What Makes You Beautiful?
Friends, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving! I’ll be celebrating with a team in Ecuador, but counting my many blessings. I continue to thank God for each of you and the wisdom and encouragement you bring to my life! And so, as this is our final blog for the semester, I thought I would have a little fun!
Get ready. Are you ready? Do you know what Monday was? Monday was the day that One Direction dropped their fourth album! Count it. Four albums in four years. (Who is One Direction, those over 40 might ask? Only the biggest British boy band sensation since the Beatles!)
Four albums debuting in the USA at number one on the Billboard charts. In just four short years, the five-member British-Irish boy band, after coming in third on the X-Factor, is the number one band in the world. Their first tour filled clubs. Their second tour filled arenas. Their most recent tour sold out in hours around the world, filling stadiums with 40,000 to 100,000 screaming fans at each show. It’s absolute pandemonium. Yes, they’re cute. Yes, they have catchy music. But a large part of their success is due to the excitement and the following they have created on social media. Over 37 million likes on Facebook. A combined 114.2 million Twitter followers. A combined 32.4 million Instagram followers. (And yes, I actually went to each of their individual sites, plus the band sites, to do the math!)
Naturally, One Direction was the first thing that popped into my mind when reading Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead by Charlene Li. This important book explains how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yammer, Jive and other popular social media sites can improve efficiency, communication, and decision-making for leaders and their organizations. Li summarizes her thesis as this: “By embracing social media, leaders can transform their organizations to become more effective, decisive, and ultimately more profitable in this new era of openness in the marketplace.”
Now, of course, I do not consider One Direction leaders, or even personal role models; however, these boys know the power of social technology. They seem to have mastered how to be “open” on social media while maintaining control of their product. As Li wrote, “The key challenge to making centralized decision making more open is not to involve more people in the actual decision, but to open up information sharing in both directions, so that those in power have the right information on which to base their decisions.”[1]
One Direction has seemed to master the use of the “open mic” concept. Most recently, that have taken to Twitter to encourage participation in deciding their next single, “What song do you want to hear next? Why?” They built anticipation for their next video by releasing on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook a fifteen second snippet for five consecutive days to whet the appetite of their followers. This worked, as their fans broke the record of viewings in one 24-hour period.
Their fans, “Directioners”, feel as though they are part of the band, and in return, the band personally communicates through social media sites, answering questions, posting videos, and creating a community based on shared interests. By listening to their fans’ recommendations, they continue to break sales records and popularity records, and top the charts in more than a few categories.
As One Direction continued to pepper my thoughts as I read through this book, I came to this sentence:
“This decision making may be appropriate for picking the next best-selling artist, but not if you’re trying to make strategic decisions.”[2]
I completely agree. But I do think these boys are onto something with the overwhelming success they have had in strategically managing their band and promotional materials. Other artists and entertainers could certainly learn from their creativity and openness with their fans.
When I finally released my obsession with One Direction, I read that Li had found that open-driven objectives create some common benefits, including “removing friction, enabling fast response, and gaining commitment.”[3] American Airlines, my most frequent airline, has adopted this practice. From delayed flights to rude flight attendants and rebooking travel, their customer service agents are available via Twitter and Facebook to answer travelers’ questions and address complaints within seconds. Instead of creating a complaining frenzy, it has boosted confidence. The customer receives immediate gratification and feels cared for, and from personal experience, it has encouraged my loyalty to their frequent flyer program. In reality, people complain, and with social media being so accessible to anyone and everyone, wouldn’t it serve the producers and leaders to be proactive and aid in creating solutions rather than waiting for the next shoe to drop?
What if we adopted this as a church? Should we include on the church website a voting poll for hymns to sing the next Sunday and a choice of sermon topics? Would it boost attendance? If we had a communications department set up to respond within minutes to a tweet of complaint or give a hearty answer to a discipleship question, would the confidence in our leadership soar? If the pastor did a fifteen second video snippet each day leading up to Sunday, would the seats fill with excited listeners? Should we install a screen behind the pastor on Sunday and have the congregation “live Tweet” questions during the sermon and make the service interactive? I would hope that we, as church leaders are connected with our congregants enough to ask, like Howard Schultz, what they like and don’t like about the church. If not, this certainly seems to be a worthy question to ask, to promote care between the leader and his flock.
How does Open Leadership relate to church? How could open leadership create deeper relationships between Christ and follower? How could open leadership spread the Word to all the nations? Is there something to learn from One Direction?
[1] Charlene Li, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010), Loc. 841.
[2] Ibid., Loc. 857.
[3] Ibid., Loc. 1402.
About the Author
Ashley Goad
Ashley is the Global Missions Pastor at First United Methodist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana. She's a UNC fanatic, Haiti Enthusiast, Clean Water Activist, Solar Power Supporter... www.firstserves.org www.solarunderthesun.org www.livingwatersfortheworld.org14 responses to “What Makes You Beautiful?”
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Now Ashley, I am personally offended by the “over-40 comment!” Common, I even know One Direction! I love the song “You don’t know your beautiful” – I very needed song in our media driven world! I had to laugh, you thought of One Direction…I thought of the Pointer Sisters (“I’m so excited…I just can stand it…I’m about to loose control.”). I guess I am old! But, I appreciated your levity at this time of year, and hope you enjoyed mine. I think you do bring up a lot of great points about the possibilities for churches to better connect and act as a real community. I think it will be hard for many leaders who have this skeptical attitude about the wisdom of the masses and feel the need to make the wise and godly decisions…you can’t live it up to uneducated and sinful people to do the high work of leading the church. Sadly, it suggests that God doesn’t actually work and guide the masses in our churches, so we have do it for them. Jesus seemed ok with sending out goofy and under trained disciples to learn as they went…maybe we should take this to heart! Don’t you think that churches will have to move into a more open way of leadership and practice because of the world we live in — this is just how we are connected today! To not be open will indicate to people that you are not interested in being connected and are not interested in me! And I think people will go elsewhere. Yes, we live in a very different world!
Hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving, filled with smiles and tasty food!
John! You’re not old! 🙂 I love your song choice, too! I think that just shows how hip we are, relating our reading to music! 🙂
You make a great point. Social media and such can be a great tool in connecting and relating one-on-one. It creates a direct connection to an individual to show care. A 140 character shout-out to an individual portrays the act of “Hey, I was noticed! They care about me.” That’s a good thought, John. Food for thought.
Hope you have a great Thanksgiving, too! I wonder if they serve turkey in Ecuador? That’s where I’m heading Saturday!
Ashley, being the father of a 15 year old girl puts me in the know about all things One Direction (self-disclosure: “Best Song Ever” is my favourite). Thanks for giving us a soundtrack to read to – adds to the experience.
Certainly, considering this book for our churches is a challenge because the model that Jesus gives us is so different than the business building – brand enhancement strategies. However, there is much to be said in developing clear lines of communication where people feel as though they have a voice or influence in what is taking place with their church. On the flip side it is important for those in leadership to demonstrate to their churches that they indeed have value, as the body of Christ – that together we advance in God’s mission, and maybe that’s where things have stagnated (as John mentioned above). Where we (the church) differ is that our purpose is to “go” to “send” to “reach”. Perhaps if our open communication focused more on that idea we might see different results, as we align more with God’s commission to us. What would that look like? I need help there.
Deve,
If the church would just go, send, and reach the lost we would not be having so many issues with church leadership today. If we, as leaders, would lead as Christ did then openness would not be an issue. Jesus didn’t have a cell phone, but he got the word out…because he was passionate, authentic, and transparent. It seems to me that we have made leadership and communication so complicated that we forget to share life with each other and to talk about Christ and what he is doing in our lives. Li makes very good points about being an open leader, and how to communicate within the digital world that we live. I have to believe that Jesus would have the most followers today on Twitter and Facebook…he would engage the culture in a relevant way with a specific message. I think that is where churches are failing in their use of social media. They aren’t engaging with the message Christ…rather they are just posting without meaning.
Richard
Richard,
“posting without meaning”…love that…kind of like talking for sake of talking…I would also agree with your comment regarding churches; my observation has been that those churches who are most focused on God’s mandate have fewer internal issues to deal with…
Ashley,
To be honest, I only liked certain parts of this week’s reading. In fact, I disliked a lot of the book. Why? I hate much of what has to do with modern culture, particularly social media. I have seen our culture becoming more and more superficial, more and more naive, and more and more impressed with irrelevance. This scares me. It scares me a lot.
I know that the intent of this book was not to make everyone become social media experts, but there was a tendency to push us in that direction, and I know that I am not jumping on that train anytime soon. It would be inauthentic for me to do that. I know that there are good things about some of the new technology, but it is not the technology that is what is important; rather, it is the people behind the technology that matters. I know that I am not saying anything profound here. I just know that I am not impressed by success any more — particularly not with a boy band that just put out its third album. Sorry. I don’t mean to be negative. Maybe I am just in a bad mood. 🙂
Bill, I completely understand that One Direction may not be everyone’s “cup of tea!” As I sat in Ecuador this week, I reveled in the fact that I put my cell phone away and didn’t use it except at night-time when I pulled it out to post photos and the link to our video blog. It was our way of including those at home into our mission trip. In fact, when several church members met us at the airport on Saturday, they greeted each of us by name, and said, “I feel like I was serving with you in Quito this week!” Perhaps there are some good things to the new technology…but it sure was nice to “disconnect” for the most part!
Ashley, great modern day application to our reading. A boy band. Who would have thounk-it? Unlike John, I had no idea of this boy band wonder. I am really out of the loop. I will have to ask my 15 year old daughter. She will probably know who they are.
Watching their video that you have embedded here does show quite a bit of talent. Several of them sing and the tunes are very catchy “love ballads” singing about relationship, every young man and young woman’s thoughts.
Do you think that it is the “boys” or their more adult managers that have manipulated the social media craze with such success? I wonder how the Beatles did so well in their time and if this group could not easily break their records due to the potential media exposer we have in our day and time.
Applying this open concept with church is a great thought. As I read this book I was also thinking the same thoughts, about church not about the boy band. Ha! 🙂 How could we involve more people in the workings of the church? At my church, a large (3,000 in attendance) non-denominational charismatic church everything seems to be run without any input from the congregation. Though there are constant appeals for all of us to get involved, it is only to carry out duties to help the church leadership do what they do not dream and give input. That is a challenge. I recall back in the early 90’s there was a concept called “Open Church.” I believe it was more of an openness to what actually went on during the Sunday morning service. People could ask questions during the sermon, come and go, even get up and do sermonettes, etc., etc. I don’t think the concept survived long.
I agree that your idea would increase attendance. What if the pastor/preacher gave three options for sermons and went with the one that was most voted on for next Sunday? Talk about getting the pulse of the congregation. To often people come and say that they got nothing out of the sermon cause it was not personally applicable to them. If people voted on what they would be hearing I do think attendance and attention would increase. Perhaps just doing it for that seldom extra Sunday some months have. If you could not do the whole interactive twitter feed thing on a Sunday morning you could set it up once a month for a evening setting. I would enjoy that.
Great thoughts Ashley! Oh, I have been listening to your boy band during all my typing. Came to “Act My Age” and thought that was a nice reminiscing of the time Michelle and I are coming to. This January we will be celebrating 24 years of marriage and already my kids think I don’t act my age but I still feel the same for my love Michelle!
Great! Ok better get back to my sermon for this morning at Liz’s church.
Happy Thanksgiving my Quaker/Methodist/missionary friend.
Mitch! I love it! I’m so glad to have introduced you into One Direction fandom! 🙂 So… I read your response Sunday night while I was in Quito. It just so happened that the pastor that morning was finishing up a sermon series. At the end of his sermon, he gave two new sermon series ideas…and then asked the congregation to vote on which they’d like to hear next! Ha! How about that?!
Hi Ashley
Excellent and well-written post! Well done. Love the One Direction comparison.
You ask some great questions towards the end of your post about how we could possibly utilise some of these social media tools within a church context. I love the 15 second video snippet build up! And perhaps tweeting feedback after a sermon. But it does make me think about just how much extra work this could generate. I imagine One Direction have a very clever marketing manager in charge of their social media communication, and perhaps this is a role that might be necessary in churches in the years to come. Who knows? One day some churches might be looking for social media pastors 🙂
Some great suggestions Ashley! You’ve given me some ideas to think about 🙂
Well my dear, have a lovely weekend!
God bless, Liz x
Liz, I think you imagine correctly – I am certain there is a full staff of PR folks who strategize on when to drop One Direction singles and prompt “the boys” on their communication and tweets! You are right that it would add a ton of work, especially to already stretched church staffs. We have three folks dedicated to communications at our church, and they still find they are overloaded. …. So how is it going out in the community? Have you found a local tea shop to serve as your office?? 🙂
One Direction? Really? And might I add, you’re counting again. You are raising some serious questions in my mind about your sanity 😉
Ok – but let me say this: You bring up a relevant, time oriented example of how One Direction models open and appropriate use of social media. And you are right – they are everywhere. They are smart in how they use it. I wonder if in part this is because they are young and have grown up with this media as an extension of themselves, while we old folks are just trying to catch up. We have much to learn from our youth. Oh so much.
Peace to you on your Ecuadoran journey!
Yes. One Direction. Really! 🙂 And I really like to count! It soothing!
You know, I got a taste this week of using social media for the good of the world. Through Vimeo and Facebook and Twitter, we were able to include our entire congregation on the trip to Ecuador. Folks said today in worship that they felt like they were on the trip with us, and the excitement built for the next set of adventures. We have such good stories to tell, and without these tools, it would be much harder to sit, have coffee and tell the story to every congregation member…though I really like the sound of that!
Happy thanksgiving to ya! I sure missed you while zip lining through the cloud forest!
These topics are so cofnsuing but this helped me get the job done.