Every so often I like to write a blog or two about the great stuff I’ve run across in publishing, on the web, or on television that has challenged, inspired, or taught me something.

Here’s a few past blogs on What I’m Learning that will give you some background: Video’s, Sites, Misc.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of great history books on my kindle.  As I’ve state in past blogs, I love reading about the great people of history in biography and in well-told narrative.  Around Christmas I took a leap on an author I’d not read before, Paul Johnson, and I’ve now read four of his history books and loved each one.

Creators: This book is a compilation of some of the greatest creative personalities in antiquity and semi-modern history.  Ever wonder what made Bach great?  I’ve never been too interested in him, but Johnson brings his creative genius into tight perspective and gives great lessons in the process.  The book is full of characters that you ordinarily wouldn’t want to read a whole biography on, but he just breathes life into these characters.  People such as: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Jane Austen, Mark Twain and more.  An excellent book to challenge the creative instinct in you by viewing creative through the prism of the greats of long ago.

Intellectuals: much in the same vein as Creators, Intellectuals highlights those pivotal thinkers who have pushed the ideas and ideals of revolutionary thought.  A much more critical book, it is helpful in illuminating the gap between the thinkers of enlightenment thought and the application of their ideals and standard to their own life.  Some of these great thinkers come under particularly tough scrutiny, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  Rousseau was among the first of his age to assert that his own personal ethic and thought was enough to overturn societal standards based on Judeo-Christian tradition.  Highly critical of both church and state, he espoused truth and love.  In real life however, he was a monster.  This dichotomy is dramatic.  If you wonder about the who, what, when and how of ideology and new age enlightenment thinking, you’ll enjoy this book.

Heroes. Again a brief anthology of historical figures, this time with an eye on those who have conquered and reshaped the world through the ages.  Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Winston Churchill, and more.  A great book and very uplifting.

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In my estimation, when a new opportunity or responsiblity that will expand your leadership/influence/experience comes along you ought to give real serious thought to saying YES!

Most people don’t say yes because they’re already busy. I get this, I understand it, but I also know it’s a trap. Time management is not just filling your day and being efficient. It’s being effective, which is all about doing the RIGHT things. If you’re knee-jerk reaction is to say NO because you’re busy, then you’ll never be open to filling your days with more interesting and effective tasks.

Here’s what I know about saying YES

1. It Almost Always Means More Work Initially: At the very minimum, it stretches your brain because it’s not what you’ve done before and it requires more emotional energy. This alone shouldn’t be a reason to say NO.

2. It Forces You to STOP Something Else: I’m a big fan of making a list of things that you dont’ need to be doing anymore. We’re people of habit, that’s a good thing, but it also means we carry on with tasks, assignments, regularly scheduled events that don’t have meaning or purpose. When you add some new responsiblity/opportunity it’s a great time to evaluate: Do I need to be doing this anymore?

3. It Keeps You Young: My boys are forever asking me to do stuff that I’ve not done since I was a teenager. That’s great. It also means I pull a muscle every now and then. Fact is many of the reasons we say NO are rooted in just plain inflexibility. Stay mentally limber by saying YES to new challenges and opportunities.

What an outrageous, idiotic and judgemental thing to say!  Maybe, but hear me out.

There was once a day when a leader became a leader because she/he was a voracious collector of books.  Think Thomas Jefferson, who I discovered while touring his house a few years ago was more than just a casual collector of books; he was a uber collector.  He had books not because of their value, although they later became the centerpiece of the University of Virginia and part of the Library of Congress, but because books at that point in history were the only way to advance your learning fast enough to keep pace with change.  Going to school until the 7th grade wasn’t going to cut it for a leader.  Jefferson read on a wide range of issues, often natural sciences, which he found interesting because they were discovering new worlds, expanding west and needed a guess-work road map of what they’d find.  While leaders will always need to be readers, physical books are not the tool of change anymore, technology is.

Now leaders are faced with a future that looks dramatically different than the past, and not just because of the uncertainty of the geopolitical world and the economics of age-old businesses such as publishing, automobiles, music, newspapers being turned on their head.  The future is different because the tools are changing the way people live life, and we must respond quickly to adapt our methods of communication and interaction to keep up.

Frankly, having a smart-phone is the least of your worries now.  That ship has already sailed, which is why I referenced it in my title.  But I could have also put in IPAD in the title, and those haven’t even come out yet!   (more about that in a minute)

If you don’t have a smart-phone you have no clue how 100% of your donors, clients and staff (kids or grandkids) will interface with you just a few years from now.  Mobile devices are how people socialize, read email, watch content, read books, play games, surf the web, get GPS readings, and more.  Great smart-phones, like the IPHONE and some of the DROID phones, can be personalized with apps that make it totally geared to your interests and tastes.  This is affecting non-profits now, but in a couple years if you aren’t developing your charities/ministries content for mobile apps you’ll be out of business.

Here’s some ways charities/non-profits must be moving regarding mobility:

Web content for mobile devices, apps for droid/iphone devices that will deliver your content, strategy for social networking, geo-locating for donor events/connecting activities, live streaming of services/emergencies to your donors and the world, donating by text (after Haiti, it’s not going backward), and more.

As I was thinking about this blog I anticipated a few of the questions/statements you might make in rebuttal:

1. I don’t have a smart-phone because I can’t afford it. If you’re not a leader of an non-profit organization, or have no desire to be in the future, please feel no shame in waiting out the smart-phone game (or KINDLE, or IPAD game) until it comes into your price range.  But if you ARE a leader (you have responsibility for a group, church, business, charity) you have no excuse.  Under what scenario is your non-profit going to avoid the common leadership tension of lack of resources v. need to create, innovate and build?  It’s not going to happen.  More than that, you’re likely loosing opportunities for resources if you’re not actively thinking of ways to incorporate mobility into your non-profit. (and if you don’t own one yourself, you’re definitely not thinking about how others might be using it)

I hasten to add that I’m not a theorist, I have resource constraints as well, yet I think this is the  growth element for the next decade: The understanding of how technology is changing how we communicate.  It’s not fundamentally different than when Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark west to explore the new country.

2.  I’m not in the kind of non-profit business that needs one.  Really?  As the CEO of the Rescue Mission I can’t imagine a future where we’ll be able to avoid these trends and our ministry is as straight-forward as it gets.  This trend is going to affect everyone.  I’m by no means an old man, but I can remember when people argued that they weren’t going to give up their typewriter for a computer.  Now my kids don’t even know what a typewriter is!  They’ve never seen anyone who has one!

3.  I can’t keep up. Please understand, the organization you lead or will lead in the future needs you to be willing to grow in this way.  In my case, I’m passionate about solving homelessness and seeing lives transformed through God’s love.  It motivates me to make sure that I’m fulfilling the responsibility I owe the organization to look down the road and see where the potential challenges and opportunities exist.  Jump in and start asking some creative questions about how the new technologies might apply to you.

Briefly, let me encourage you to begin thinking about why you’re non-profit needs to consider how it might use the IPad and like technologies that will be rolling out in the next 16 months.  The IPad is like a large ipod touch so many people think it will not work in the marketplace.  But I think it has the potential to impact non-profits/charities and ministries in a few key ways.

1.  It’s the first, but not the last, computer to be APP-centric. Charities are going to need to get creative about developing innovative apps that will either help their client or donors connect.  An app on a larger screen will have different expectations than an app on a smaller screen, requiring more video elements and better graphics.

2.  It’s going to make communicating multi-function.  The challenge for every non-profit is how to get your donors and the community to read your material and build interest in your important cause.  These type of reading devices (KINDLE is opening up to apps too) are going to challenge us to adapt our newsletters and websites to connect. You’ll likely need text, video and audio in the newsletters of the future.  Better jump in and start using it to figure out and dream up ways it could help your cause.

3.  Increase the importance of Visual.  I love watching video on my iphone because it’s handy.  But the IPad and like devices will likely make portable video viewing even more prevalent.  Start thinking about how you are going to capture video, package video and present video of your ministry.

To lead is to get out front.  I encourage you to use the technology out there to creatively craft the future of your organization.

What parts of this argument do you find most challenging, disagreeable or inspiring?  Let me know.
Here’s an extra, a clip of my comments on this blog from USTREAM