Today I saw this headline in my notifications from Mashable.

Apple set to be the #1 seller of PC’s next year.

Thoughts of Wow! And Finally! And “They said it would never happen!” all flashed across the screen of my mind.

And then it hit me. Apple doesn’t sell PC’s. Wasn’t that Steve Jobs’ whole point?

“Think Different?”

It would be akin to the headline, “Pepsi set to be the #1 seller of Coke next year.”

If ever there were the blaspheming of a brand, this is it.

Could this signal the beginning of the end for the brand Jobs’ built? He must be turning over in his grave.

My take: Apple didn’t set out to win the “computer” war. Jobs created an entirely different game; one in which they were the only player. That, in large part, explains why apple owns the tablet market. There is no competition. This can’t be summed up as a blue ocean red ocean issue. It’s more like apples and oranges isn’t it.

How might you develop this kind of strategy in your business or on your blog? What about your church or non profit? How many churches operate with the mentality of competing with other churches. I work in higher education, an industry that constantly talks about “comparator” schools. Someone is going to completely reinvent the game soon, leaving the rest of us holding the proverbial bag.

My question: what would it look like to create a new game; one where you owned the playing field–because you were the only player? It takes a lot more imagination and ingenuity to do this. But it must be a whole lot more fun. I

Anyone got any analysis on this?

Ok, so if you’ve clicked on to this post you may have already fallen into a the third trap– the trap of thinking you are a smart person. ;0)

The truth is, you probably are.

In all seriousness– here are the two traps:

1. To forget what it’s like not to know what you know. (i.e. to be unaware of your intelligence)

2. To not know what you don’t know. (i.e. to be unaware of your ignorance)

The former is negligence. The latter is recklessness. Both run the risk of arrogance.

The antidote to the former is attentiveness; for the latter it’s restraint.

Anybody out there go to Catalyst 2011 in Atlanta? If so, I would love to hear what happened there and what you took away.

Scott Lees, Executive Pastor at Christ Church in Memphis, Tennessee, agreed to send me his take. It follows:

Why would a 39 year old Executive Pastor from a 50 year old United Methodist Church attend a conference designed for a bunch of urban progressives who are planting new churches in city centers? That’s the question I kept asking myself as I made my way from the hotel to the conference center for Catalyst 2011 in Atlanta, Ga. Since I wasn’t sporting a messenger bad, skinny jeans or a faux-hawk why in the world did I choose to participate in this leadership experience?

First, Catalyst was more than a conference. It was a runway for new ideas and initiatives. How many times do we as leaders get stuck listening to the same people, reading the same authors and executing the same ideas? Sometimes Jesus needs to step into our comfortable temple courts and turnover the table of old paradigms. Listening to leading edge leaders forces me to see the world from a different perspective and the result is a broader imagination for the church that encourages more people to bring their sacrifice of praise to our King.

Next, if Methodists do not engage this next generation of leaders we will miss our own party. Over-and-over again, speakers and musicians articulated the message of social justice as a natural response to personal holiness. You could hear our founder John Wesley’s influence when he said, “you cannot have personal holiness without social holiness and you cannot have social holiness without personal holiness.” Speakers like Blake Mykoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes, reminded the audience that we have a responsibility to serve under-resourced in the world because eternally that’s more important then making a profit. Sound familiar? If the Methodist Church does not participate in the conversation, and prepare leaders to reach this urban progressive culture, we will give up our seat at the banquet table to another neo-Calvinist or, worst yet, fail to invite post-Christians to the table who are hungry for the message.

Finally, pastoral leaders need to be reminded of the gospel. We preach it. We teach it. We live it. Sometimes we need to sit and be present so we can simply hear it. Catalyst, and really any Christian conference worth the investment, provides space where we are reminded that we are sinners saved by grace. We are not defined by the numerical growth of our churches, the creativity of our programs or the effectiveness of our leadership. Our righteousness is in Christ and we are successful because we are adopted children of God, period. Nothing we do can add to, or take away from, our true identity in Christ and I was reminded of that truth throughout the week. And I needed to be. You do too.

So next year, consider Catalyst for leadership training. You don’t have to own a pair of skinny jeans to register.

I’m searching for a new word, one that captures a growingly frustrating everyday phenomenon. Here’s the dilemma:

I’m sitting at my desk, positioned in front of my “screen.” As I move through my email I come across a reminder from a co-worker  to send them a link to that article from the Wall Street Journal by Stephen Johnson.

So I shuffle over a few screens to my internet browser to find the article again. As I arrive at my browser, several pages are already open. I note someone new has joined the new project I am working on. This someone new happens to be a friend I’ve lost touch with from years before.

Before you know it, I’m back at my email sending this long lost friend a quick note to reconnect. Then I remember. I shuffle back over to the prior task in the internet browser. As I arrive there again, I can’t for the life of me recall the task that took me there in the first place. Remember the WSJ article I was to send to a coworker? For some reason, I don’t have the foggiest memory of it. I sit there dazed and confused at what to do next. Then a blogpost catches my eye and before you know it, I’m clicking on an embedded link in the blogpost.

Then I hear the “ding” on my iPhone and I reach down to see who’s texting me. And after that, I see the notification that “toocoolforhomeshool” has played a word on Words with Friends. And on it goes. . . . . .

So I’m looking for a word to describe that phenomenon– when you begin to fulfill a task or do a piece of work and by the time you get to the place where the work can begin you’ve become so distracted and disoriented you can’t remember what it was you were going to do in the first place.

I’ll come up with a prize for the best idea.

I was there. Watch it to the end. It turns out this man is blind, and yes Bono gave it to him.

I’ve never seen a rock star more like Jesus than Bono. This parable-like incident conjures up images of John’s account of “the man born blind.” The story actually shows the real blindness is with all the people around the blind man who failed to see him. Jesus sees him and heals him and he is overjoyed and the crowd stunned. That’s the feeling you got at the concert that night when this happened. Pure joy.

Here’s the question. Did Jesus heal the blind man because he saw him or did he see the blind man because it was in his nature to heal him? I don’t want to overstate the analogy here– but did Bono bless the blind man because he saw him or did he see the blind man because it was in his nature to bless him? I think it was the latter. It is one’s quality of heart that enables true vision. In other words, we simply do not see what our heart is not attuned to embrace.

It makes me wonder about my own quality of vision or blindness. Am I a person who sees? The deeper question: is it in my nature to bless and heal those most often overlooked (or not seen)? Capacity of heart determines quality of sight. Right?

Perhaps this is why in Scripture a hard (stoney) heart is connected with eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear.

A page without punctuation is like a life without spaces.

It happens to me constantly. I bet it happens to you too. Just this morning I scrambled around to get ready. Someone was picking me up for work around 8. I somehow managed to be ready a full 5 minutes before 8. I walked out onto the front porch and felt the cool morning air. Birdsong rang out from the trees. The garden still dripped dew. In response to that I sat down on the front porch swing, promptly pulled out my iPhone 4 and began to check email. That’s when it hit me.

A page without punctuation is like a life without spaces.

Everywhere we turn we see it happening people riveting their attention on a little rectangular device in the palm of their hand these devices for all the good they do can literally consume every square inch of space in our lives wherever there is a pause instead of a inserting a comma I pull out my phone and see if it’s my turn on Words with Friends on the short walk from my car to my office instead of inserting the (ellipses) my mind so desperately needs before launching into a full day of work I pull out my phone and fire off a text or two about who knows what on the short one mile commute from work to home instead of inserting a (question mark) and preparing my heart for home I pull out my phone and squeeze in a quick callback and most unfortunately after I arrive at home instead of the joyful interjecting exclamation marks of joy I pull out my phone and scan my twitter stream or update my facebook

A page without punctuation is like a life without spaces.

See what I mean? So much meaning is missed without proper punctuation. So it is with life. So much meaning is missed without those gifted spaces and brief interludes. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving up my iPhone. It’s not Steve Jobs fault. I’m taking back those little spaces. I’m learning to restore attention to the little mysteries offered by an ordinary day. So the next time I’m in an in between moment, instead of pulling out my phone, I’m going to put in a punctuation mark.

It’s really that simple.

I recently happened on a few lines in a Mary Oliver poem that stopped me in my tracks. The verse both gladdened and challenged me. They distilled the complexity of daily life into the simplicity of basic instructions. Somehow I believe if I can live by these words everything will work out fine; despite the inevitability of them not always working out in the way I think best.

So what are these words? She places them at the center of a poem called, “Sometimes,” in their own little section. They don’t seem to have a lot to do with the rest of the poem. The three lines come after an initial phrase that captions them. The caption over these 7 little words reads, “Instructions for living.”

7 words……. Simplifying…….Clarifying……….Distilling………..Purposing……………Empowering……………Captivating………….Orienting

And No, those aren’t the 7 words.

So these 7 words…… Can they possibly live up to the preceding prelude of unparalleled expectation? Probably not, but it’s a definite maybe.

Here they are:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

These are the words of Easter.

Your reactions appreciated.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
for a real VIN diagrammer see INDEXED.

Take 6 minutes and watch the bit below.

Last Friday night I braved the journey to the local Apple store to buy an iPad 2. Upon arrival I learned they sold out; the line began forming the night before and almost ran the length of the entire mall.

Apple imagined it all over 16 years ago.

So I ask myself, “Self, what are you imagining today that might come to fulfillment in 2027?”

I encourage you to ask that question too.

Ideas? Anyone?

Click on the image and read the page– begin with “The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind. . . .”
It wouldn’t surprise us to think this was written by another fluffy consultant type. The surprise? Tom Peters wrote it. The excerpt captures part of #25 in his book, “The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence.” (Quote from the slightly fluffier Dan Pink.)

Tom Peters’ is a bottom line business thinker. Leadership guru Warren Bennis, the only person close to both Tom and the late Peter Drucker, told a journalist, “If Peter Drucker invented modern management, Tom Peters repainted it in Technicolor.”

Whatever kind of movement you lead or organization you run, be on the lookout for “artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers,” and you get the point. Make sure they sit at the tables of influence.

If you’ve crossed over the frontier of reading, I’d encourage you to get this one in the Vook Edition. and the price is right!