Are We All on the Same Page?

A few years back, I watched as my fellow church members -- new and old alike -- grew agitated attempting to quickly thumb to the right pages in our church hymnal. The organist had already begun to play in many cases while the congregation rushed to catch up. The problem is that the church had recently adopted new hymnals. The pages are, well, paper thin; the hymns appear to be in a different order than our old hymnals; more importantly, the hymnals no longer immediately opened to favorite passages.

As members of the congregation, myself included, paged feverishly looking for hymns, we kept wishing for the older, more familiar text. Why? Because we couldn't find what we wanted and you couldn't even look to a neighbor for help because he or she was having the same problem. No one was on the same page.

Does this sound familiar? Lot's of companies complain that their HR or marketing departments have rolled out new messages, new materials (new corporate hymnals) and that now, no one appears to be on the same page. There is nothing wrong with new materials -- but maybe we need a moment to become familiar with the books before we begin singing from them.