I ran across a reference to Parkinson’s Law today and decided to dive a little deeper into it. Basically it states:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

and / or

The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource.

Parkinson used this theory to explain why the British Colonial Office grew in number of employees as the actual number of colonies declined – so that it employed more people when the number of colonies had been reduced to zero than when they were at their highest number.

I encourage you though to spend 5 minutes reading more about the theory behind this cheeky saying by reading the first half of this article in The Economist. Really it’s worth it.

I see the mechanics of this law in almost every organization I’ve ever worked at. I also see this at work in me. Over the last year or two it’s tempting to cry that myself and our team is ‘over-worked’ and that we need more resources. In fact our team has contracted quite a bit in the last two years while our attendance has jumped significantly. The key for me is 1.) Am I working on the right things 2.) How are we sharing the load with volunteers.

Knowing the facts of Parkinson’s Law will definitely bring clarity to future resource decisions.

A week or two ago I mention I had 3 must reads for you. Here’s the second one (remember “Switch” was the first), Spiritual Leadership By Henry & Richard Blackaby (authors of Experiencing God). This book is the best I’ve read in years. It has so many simple, but brilliant points. Please don’t write this book off as only being for pastors. Any Christian who wants to grow in leadership should read this book. I’m not sure why it took me so long to find it and why I’ve not heard anyone mention it before.

Below are just a few of the points that hit me. There’s so much more I could add but doing so would probably break copyright.

Society longs for statesmen but it gets politicians. Statesmen are leaders who uphold what is right regardless of the popularity of the position. Spiritual leaders must be spiritual statesmen not merely spiritual politicians.

In the case of churches emulating the success of other churches, it seemingly elminates the need for Christian leaders to cultivate an intimate relationship with God.

If a vision must be sold to others, it is not a compelling vision and is probably not from God. Spiritual leaders don’t sell vision; they share what God has revealed to them and trust that the Holy Spirit will confirm that same vision in the hearts of their people.

Integrity doesn’t happen by accident. It happens on purpose.

In God’s eyes, how something is done is as important as what is done.

If growth in numbers is a sure sign of God’s blessing, then many cult groups are enjoying God’s blessing to a far greater extent than many churches.

The single most important thing leaders should do is pray. Prayerless leaders are like ship captains without compasses-they can make a best guess at which direction to go, but they have no assurance they are heading the right way.

While all Christians have the Holy Spirit’s presence in their lives, the condition of being filled with the Holy Spirit come through concentrated, fervent, sanctified prayer.
Leaders cannot truely serve people they do not love.

Some leaders offer a token prayer and then compile a list of pros and cons from which to make their decision just like an unbeliever would. Leaders must be cognizant of the fact that determining God’s will is not a matter of merely compiling a list of pros and cons; it is a matter of relating to a personal God who is more than willing to guide His people.

When spiritual leaders struggle to make decisions, they need to immediately examine their relationship with God.

God never piles on more than someone can handle. God never overbooks people. God never burns people out. When people become overwhelmed by their commitments and responsibilities, they are operating on their own agenda. God does not give people more than they can handle, but people regularly assume responsibility for things they should not be doing.

Dave Ramsey gives this equation for momentum.

Focused Intensity over Time multiplied by God = Momentum

You can argue that his understanding of math is off a bit, but that’s not the point now isn’t it.

Do you ever hear a quote that punches you in the gut? Lately, I’ve literally been stalked by a thought; reading it in numerous places. It goes something like (sorry I don’t remember it exactly… this dispite reading it in several places…)

We all have the same number of hours in a day Einstein, Mother Theresa, etc.. had.

We often look to our heros and forget they managed their success in the same number of hours we have each day. Sure some of them had gifts we don’t, but their ability to focus on doing the right things is where their success stemmed from (in fact, studies show that there is little correlation between intelligence and success.) Planning our time and limiting our focus is probably the most important key to success.

Update: Found the exact quote from Zing

“”Don’t say that you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Hellen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr. – pg. 113

The other day I finished the book Change By Design by Tim Brown. Tim is the CEO and president of the legendary design firm IDEO. It was a good book on how “design thinking” needs to be applied to all areas of an organization. As several people on the team can a test to I quoted from it nearly every day (sorry). I’ll blog more concepts from the book soon, but one that really resonated with me was his How to Grow Matrix. Here’s the chart.

The concept is that you need to be investing in all four quadrants. The chart is not so much revolutionary as much as it is clarity. It helped me really think about how we’re investing in each area.

More from the book coming soon (I promise hope).

I read this quote the other day and it really struck a cord with me.

I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me.
-Yvon Chouinard founder and owner of Patagonia, Inc.

Replace the phrase ’sport or activity’ with ‘technology or project’ and you have me. CSS, C#, PHP, Photoshop, SQL, MySQL, Flash, GIS, etc… etc… I’ve had a passion to learn each… I learn each more than the average bear, but never to the point of mastery. It really frustrates me. I wish I had the focus to learn at least one technology to a 90-95% mastery level. But alias that goes against my nature. I really need to think about this… do I remain a random generalist, or become more focused, albeit, limited specialist.

Inc. magazine has a great article on Jason Fried, founder of 37 Signals. While it touches on several interesting topics he has some profound quotes on simplicity.

In the software world, the first, second, and third versions of any product are really pretty good because everyone can use them. Then companies start adding more and more stuff to keep their existing customers happy. But you end up dying with your customer base, because the software is too complicated for a new people.

Well said… I can think of a lot of good examples where this is true. One that hits home with me recently is Microsoft Word. Most people I know could get by with the features present in Word 6.0. If I had to, I myself could get by with Word 6.0. How do I know? Because recently I’ve started using Apples Pages, a part of their iWorks package. On the surface it’s a very simple word processor. Instead of bombarding the user with a million buttons, drop-downs and pickers layered in a ribbon bar they show only a very simple menu bar (a inspector window is available for the more complex items).

I think the fundamental difference in the two products, Word and Pages, goes to the types of questions the developers ask in their product meetings. I have to think the the Microsoft meetings focus on the question of “What features are our customers wanting in the next release?” while at Apple I would bet the question is “How can we make it easy for our customers to make a kick’n document that will impress their boss?” Really, isn’t that second question what we’re looking for in a word processor?

I would recommend that you take a look at Pages to see what a word processor should be. It’s amazing how you can make an incredible looking document in just a few minutes. It almost doesn’t matter what words you use…

In closing… I really like this quote from E.F. Schumacker on simplicity. Read it and ask yourself, “What will I make simpler today.”

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. ” E.F. Schumacker

For years now, our dept. name has been IT/Communications. We have always felt this description, although not bad, did not quite capture the essence of our team make up, especially the fact that we strive for synergy between our technical and creative sides. Our team is a unique group of talented artists and technical specialists. To that end we recently announced a name change for our department from “IT and Communications” to “Creative Technologies” or CT for short. Pixar Animation Studios has a saying that resonates well with our team Art + Technology = Magic. Our goal is to bring that same mix of skill sets together to expand the mission of CCV.

This week I completed the book Inside Steve’s Brain. I was a book that I’ve been dying to read and it didn’t disappoint. It’s less about Steve’s brain and more about the history of Apple and it’s products. It does discuss quite a bit of their design thinking and processes. I’m not one to like to summarize books (if you’ve read previous posts you know I keep notes in a different format) but will say you need to read this book. Actually, there’s an update coming out soon so you might wait for that.