Trust

In college, I spent a month writing about how to manage networks of people and information. In the “old days,” we had hierarchical organizations and data. Managers could use a style of “command and control” to keep track of their employees, and their information. But now, in an age of global teams and the internet, the traditional management methods don’t work nearly as well. After reading for 80 hours (literally) all the journal articles I could find, the solution for me came down to one word: trust. The only way we can actually manage in this networked age is by creating environments where we can trust both data and people. So, you can imagine I was interested when I saw this quote on the Freakonomics Blog:

This guy is a fee-only insurance consultant. I love how he explains himself and his business; I so deeply wish that more people, and especially companies, could achieve this level of transparency and information. Check out his Q&A, toward the bottom of the page, for a sample of what I’m talking about. Here is my favorite item:

How do I know that I can trust you?

“You don’t. But trust is overrated. Numerous studies have shown that most people are not good at judging who is trustworthy and who isn’t. They think they are, but they’re not. How many times have you seen a story about someone who got duped by a supposedly trustworthy person?”

I wrote the paper while working for PriceWaterhouseCoopers in London. So it was a totally secular affair. But now, I wonder how our sinful nature interacts with that. Who can we trust? Can we be trustworthy? And what do we do about it? Does a line like this from this insurance consultant make you want to trust him more or less? Why?

“The God Who Saves”

While I was studying abroad in Australia, I got to meet a guy named Mark Gilbert. Every Friday morning, Mark would come to my house at 6:00 AM, wake me up, and we’d go for a morning surfing lesson at Maroubra Beach, just south of Coogee in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. Mark would teach me to surf, then we’d grab breakfast and study 1 John together. It was a great picture of what I want discipleship to look like in my life.

Mark, like me, comes from a Catholic background, and so he spends a lot of his time helping Catholics understand the gospel for themselves by reading the bible. He’s just written a book, which I intend to buy, called The God Who Saves.

Here’s what I found online about it: “In four studies, the book demonstrates to the reader through the examination of scripture the reason we need to be saved, how God saves us through Jesus and what faith has to do with us being saved.

“Each study deals with common misunderstandings people from Catholic backgrounds often have with concepts that Bible-believing Christians may take for granted.

“For instance, many from a Catholic background, as with most religious traditions, would see sin as to do with the seriousness of particular actions that disobey God’s commands.

“In the study on ‘Why we need to be saved?’, as the participant is taken through the Fall, it is demonstrated how it is not so much the seriousness of a particular sinful action, but of rejecting God and his authority to rule our lives that is the main problem. ” (The God Who Saves – Mark Gilbert)

 

Because I think everyone needs to hear the gospel, and because I’m always looking for ways to help introduce others to Christ, I’m interested in getting the book. Because it’s my friend Mark who wrote it, I’m really looking forward to it.

I’ve got my frequent flier miles saved up, so at some point, I’m looking forward to another trip back to Australia. Perhaps Mark and I will go for a surf.

Getting Back to Getting Things Done

Have you heard about Getting Things Done? One of the keys is that when you’re creating a task list, for every project, you list the “Next Action.” That means “If I had nothing else to do except work on this project, what’s the next physical action I’d need to take to move it closer to completion?” I think that’s a good question. So I was interested when I saw Merlin Mann’s post on 43 folders about verbs.

How you articulate an activity or how you choose to frame a project within the context of your larger life and work will say a lot about how successful you can be in turning all your “stuff” into atomic actions that will work in support of valuable outcomes. This starts with simple things like beginning next actions with a physical verb, but there’s actually a lot more subtlety (and potential confusion) to it.

Project verbs

Finalize, Resolve, Handle, Look into, Submit, Maximize, Organize, Design, Complete, Ensure, Roll out, Update, Install, Implement, Set-up

Next-action verbs

Call, Organize, Review, Buy, Fill out, Find, Purge, Look into (Web), Gather, Print, Take, Waiting for, Load, Draft, Email

Getting that taxonomy and structure correct during the planning stage will do much to improve your life when it comes time for doing.

Available: GTD: Project Verbs vs. Next-Action Verbs

So… after two weeks of travelling, I’ve go a lot to process through. I hope these verbs can help me.

It’s all worth it.

I thought this month I’d share the text of an e-mail I got from a freshman named Tony at Babson:

Hi Brian!!

This is Tony from Babson.

I just wanted to let you know that I finally got to sit down in Reynolds with “Sarah” today. She was the girl I told you about who kept challenging Christianity in my Rhetoric class, but seemed very willing to discuss religion with me whe I asked her.  

I kept the meeting very light, and started it off discussed random things like how it is living in Park Manor North, coming to Babson, etc…

Then I made my move.

 First, I asked her what she believed. She said that she doesn’t believe God or anything, but does take bits and pieces of different religions that she finds useful or interesting.

So after that, I turned to the small booklet you gave me. I had to very briefly explain it to her because she was peer-pressured into seeing “Borat” in Sorenson with all of her close friends in the middle of our discussion. Seeing that she was going to leave, I went through the whole booklet in about a minute, which didn’t go so well.

After thinking about it, I actually consider it a blessing, because the conversation starting to go into my own experience with God (which way I chose to live and why), which I wasn’t prepared to talk about and was starting to screw up. But things were going fine up until that point.

Before she left, I gave her the booklet, so she has the message with her. I know she’ll probably read it, because she seems interested in the whole topic of faith and religion.

I asked her if she would like to meet again, and she said that she was more than willing. We have a good friendship developing, so there is still a good chance I can get through to her.

I apologize for the length of this email, but I had to tell you about my first ”sales call”. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions for the next time I meet with her?

I hope everything is going well on your end. See you tomorrow night if you can still make it with the snow we’re supposed to get. Keep warm.

God Bless,

Tony

Isn’t it fun to see Tony take his first steps to introduce others to Jesus Christ? If you ever wonder if your support (prayer and financial) is worth it, consider students like Tony. It’s all worth it!

Tony’s closing question to me: Do you have any thoughts or suggestions for the next time I meet with her? How exciting is that?