This past Friday evening I joined an estimated audience of 67.5 million people who watched the Opening Ceremony for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. As I watched I thought of four lessons that we can learn and apply to our own lives and businesses. In my own case, I'm thinking about how to apply these lessons to our new ministry, Church Requel. But these lessons could benefit anyone and any business or organization.
Lesson #1 - Be yourself. Don't try to mimic someone else. Certainly the temptation for the organizers in Vancouver would be to try to copy the incredible opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008. Instead, Friday night we viewed something uniquely Canadian with some new visuals never seen before. In every business and organization there is the Beijing temptation - to copy or mimic the best, the most well-known. However, every organization has one advantage over every other one - their own uniqueness.
Lesson #2 - Be creative. One of the aspects of Friday's ceremony that I really enjoyed was the use of all the arts to tell the Canadian story. Singers, dancers, story-tellers, all supported by tech visuals and sound combined to make for a compelling hours-long event. You can bet that thousands of man hours went into just thinking out the possibilities for that opening. You may not have access to such resources, but isn't it possible that you could be more creative in the way you tell the story that is most important to you?
Lesson #3 - Use technology to support your story, but not to be your story. Certainly the technological arts found their way to the stage Friday evening. I've never seen such a floor projection system. What is important for us to remember, however, is that in every case the technology used Friday night supported the main story line. The tech never became the story itself. The lesson applied depends upon your current use of tech. If you're still using an overhead projector, maybe you need to step up your game a bit. If you're a tech maven like me, maybe you need to learn how to integrate the tech seamlessly into your story.
Lesson #4 - Involve your audience. Admittedly the Friday night audience in Vancouver was highly motivated. They all wanted to be there. The Opening Ceremony tickets are the most highly coveted. Still the Olympic organizers didn't take their audience for granted. Did you notice how the entire audience was given a white reflective outfit to wear at a certain point in the ceremony? The Olympic audience became part of the story. Any good story teller already knows that fully engaging the audience is job #1. Is there some way you can help your audience to become more a part of your story?
It would be easy to dismiss these lessons because of the tremendous resources used in Vancouver. You and I may not have access to the millions of dollars or man-hours. But we do have access to the tremendous resources of our minds. Without spending a great deal more money, who among us couldn't better identify our own uniqueness and apply some greater creativity?
