Outsourcing, Part 3

The catalyst for Part 1.

Part 2 was yesterday.

As I’ve reflected on the question, “Why Parents Outsource Their Teen’s Spiritual Formation” over the past few days, I believe that the answer is ultimately about a lack of partnership between parents and the church (or youth ministry/youth minister).  I believe that BOTH side have forgotten their roles in this partnership.  The definition of “partner” looks like this:

partner |ˈpärtnər|
noun
1 a person who takes part in an undertaking with another or others, esp. in a business or company with shared risks and profits.

This is all about relationship, community and the “a” word…accountability.

Let’s talk about parents (and remember that I am one, so this list is about me).

• Parents fail in this partnership when they simply drop their kids off for the night.
• Parents fail in this partnership when they don’t respond to emails asking for feedback.
• Parents fail in this partnership when they invest nothing in the ministry, when they simply consume.
• Parents fail in this partnership when they don’t take advantage of opportunities to talk about faith at home.

Now, let’s talk about youth ministers (remember, I am one, so this list is about me), churches and youth ministry.

• Youth ministers fail in this partnership when we don’t take the time to say “hello” to the parents.
• Youth ministers fail in this partnership when we do not deliver information (trip details, etc) as promised or in a timely manner.
• Youth ministers fail in this partnership when we do not take into account family schedules, work schedules, etc.
• Youth ministers fail in this partnership when we think that we care about kids more than their parents do.
• Youth ministries fail in this partnership when we think that we can replace the parent.
• Churches fail in this partnership when we do not communicate that the number one role of a parent is that of passing on the faith to their children.
• Churches fail in this partnership when we do not equip or support families in this effort.  We can (and do) point the finger at parents and families all that we want, but if we are not equipping them for this effort, they cannot.

Partnership comes when we realize that we are all in this together.  Partnership happens when we come along side one another, not in judgment, or competition, but in a relationship that is encouraging and honest in what we need from the other partner.  Partnership comes when we have an expectancy of one another that we are seeking the same goal.

For those of you that partner with parents, what does that look like?

Outsourcing, Part 2

Yesterday, I posted a response to Tim Schmoyer’s blog post about “Why Parents Outsource Their Teen’s Spiritual Formation”. I did some brief research on why companies outsource, and here is one list:

* Reduce and control operating costs
* Improve company focus
* Gain access to world class capabilities
* Free internal resources for other purposes
* A function is time consuming to manage or is out of control
* Insufficient resources are available internally
* Share risks with a partner company

Pretty straightforward. As many of these are similar, I’ll combine them.

When parents outsource spiritual formation of teens:

* Reduce and Control Operating Costs/A function is time consuming to manage or is out of control:  It costs them less, in terms of investment.  Not in money, but in TIME..which, at this point, is the most important thing.  Spiritual formation is all about time, and many families simply neither have, nor make, the time.
* Improve company focus/Free internal resources for other purposes:  Families are free to spend their time on other things, perhaps those things are valid (employment, school, etc), perhaps they are not.
* Gain access to world class capabilities/Insufficient resources are available internally:  Some churches and ministries are absolute machines.  The amount of material available is incredible.  As a parent, I (personally, no sarcasm intended) do not have the TIME (see #1) to pour through it all and determine what I might use to disciple my families.
* Share risks with a partner company:  The word “partner” here is incredible.  It implies a relationship…that the two parties are working together.

Now, each of the above can be completely legitimate things.  Here’s where my cynicism comes out…

* Reduce and Control Operating Costs/A function is time consuming to manage or is out of control: Question: Is there anything more important than passing on the faith to our children?
* Improve company focus/Free internal resources for other purposes:  Question: Is there anything more important that passing on the faith to our children?  I mean, I want my children to to grow up and be productive members of society.  But, what good is it to gain the world and forfeit their souls?
* Gain access to world class capabilities/Insufficient resources are available internally:  The Bible is insufficient.  In fact, in our middle school and high school Sunday school class, it’s all we use.  We just read it and talk about it.
* Share risks with a partner company:  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard a parent complain about “if my church’s youth ministry only did “x”…”  Let’s be honest.  Outsourcing gives us someone to blame.

To recap:

The outsourcing takes place because we allow them to.

There are benefits, both legitimate and illegitimate, to outsourcing.

Tomorrow, let’s talk “partnership.”

Join the conversation!

 

On outsourcing, part 1

My friend Tim Schmoyer just blogged about “Why Parents Outsource Their Teen’s Spiritual Formation.“

Here’s what I think:

• I’m convinced that for many parents, those in the church anyway, they want to teach their children.
• These same parents, don’t know how to teach their children.
• The reason that they don’t know how is because the church has not taken seriously it’s responsibility to equip them.
• Because the church has neglected this role, parents need someone to teach spiritual formation for them.
• So, the church, in an effort to meet this need, does an end-run around the parent and hires an expert.
• This expert, then, enables both the parent, and the church, to perpetuate the problem.

In short…parents outsource their teen’s spiritual formation because we not only allow them to, but because we provide the system the justifies it.

Thoughts?

“What’s in it for me?”- part 2- the dangers of siloing

Before I begin, here’s a disclaimer, it is perfectly legitimate, at this point in history, for people to ask “What’s in it for me?”.  Thinking through this question is absolutely necessary for any organization in the midst of change.  How this question is dealt with will make or break you.  Yesterday, I wrote about my early experience in working through change at Best Buy.  Today, I want to talk about what happens when the various entities within an organization “silo”.

Technically speaking, a “silo” is a system that is incapable of reciprocal operation with other systems within a related, yet larger, system.  Rather than a “systems thinking” approach, in which there is reciprocity (communication, commonality, collaboration, etc), “siloing” leads to a “to each his own” mentality.  Essentially, the individual sums are not only greater than the whole, but some of the sums are greater than others.  Why might silos form?

• A system may not feel like they are part of the whole, in vision, in respect, in trust.  “What do you do in the cash office all day?”
• A system may not feel that the other entities understand what their role is.  “Don’t they know how hard it is to unload a truck?”
• A system may feel that their entity is more important than the others.  “Don’t they know what would happen if sales stopped selling?”
• One system may be compensated or celebrated over the others.  “Why do we always have sales contests on the weekend?”
• A system may feel that it is unsupported by the other systems, so it will focus on itself.  “Screw them.  They don’t want to help me, so I will just focus on what I do best…Operations.”

As I went through various assistant manager positions, I was great at building silos.  When I was an inventory manager, I had a top notch inventory staff and we counted and checked stuff that we were not supposed to.  Even though our distribution centers were “90+% accurate” there were times that we detail counted trucks as we unloaded them.  We went out to the floor and cycle counted everything.  And, we reduced shrink from one inventory period to the next by 95%…the best reduction in company history at that time.  But I couldn’t run the sales floor to save my life.  Counting skus was WAAAYYY more important than sales.  When I switched to operations (front end), I built a team that was 100% committed to having the best operations team in our region.  We were the tops in all measurables, replacement plans sales, credit card conversions, you name it.  But when someone had a question from another department, I did my best to avoid them.

Something funny happened on my path to GM.  I was asked how I was benefiting the rest of the store.  It was great that I was making a name for myself, but all people wanted to talk about in interviews was how I helped sales, how I helped merchandising, how I was helping the store.  Then, when I made GM, I failed because I had no clue how to build a team that was bigger than me. It was only after I was demoted from GM and went to another store, did I work under an excellent store manager who taught me about the bigger picture.

I had to learn that a win for operations might be shallow if our merchandising team failed.  We  would have nothing to sell if inventory did not receive product correctly.  Practically speaking, the equation was not 25 + 25 + 25  +25 = 100.  There are indeed differences in roles and functions.  But, the various entities are interdependent and inter-related.  Even if they were 91 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 100, the 100 is still greater than 91.  91 does not get there without the “3′s”.

Tomorrow: “What’s in it for me?”- part 3, silos and the church

“What’s in it for me?”- part 1

For the last 15+ years, I’ve dealt with that question in one form or another.

In 1995, I began my career in management at Best Buy as an inventory manager in Columbus Ohio.  Best Buy at that point was in the midst of transition to going full bore nationwide.  There were a ton of things changing, through a consulting firm, Best Buy looked at other retailers to learn their “best practices” and determined ways to implement them.  From receiving methodologies to merchandising and sales, things changed and Best Buy had to manage those changes.  These changes eventually became known as “SOP” (Standard Operation Platform), and at the district level, they hired people known as “Change Implementation Managers” to lead the store staff (beginning at the managerial level) through these various changes.  Constantly at the forefront was the need of management (even TO management) to learn “what’s in it for me?”  What was the benefit to the people in the warehouse to unload trucks in a certain way?  How did that truck process help the merchandising staff?  The sales staff?  The cashier staff?  Ultimately, it came down to this, each “silo” within the store (sales, merchandising, inventory/warehouse and operations) had to learn the big picture.  It was the big picture, the vision, the mission of the overall company that drove those individual processes.  If the management was able to create this larger vision and understanding within the store, the culture itself would be changed, because everyone was part of a larger team, a larger purpose.

I was no longer “just” an inventory handler, I was part of something bigger than myself.  What I did impacted the rest of the store.  If I was careless in my receiving process and missed something, or something was incorrectly tagged, then come inventory time, we’d be short.  If I was a sales person, and wrote something down wrong, or grabbed the wrong box, there’d be a pricing error or an inventory problem.  If I were a merchandising team member, and I put something on the wrong peghook, or tagged something wrong, there might be an error.  As a cashier, a mis-ring, or missed scan would again cause an inventory problem.  Our goal, was to communicate that being a cashier was not just “being a cashier.”  Regardless of my position, every task and role that I performed had an impact on every other role and task within the store.

Often, however, we would see the various “sides” of the business silo.  Operations would focus on operations, sales on sales, etc.  This always created heavy damage within the organization.  Why?  We’ll talk about that tomorrow.