TESTIMONIAL:
“With intelligence and passion, Tim Sanders reveals the new competitive logic of business: Being great now depends on being good. Whether you’re in the boardroom or the mailroom, you owe it to yourself to read Saving The World at Work and to begin putting into practice its powerful lessons.” Dan Pink, author of A Whole New Mind
I plan on ordering my copy….I recommend that you purchase one as well.
I have finally gotten around to posting the review of the book “Collapse of Distinction” by Scott McKain. This is part of the Thomas Nelson – Book Review Bloggers program
The title and subtitle grabbed my attention right away, the subtitle is “Stand out and move up while your competition fails”. When I started reading it I went into the book and thought is this only going to be a book for business or will it be able to be applied to church as well. I think the concepts and principles in the book are valuable in both cases.
McKain does a good job in describing how business’ struggle with sameness. The pitfalls of being the same as everyone else. He also tells you what to do about it. How to stand out, to become distinct.
One of the first things that caught my attention was when McKain wrote that many business’ focus on not losing to the competitor. He says that we should be focusing on the customer instead. What the customer really wants. I believe we can give lip service to this and say we are customer driven or focused. But I think this book gives good insight it making that a reality rather then just a good statement on the company website.
The customer must get the sense or the experience in dealing with your business or church that they have received exceptional value in that experience. Or a compelling experience.
McKain describes three levels of business or professional differentiation:
Sameness
Differentiation
Distinction
He also goes into detail on 4 cornerstones
Clarity
Creativity
Communication
Customer-Experience Focus
I am in the midst of starting a new business venture and I plan on reading through this book again and building in concepts of this book into my business from the get-go. I recommend this book to any business leader, church leader…especially those that are just starting out.
Saturday night I sent out the message to the Facebook Group about Catalyst. Catalyst is being relaunched at Calvary Church. When it is relaunched it will be bigger then last year’s Catalyst. Those that were on Facebook Saturday night, Sunday morning or on their mobile device stepped into the service Sunday morning with a little pre-service information.
Sunday morning, Pastor Jer in the AM spoke on the changes happening at Calvary Church. Part of what he spoke was the relaunch of Catalyst. Catalyst is unique to itself at Calvary Church, and it is being led by my wife and I. It is also a department by itself. There was lots to cover in the AM, and Pastor Jer couldn’t go into all the fine details of what this change to Catalyst meant. That being said, there were some questions by some people after the service.
This upcoming Sunday morning we will be having a “Catalyst Remixed”. This will be a time to go into the changes in a little more detail. I will also take questions and provide answers.
There are reasons that we are going to relaunch Catalyst the way we are. Primarily, with just being a Sunday morning class, it was too restricted, and couldn’t maximize its potential.
It is official this September Catalyst is once again launching at Calvary Church. This time around there will be more to Catalyst then just a Sunday morning experience. I met with Pastor Jeremy this week and we discussed how we needed to take this to the next level.
Catalyst will be for 19-35 Singles, College and Careers. Sorry, those that are married will not be able to attend, even though some have asked me if they can.
Look for the new trailer announcement coming on Facebook in the main sanctuary soon. The first series will be the one we never did finish in 2008 due to my family interm’ing in Cornwall. That series was on Social Justice.
Again, there will be multiple ways to connect with Catalyst, this blog, Facebook Group, and following me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/regbertrand).
There are a few things that we are still developing….but see you soon.
