Saturday, August 13, 2011

Where do I have SNAP?

In one of yesterdays sessions of The Global Leadership Summit I had the privilege of being introduced to Michelle Rhee (@M_Rhee).  She left quite an impression on me.  And over the last 24 hours as I have mentally sorted and dug my way out of the massive amount of good information from the Summit, I have been asking myself, Why?  Why did she leave such an impression on me?

One point she made during her interview came to the surface first.  She coined the idea of SNAP.  (She may handle the capitalization of the word differently, but having understood the concept, I believe it is best represented in all caps and perhaps bold.)

She described SNAP in a teacher as one who, as you walk into her classroom, you see her writing on the board beginning the next lesson and without turning her head she tells Jimmy to stop pulling Suzie's hair and throughout it all she doesn't miss a beat from the mission before her of imparting the next great information to the students in her class.

I have a couple of thoughts after ruminating on SNAP a little.

First, I believe deeply that God has created each and every one of us for a purpose.  He has specially crafted us with gifts, He has intentionally shaped our circumstances and surrounded us with people that have helped tool us for this purpose. I also believe within that purpose we can function in His power and not on our own power.  So, I believe we all have that seemingly illusive quality Rhee calls SNAP.

Second, I believe that we all have this gut knowing of when we are functioning with SNAP.  We call it different things:  being in the zone, working in our sweet spot, leveraging our strengths.  But in the moment, as it is happening we feel it.  Almost as a sort of beautiful Twilight Zone everything seems to be moving in the right direction.  We have all the tools needed for the situation at hand in that moment.  We are fully engaged in the moment and we wouldn't want to be anywhere else.  And we are being effective.

The question then, that begs to be answered is "Where do I have SNAP?"  Life is too short, time with the people we love is too precious for me to want to function anywhere other than in my zone of SNAP.

[image by Center for American Progress]