Podcast Episode 108: Episode 81: Rock Growth

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Join Jon & Emily as they highlight the growth of Rock and the exciting things coming this year!

Transcribed Content

This episode of Rockcast is brought to you by Rock partner Triumph Tech, a full service specialist partner. Rock partners provide crucial support for Spark Development Network and important services for the Rock community. Connect with Triumph Tech today at rockrms.com/partners. Welcome back to Rockcast, the podcast where we take you behind the scenes with Spark Development Network, give you updates on Rock, the product, and the community, and basically keep you in the loop. I'm Emily Forman. I have Jon Edmiston here today, and we have lots of exciting updates that are kicking off the the new year here for our team. So we always have to start with where are we with Rock? Well, we have a lot of things going on right now. So, 10 is obviously been out and out in the wild, people are upgrading and that's great. We have 10.2, lots of new things going into 10.2, a lot of bug fixes in ten two and some new features in ten two. A lot people have been asking lately what is the release date for 10/02. And on point releases, we really don't have, , a schedule. We put it out when it's when it's needed. Either there's enough bugs that need to be squashed and and put out that we put it out. Right now, we're trying to hold back a little bit longer because there's some more things that we wanna add to it before we release it. We've been in, several features going on at once. Right? We had nine and ten kind of in co development and 11 is actually in development now. So we're kind of untangling some of these feature sets and trying to get, enough, things into ten two that we can build off of in the 10 o branch. So one of the things that's kind of interesting is on these point releases, we can't make model changes in Rock, unless we plan it ahead. Okay? So we can't make model changes in 11 o until we finish making model changes in ten two. You can only have that model change token is kind of how we refer refer to it in one place. So we're kinda holding back and adding things into ten two so we can build more and more features in 10 that won't require 11. And and why do we do that? It's mainly because there's there's clients who'd want things added to core that everybody's gonna be able to get and and and take advantage of, but they have specific due dates. Mhmm. So for instance, , camp season's coming up. That's something that we've been really planning for, and and there's some, new tools that we wanna add. And so, that's kinda holding up a ten two going out. If it's if it's just simply a bug patch thing, we probably would start to release it now. But we wanna hold on to it just for a couple more weeks, before we send it to alpha and beta testing so that we can get, the the the framework or the foundation built for some of these new features coming out. So that's why it's taking maybe a little bit longer for us to put it out there, but there's so many good things in it. And it's gonna it's gonna add features, but it's actually gonna have the foundation that we can build more features on, before the summer season. That said, 11 is still going. There's there's lots of features being put into 11. So it's it's pretty active back here. And it's and it's it's a little bit difficult to kinda figure out, , which branch are we putting this into? And, , there's a lot of communication going on to making sure that we keep everything straight. Yes. It's definitely fast paced around here when and the planning required to build in what feature goes where, how we map it out, how we hit a, a church deadline, how we hit internal deadlines, deadlines, and and keeping that all flexible in real time is is a challenge, but it's pretty exciting to see it come together. Yeah. I mean, even this week, there's a lot of deadlines that we're working on. In fact, that's why, , Nick's not able to join us, today. He's right now actively working on a very big project for a church, that has a a deadline that's, and everything's going really smooth. So it's it's great to see that, but unfortunately, he couldn't be with us today. For a good cause. Yes. Well, if anyone who's listening here has a desire to see what happens around here and at the same time really influence their skill set in the Rock world, the masterclass that's coming up next, the first one of 2020 is really something that you wanna be a part of. Mhmm. It is held here on premises. You have the opportunity to tour our offices and say hello. But you also have the opportunity to sit in a classroom with a a small number of people with a Rock instructor who's on our team to help you really understand how to administrate and use Rock and and understand its feature sets so you can go back home and be the trainer of your trainers. There are a lot of people who've told us this is on their wish list for this year. We haven't yet seen all of those people sign up for this class. So one thing to be aware of is the way we typically see our registration patterns. They fill up pretty quickly at the closer to the end. So if you're considering doing that and you just haven't gotten your registration in yet, I know it's been the holidays, it's been very hectic. Getting the right approvals in place and getting all those things done has been a bit delayed. But I would say you'll probably wanna get on that here in the next few days, because we do expect to see that class filling right up based on the feedback we've had from the community. Also, I think it was last just the fourth quarter of last year where we broke 100 overtime masterclass grads. And we've been able to really see the rise in, the community at the same time online in chat, and it's pretty exciting. So definitely something you wanna be a part of, something benefits you greatly in your job if you are, on a staff with a church that's using Rock, benefits the community, benefits, it benefits everyone. A huge asset to your church though. So make sure and get signed up for that. Yeah. Plus the weather is amazing right now and this is a perfect time to come out. And you these classes really just bring a sense of community just to that class. We could all go out and eat Mhmm. On one night. But we really find that the people who come to these classes, they stay in this tight group and then they meet up with each other at the conference. And it's kind of a lifelong little group that they go to for questions. It's a graduating class. Right, it really is. It's cool to see that community. Everybody shares contact information and has their little go to group. So it's definitely a a huge asset. Right. And speaking of things you don't want to miss, we have to talk about the Rock Conference coming up this year because we are putting so much work into it right now, and we're very excited about it. , it's going to be a little bit, different this year in that we are working based on feedback we've had for years on how to restructure things so the whole community can be together around the clock in one space. And I think this year, we've really landed on a solution that's gonna be fantastic, at the Renaissance Hotel here, in the Phoenix area. Stay in the room on premises, go to the conference sessions during the day. We're we're in great communication with the event planners at the hotel space to make sure we have all sorts of open areas and seating in the evenings for people to connect and some really fun things planned to help with community connections in the evenings. So this is an absolute must. Yeah. And the lobby space that, , we have is six stories tall. We can be there all night just talking and there's some really great just spaces in that area that, , people can kinda either stand or sit and have, , little breakouts. Mhmm. I'm really excited. It's it's there's not gonna be a lot of sleep, those nights. This is gonna be solid community time. It's gonna be fun too. It's gonna be pretty fantastic. And we'll have some things we'll do to help facilitate some of those interactions and some off the cuffs. There'll be lots of opportunities and and angles to take on that. Yeah. One interesting thing that we're also trying to add is we we named it Rock Experience because we really wanted to for people to be able to experience Rock. And we've we've had that. , I I feel we've done a pretty good job with that. But this year, we're gonna really break it out. So we've already been talks, with Zebra and some other vendors to come out and have more expo, so you can kind of see the actual printers. You can talk to a Zebra rep. You can ask questions about it. Cool. I think so many times we see all these printers that they have, but we always go with the standbys because we know they're gonna work and everybody's using them. But sometimes you're , I wonder what that would be . I wonder if I could if I could just hold it, touch it, ask some questions about it. I might be interested in that one. We wanna have much more conversations around that so you can see touch, not just printers, but, , lots of different things. Zebra's gonna bring out some, , tablets and lots of cool stuff. And we're trying to get some other hardware and software folks to actually see, touch, play with conference. Mhmm. That will be fantastic. That'll be a little bit different than just experiencing it through maybe our registration or check-in or some other things that we've done. The real hands on experience, I think, will be highly beneficial. Mhmm. So that said, if you are a vendor listening to this and you have, hardware that interacts and is compatible with Rock, reach out to us if you'd some booth expo space at the conference, and we'd we'd love to chat. We are definitely right now actively getting our sponsors put together for the event. Mhmm. We are actively working on our speaker lineup. Many of you may have been contacted by us. If you haven't been and you have a topic or two that, you have in mind, something you've learned as a best practice, a project that went really well at your church in Rock over the past year, please do reach out to us and let us know. We're anticipating needing around 60 or so speakers this year, probably a few more. So definitely are interested in hearing what you have to say. If we've asked you and you haven't replied yet, it might be just because you're thinking about what that looks . That's all stuff we can iron out as we go forward. We also need some people that can volunteer to help in tracks for people who are new and and helping with a few things that too. So if you can if you'll be there and you could help us out with some of that, that's fantastic. Whether or not you have your topic in mind, let us know. And, we may have some opportunities where we need someone, to help with something and we already know what it is too. Yeah. And I think one of the exciting things about this conference, talking about the expo, talking about the speakers is I feel feel this is the first time where space is not a limitation. Yes. It's really what do we wanna do? And there's so much space that I mean, conference expo area where for the vendors and where we'll be eating is so big. I mean, you could play two hockey games in there. It's so huge. And, it's just nice not being limited by It really is. We've always taken the feedback seriously that we've gotten from people after the conference in our surveys. But some of the things we've had to say, yeah, I know. That that would be really nice that we do have a limitation on on space or on, , some other, type of thing that we haven't been able to address in the past. And we've really kind of blown some of those limits out this year. Mhmm. Yeah. Pretty fantastic. So if your registration's not in place, please, do set that up. If you're a sponsor, check out our sponsor page and look at the options there. Reach out if you have questions about anything. We expect to have a lot more information with speaker lists and that type of thing up on the website in February, early February. So keep checking back to see as our tracks and speakers begin to evolve and be made public. Yeah, super excited by it. And we're actively working on it major right now. lots of times we've put in this. I the conference just happened, but in a sense, it's close to happening again. It is. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, we are doing a fun event for the community the night before conference starts. So when you're booking your travel, make sure you're coming in Monday morning at the latest and you're staying through Thursday morning at the earliest. Otherwise, you're bound to miss something and feel regretful about it and not be able to make those last minute changes to accommodate. Yeah. We've always intentionally made it a two day conference. I mean, I think most people would probably make it two and a half days, but we really felt that that extra half day is always, when they do that, is always kind of the wasted time. We're really trying to compact this in. So don't try to compact it further. Right. Because it's already compacted tight. A lot of people treat that extra half day as sort of optional anyway. And that's, , not really fair to the speakers and, not really what we were going for. So don't cut off extra time, I think is Right. A good message. You've already booked all that time and squeezed it in. Yes. So get your conference registration in and book your hotel rooms. You have to do both of those. You don't wanna be staying somewhere else. You wanna be staying right on-site or you might be missing the the whole point of what we're doing here, which is to keep everybody together. So make sure and get those registrations in. There are limited room registrations, so you'll want to do that sooner rather than later. And we've worked really hard to get those room rates really low. We really have. It's a great deal for that That's a huge deal. So if you have any questions about anything and that's been holding up your registration, reach out, let us know. We'll help you, get the answers that you need on those. Yeah. So it's 2020. It's kinda hard to believe. I'm still kind of having shock every time I write the year down. I have to pause for a minute, sometimes scribble it out. I know I'll get this soon. I'm I'm working really hard on getting my brain up to speed with current dates. But the other thing that we've noticed beyond just the year changing, the calendar changing is our dev team is growing. Yes. So we've, in the last week added an additional developer to our dev team and we're about to add another one next week. So, this is the fruit of many, many months, literally many, many months of searching and interviewing and, praying, for. So and it's finally coming through, and it's it's pretty exciting. In fact, the one that's coming tomorrow, we've been talking to that, individual for gosh. I feel it's over six months Mhmm. Waiting for the right time and and just waiting for the the timing to be right. So really excited about the additional horsepower to the team. It that always in the beginning, that ramp up is it takes time and and energy, but we're excited to do that and to build out the team further. And then even long term, have now more horsepower to have to pour fuel into features and make sure your architecture and requirements are all typed up and ready for all of the additional work that they can do. But we're super excited, by the individuals and what they're gonna be able to contribute to the team. Definitely. It's exciting too because I think this shows out the faithfulness of our community in buying the vision of what we're doing in supporting it and continuing to show up and really buying into the model. All of this is possible because of the community. And so we're excited to be able to begin paying that back with the composition of our team and the work that we're able to do. Yeah. And I really hope that those churches see us as an extension of their team. I mean, we really are. And so in a sense, they're getting additional resources to their team, which is gonna let us to move a little faster and, also be able to do more, on both the professional services side and on the core side. Absolutely. What an exciting way to kick off a new year. And those two sides are really are this two sides of the same coin because the professional service side is really adding stuff into core Right. That everybody gets. So it's interesting how, , they often seem two things two different things, but in actuality, they're just, the same thing. Right. And we've had people say before to a developer, on our staff or two, are you now are you a core developer or are you working on, projects for churches? And our developers can't really tell you they're one or the other because our projects are all part of the same release cycles and and everybody works on something here and something there. And, so we don't really divide the team up that way. Yeah. And I think over time, it it does seem it might just be a trend temporarily, but maybe not, that the amount of custom work we're doing that doesn't go into core is actually going down. Right. Almost all that work is in core, and that's pretty cool. And just the amount of churches saying, hey, I really want to build something not just for myself, but for all churches is just unbelievable. And even some of them are saying, hey, if it takes a little bit more time or money, I I want it to be used for everybody. Just let me know. Let's talk about that. And that again blows you away. Absolutely. That is fantastic. And then we have these interesting conversations about development cycles and timing. And that's one of the reasons as we were just talking about that we build these functionalities into our dot releases so that we can continue to fill those needs for the churches we're working with. Yeah. A lot of times it kinda feels , , trying to have to arrange all the all the pots to catch everything because you and you gotta do it in a certain way because there's certain limitations. It's almost a puzzle game that you have to do. Right. It's very much a puzzle game. Yeah. With different rules that you can't okay. Can't do this unless you do that. And and so it's kind of fun, although looking forward to having fewer, spinning plates or branches in our terms, going. So within a few weeks, we'll have a few less branches to have to worry about. That'll be nice. Yeah. Now all of this takes some serious, as you said, planning. The architecture is a a major part of what we do around here. And we've begun talking about it a little more because it is such a major thing and we we reference it a lot. , we're not just gonna build something for today. We're going to build something that interacts with everything the right way and is is future compatible as we can make it. So we've started to field some questions about what our architecture best practices are and the way we do that. John, can you share a little bit about what you're thinking about on that front? Yeah. So I think in one the last podcasts, we were talking about how we're trying to, flesh out some of our best practices. And a lot of that goes back to stuff you're working on with the team in terms of having a codex, which is kind of a fancy weird term we use for a document of all of your lessons learned for each of the different areas on our team. So every team member here at Spark is now working on a codex. It could be that some of them are working on it together and as a as a small team of of, , people who work on the same types of things. So it might be a consulting codex or might be a technical architecture codex or a development developer codex. We've had that one for a while. But everybody's working on putting these best practices into paper. And I would recommend everybody do that Mhmm. Even in the community. Some people sounds , well, why would I do that? , I don't need to do that. , I know it. But I think from a healthy, mature organization, everybody should have their how they do their job on paper. Some people would again say, well, why would I do that? Because it puts me out of a job if I yeah. Exactly. Because you should be growing. Mhmm. The job you're in today should not be the job you're in in in a year or five years. So you're really helping onboard the person who's gonna help you move on to bigger, better things. We always say here too, well, if we keep growing, it's unlikely you're you're gonna be doing the same everything in your job, you won't be able to do that. It's gonna be expanding. So you're gonna help the person come on next to you. And when that person starts, you can't tell them everything because you don't know it. You've forgotten it, you just do it, it's part of your habit. There's so many things that I'm , Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you need to do that. And that person's been here a year and I haven't told them that because I didn't write it down. So we're going through that. And I think we mentioned it, on the last podcast and a couple people have actually reached out and said, hey. I'm really interested in that. When is that gonna be ready? And so, we're really surprised and and excited that people are excited. So we're gonna put together some videos to kinda go over that. But I think in the meantime, we're actually gonna, on the podcast, go over some of those concepts. I feel if we wait for the videos, it's gonna take too long. Mhmm. But probably in the next series of podcasts, we'll start sharing with you how we, for instance, how would we interview a client to get their requirements? That's a very interesting, process. , you have to steer it right. Otherwise, you can come out the other side with not enough information, or maybe you have come out with a solution that's not optimal because you listened and did exactly what they wanted, and they didn't really know what they wanted. So we have some tips and tricks to, gather those requirements, and so we'll share those on the next podcast. But we we are documenting that for ourselves, but then we wanna make that content available for the community. We're not gonna lock it up within the spark walls. As it becomes ready to be shared, we want to put that out. And so I think we have one that originally we didn't think would be of interest, but maybe it would, is how we do estimating. So we're gonna put out a video on three point estimating, and how to do that. It's really a great tool, that gives you tighter estimates yet still lets you think through the risk of each of the items, which I think is what's great. It's not it's not random guessing and padding. So how do you think that three point estimating could be applied inside the church world? Well, I'm guessing that almost everybody listening to this podcast is asked to do work, with their organization or they might have a project within the organization. And, of course, every senior leader wants to know how long it's gonna take. Mhmm. Now sometimes they may not the level of that oversight might vary, but the professionalism that you can give back should always be consistent. I mean, if they're not, , breathing down your neck for the deadline, I'm sure they're curious of when it is. And if you can go back to them with a well considered deadline and talk to him about probabilities of it hitting a certain mark, I think they're gonna be impressed. It builds up confidence in in you and your role, but it also helps you do your role. So we have a a saying here, which seems kind of obvious, but it's so important that we have a ready, aim, fire mentality. So we always want to prepare our work. We want to figure out how we're gonna do something before we tell a client how much it's gonna cost. And, again, most of you are probably going, really? What that's so special about that? But we live in a culture that's ready, fire, aim. We don't to do that prework. We wanna jump right in and just start working on it, and that is, , literally the worst thing you can do in technology. You do not wanna be figuring it out as you go. I mean, literally, your code, your solution, your workflow, whatever you're doing is gonna be not good if you're figuring it out as you go. And I have to be honest, think in in the past, we've we've we've struggled a little bit with that and we've had a lot of rework because of that. , our standards are high, so we're never gonna let that work go out, but it means that we had to rework stuff or re factor stuff. And you don't wanna re factor something that hasn't even seen the light of day yet. Right. That that that's telling you that you you ready, fired, aimed. And, there's this in our culture this huge desire just to get started, and we feel we need to get prepared. I think there's a famous quote attributed to Lincoln that I'm probably gonna butcher, but he he basically say, hey, if I was given an hour to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first fifty minutes sharpening my axe. And that's what ready, aim, fire does. It just really is sharpening the axe before we use it, making sure we know exactly what we're gonna do. And that three point estimate is is the starting point really of that. Once you get the requirements, which we're gonna talk about maybe in another podcast, it's really how do you plan that estimate that's that's so key. So if you find yourself painted into that proverbial corner, it might mean the next time around add your add to your expectations of planning. Yeah. And think it makes it more defendable because I think when you watch the video, you're gonna see that it's really, helps you get a number of hours, but then it can give you a confidence level too. So, hey, , here's my number of hours. I feel it's gonna take twenty hours, but it could be as high as twenty four or as low as sixteen. And you're gonna have, , true facts and statistics to back that up. And so I think and and showing that risk will make maybe the spreads even wider in your in your senior leadership would be , why the huge spread? And you can break down your work. Well, here, , here's the things I'm uncertain about. I know what I'm gonna do, but I'm uncertain how long it's that those things are gonna take. And I think when they see that, they're gonna have confidence in that, okay, you're just not being lazy or padding your estimate. I mean, that's the worst thing that we don't want to do either. We don't wanna pad our estimates because of uncertainty. We wanna approach that uncertainty in a structured way and make sure that the statistics back it up. And, , uncertainty is a is a fact. But when you're just kinda licking your thumb and sticking it in the air and going, yeah, it's about, , let's add some, , add six hours for padding on that. Yeah. That that's scary. Mhmm. Because that level of planning means either someone's gonna overpay or you still didn't do your due diligence and think it through and you're gonna come in lower and now that's you you lose money on the project. If we lose money on the project, that's very bad because we're nonprofit and, , that we didn't pad it. And also that means someone else has to pay for that and we don't want that, . We also don't want a scenario where one person takes requirements and, gets an estimate in place that everyone agrees to for an amount of time. And then someone else has to do the work and realizes that that it really wasn't the solution wasn't well fleshed out. Right. And that padding can't necessarily make up for that. Sometimes it's something isn't possible a certain way and and the rest of the the action items inside that project require that first part to be feasible and and maybe it wasn't. Right. And that's that's again human nature too. , we're very, free with other people's time and stress sometimes not as much with our own. So I always try to to when I'm trying to estimate, , I'm I'm imagining me doing it. Mhmm. , how would I feel about this estimate? And then I play other games , okay. Well, if I if I, had a thousand dollar wager on that number, how how much how much tension would I feel? Now I don't let that let me pad the estimate, but I I just use it as a tension factor. , okay. I'm feeling tense about that. So let's let's reconsider this. Maybe I need to go in and and do a little bit more work to figure out exactly how. Maybe my tension is about I'm uncertain about how I'm gonna do it. If that's the case, stop. , the the risk factor of a three point estimate, if you don't know how, that's not the that's not why you're putting risk in there. Go figure out the how. It's more about, , okay. I know how I'm gonna do it. I'm just not sure. , the maybe I'm setting up DNS, and last time I set it up, , I had problems with my DNS service, and that took me a little bit longer. It's for planning for things that, those types of uncertainty. Never for , well, need to do workflow. I'm not sure how how I'm gonna do it. ? I would plan out, okay, these are the major actions I would use and, because if you have to ever fall back to using a SQL action in a workflow, it's gonna take longer than a normal action and you you need to know that. That's a good point. So all of this is basically telling us I think that plan for a considerable amount of time in planning Mhmm. And the whole project will go better. Sharpening your axe. Mhmm. I mean, I'm not sure if you ever chopped a tree with a dull axe. That's not fun. I haven't ever chopped a tree with any sort of axe. Really? I have not. Have to Chainsaw? No. I do have a sister who is certified in chainsaw. Chopping chainsaw, I don't know. I once built a addition onto my uncle's log cabin and we went out to the forest and dragged the trees out. And so a lot of chainsawing involved. And I have to say he was really good. every time we went out, he was before he was out, the night before he's out there sharpening his chain and, bringing extras and, , that guy was very well prepared. And it's amazing how much a chainsaw will cut with a sharp blade versus a not so sharp blade. I feel I need a field trip at this point. Yeah. Jackson Hole. Alright. We'll have to get on that later. Alright. So we've been having some great conversations with the team also as we kick off the year. And John, you ran across something super interesting that you brought back to the team at our most recent staff meeting about our mindfulness loop. And it was a concept that I hadn't thought of ever before, but it really resonated. Can you share a little bit about that? Sure. It's probably a concept you hadn't heard of, but you do it. , it's built into the way you think, which is what I think was fascinating to me when I read about it or watched a video about it. So it was New Year's Day and I was, , just watching some YouTube videos trying to figure out, , okay. What's gonna be different this year for me? And it was more on planning and thinking, patterns. And this one guy said, hey. As one of his ways of how successful people get things done is is we the concept he called the mindfulness loop. And he basically said successful people have a mindfulness loop running inside their head, and they're constantly have these dependencies in their life. So my dependencies might be something , and I think there's two levels. There's a macro level dependency. So mine might be, well, I'm the technical architect working on Rock. So that's a pretty broad thing. Right? And then there's micro dependencies. I need to work on this feature for v 11, maybe digital signatures. That's micro. It's very very down in the weeds. But we have these dependencies, and basically what we need to do, successful people do, is they is they think through these dependencies all the time. So they're every week or every day, they're okay. As a technical architect, what do I need to be doing better? , what what needs my attention? What do I need to be pushing on? And so they're constantly in their head putting these mindfulness these dependencies through a mindfulness loop. And they're always, okay. What do I need to do next on this? What do need to do next on that? And I find I I do that a lot. , I'm driving pretty much all day. I'm just thinking about something else. Okay. What do need to do next on this? How can I make this better? And I'm keeping notes, and I email myself, , constantly. , over the weekend, I might email myself 30 times different ideas or articles or things to research. And so what he's saying though is if you don't have that loop yet, and I mean yet because you can get it, there's a there's a way you can get that, and that's first to be intentional is to map out your dependencies at the macro level and the micro level. And then you wanna set up time on your calendar, block it, do it, and think through all those dependencies and say, how do I need to push this forward? What can I do next? What's waiting for me? , there's a lot of entropy as systems without having energy poured into them, , go into chaos. And that's basically what this is saying is that you have these dependencies whether you them or not. They're assigned to you. You have them. People are expecting them. And they may not all be work based. It might be even, , , raising your kids or or your marriage. Then if you don't pour energy into them, they're just gonna just go into chaos. And I think that's kind of what this principle is about. And the the successful people I know, I can see them doing that because they're coming proactively saying, okay. We need to worry about this or that. I mean, you do it all the time, even small things this podcast, you're preparing what we're gonna talk about, you're preparing the special guests. No one's telling you to do that. It's in a mindfulness loop where you're thinking ahead and saying, okay, what do I need to do to prepare all this out? And I think the light bulb moment for me was just hearing it articulated. Definitely, I've never heard that spoken before, but it is very interesting. And I think maybe if you do that today and you haven't thought about it, it might have originated from pain points in the past. Because building that awareness helps to keep you from getting hit upside the head with something unexpected in an area where you were supposed to be on top of it and you weren't. Sometimes that happens and you don't realize that some responsibility was handed off to you or that it exists in sort of this weird netherworld and nobody cares there, but it will impact you in the future. So I'm pretty sure I can look back on things in my life and say, oh, that was really painful. I got hit once or twice by that one. And I thought, how do I prevent getting hit the next time? And over time you build up these mental processes and systems where you're , oh, gotta check-in on that again. Make sure that's not gonna hit me or hit someone else that I care about. And over time, this framework gets put together. It'd probably be pretty hard to just grab the framework and wear it immediately without that awareness and without kind of building up, start with those pain points and say, how can I make this better in the future? Right. It's really developing that habit if you don't have it. And for those who don't have the mindfulness loop, they're basically letting life happen to them and then and then they're forced to react constantly. And I think that's kind of what you just described is this, you got hit on the side of the head and you had to react and then you realize reacting just doesn't work. Mean No, there aren't any good options left at that point. You have bad choice a, bad choice b, and bad choice c. Which one do you wanna take? And you might be able to survive your your career or your job. At that point, it's probably a job and a career. But you're constantly it's not fun. It's this tension of always being hit by the brick and just learning to buck up and take it versus getting out ahead of it and realizing you don't have to be in the way of the brick. You can move. And that's true for projects and tasks, but I think it's true for relationships too. A lot of times we look back on a relationship that feels it's crumbling suddenly and think, did this come from? How did this happen? And then if we look back, we realize, well, maybe we weren't giving it great care and feeding over time. Yeah. I think the person who was doing the video was really he mentioned that a lot of the Sprite, people who have it might've come from their childhood. Their parents instilled it either most of it not intentionally, but sometimes, , unintentionally. He he references a moment when he looks back and his mom one day, he was a he's a teenager and halfway through the day, his mom yells up from down below, hey, did you take a shower yet today? And he's thinking , of all the things to say right now, why why were you thinking but she had a mindfulness loop, have my kids bathe today. , , that all of sudden it comes to her mind in her pattern of mindfulness loop. And he thinks that by living in a culture that, it kinda developed these things. And I can look back at my childhood and I I can see that. , my parents definitely had a mindfulness loop that I can I can probably say I inherited through nurturing? Right? Sometimes nurturing might not be the right term, it might be bricks. You get thrown enough bricks, you're , okay, die. But it's gift, . Right. I make a joke about that but it really is a gift. It's learning to anticipate those things. Okay. So that gives me a lot of hope that at some point, my nine year old son will develop a mindfulness loop about his own dirty socks. Yeah. When I I mean, my my mom would probably she would be in shock to know that I probably got a mindfulness loop, , in my younger years because I was definitely It didn't exhibit quite yet. Yeah. And I think, , sometimes you have a mindfulness loop. Some people have mindfulness loops, they choose not to listen to them. , that was probably me. , I knew I should do that, but I'm not gonna do that. ? And then over time, you mature, hopefully. That's flexing a little independence maybe. Or laziness, one of the two. Yeah, sometimes they're interwoven. Right. I wanna try that out for a while. I wanna see what being lazy feels right now. Oh, painful, I got hit upside the head. Yeah. Definitely. Well, is fun to see that kind of thing develop in your kids and to I'm not sure it's fun to see it develop in yourself but it does feel gaining competence. Right. And I feel the more you do it, the more success you're gonna see. And know, I can think back to my career. I in my long career in IT, I can I knew people in my in in previous jobs who yeah? Looking back, it's , don't know if they even realized had an idea that the future even existed because they never ever ever prepared themselves for it. They always put themselves in situations you're , what? You didn't plan for that? , I remember working at CCV, the the senior pastor Don Wilson, he would always say, and it was so true, he prepared for every single meeting he went into that day, sometimes a week ahead of time. And he already knew what he was gonna say, he knew what the other response was gonna be, and he would have his his, , second tier points already prepared. And in the beginning, I thought, well, that's a lot of preparation. Yeah. A lot of meetings. , that's that's that's interesting. But now I I really can see how that is helpful. He's already prepared himself for all those meetings. There's no surprises coming. And I look back and I'm , that's that's really smart. I know I've developed some things just, there are lot of tools out there basically that are that will help with all of this. And I'm a task oriented person, so I have to use a mindfulness loop to remind me to check-in on my relationships, not because they're not important to me, but because my brain always goes to, oh, check off all these things on the list and then I can go be with the people. Because I love people, vert. But that's not a very successful pattern. It's just the way I know that's my default. So I I use a lot of tools to help with my mindfulness loop in that area because that's my intention. It just isn't always my natural wiring. So I use all sorts of different tools for everything from renew this prescription so I don't have a gap in a prescription for somebody that I'm responsible for. Or I use reminders three weeks out from the birthdays of my friends and family. So I know that those are coming and I have time to do something. So I've even built in I used to have a reminder on someone's birthday, then I would get hit upside the head with that if I wanted to send a gift to my niece or nephew. And so I built in timeframes on that. So I have those on a personal side too, as well as on a business side. And I've over time adjust them and think back, did that go right? Did that not go right? How could I make that better? And eventually you kind of have this framework that helps you do life the way you want. Yeah, that's a good point that you can automate some of that too. And if you can, you should. You shouldn't. And , oddly, I struggle with guilt about that sometimes , Oh, that should be natural. I should be remembering that that is coming and preparing for that and doing it. And guess what? Life moving way too fast for what should be natural to be relied on. And so I would say use your human skills of empathy and of relationship and of all of those kinds of things, and then rely on technology for the parts that it can do. And then you have more capacity to dig into the really human characteristics of interacting with people and Yeah. I mean, the human brain is not good at memory, but ironically, computers are. Right. And in terms of creativity and and, innovation, people are really good at that and computers, not so good. So, , this is using the right storage mechanism and and and tool. So, anyway, I found that concept super helpful, and, I will be more intentional about it going forward. So I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah. It's it's makes me want to even do better at that too. But I think from a team perspective, it's helpful that we can all do that because it helps us back stop each other more. Otherwise, the person with the mindfulness loop becomes the backstop. And that's not really fair to that person. Plus it's not using them to their best. Forcing them to become the mom or dad in the situation to say, hey, your socks are still on the floor when it's not our socks. Right. And it makes sense if you have a nine year old but not really in a working environment. Right. It's kind of embarrassing. Right. It also uncovers some things assumptions. Maybe I'm assuming you've got it. You're assuming I've got it. Nobody's wrong. But the ball's about to drop and we wouldn't know it if we weren't, , having a conversation and adjusting our mindfulness loop. Yeah. That's great. Well, thanks for sharing that. That was wonderful. You also had a couple of really cool quotes that you shared at the last staff meeting I was hoping you could bring today too. Yeah, some of this, we can probably go and unpack in more detail when we talk about how to interview clients. But there's a great graphic designer who does a lot of great videos to help you become a better not just a designer, he does certainly does that, but more of a a better leader, a better, consultant, which is that even if you work in a church ministry, that's what you are. You're a consultant to your your ministry staffs. And he said that as you're talking through a solution or a need, understanding is more important than speed. And so sometimes I think there's a real rush to try to get those requirements and you wanna just kinda move on, but you don't quite fully understand it and that the message there is slow down, , make sure you understand exactly what they're saying and maybe even talk about that in the beginning that, hey, we're gonna I really wanna understand this, so it might take a little longer, which kinda goes into the next point, which is give voice to feelings or frustrations. They tend to diminish those frustrations and feelings, and reduce the intensity. And so we we call that internally calling the foul. And so basically saying, hey. Speak words that describe the foul and that, therefore, it removes the frustration to it. Mhmm. So, hey. Here's my fear in the end. There's gonna as we roll this out, there's there's gonna be some some turbulence here, and we just need to make sure that you you're aware of that. It's it's a difficult transition, and so we're gonna do our best. We're gonna try to get as much of it taken care of ahead of time, but there will be a few things that we need to clean up. If you say that, it takes away all the frustration, not all of it, but a lot of it when it when it actually happens. If you never say anything and it happens, they're , that's unexpected now. Right? So now the tension's , hey, wait, this is broken, this is broken, this is broken. And I remember back when we rolled out, Rock to CCV or at CCV, I had to do a a presentation of a month ahead or two months ahead about the the transition, how it's gonna go. And and one the things I I said is, , we're gonna change the engines on this plane in midflight. ? If anybody wants us to let us land for two or three weeks and not do any ministry, we'd be happy to do that, but we really don't feel that's what you want. So we're gonna change the engines midflight. That's okay. We're not gonna crash, but there will be a little bit of turbulence. So I just wanna call that out. Okay? And, it went really well because the day of or the week of, we did have, , a couple little things, nothing major, but, and the if I hadn't said anything, think there would have been issues and concerns. But we really we literally had people run up and say, hey. This isn't quite working right. Is that some of the turbulence you were mentioning? It's , yeah. Exactly. It is. I mean and because we gave it words and because we gave we've gave voice to that, it just neutralized a lot of that tension and frustration. And I think that's so important. And sometimes we know those things. We just choose not to say them because it it might be uncomfortable. It's a hundredth at the uncomfortable level saying it ahead of time than when you have to say in the moment because at that point, it's hard to trust that. Easy to trust someone who calls it ahead of time. And sometimes you might call it a foul that maybe doesn't even happen. , maybe that that thing didn't happen, but you could say, hey. What could happen what what commonly happens at this stage is you can see we can see these types of things. Or if we don't plan it well, this could happen. And if it doesn't happen, it's okay. They probably even forgot that you said it. But when it does happen and you said it, it it that linkage comes back. So it's better to talk through that with the things that could go wrong. And so we really that's one of the key things we always talk about is called the foul ahead of time. We do and it's very effective. And speaking of effective, the first quote that you mentioned resonates with me because I I feel we're always supposed to be balancing this tension of efficiency and effectiveness to do something right. Mhmm. And if one wins out entirely over the other, the the balance can be off and and something can go sideways. So it's interesting to think about if you go too much toward efficiency, get it done fast instead of get it done well. Sometimes, at least for me, I can tend to start applying a filter that says fast is good, slow is bad, a morality filter. Right? And that's not true. Or even a stewardship filter. , if I do this faster, I'm I'm having better stewardship over the resources that I'm responsible for, and and I wanna have the best stewardship possible. But if you spiral with that too long, you're suddenly sacrificing your effectiveness for efficiency, and that isn't great stewardship. And that and the morality filter that I sometimes will find myself sliding toward needs a check because it's not accurate. Mhmm. So I just think that's a really good succinct reminder of the balance that we need between effectiveness and efficiency. Yeah. That's really good. And I don't think there's a right answer to that. I think sometimes what people might think of as the morality filter and I'm putting myself into this too, is that is it a morality filter or is it just a rush to get it done? Sometimes it is. you said, I'm just trying to be efficient and effective, but sometimes it's I just sometimes the planning planning and some of these things that we talk about are the vegetables on our plate, we don't want to eat them. They can be. And so trying to figure out ahead of time the understanding, because I can I literally can put myself in the situations where I didn't want to continue to understand what the what the client was saying because it hurt? It was, , complex and and the the everything inside your head is this screaming, , don't worry. We'll figure that part out later. And that's when I've when I tried is to pump the brakes and say, no. No. No. I have to figure it out right now. We're no closer to understanding this than right now and to have to re get back to this point is gonna be hard. And brutal. Yeah. But I've seen a lot of people do it and I and I've been guilty of doing it and and I in my head is screaming, just figure that out later. And that's when I have to say, okay. I don't mean to be, difficult, but I I I still don't understand it. I'm sorry. Can you can you explain it even further? And I I mean, I can think of situations, on large projects in the past where everything in my body was screaming, just leave the meeting, go to the restroom and never come back. Because it's so difficult. And it's not that the client's being difficult, it's just that the task is being is difficult to understand and it's frustrating because I don't understand it and I want to. And that's when you just have to keep going. , you'll get out the other side eventually, but don't say, we'll figure that out later when we need to. Future you will not be happy. Right. And the client won't be happy. Your customer won't be happy. Good point. One of the mental models I'm trying to apply is I love maps, right? I love them. I think they're fascinating. They represent all kinds of interesting things to me. They're intriguing. I have a mental map for time. Time is gold to me because I have a lot of responsibilities in a lot of areas. So I have a mental map with time and I feel I can allocate certain things to certain places. And if I don't keep that balance right across everything, then I feel out of whack. So I am trying to create an overlay on my my time map that is a, a strategy map. Right? So strategically, yes, this could fit into this crack right here of time that I have to make myself most efficient. But strategically, it deserves more than that. So could I make that happen and be super efficient with my time? Yes. Is that the best answer in this case? Probably not. So I'm finding myself doing what kind of map overlays can I put on top of things to be more strategic about how I allocate my time? That's really good. I don't think I'm that strategic with how I think about my time, which is probably bad. Sometimes the only thing you can't manufacture or get more of. Right. You can give almost anything else in this world, more of it if you if you need it, but you can't do it that with time. I have a tendency to just go, well, I'll just add more time whether it comes from my personal time or and which is unhealthy and bad. That's interesting. I should probably think about that more. Well, you can manage your margin, you can manage your life. Mhmm. That's what I've determined. But sometimes that means if you really try and there's some amount of tightening you can do in your margins and then you obsess about it and you can start creating problems instead of solving them. So that's I don't know. There you go. There's my vulnerable state about my time mapping. Well, in a lot of this is really speaking towards just doing the prep work ahead of time, going back to the axe analogy. And he had another great analogy, Chris Doo, is that the outcome of a fight is determined in the gym, not the ring. And that is so true in fighting and it's true in in project management too that the outcome of the project is gonna be done in the preparation stage, not necessarily in the development or the or the work stage. If you put that time ahead of time and I've seen that in life too. The more we've prepared a feature ahead of time, it just goes so much more smoothly through, development. But that's that's the area, honestly, when I look out, I see little preparedness in in some of the projects. Where's the requirements document? Where's the mock ups? Where's the how are you gonna do that part? Oh, I don't know. Think we'll just make a workflow does that. What actions will you be using? I mean, you'd be surprised. I feel I probably know the all the list of actions pretty well, probably in the top 10 percentile of, , the community, but I'm always inside the sample workflows, , just adding new new new actions, making sure I understand all the inputs that they have to make sure that everything's lining up in what I'm trying to do. Right? So I'm confirming all of that ahead of time so that when the person goes to do it, they're not left with , John, , this doesn't work because I we don't have this input. It's , oh, oops. Sorry. That that would be embarrassing for me. Right. So I'm always on the pre alpha and demo sites, , tweaking things to make sure that all all the things line up. Wow. We just unpacked a lot today. Yeah. So I don't know what the calendar switchover has triggered for all of our listening audience, but for us, it has definitely triggered some reset in thinking in why and how we think. Greg with Healthy Growing Leaders talks about thinking about thinking, which when I first heard that concept, was too much thinking for me. It was very deep, but I'm starting to understand what he means by that. And the thinking about things our patterns, our ways we approach things is just, it's so healthy to give some time to that and to consider, is this the best approach as an organization, as an individual? And so we're putting a lot of effort into that this year. And I'm really excited to see where that takes us. Yeah. Well, it's the start of a new year and and my biggest fear is I wanna be different at the end of the year than I am at the beginning. And that means I have to be intentional about how I'm gonna grow and what am I gonna focus on. And we also sit at the beginning of a new decade. Right. So I I think it's really interesting. I play a game in my head too. I was , okay, the nineteen twenties, what what's my perception of that? What's and what was the perception of the nineteen tens? And it seems those are so drastically different, but it doesn't seem that when you lit when project it to the February and tens and the twenty twenties But I have to remember that these are the decades are big and so how do I make sure that in the end of the twenties, the twenty twenties, how am I gonna be different? that's a scary thought. , we've got to get working on that. There are miles to go before we sleep. Yes. All right. Well, thanks everybody for tuning in and, indulging us in our conversation here today. We're very excited about and the growth that we see there and and anything we learn that we feel could have benefit to everyone. We just wanna be really open handed with, knowledge and insights that come our way, and we figure that's, better together. Thanks for tuning in. Do a church that loves the idea of using Rock but hasn't taken that leap yet? 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