The Sixth Sense

Some great quotes from ‘Story’

As I mentioned on Friday, I’m thoroughly enjoying a book called ‘Story’ by Robert McKee. It is filled with some outstanding comments, insights, and observations. Here’s a few more I thought I’d share with you.

“Story isn’t a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on in our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.”

“When society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.”

“Master storytellers know how to squeeze life out of the least of things, while poor storytellers reduce the profound to the banal. You may have the insight of a Buddha, but if you cannot tell story, your ideas turn dry as chalk.”

“The world of a story must be small enough that the mind of a single artist can surround the fictional universe it creates and come to know it in the same depth and detail that God knows the one He created.”

Tags: Books, Quotes, Robert McKee, Story

Why we go to the movies

I’m reading a book called ‘Story - Substance, Structure, Style, and the Substance of Screenwriting’ at the moment. It’s by a guy called Robert McKee. I’m only a few pages in, but this quote absoultely leapt out at me. Really powerful.

We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world, to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems so unlike us and yet at heart is like us, to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality. We do not wish to escape life but to find life, to use our minds in fresh, experimental ways, to flex our emotions, to enjoy, to learn, to add depth to our days.

This definitely resonates with me deeply.

What about you?

Tags: Books, Quotes, Story

Author Interview: Joseph Michelli

 

As I mentioned on Tuesday, Joseph Michelli has very kindly agreed to take a few questions linked with his new book ‘The New Gold Standard’. Enjoy!

1) Thanks Joseph for agreeing to be interviewed for The Sixth Sense. Why don’t you start by telling us a bit more about who you are and what you do?

I am an author, professional speaker, and business consultant.  I work to enhance leadership skills, customer service, and employee empowerment worldwide.

2) Your latest book is called ‘The New Gold Standard’ (published by McGraw-Hill). Tell us a bit about what the book is about and why you wrote it.  

The book is a behind the scenes look at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.  The hotel chain began through the inspiration of Cesar Ritz more than a century ago and has maintained a legendary position in customer service excellence.  Despite its storied history, no one had been permitted to write a book about this iconic brand and fortunately I was given that opportunity. 

3) Whilst your book is presumably primarily geared to the business audience, many of my readers are involved in other social enterprises, non-profits, churches, etc. How would they benefit from the principles in The New Gold Standard?  

I have been surprised and pleased by the broad markets in which my books have gained traction.  I think principles of human service should transcend time, geographic boundaries, and even applications often narrowly prescribed to business.  A concept like “it’s not about you” which I present in The New Gold Standard, can serve as a reminder for how to build great marriages, outstanding places of worship, and dynamic community organizations.

4) Why should anyone part with their hard earned cash and precious time to read your book? Sell it to us!

Well I know cash is tight and for many of us time is as tight - if not more so.  I think books like mine can be idea starters, prompting and inspiring people to reach for greater impact in the way they lead and serve.  I invest my time to write these books in the hope that others will invest theirs to benefit from the wisdom of tried-and-true leaders.

5) What books/magazines/websites are you reading at the moment and, more specifically, what would you recommend?

Well The Sixth Sense of course….I also read the classics like Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Businessweek.  In fact, Businessweek has kindly done a featured video curriculum about my books and the art of customer experience creation which can found here. I also love John Maxwell’s Leadership Wired newsletter and Warren Bennis’ Leadership Excellence newsletter.

To find out more about Joseph, you can visit his website: www.josephmichelli.com.

Tags: Author Interviews, Books, Leadership

Set the foundation

Chapter one of The New Gold Standard focusses on having a good foundation in place. It’s all about communicating core identity and culture.

Ritz-Carlton make a big deal of ensuring the mission, vision, values, are deeply embedded in all their staff. Everyone of them has a ‘credo card’ they typically carry around with them at all times. Everyone in the organisation can easily provide a clear and accurate understanding of the business’s mission and purpose.

Time is spent everyday emphasising and reorienting around the mission and culture of the organisation. This daily time provides space for repetition of values, emphasising common language, visual symbols, passing on of oral traditions (not just email), positive story-telling, and modeling by leaders.

The challenge for me reading this stuff is translating it into the volunteer context in which I primarily lead. It’s all very well spending time every day embedding the culture of the organisation, but what about when the opportunities for doing that are physically only once a week at best? And even then for only a couple of hours.

How do you go about embedding culture when there are far fewer opportunities to do it? I agree with all the things Ritz-Carlton are doing, I’m just grappling with what that might look like for us at Mosaic.

We do talk about our cultural values a lot. But I know we could do more and do better. I definitely think we need to improve our sharing or stories that positively communicate what we value. Stores (and visual images) definitely help things stick. I just need to remember to do this more!

Tags: Books, The New Gold Standard

Holiday reading

Well, it’s taken a whilst to finalise, but I have decided on the books which will join me on our holiday to Orlando.

I’m taking three books with me.

As has been my custom for some time with me, the first book on my summer holiday reading pile is the new(ish) John Grisham book Playing for Pizza. I’ve always enjoyed getting engrossed in John Grisham novels and I’m looking forward to this as always.

Second on my reading pile is a book I’ve been meaning to read for at least two years now. I’ve been endlessly hoping that the price would come down a lot, or that a paperback copy would be released. Neither seems to have happened, so I have taken the plunge. The book is called Good to Great and it’s by Jim Collins.

And finally, the last book I’ve decided to take with me was a random find whilst browsing through Waterstones book store on Tuesday evening. I love book stores. Especially when I have no agenda. I can just see what’s out there and am happy to be influenced to purchase whatever takes my fancy. The book which grabbed me this time is called Tribal Leadership and is by Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright.

I’ll share any thoughts and insights when I get back.

What are you reading this summer?

Tags: Books, Holiday, Reading

Guest Columnist: Deana Watson

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Today I am very pleased to introduce the first of several guess columnists who are going to write occasional posts here at The Sixth Sense. Deana Watson is a great friend of me and my wife Rachel. We have known her and her husband Steve for several years now and they are some of our closest friends. We met through the blogosphere originally, but we have seen holidayed together in California and they have stayed with us in England three times.

Deana has had more than her fair share of life’s trials to go through and she has such a depth of wisdom and life perspective that I am always encouraged, challenged, and refreshed by. Deana has a particular passion and interest in other cultures and I’m sure you’ll see that come through in her posts.

Anyway, enough from me, over to Deana. Enjoy!

PS Make sure you check out Deana’s own blog here: http://obahsomah.blogspot.com/

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My friend asked me last week if I ever read fiction.  He was just starting to get into fiction, and wondered what I liked.  I told him I usually only read fiction.  I’ve got enough real life to go around.

The fiction I read is almost exclusively stories about South Asian women.  Stories of new brides, or widows, mothers, sisters, daughters.  All written by South Asian women.   I have my favorites, and of those favorites, all of their works.

This surprised my friend.  And why shouldn’t it?  After all, I was born smack dab in the middle of these United States. Until I was nearly 18, I had never even been on an airplane.  I live a very typical American life.  I live in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood, driving my Volvo station wagon (estate for my cousins across the pond).  I stay at home with my disabled son all day every day, while my husband works in his corporate job to pay the bills.

But deep down, running through my veins, the very beat of my heart pounds of other lands.  Distant lands, and not so distant lands.  I love to read these stories, because in my mundane American life, they take me there.  To the dusty streets of Calcutta, or the sweltering heat of Jaipur, to the Taj Mahal in Agra, or the city and sea of Mumbai.  And there are the stories of the many Bengali and Pakistani and Indian women who land in Western countries.  In places like Brick Lane in London, or Berkley in California, or following their newly chosen husbands to university jobs in Boston.

And while I read, I remember, and I wish myself there.  One of the most magical visits to another land in my life, was three weeks spent in India.  But, while we were there, I hated almost everything about it.  It was hotter than any hot I had ever experienced.  The smell choked me in a way that caused me to wretch more than once in front of curious gawking children in every shade of brown.

It was filthy, absolutely filthy. With defecation from animals and humans alike right in the roads to step over. The horns blazed in the bumpy taxi and rickshaw rides.  I wept in my bed at night thinking of the mothers holding children who would pull on my clothes in the markets asking for money.  And the food was hardly something I could stomach.  It was literally an attack on all my senses.

Yet now, when I think of that time, of India, it doesn’t take long for my eyes to tear up. I long to go back.  To walk those same dirty streets, to see all of the same sights over again, to eat every thing that is presented to me.  To make new friends, if even for just that moment.  The same things that were so assaulting to me then, are the things I hold so closely to my heart now.

I have gotten to know these places more through reading about the lives of the women in my books. And I’ve ventured out to areas that I never thought I would want to visit.  Places like Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, and Iran, and Afghanistan.  And I truly would love to visit every one of those places.

But for now, I have medicine to measure, and doctors appointments to schedule. I have insurance companies to argue with, and government agencies to persuade to  give care for my son.  I have a child with a disease so rare that the leading doctors in the world shake their heads in confusion at him.

And because that is my life right now, once he goes to bed at night, I look at the bookshelf beside my chair, and I beg them to take me to a far away land, or not so far land.  Just for about an hour…maybe two…one chapter at a time.

Where do your books take you?  Do you enjoy fiction, or just the facts man?

Tags: Books, Culture, Guest Columnists, Life

Author Interview: Eric Bryant

Following on from yesterday’s introduction, here is the short interview I did with Eric Bryant recently.

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Thanks Eric for agreeing to be interviewed for The Sixth Sense. Why don’t you start by telling us a bit more about who you are and what you do?

I live in Los Angeles with my wife Debbie and two children (Caleb and Trevi).  I serve at Mosaic, a diverse and creative community of people who believe we can change the world.  :)

Your latest book is called ‘Peppermint Filled Pinatas: Breaking Through Tolerance and Embracing Love’ (published by Zondervan). Tell us a bit about what the book is about and why you wrote it.

I wrote a book to Christians about learning to embrace the people Christians “love to hate.”  In essence, my goal was to help people discover they can actually develop meaningful and beautiful friendships with people who look, act, and even believe differently.

Is there a specific group of people you’’d really like to see having a copy of this book in their hands? 

Anyone who wants to create a more diverse, missional, and loving world.  Tolerance and Racial Reconciliation aren’t good enough.  We need to create a reconciled and diverse community!

Why should anyone part with their hard earned cash and precious time to read your book? Sell it to us! 

You really want to help me sell this, huh?!  I have received lots of feedback from people saying they see the world differently after reading my book and laughed while reading it.  Erwin McManus, our lead pastor at Mosaic, wrote the Foreword in which he compared my book to a combination of “Saving Private Ryan” meets “Nacho Libre.”

What books/magazines/websites are you reading at the moment and, more specifically, what would you recommend?

Besides The Sixth Sense?  :)  I have really enjoyed Core Magazine there in the UK plus Outreach Magazine here in the U.S. in terms of magazines.  In terms of books, I am enjoying Dust Off Their Feet by Chris Seay plus The Black Swan and MicroTrends.  In terms of websites, we work hard to have a great deal of valuable free content up at www.mosaicalliance.com and www.ericbryant.org as well.

Thanks again for your time, Eric. We really appreciate you taking the time to answer our questions.

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If you are based in the UK you can buy the book here. If you’re from the US you can get your hands on it here.

Any thoughts, comments, or questions?

Tags: Author Interviews, Authors, Books, Culture

Introducing Eric Bryant

One of the privileges I have had since Mosaic here in Sheffield connected to Mosaic in Los Angeles has been getting to know Eric Bryant. Eric serves as an elder, speaker, and navigator overseeing the leadership team at Mosaic in Los Angeles.

I once heard Erwin McManus (leader of Mosaic LA) describe Eric as being the guy who helps to ensure that Mosaic actually exists outside of his own head! If you want to get to know the ins and outs of how Mosaic LA functions, he’s definitely the guy to speak to.

He is a very gifted and talented guy who is a real inspiration. He is a great speaker and, on top of that, now a great author too. 

Speaking of which, I recently got to interview Eric and ask him a bit about his new(ish) book “Peppermint Filled Pinatas: Breaking Through Tolerance and Embracing Love”. You can read that interview tomorrow, but for now I just wanted to give a few comments of my own on the book.

Perhaps a good way to express how good a book this is is to tell you about my wife, Rachel. Now, I know this may shock some of you, but Rachel hardly ever goes near Christian books. She struggles to read them, finds them very samey, and hardly ever starts let alone finishes one.

BUT, she picked up Eric’s book at my prompting and that was it. I barely saw her for the next couple of days. She not only started it but finished it. I was surprised and amazed and asked her why she liked it so much. Her response was, ‘I loved it’s wooiness’!

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment, both Rachel and Eric share a talent theme called ‘Woo’. It means they love meeting new people, working the crowd, etc. And for Rachel, she just loved sensing the ‘woo’ flowing through the book. Making friends, building relationships. That feels so real and natural to her compared to all the theoretical stuff that gets tossed around in so many Christian books.

From my own reading of Eric’s book, I just loved the emphasis on friendship and relationship. It is amazing how much easier it is to journey through differences of opinion when we choose the path of friendship and love. And from reading Eric’s book I was really encouraged to keep building relationships with all kinds of people - not people just like me!

So yeah, I give Eric’s book a BIG thumbs up. You should definitely go and pick up a copy if you haven’t already.

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for the interview with Eric!

 

 

Tags: Author Interviews, Authors, Books, Eric Bryant

Author Interview: Gerardo Marti

Following on from yesterday’s introduction, here is the interview with Gerardo Marti.

* * * * *

Thanks Gerardo for agreeing to be interviewed for The Sixth Sense. Why don’t you start by telling us a bit more about who you are and what you do?

Anything for you, Sam!  I am a sociology professor at Davidson College, a small liberal arts college in North Carolina. Before that, I taught classes at several colleges, universities, and seminaries including “Race and Religious Faith” and “The Sociology of Hollywood” while serving on pastoral staff at several churches in Southern California.  Classes at Davidson are typically very small, so I have lots of opportunity for rich discussions on intriguing topics with really smart students. I use time outside of class to accomplish my own writing and research, share what I know with scholars and church leaders, and spend time with my family.

Your first book is called ‘A Mosaic of Believers’ (published by Indiana University Press). Tell us a bit about what the book is about and why you wrote it.

I remember an afternoon in June 2001, I had been busy around my office in Los Angeles answering phone calls, returning email and looking through letters and came to an abrupt realization. A steady stream of calls, letters and emails came from church planters, seminary students, sociologists, journalists, pastors of churches of all sizes, church consultants, and professional Christian researchers. In the previous few years, aspects of Mosaic LA appeared in book chapters, articles and newspaper stories.  The lead pastor and other staff members were solicited for conference speaking and church consultations.  Even our lay leaders were accustomed to being spontaneously interviewed at our Sunday services and made themselves available throughout the week for guests wishing to learn more about the church.  Mosaic had become an important resource for a new generation of church leaders.

I realized I was at the center of this unique phenomenon. A Mosaic of Believers gives an inside view on how this church pursues innovation while negotiating ethnic and racial differences along the way. Mosaic LA is still one of the most creative and diverse churches in the United States. Before the book, I and other church leaders always answered questions openly, honestly, and with as much detail we had available.  Yet, the hunches we carried with us in day-to-day ministry had not been examined systematically.  The in-depth research carried out for the book is the most extensive ever done.

Is there a specific group of people you’d really like to see having a copy of this book in their hands?

You may know that sociologists once believed that modern technology would kill religion.  They were wrong.  Now, no one denies the continued strength and importance of religion. If you want to understand the relationship between religion and social change, you should read this book.

Why should anyone part with their hard earned cash and precious time to read your book? Sell it to us!

One reviewer wrote, “Clearly, Mosaic is spiritually compelling. Its members are on fire with their faith…. Its leaders take risks that most pastors would not dare.”  A Mosaic of Believers gives a close look at a church with a vibrancy most people find hard to believe — and then often wish they could experience for themselves.

Are there any new projects you’re working on now?

I’m thrilled to have a new book coming out this summer called Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity and Ambition in a Los Angeles Church.  http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/acatalog/Hollywood_Faith.html  It’s about negotiating the tension between pursuing faith and pursuing fame: How do people pursuing careers in Hollywood’s entertainment industry maintain their religious devotion without sacrificing their career goals? It’s the first book to provide an in-depth look at religion among the “creative class” and previews a possible future for religion in the 21st century.

What books/magazines/websites are you reading at the moment and, more specifically, what would you recommend?

There’s a fascinating blog on religion in American history found at http://usreligion.blogspot.com/.  There’s always an interesting discussion happening at the Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank http://www.generousorthodoxy.net/thinktank/.  Then, of course, I keep up with the world through your blog, The Sixth Sense.

On books, I’m reading David Smilde’s Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism, Brian Cowan’s The Social Life of Coffee, and Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering.  I’m reading some fiction as well, including Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins, Birds without Wings by Louis de Berneires, and The Year of Jubilo by Howard Bahr.

Thanks again for your time, Gerardo. We really appreciate you taking the time to answer our questions.

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If you are based in the UK you can buy the book here. If you’re from the US you can get your hands on it here.

Any thoughts, comments, or questions?

Tags: Author Interviews, Authors, Books, Culture, Leadership

Introducing Gerardo Marti

Some of you who are familiar with me and my wife Rachel’s story of pioneering Mosaic here in Sheffield will know that, having decided to start Mosaic, we discovered another community with the same name, heart, values, etc who already existed in Los Angeles.

In wanting to find out more about the story of Mosaic LA, I came across a wonderful book called ‘A Mosaic of Believers’ by Gerardo Marti. It was a truly fascinating read. Insightful and inspiring. I couldn’t put it down.

Having read the book back in the Autumn of 2005, I then had the privilege of spending a day with Gerardo as part of the International Mentoring Network in Orlando, Florida in February 2007. I don’t think my mind has been so stretched and challenged as it was that day. We still talk about it now. 

Gerardo is blessed with the wonderful combination of an amazing depth of knowledge that is served by real wisdom and humility. I feel very honoured to have spent time with him and have learnt so much in doing so.

This February gone I got to spend a bit of time with Gerardo once again when me and Rachel took him out for lunch. As always, the conversation was so enriching. He is so insightful and I firmly believe his voice is one which needs to be heard across a broader spectrum. And so he comes highly recommended!

It is linked with all this that I was delighted to be able to interview Gerardo recently about his book. So make sure you check back tomorrow to read the interview. You’ll be glad you did!

Anyone already read ‘A Mosaic of Believers’?

Tags: Authors, Books, Culture, Gerado Marti, Leadership, The Big Interview