OK, I know I will get some static on this one. Pastors aren’t supposed to use any language that cannot be found on an old rerun of “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood”. If you give me a chance, I will explain my choice of title. It started back in April, when I became aware of a piece of software called “PC Decrapifier” (a free download, suggested donation at http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/download ). The idea of the developer was to help the purchaser of a new computer to rid themselves of all the trial version software and nonsense that comes on the drive when the PC manufacturer ships it. Instead of simply using the Windows XP or Vista utility, this company came up with a way to allow you to eliminate all of the undesired software by choosing from a list and allowing the whole thing to clean up at one time (Windows makes you select each one individually).

In every growing team there is the addition of new people to the mix. If we try to take them out of the box and start them on their way with a series of tasks without some “untraining time”, we will no doubt find ourselves wishing we had explained more. I am not talking simply about going through the employee handbook with them, as effective as that may be. I am suggesting that we would be wise to plan time with the members of the team individually to explain the other facets of the overall shop, and how each part functions on the team to produce a singular positive result. In the process, we should be careful to ask probing questions like, “How did you accomplish this at ___?” (the place they worked before). We may get some great ideas from them, but in any case we get to hear both the good and the bad of their last employment experience. In other words, we help them purge and “decrapify” so that the bloated bad memories are made into just that — memories. When the team member is able to relieve the past (forgive the pun), they can hear the present. They have open space on the drive of their mind to learn new tasks and see how they fit the common goal of our team. Who knew? What works on drives works in team builders…decrapifying.

It seems like my life has a thousand passwords. Between bank pins and software passwords, how in the world can I keep them straight? What is worse, is that I work with people that put passwords on various accounts and computer software. How can we get both security and sanity from this process? Two authors I have read this past week have written on this subject: (Gina Trapani of Lifehacker.com and Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing.net). Gina’s suggestions on passwords, in particular, take the sting out of the process of security. She has the right idea for how a team can know what those beyond the team will not know.

Her idea was to take a random set of letters like “a-s-d-f” and add to them the extension of three letters that are the first letters of the service. For instance, if the service provider is “Earthlink” the password can be “asdfear”. If the service provider is Google, the password is “asdfgoo”. The team can all easily recall the access code, but it will be meaningless to anyone else. I have found a variation of this system can be good for your marriage as well. It helps to have good communication before you get to the bank and have to use a pin that hasn’t been used in a while. Since in many countries I travel to the pins need to be all numerical, I have a simple system that uses the same principle.

There is an abundance of free software (shareware) out on the web. Some of it teams need to operate smoothly. In these hacks, I will try to survey some of it that I have found helpful. There are many blogs that do this well, but I know that there are Pastors and business owners in my circle of friends that may not read them. Nothing in these hacks will be included unless I have tried the software, and deemed it personally useful (a rating that virtually no one acknowledged!). Here it goes!

Last year a student came to Great Commission Bible Institute with no Microsoft Office suite. They went to the store and bought a student edition for about $150 before I realized what they did. Because of that, I will post this one first: The whole suite that works with Word, Excel and many other productivity pieces can be found absolutely free (from Sun Microsystems) at OpenOffice.org ! This is not a new announcement, and thousands use it everyday. It is easily downloaded from their site and works like anything I have ever purchased from Microsoft. You DON’T NEED to spend money updating to newer versions of MS products every time one office somewhere updates theirs. Your whole team can download this and keep it current at no charge.

We have already written in a previous hack about the use of online based document software available through Google docs. Another excellent piece of software (also free) is their Google Presentation software, that has worked for me seamlessly with my Microsoft Power Point files. There are options to work with a presentation that is located on the web, or that is kept on my own drive. If you are familiar with Power Point, this web based application will be very helpful, and did I mention, FREE. A simple but entertaining presentation of all of this software and the concept can be found at:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA

Another freebie for this hack is a personal favorite. Recently I have been a part of several conference calls and meetings where a group of individuals have needed to coordinate schedules and “poll” each other on a good time to get together or call. “Doodle” is a free website where I can create the poll, ask my questions, send the link to my list of those involved, and watch responses in near real time.

How can I use this? Let’s say five couples want to go out on Friday night. We need a time and a place, right? I can send them a simple link with time choices and restaurant choices and “poll” them. That’s a simple example, but think of how this can work on team based projects. What day of three is best for us to have the upcoming meeting? Is it better in the morning or afternoon? If you are spread out across the globe and you need a quick straw poll, this is your simplest answer. Go to www.doodle.ch and check this out! It is effective and fast. Yes, of course it is also FREE!

Something remarkable is happening in the team working world. The software framework of our lives is shifting beneath our feet. Yes, Bill Gates is retiring from Microsoft operations, but something even more profound is shifting… More people are using “Team software” or collaboration software. What’s more, is most of this new software is FREE.

Instead of using Microsoft Word or Word Perfect x.0, try a collaboration of writing notes among team members using the Google Docs software, all free online. Set up an online free Google account for your office use and have all of your team members able to log on. When you create a document or update a document, every person who has web access can view the document in real time. In fact, every person on the team who has been given access to the document on the system can change it. If two work on it at the same time, Google will let you know when you go to save that there are two docs competing to become the revised version. You can rename one and compare them, making a choice.

The best part of working online with documents is that you can avoid emailing back and forth fifteen revisions, trying to keep which one is the most recent and best. In addition, no matter where in the world you are, you can access the team’s most recent collaborative document. Simple solutions have already been made for working offline on materials, so you needn’t stay online all the time to be working on them. You can set your laptop to automatically update files you have been working on at the time you next go online.

Someone is reading this and asking, “What about security?” Fair question. Yet, I don’t know many people that have that much secure information that they collaborate on and send via an email or web. Obviously there are ways to encrypt and do that, it just doesn’t happen in my world that much. Most of what we work on simply isn’t that sensitive. If yours is, I would suggest working another way.

All of my students are required to turn in all work digitally. In team projects, I want them to get used to the idea of using online software, because many of them will work on teams that are not geographically bound to the same area as them. Life is changing and even social networks are electronic for many around the world. What makes us think we need the team in the same office to work together.

In my travel office (one of the businesses that we set up years ago) I can get a photo from that day’s Jerusalem event, put into a document written in Florida with travel flight  of a recent teaching details from our booking agent’s office in Ohio and match it to a video clip from our producer in South Africa from a DVD we shot in Israel six months before, link them all and have them on the web by nightfall in Florida. The next morning (Jerusalem time) a brochure can be generated at the printer’s office in West Jerusalem and a pdf copy can be emailed to me for final approval before the press runs. We call that a Tuesday, it happens all time in businesses around the world. I choose color printing based on where I can get a good deal, in Asia or New Jersey. All of it will be shipped anyway.

Our place of business is increasingly becoming wherever I am sitting with a cell phone and laptop. As much business is being accomplished in my local Starbucks on a Wednesday morning, as in the local strip mall. Business is changing. Teams can keep up and work together with no monetary investment!