cases. And it just, again, gives you a blueprint to kinda think through what you're doing and provide a way to improve what you're doing. Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, that ties back to so many of the conversations that we've had so far about simplicity. And I would love to hear from our churches what is, , one point in this timeline or this framework where you think that the handoff could be improved or where you notice that people are falling off. Let us know in the chat. I think that information will come in handy in the future. So why are we talking about Horst Schulz today? Yep. That's a great question. Here's our news. Horst Schulz is going to be with us at Rx twenty six. He's gonna be one of our keynote speakers. We're so excited about this. He brought this system of excellence to the Ritz Carlton, which is the standard of excellence out there. Right? And he's gonna be bringing it to church leaders who can absolutely apply some of these same principles to really build that excellence into the systems of their church. That's awesome. And I think then the next step would be then we'll talk about ministry by design at the at the conference. So that first day, I think, is gonna be a really good day of we're gonna have some really good AI content, especially for pastors looking at not only from a technology perspective of AI, but a cultural perspective of AI and where it's going and how and when to use it. Obviously, we'll have a lot of Rock updates. Then we'll have Schulz talking about how systems work. And I think really, it's gonna be really encouraging because he's also a Christian too. And so how do you take this person who's made incredibly powerful brands and then apply those same things to church? It's gonna be pretty awesome. And then boom. Here's going to be one idea, one blueprint that you could take back and and use within your church. Yeah. It sounds our conference is gonna be so special this year. And I know our team are already getting excited for it. We're working hard to keep improving and making it valuable for the churches, for the leadership, for nontechnical roles, and for the entire community. So Just keep in mind, though, your leadership do does not know about this conversation. So the only way to get that value to your leaders is for you to share it. Yeah. That's great. So to recap everything from that we've talked about, we have the AI Summit coming up on July 7, and we have Hort Scholz at Rx twenty six for November 3. Thank you guys for joining us. We'll see you next time.