The Value of Vision, Part 1: Is Vision Relevant Today?

by: Mike Myatt

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Mike Myatt, widely regarded as America’s Top CEO coach thinks so – with an empathic YES!

Leadership without vision is like trying to drive blind – it won’t end well.

Here are some excerpts from an article on vision he recently wrote:

The best evidence of the importance of vision is what occurs in its absence– mediocrity, irrelevance, and ultimately, obsolescence. Why do so many organizations struggle with creating a cohesive, aligned vision? The answer is regrettably obvious – many leaders are simply failing to lead.

Organizations don’t have leadership issues – they have vision issues. Leadership decoupled from vision is nothing short of a farce. Vision isn’t just ethereal hocus-pocus; it’s the core manifestation of an organization’s values. Vision is what gives a company its forward leaning bias and constantly propels the enterprise beyond the status quo.

Vision statements, as implied in the construction of the phraseology itself, put forth a statement of envisioned future. This vision, if successful, must be underpinned by core ideology (values) and then expressed with clarity and conviction.

Life is just plain easier when you can see what’s ahead of you. Great leaders understand the value of simplicity in all things, and nowhere does simplicity add more value than as it relates to vision. A vision not understood will be misunderstood, misdirected, or ignored. A vision that is values based and simple is easy to evangelize and operationalize. All a leader must do is focus on the right things.

Don’t be in the business of business – be in the business of leadership. At its essence, leadership is the business of defining and articulating vision (why), and then aligning people (who) with said vision – these are the two key strategic elements of leadership (leadership + purpose + people = culture).

Leadership isn’t easy, but it also need not be overly complex. Great leaders are gifted at simplifying everything around them – they are focused on the right things, which allows their processes to fuel creativity and innovation not stifle them.

Lastly, don’t get caught up in attempting to develop something catchy to be encapsulated within a piece of framed artwork that hangs on the wall yet is never put into practice. It is much more important that your vision be understood by company employees, and translated into the resultant authenticity of their actions.

Read the full article here.

Read more from Mike here.

Tags: Leadership, Recapturing Vision, Vision alignment

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Saving Suburbia: From the Garden to the City

by: Mel McGowan

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God is a God of community.

Before the beginning, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit “did life together” in community. “In the beginning,” God created a perfect setting for community—Eden—for vertical connection with him, as well as horizontal connection with others. After the cleansing of the flood, God chose a particular people—a community—to tell his story and reveal his ways. And for the past two thousand years, the Bible says that his presence has not been contained by a tent or a building but is somehow found within in Christ-centered community: the church.

Humans, made in God’s image and for his purposes, are hard-wired for community.

However, today, the concept of community is being kidnapped from us:

• 3-car “garagescapes” have replaced tree-lined front porch landscapes
• Contemporary mega-churches (many with the word “community” in their name) feature darkened rows of attenders seeking anonymity
• The internal combustion engine killed Main Street, Elm Street, and the walkable scale of human towns
• Digital technology and social media seem to remove the need for actual physical spaces to connect with others

All of these changes are demonstrating that when we divorce the word community from the reality of a particular human-scaled place, we fundamentally lose something in the mix. Today, many church planters and next generation Christian leaders feel a calling to be “architects of community” in either urban or suburban settings. However, most are ill equipped to answer this call because they lack a biblical understanding of place and a historical understanding of terms like city and suburb.

Without an adequate theology of place, we resort to either devaluing it (throwaway church buildings) or overdoing it (by trying to re-build the temple). And without a greater understanding of how physical human ecologies and environments either facilitate or constrain community, we will fail to be truly present in the places and cities to which God has called us.

In light of this, we’ll consider a theology of place first, and then explore the tangible challenges we face for creating authentic community in our cities, with a special focus on the suburbs.

Mel McGowan, president and founder of Visioneering Studios, has written an inspiring and challenging treatise on the “place” of church in America today.

>>Download Saving Suburbia: From the Garden to the City here

Tags: Mel McGowan, Place, Saving Suburbia

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Good Organizations are Storytellers. Great Organizations are Storydoers.

by: Ty Montague

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Discussions about story and storytelling are pretty fashionable today. On the one hand, as a lifelong advocate for the power of story, I find this very encouraging. For all organizations, having a story and knowing that story are crucial steps to achieving success. On the other hand, I’m worried that too many organizations think that telling their story through advertising is enough. It’s not.

In fact, those that think this way do so at their own risk because there is a new kind of organization on the rise that uses story in a more powerful way — and they are run more efficiently and profitably as a result.

In my new book, True Story: How to Combine Story and Action to Transform Your Business, I call these new organizations storydoing organizations because they advance their narrative through action, not communication. Storydoing organizations — Red Bull and TOMS shoes, for example — emphasize the creation of compelling and useful experiences — new products, new services, and new tools that advance their narrative by lighting up the medium of people. What I mean by this is that when people encounter a storydoing organization they often want to tell all their friends about it. Storydoing organizations create fierce loyalty and evangelism in their customers. Their stories are told primarily via word of mouth, and are amplified by social media tools.

So how do you know a storydoing organization when you see one? These are the primary characteristics:

1. They have a story
2. The story is about a larger ambition to make the world or people’s lives better
3. The story is understood and cared about by senior leadership outside of marketing
4. That story is being used to drive tangible action throughout the company: product development, HR policies, compensation, etc.
5. These actions add back up to a cohesive whole
6. Customers and partners are motivated to engage with the story and are actively using it to advance their own stories

Storydoing organizations have a feeling of authenticity and humanity about them that is lost in many traditional organizations today. It makes them magnetic.

Storydoing organizations are on to something very compelling. Storydoing can be learned. And once learned, it can be replicated and spread from one part of your organization to another.

Are you a storydoing organization? Here’s a tool that will help you discover that answer.

Read the original article by Ty Montague here.

Read more about storydoing here.

Tags: Attention, Awareness, Brand, Story, Storydoing, Ty Montague

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Seven Disciplines that Make Leadership Development Stick

by: Michael McKinney

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Leaders don’t always finish well or finish what they start. Leadership development sustainability isn’t easy. Given the fact that we all know leaders that haven’t finished well, it’s surprising how many of us have no plan in place to consciously and specifically improve our leadership abilities. Most of the time we wing it.

Leadership sustainability is about the commitment to change and growth that is consistent with shifting requirements, not just individually but for the organization as a whole. In Leadership Sustainability, authors Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood have defined seven leadership practices that instill sustainability. It begins with “recognition that what matters most is the impact of the leader’s actions on others—not just the actions themselves or the rationale behind them.” Yet that’s not something that we often feel we have time to consider. Our leadership is experienced in our actions and not our intentions.

In brief, the seven disciplines to incorporate into your leadership plan to help make your best intentions stick are:

Simplicity. Focus on what matters most. Tells stories with impact. Leadership sustainability requires that we find simplicity in the face of complexity and replace concept clutter with simple resolve. It entails prioritizing on the behaviors that matter most.

Time. Manage your calendar to reflect your priorities. Put desired behaviors into your calendar. Employees see what leaders do more than listen to what they say. Leadership sustainability shows up in who we spend time with, what issues we spend time on, where we spend our time, and how we spend our time. Recognize routines and modify as necessary.

Accountability. Take personal responsibility for doing what you say you will do and hold others accountable as well. “We see too many leadership points of view that are more rhetorical than resolve, more aspiration than action, and more hopeful than real. Leadership wish lists need to be replaced with leadership vows.” Be consistent with personal values and brand.

Resources. Leaders dedicate resources in order to support their desired changes with coaching and infrastructure. Use a coach. Get coaching and institutional support to become a better leader. “Leaders acting alone, even with great desire and good intentions, are unlikely to sustain their desired changes.”

Tracking. Move from general to specific measures. Measure what’s important and not what’s easy. Tie to consequences. Unless desired leadership behaviors and changes are operationalized, quantified, and tracked, they are nice to do, but not likely to be done.

Melioration. Leadership sustainability requires that leaders master the principles of learning: to experiment frequently, to reflect always, to become resilient, to face failure, to not be calloused to success, and to improvise continually.

Emotion. Know why you lead. Connect change with personal and organizational values. Recognize your impact on others. Celebrate success. “Some leaders work to hide their feelings and avoid becoming too personal with others. These leaders end up distancing and isolating themselves. Leaders who are emotionally vulnerable and transparent will be more likely to sustain change.”

The authors have provided videos, tools and assessments on their web site to help you to achieve leadership sustainability.

Read more from Michael here.

Tags: Leadership Development, Michael McKinney, Staff, Staff Development

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The Law of Subtraction

by: Matthew May

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The Problem: Excess Everything

Our organizations are more complicated and difficult to manage than ever. Our economy is more uncertain than ever. Our resources are scarcer than ever. There is endless choice and feature overkill in all but the best experiences. Everybody knows everything about us. The simple life is a thing of the past. Everywhere, there’s too much of the wrong stuff, and not enough of the right. The noise is deafening, the signal weak. Everything is too complicated and time-sucking.

Welcome to the age of excess everything.

Success in this new age looks different, and demands a new and singular skill: Subtraction.

Subtraction is defined simply as the art of removing anything excessive, confusing, wasteful, unnatural, hazardous, hard to use, or ugly—and the discipline to refrain from adding it in the first place.

The world’s most original innovators all know this: less is best. They know that by removing just the right things in just the right way, they can achieve the maximum effect through minimum means and deliver what everyone wants: a memorable and meaningful experience.

Subtraction is the scalpel of value—the method by which the simplest, most elegant solutions will be created, now and in the future. Subtraction is the creative skill needed to win in the age of excess everything, yet until now there was no simple, incisive guide for developing and deploying it.

Enter the “laws of subtraction,” six simple rules for winning in the age of excess everything, distilled from a six-year study of over 2000 ideas, and centering on a single yet powerful one:

When you remove just the right things in just the right way, something very good happens.

>>  Download The Laws of Subtraction here.

Tags: Leadership Engine, Matthew May, The Laws of Subtraction

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NewSpring Evangelism Course Participant Guide

by: Perry Noble

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At NewSpring Church, “found people find people.”

Pastor Perry Noble and his team have prepared a tremendous resource on Evangelism for use in their groups – and now they have made available to everyone! Here is a brief outline of each session. NewSpring has graciously given permission for you to download the Participant’s Guide; see the link below. The link to download the video segments is also listed.

SESSION 1: WHY?

In this session Perry talks about “why” we all have a call to evangelize and why it is important that we talk about Jesus. Evangelism is important because every person we come in contact with is either in a relationship with Jesus or is spiritually dead.

SESSION 2: WHAT?

In this session Perry will teach about “what” evangelism is. This lesson will help you see more specifics about sharing the Gospel and also a few things you will want to avoid.

SESSION 3: WHERE?

In this session Perry will teach on “where” we are called to go as believers. While it is easy to focus on ourselves and what makes us comfortable, the Bible tells us that Jesus came to save the world not just you and me.

SESSION 4: WHO?

In this session Perry talks about “who” you are called to share the gospel with. The call to evangelism is not just the responsibility of the church, or your pastor, but it is YOUR responsibility as well.

SESSION 5: SHARE YOUR STORY

Following this video, everyone in your group will have a chance to share their story in three minutes or less.

>>To download the Participants Guide, go here.

For additional resources (Host Leader Guide, Host Training Guide, and videos for each session, go here.

More about NewSpring Church here.

Read more from Perry Noble here.

Tags: Evangelism, NewSpring Church, Perry Noble

| What is MyVisionRoom? > | Back to Process >

Vision is Always Visual: Illustrate the Process

by: Eric Geiger

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Illustrating your church’s process is vital. The simple process is more likely to resonate with each person if it is visual. People are more likely to remember it. Consequently, people are more likely to experience the reality of the process if they can recall it.

Recollection increases movement. It increases the likelihood that people will progress through the stages of commitment. People will not live out something they cannot remember.

The process must be the vision for discipleship in a local church. The process says, in essence, “This is the kind of people we believe God is calling us to be, and here is how He is going to transform us into that type of person.” It is personal. It is something each person can internalize and own. The process can become the personal vision for each person in the church.

And vision is always visual.

People are able to live out the vision if they can see it. If there is a visual illustration for the process, people know where they are in the process and where they have yet to go. If they can attach the process to something that is etched in their minds, they are more likely to embrace it.

The process must become etched in the minds of your people.

A visual illustration increases clarity; therefore, church leaders should use one. The visual illustration may be a diagram, or it may be a metaphor that gives people a mental picture.

Choose a visual illustration for your process. Get some wise and creative people around a table and come up with one. Or borrow (steal) one from another church. However you do it, just be sure your visual illustration has the following components:

1. The illustration should be reflective of your process. The illustration must fit. If your process has three steps, then your illustration should reflect that. If your process has four steps, your illustration should reflect that. Ensure that the illustration is an expression of the reality of your process.
2. The illustration should show progression. Remember the simple process is about moving people toward greater commitment. The genius in the baseball diamond illustration started by Rick Warren is that the diamond shows movement from base to base.
3. The illustration should help simplify. Don’t choose an illustration that makes your process seem complicated. Here is the rule: If you have to explain a lot of symbols and hidden meanings in your illustration, it is too complicated. The point of your visual illustration is to help people grasp the reality.

Adapted from Simple Church (B&H Publishing Group, 2006).

Read more from Eric here.

Tags: Attention, Awareness, Eric Geiger

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Larry Osborne’s 3 Mission Essentials

by: Will Mancini

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My friend, Larry Osborne, leads North Coast Community Church with a group of gifted leaders. I enjoy his writing as much as any pastor who writes on leadership. This October, he releases a book entitled, Innovations Dirty Little Secret. (I just sent an endorsement after pre-reading the book.) Whether you like the title or not, this book is worth getting for the chapter on mission and the short section on vision alone.

In short, there are very few books that tie organizational clarity to practical aspects of innovation in a ministry context.

Here are three essentials he talks about for mission, with a chapter subtitle, “How clarity accelerates innovation.” Larry writes that mission must be:

• Ruthlessly Honest
• Widely Known
• Broadly Accepted

Here are some snippets

RUTHLESSLY HONEST

First, to be useful, a mission statement must be ruthlessly honest. It should reflect your organization’s passionate pursuit, not merely your wishful thinking, your marketing slogans, or a spirit of political correctness. Anything less is disingenuous. And worthless. It doesn’t take long for people inside and outside an organization to recognize what the real priorities are. If your mission statement says one thing but all of your decisions and actions pursue something else, the predictable result will be cynicism and confusion.

WIDELY KNOWN

A second trait of a powerful mission statement is that it’s widely known. Even if it’s ruthlessly honest and laser focused, if it’s too wordy and complex to remember, it’s pretty much useless. To impact the daily decisions of an organization, a mission statement must be easily remembered and repeated ad nauseam—and then repeated again. When a mission statement is so complex and wordy that no one remembers what it says without stopping to re-read it, there’s not much chance that daily decisions will be made in light of it or even align with it. Too long to remember is too long to be useful.

BROADLY ACCEPTED

In the early days of a startup, it’s easy to gain broad acceptance of your mission. If it’s genuine and clearly stated, you’ll attract people who agree with it and you will repel those who don’t. That’s why so many startup teams have a Camelot-like sense of unity.

But it’s difficult to maintain that sense of unity and broad acceptance of the mission over time. As organizations grow and mature, there’s almost always some measure of mission creep. It’s inevitable. New staff and new leaders subtly redefine the mission in terms of their own personal perspectives, preferences, or the position they have within the organization. And those subtle shifts add up. Eventually, many organizations end up with competing silos, each with a slightly different.

WHY  MISSION CLARITY ACCELERATES INNOVATION

A clear and memorable mission statement will tell you what to feed and what to starve, what to focus on and what to ignore. It will give you a framework by which to judge success and failure.

Without mission clarity it’s easy to be seduced by every innovative idea or proposal that appears. Especially if something is novel, has been successful elsewhere or promises to make a solid short-term profit. But over the long haul, if something doesn’t take us toward our mission, it takes us away from our mission, even if it’s a great idea and a potential game-changing innovation elsewhere.

It’s hard to hit the bull’s-eye when it’s a moving target, or when everyone thinks it’s a different target, or no one knows for sure what the target is.

NORTH COAST’S  MISSION

Making disciples in a healthy church environment

Read more from Will here.

Tags: Innovation, Larry Osborne, Mission Statement, North Coast Community Church, Vision, Will Mancini

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Think Inside the Box

by: Steven Furtick

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When it comes to our limitations, most people operate out of an if, then mindset.

If I had __________, then I would ___________.
If I could __________, then I would ___________.

So…
If I had more money, then I would buy a nicer house.
If I could sing, then I would be a musician.
If my children were in a different stage of life, then I would move.
If my church had a state of the art facility, then we would grow.

You encounter this same kind of thinking in the corporate world. It’s called thinking outside the box:
What would you do if you had unlimited money? Could sing? Had children who were at a different stage? Had a state of the art facility?

Sounds nice, but this mindset is a breeding ground for frustration. Why?

Because you don’t have unlimited money.
You can’t sing.
Your children aren’t in a different stage of life.
And your church still has the same building.

In other words, for now you’re stuck with your limitations. And while it might be liberating to think about life as if you didn’t have them, they’re still there and you have to work with them.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t plan ahead or that you shouldn’t dream. Of course you should. But your box is never going to expand to the place where you’re thinking outside of it until you learn to live in it.

I would challenge you to think inside the box. Stop waiting for what you want and work what you’ve got. How much money do you have? What talents has God given you? How can you maximize your church or corporation with the assets and resources you currently have in place?

Your greatest limitation is God’s greatest opportunity.
If He wanted you to have ________, He would have provided it to you.
If He wanted you to do ________, He would have made you able.

But He didn’t.

So there must be something greater in mind that He wants to do through your limitation. He must have something in mind He wants to do with what you actually have and actually can do.

Most of us are so focused on what we don’t have that we’re blinded to what we do have. If you had what you think you needed you wouldn’t be able to use what God’s actually put inside of you.

And what He has put inside of you is all you need to accomplish all that He’s called you to do. It’s all He needs too.

Even if it seems limited to you.

Tags: Innovation, Limitations, Steven Furtick

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The One Social Network Every Church Leader Needs to Use Regularly – for Now

by: Rich Birch

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If you could only be on one social media network as a church leader which one would it be? If you wanted to focus your efforts on a single network for simplicity sake where should your energy go? Where should you start your social media work as a church?

Facebook

In the current state of the social web Facebook represents the best place for church leaders to invest their time. Over 1.1 billion people are currently on the network [1]. 23 percent of Facebook’s users check their account 5 or more times daily [2]. A recent study showed that 77 percent of consumer focused companies and 43 percent of “business to business” focused companies have acquired customers through Facebook [3]. Users spend over 400 minutes every month on Facebook [4].  All those statistics add up to the fact that the people you are currently working with and the people you are trying to reach are on Facebook.

Your Social Media Strategy Needs to Start With Facebook. But Wait … there’s more to the story.

Social networks follow social lines. (Shocker!) There is evidence that people’s “offline” friends impact the social networks that people connect with “online”. So if people in your community start getting interested in Instagram or Google+ the value of those networks goes up for your people and might make it more popular than Facebook in your community. This is called “the network effect” … as more people connect to a social network it becomes more valuable because more people are connected to it. It’s a virtuous cycle that spreads social networks. You need to do a little investigation to see what “other” networks might be popular within your community.

The “network effect” works in reverse as well. As people start leaving a network it becomes less valuable to the people on it. As people leave and stop interacting more people leave and stop interacting. It becomes a vicious circle. This is how Friendster was displace by MySpace … which was displaced by Facebook. Just because Facebook sits on top of the social media world today … doesn’t mean it always will. As church leaders we need to keep an eye on this trend as we look to the future. The skills you develop on Facebook today will be transferred to whatever network will replace it in the future. Social Media is here to stay as a vital communications channel but the specific networks will come and go.

Which network have you seen the most engagement with as a church?

Read more from Rich here.

Tags: Attention, Awareness, Brand, Social Media

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