Lessons I'm Learning in a New Job - Volume 1

1. In finding rhythm, realize every day has different beats. So enter the day grateful for music.

2. The strength of a plan is how well it can thrive when conditions aren’t ideal. 

3. Nothing grows on the white board. It grows in the soil. But white boards can keep it from staying stuck in your head and never seeing light of day. But the goal is still getting to the soil.

4. Plan your day. Expect not all will happen. But then watch God come in the midst and transform it to become more than you imagine.

5. Comm Plans, design plans, and ministry plans are different...but the thread through them is so strong, they tend to surface in the same conversation creatively working together. 

6. The sweet spot is intentionality, priority, and adaptability. That takes work and team to do it well. Let God grow your faith in the tension of it. 

7. Don’t despise limits. It will force you to prioritize, reset expectations, and often face your insecurities. Healthy people embrace that.

8. Communicate imperfectly but communicate. If you don’t, it will communicate something. 

9. Notice the temp of a room. Cultivate an environment where folks simultaneously are challenged, empowered, and feel like they belong. When the temp changes, it’s usually a signal something may be off in one of those areas.

10. Best way to address an issue is to get back to the core.

11. People plan & process in different ways. Respect that or you’ll misinterpret. If we seek to serve one another, the beauty of both can lead to flourishing for more than just the two. It tends to multiply. 

12. You got to come up with a way to help folks be heard, find a temporary track, while bigger tracks are still being formed. 

13. Working toward the core understanding of how we are different but stronger together will help you thrive together.

14. The ideal plan can never just work for one person. Because chances are that one person would just be you. Ideal allows those inside it to thrive together. 

15. Remember we learned bike riding before car driving. But we all rode in cars first. 

16. Realize when a project becomes a sinkhole. Find a new way to solve, train up another to handle it, or delegate it.

17. In learning a new job, you will fail at something everyday. The goal isn’t perfection but to keep growing through it to strengthen skill, humility, community, and vision....and of course stay alive.

18. Better one strong communication channel than many weak channels. But keep finding new ways to communicate and diversify because you can’t reach everyone through one channel. But there is growth phase for everything. So stay connected to the Source. And remember no effective channel stays the same.

19. You can’t build new systems on top of broken systems. You got to address foundations. In every new job there’s a good chance you will encounter both. And there is a good chance you will be bringing in both. Be mindful. It’s the beauty of learning together.

Phase 1: Listen, Learn, & Connect. Aim for small wins. 

Phase 2: Keep listening, keep learning, keep connecting. Build on small wins toward a big win. 

Phase 3: Count the losses and reassess. Keep listening, keep learning, keep connecting. 

Phase 4: Realize phases sometimes bleed together and circle back. In every phase, embrace hard conversations. 

And if you forget everything, don’t forget to pray.

20. Grace.