What in the World is Mike thinking?

Those of you, who know me well, know that I am a “talking thinker”. In many cases I will put out thoughts and I will be looking for people to challenge me on those thoughts or confirm that they are valid. One of the things I need to work on this year is making clear that my talking thinking is just that. Because I had been in my “comfort zone” for the past many years working with many people who knew me well and understood my way of processing thoughts, I forgot that not everyone “thinks” or knows that I think this way. This past year I realized that many times in discussions with others, people came to the conclusion that I had already made up my mind even though I was still in “processing” mode. Again, I need to be conscious of that more this year.

Having said all of that, I am thankful for all those discussions as I learned a lot through them and while they were not always easy conversations I was constantly reminded of how much work it took to build something from the ground up like a new business (see my last post) or an MFI. I was challenged by many very intelligent individuals who taught me a lot about how different their local context could be and in return I challenged them to think about how similar some of those things could be around the world. I will tell you that without these types of conversations I don’t believe we would be moving in the direction we are heading today in supporting a “Global” organization with 100 (or 47 if you look at the MFI community) unique organizations as a part of it.

The other thing I learned is that we all have our change management challenges. It might be a national individual thinking regionally or globally. It might be a regional individual thinking globally or nationally (or even at a branch or ADP level). Or it might be a global individual thinking regionally or nationally (or again locally at the branch or ADP level). It might be the realization that some roles can be done more effectively globally, regionally or nationally, and some can only be done locally. I saw a lot of times last year where people felt they knew what problems the people they were trying to help were experiencing but I believe in fact that until we really dig deep we can’t appreciate the challenges others face. This means one very important thing to me…Ask them, they will tell you what will help them and what is important to them.

As I get ready to head off to Los Angeles to meet with Adam to discuss how we will start to implement a Shared Services Support model for the VisionFund MFI’s globally I need to keep all of these thoughts in mind and the fact that as a member of the World Vision Global Centre IT team I need to always keep our Vision Statement at the forefront of what I do.

• Our Vision
– Earn and retain the right to serve our World Vision Partnership (internal) Customers by:
• Developing and empowering personnel along their professional and spiritual journeys
• Engaging these personnel with an undying commitment to enable World Vision’s mission and live its core values
• Our visible passion for Customer service and “urgency with a purpose”
• Encouraging local competencies with “business is mission”
• Leveraging our global scale
• Validating our processes against leading practices and performance measures

Thanks again for listening to my “writing thinking” as this would be the blog version of my “talking thinking” :-)

Until next time,

Mike