CHELSEA – Attendees at the Chelsea Business Alliance’s monthly luncheon on Wednesday, Jan. 9, heard about a new church campus and several capital projects being undertaken by the city.

Kevin Johnson, teaching pastor at Double Oak Community Church, talked about the church’s Chelsea campus that started in August 2018 and is meeting at Chelsea Park Elementary School until a permanent home is constructed.

“It’s been exciting to see the way it’s grown,” Johnson said.

Johnson discussed the value of workers who can creatively solve problems—and the difficulty in teaching or inspiring such a trait in others.

An example of a business creating an environment that fosters creativity is Toyota, Johnson said.

After World War 2, Japanese companies and products were not respected, but Toyota helped change that perception by focusing on building quality automobiles.

Part of Toyota’s approach was to install a trigger at each work station that could be used to stop the entire assembly process if a problem was discovered.

Such a device would have been seen as incompatible with the accepted assembly line process focused on efficient production, but Toyota wanted its employees to feel empowered and to collectively focus on solving a problem if one was discovered.

“They wanted to make a perfect car every time,” Johnson said.

Johnson also referenced “Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration” by Pixar President Edwin Catmull, in which the author discusses the fear of failure that can develop when a company has experienced only successes.

The book explains Pixar’s use of “post-mortem” meetings to review projects after they have ended, and Johnson said he tried such an approach with church staff at the end of 2018.

“Invest in the environment of your business so that people feel empowered to be creative,” Johnson urged those in attendance.

Chelsea Mayor Tony Picklesimer also spoke at the CBA luncheon at the Chelsea Community Center.

The City Council passed a $12.8 million capital projects budget in September 2018 that includes projects such as construction of a multipurpose football field, playground, splash pad, amphitheatre and archery park at the Chelsea Community Center; walking track, four baseball fields, Weldon Pavilion and multipurpose building at the athletic complex off Shelby County 11; a third fire station for the city off Shelby County 51; a new fire truck; and road projects.

“It’s an exciting time around the city of Chelsea,” Picklesimer said about the projects, which should be completed at different stages through the next three to four years.