The Bradford Blog

It’s time for some spring cleaning

It’s spring! The birds are singing, the trees are greening, and life just seems to have a bounce in its step again. Spring also means it’s time to clean up and out different areas of our lives. While spring cleaning is usually meant for the house and garage, it can be an excellent time for rethinking as well. Whether it’s your relationships, finances, career, or something else, you can leverage this time for a personal overhaul.

One tool that can help you with this is the SWOT analysis. Sounds exciting, right? I encourage you not to tune at this point. This type of analysis is a tool businesses often use to strategically measure their current effectiveness and overall health in their internal and external environments. So what does SWOT stand for? And how can a business tool aide our personal lives? The acronym stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The first two elements apply to internal environments, while the last two to external ones. While this exercise is simple, it needs some dedicated energy and thought to fully assess each area. A solid starting point is asking the question “What are my _____?” and insert one of the four points of SWOT. For example, as a parent, I may go through a series of questions such as:

· What are my strengths as a dad? What do I do that is received well from my kids and why? How does my approach to parenting reflect my core values and the needs of my kids? How can I live in these strengths more?
· What are my weaknesses as a dad? What do I do that is poorly received by my kids and why? How could my approach to parenting grow and become a better reflection of my core values and the needs of my kids? How can I grow through these weaknesses and become a more balanced parent?
· What opportunities can I leverage in my relationships with my children? Are there social groups that would be a positive influence on my kids? What interests do my kids have that I can become involved in so my relationship with them can grow?
· What threats exist that could harm my relationship with my kids and their well-being or development? Is there anything I need to be protecting them from? Is there behavior that needs to be corrected because of its destructive nature?

I could go on with more questions, but I hope you get the main idea behind it all. A strategic tool like the SWOT analysis can be very effective in helping us see and understand where our lives are really at. This type of rethinking is an important part of the Resole Process as it allows for assessment of our current life trajectory and provides the insight needed to correct course. I challenge you this spring as you clean out the tangible compartments of your life that you also do the same to the intangible parts as well.

For more information on how to create a personal SWOT analysis, click here.

2013: 04/16
CATEGORY: resole
rethink
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New growth could leave some behind

I submitted the following OpEd to a local news site in Oak Ridge in March and, since I have yet to receive a response, thought I would blog it as well…

There is a revitalized excitement in Oak Ridge these days. The news of new restaurants and retail stores coming to town seems to have produced a bounce in our collective step. The infamous Oak Ridge Mall appears to have a new future and work at the marina will undoubtedly enhance community life. But, in our excitement, let us not forget to consider the ramifications of our decisions.

Take the new Kroger Marketplace set to open sometime in 2014. There is a definite desire for a nicer, larger grocery store in town and it will bring greater access to areas north of Oak Ridge Turnpike. Additionally, the development will attract other shopping and dining options to the city. But what impact will its move have upon residents of the neighborhoods behind it be, specifically those living in the Scarboro community. This area is listed by the USDA as low-income and low-access, meaning a significant amount of residents live more than 0.5 mile from the nearest supermarket. While this does not seem to be a huge deal in this age of cars, there are members of this community that likely walk to buy their food, especially with the lack of public transportation. To complicate the matter further, food prices continue to escalate, especially those considered nutritious, which places an even greater burden upon the finances of our low-income neighbors.

In conversations I have had recently with friends and coworkers that live in Oak Ridge, I have come to the conclusion that a community food policy or plan does not exist that informs decision makers on the City Council, Planning Commission, and in the City Manager’s office of impacts such as what I discuss above. It is my understanding that Kroger is actively pursuing a new tenant for its current home to avoid leaving it empty, but there is little guarantee that it will be another grocery store. Instead of a “wait and see” mentality, I propose that we proactively look for a solution that not only improves access to Scarboro and the other surrounding neighborhoods, but that also provides healthy, affordable foods in innovative ways. One potential solution is revising land-use policies along Tuskegee that would allow a smaller grocer to locate. This store could be an outlet of a larger chain, such as Food City or Kroger, in order to benefit from economies of scale and other efficiencies related to size. Additionally, bringing a Farmers Market on an additionally day at the Scarboro Community Center could provide local agriculture with a new market and bring nutritious foods to the community.

These are just ideas. Ideas to get a conversation started in the community. I believe it will take more than one individual’s hypotheses to create solutions. Instead, it will take the entire community realizing that we need to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

2013: 04/12
CATEGORY: resole
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Dry bones

On Easter, the message at my church was centered on a passage in Ezekiel that speaks of the valley of dry bones. In a prophetic vision, Ezekiel has a conversation with God about how these bones represent the people of Israel who have become complacent and lukewarm in their faith. God instructs Ezekiel to speak to the bones and command them to hear the word of the Lord. Following his command, the bones came back to life and the tendons and muscles and skin formed over them once again. And then God told Ezekiel to command breath into them again and the dry bones became alive once again. This vision was an illustration of what God was going to do in His people.

I started thinking about this today after reading a quote from Oswald Chambers. “You should always recognize the difference between what you see Jesus to be and what He has done for you. If you see only what He has done for you, your God is not big enough.” After thinking about this for a bit, I realize that my bones are dry, that my faith and relationship with God have suffered from comfort and complacency for quite a while. I have not experienced the freshness of “seeing Jesus” that brings new life to dry bones.

A few years back, I read a book by Pastor Craig Groeschel titled “It”. He describes three “dangerous” prayers that will bring about life transformation and challenges the reader to consider praying these daily:

· Stretch me – our faith can get complacent, especially during comfortable seasons of life. This is a prayer for spiritual revitalization.
· Ruin me – this is a prayer asking God to tear down the walls we build around hearts to protect us from the outside world. It’s a plea for vulnerability and to see life around us with eyes that God sees it with….that my heart would be broken for the things that break His.
· Heal me – there is always a need from healing. This world is brutal and the wounds it causes can only be healed by God.

I prayed each of these prayers earnestly for days, and I have seen how truly dangerous they are. But I choose to see them as powerful prayers rather than dangerous, because God is looking out for us and has our best interests in mind. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11 ESV) So I begin praying them again with an understanding that He will answer them in the way He knows I need today.

I talk a lot about Resole. Recently, I’ve realized a fifth intertwining element needed to be added: Repent. I guess that’s what this post is. Me realizing that I’ve become dry and complacent, trusting on my own understandings and ways of life rather than upon the Giver of Life. Repent is leveraging the honest assessments we take of our lives through Relive and Rethink and confessing our error and sin and then turning away from it and to God. There’s indescribable power in repentance. If you’ve never done it, or maybe it’s been a while since you last did, I encourage you to join me in these simple prayers.

Lord,

Stretch me.

Ruin me.

Heal me.

Amen.

2013: 04/09
CATEGORY: resole
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The Peanut Butter Drive

This is a fantastic idea to work toward decreasing hunger in America.

The Peanut Butter Drive.

2013: 04/03
CATEGORY: resolve
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The link between poverty, hunger and obesity

In 2011:

46.2 million people (15%) were in poverty (fromFeedingAmerica.org)
50.1 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 33.5 million adults and 16.7 million children (fromFeedingAmerica.org)
35.7% of adults and 17% children and adolescents (ages 2-19) were considered obese (from CDC website)

What is your initial reaction to these statistics? Hard to comprehend? Let me break it down for you a little differently.

1 out of 6 Americans live in poverty
1 out of 6 Americans live in food insecure homes
2 out of 6 Americans adults are considered obese

Do you see any correlations between these numbers? The easiest ones to connect are poverty and food insecure homes because it makes sense. People with low-income are likely going to have less to spend on food. But to fully understand the connections, and the reasons behind the connections, it’s important to understand how each of these terms are defined.

The U.S. government defined the poverty level in 2012 at a total yearly income of $23,050 for a family of four.
Food security is defined in terms of access to enough food to lead an active, healthy lifestyle.
A person is considered obese when their body mass index, or BMI, is equal or greater to 30. BMI is a measurement obtained by dividing a person’s weight by their height in inches. (Granted, BMI can be deceiving. For example, a muscular individual will have a high BMI but would not be considered obese.)

Think about this scenario from the documentary Food Inc. A low-income family of four is trying to decide what to eat for their next meal. As the parents explain, they want to feed their children nutritious foods because they know it is better for them. However, fresh produce is expensive, especially considering the low caloric value of these foods. Mom and Dad wrestle with the decision between healthy foods or a value meal from McDonald’s because their kids will feel more satisfied with the more filling foods there, making their limited funds stretch further. In the end, the camera pans to the family driving down the road with McDonald’s products in hand.

This is the plight of many Americans today as food prices continue to escalate. Foods that are good for our bodies are out of reach for the budgets of many, creating this undeniable link between poverty, food insecurity, and obesity. Consider the following two graphs by University of Washington professor Adam Drewnoski demonstrating the energy density of foods compared to their nutrient rich score and their energy cost.

This can be perspective-shifting information if you have the view I used to. I held to the belief that people are overweight and obese because of personal choices to eat unhealthy and not exercise. While I still believe this is a factor, research by people like Drewnowski have opened my mind to see other contributing factors. Much is floating around as to how to remedy this problem and I will cover these in a subsequent post. In the meantime, let your mind digest this information and realize that the obesity epidemic in America is a serious issue that is partly rooted in the injustice of how our food system is structured.

For additional information, read this article on processed foods as a recipe for obesity.

2013: 03/27
CATEGORY: resole
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I want to be a fire truck

“I want to be a fire truck when I grow up, mommy!”

Yes, those words were mine. I was 3 years old, I think, when I emphatically made this announcement to my mom. (Takes me back to one of my all-time favorite comedies, Tommy Boy. “Did you eat paint chips as a kid?” Ha!) Eventually I gave up my lofty goal of being a fire truck and moved on to other dreams.

I bring this up because I recently was asked about my career dreams when I was younger and how they evolved as I aged. After illusions of Transformer-esque qualities, I discovered a deep passion for music and developed aspirations of being a rock star that hung with me for many years. I enjoyed music, was good at it, and figured it would be a great career path. As time went on and my relationship with God deepened, I also developed a desire to be in ministry, specifically in serving as a missionary. This particular desire overtook my rock star delusions after I arrived at Belmont University in 1996 and realized that I was a dime a dozen in the music world. So I shifted my focus on graduating college and going to seminary to pursue life as a missionary.

Again, my plans were forced to change as my new wife and I discovered we were expecting my oldest son just three months into our marriage and two months before graduation. So I secured a job with my dad’s company, Bechtel Group Inc., as a project analyst in their Houston office. During this time, I never gave up on my goal of working in the ministry, but, now, my focus was on being a full-time worship leader. I finally achieved that goal in 2006 as I resigned from my position with Bechtel and joined my church staff as the full-time worship pastor. Three years later, we decided to move from South Carolina to Tennessee to help start a church, and, to accomplish this move, I got a job at a Department of Energy facility in a role I had previously performed with Bechtel.

So here I am. 2013. Four years after moving to Tennessee, that new church has fizzled away and I am working as a strategic infrastructure planner for DOE, something I never dreamed I would be doing nor enjoy as much as I do. Funny how God works.

It’s common for the “what do you see yourself doing in five years” question to pop throughout life. I look back on my life and see the futility in this question. How can one plan what they want to do that far in advance? As Woody Allen once said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” This is because we don’t know the curveballs that life is going to throw at us. The Bible cautions making specific plans for tomorrow when we have no clue what it is to come. Instead of living life with a closed fist around our plans, I think the prudent approach would be to be open-handed, to relinquish control to the Lord and live your life.

I believe a better framed question for the future is “who do you want to be in the future”. This question inserts vision into the equation. A Bible proverb says that without vision a person will perish (I’ve paraphrased to fit this thought stream). Do you have a vision for your life? Or are you perishing as life relentlessly hits you with curveballs? I can more readily answer this question of who I want to be, though I have learned to be open-handed with it as well.

Who I want to be in five years:

A man that presses into God more than I do today
A better reflection of Jesus to those around me than I am now
A better father to my four children than I am now
I want to be married again, so a better husband than I was in my first marriage
An increasingly humble learner as knowledge can lead to pride

That is all I have at this moment. Maybe that is all I need. After all, it’s a big vision, bigger than anything I can accomplish on my own. I guess time (or more specifically God) will unveil the answer to me when I need to know it. But the point is this. A RESOLE life is more focused on the “who” than on the “what”. Plans will develop as vision comes into greater focus.

2013: 03/15
CATEGORY: resole
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Great tools do not always equal success

Two reports on the state of Tennessee caught my attention last week. One was the results of a study by the Reason Foundation looking at highway data of all 50 states over the past 20 years. The other was the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index on the quality of life of the nation, broken down by state. The results of each report were very interesting to me.

The Reason Foundation found that Tennessee was one of only eleven states to improve its transportation infrastructure in each of seven key areas. “This report is a testament to the focus TDOT has placed on maintaining our infrastructure, aggressively repairing and replacing aging bridges, increasing safety, and managing congestion,” said TDOT Commissioner John Schroer. “This is truly exceptional when you consider we are one of only five DOT’s in the nation with no transportation debt.” This is a truly exceptional job by the Tennessee government to target the state’s roads and bridges and work to provide safer, more reliable travel for its residents.

Contrast this with the latest Well-Being Index. Tennessee ranks 47^th in the Union in quality of life, beating out only Mississippi, Kentucky, and West Virginia. The index averages scores from six focus areas: life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behaviors, work environment, and basic access. The state actually saw an overall decrease from 2011 where it ranked 42^nd in the nation.

The vastly different outcomes in these two reports struck me immediately. How can a state perform so well in one area and so poorly in another? The necessary backbone has been maintained and improved upon, yet the way of life residents lead is degrading. The government seems to be doing its part, yet the state culture is not keeping pace.

Do you see any correlation between Tennessee’s current performance in these two areas and yourself or your organization? Are the tools in place but the culture is out of whack? I can install a state of the art exercise facility in my house, but if I don’t use it consistently, I’m going to stay out of shape. A company can develop a brilliant strategic plan, but the plan is worthless if not woven into the cultural fabric. Great tools do not equal success. They most definitely aid in success, but a decision to use them properly must be continuously made. This is a perfect application for RESOLE:

Engaging RELIVE allows for an honest assessment of whether the tools and the culture are in alignment. If they are not, then…
RETHINK requires thoughtful discussion and action to ensure the organizational culture/individual mindset is corrected, including proper use of the tools. At this point…
A RESOLVE must be made to pursue the corrective actions set into motion. This means that there is a determination to realign the culture with the tools. And finally…
Consistent RENEW-al is vital. Creativity should be used to recast the vision and culture that has been established. A friend once told me that there are only three kinds of meat (chicken, pork and beef), but they are prepared in many different ways to keep them interesting. What fresh ways can you repackage your core values?

Through applying this process, or something similar (S.W.O.T. analysis, for example), the disconnections like those between the Tennessee infrastructure condition and the quality of life of its residents can be minimized, if not avoided all together.

2013: 03/12
CATEGORY: resole
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Resolve. Renew. Relive. Rethink.