I prefer the term “New Year’s Aspirations” to the more common “New Year’s Resolutions”. Simply put, if I make a New Year’s Resolution and fail to follow through, that thing is, by definition, unresolved. And the only people who like unresolved things are jazz musicians.

Resolving to accomplish something has such a bold finality to it. This is likely a wholly semantical argument, but for some reason, aspirations sit better with me than resolutions. I have no idea what 2010 holds, but I’m aspiring to do a few things—to read more, to learn to fly fish, to lose 30lbs. I don’t know if I’ll write to you a year from now as a well-read, physically fit fly fisherman, but I want to give it a try. To rise up. Seek ambitiously. Aim. Aspire.

So, faithful readers, I hope your 2010 is full of aspiration. And, if things go well for us all, some eventual resolution, too.

Your staff culture has to represent the culture you’re trying to create in the wider church. That’s one of the biggest misses in contemporary church work. You have a business-run, top-down, bottom-line culture yet you’re trying to bring around a loving, transformative culture in your community. It just doesn’t work.
—John Peacock, Willow Creek Community Church

Obviously, working for a church I feel the weight of this in a very specific way, but I also think the overarching thought plays out in the marketplace as well, in every type of organization. You simply can’t create a macro-culture that doesn’t reflect the micro-culture inherent in your leadership. You might try to fake it for awhile, or cover it up with advertising, marketing, and lots of words, but eventually people will feel the dissonance of who you say you are versus who you actually are.

Is the nature of the relationships around this [leadership] table worth exporting to the rest of the church?
—Randy Pope, Perimeter Church

Again, church or marketplace, it doesn’t matter—if you’re leading, by definition it means others are following. Are the motives and actions of your leadership what you want to instill in people? Are you leading them where you want them to go?

Merlin Mann’s excellent Short Course on Surviving the Web, Blaine Hogan’s quick interview with The War of Art author Steven Pressfield, John Maeda’s infographic comparison of money spent on science vs. art in America, ad agency Wieden+Kennedy’s new site (love love love the timezone footer), vintage Swiss typography deliciousness from Schweizer Grafiker, DFW-area pastor Matt Chandler talking to his church before having brain surgery to remove a tumor, the simple beautiful writing app Ommwriter, an industrial design student’s brilliant take on redesigning UK power plugs, 37signals’ Jason Fried being interviewed by Chicago School of Business professors and students, and type designer/illustrator Jessica Hische’s lovely new portfolio.

Your existing competency is not the end.

Unless you choose for it to be.

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.
—James Cameron

To put it another way, if you try something extraordinary and fail, you likely learned more than your peers who are unwilling to risk. You become acclimated to a place your peers still fear to tread. Risk is the secret sauce of extraordinary work.

Don’t get me wrong, skill building and knowledge accumulation are vitally important. You need a foundation. But skill and knowledge are freely available to anyone who will put in the hours. Anyone. You have to take your skill and knowledge and do something with it.

Risk, try, act, move.

I’ve already written about this topic (see: Copying Doesn’t Hurt Me, It Hurts You) but I want to look at it from a different angle.

Our church website is copied a lot. I’m not saying that in a prideful manner, but simply as a stated fact. I get a “hey, this looks familiar” email at least once a week. As a Christian and a church staffer, I’m mostly on board with it—”same team” we often say. There’s no competitive advantage for us to have a unique website, because this isn’t the marketplace; we’re not competing with other churches. We want to see them succeed. But as a designer, as someone who is passionate about clear communications, it makes me sad.

When you copy an existing site you probably get a decent end-product, but you don’t know why. This is about more than copying design/visual cues, it concerns me to see churches borrowing copywriting style and information architecture. Why? Because you’re borrowing a voice and thought process that isn’t you. When I see a site with the same user flow as ours, all I can think is, “you don’t know why we did that. Your people are probably different.” The way we’re structured, the way we communicate and plan events, the kind of things our communicator(s) say, they’re all different than you. Not better, just different.

But if you homogenize the end-product without understanding the process that led to the original, your website will reflect who you actually are less and less. You’ll keep being you in person, because you can’t help it. But your website will be someone else. And that dissonance is eventually perceivable. A website is the first impression most people have of you; will their physical interactions with your brand feel like the same thing?

Just be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde

By all means, look at others to learn. Ask questions. But ask the right questions. Ask why something is the way it is, don’t just accept it as globally good. Don’t just look at our website (or anyone else’s) and copy it. They’re not you. And being you at every touchpoint is far more valuable than having a slick website.