Alignment Eats Accomplishment for Lunch

by: VRcurator

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When you have a vague or undefined strategy, your leaders will invent their own.

Auxano Founder Will Mancini believes that over 90% of churches in North America are not functioning with strategic clarity. Many churches have some kind of expression for mission and values, but not for strategy. The absence of strategy, as Mancini defines it, is the number one cause of ineffectiveness in a healthy church.

This map, or strategy picture, is like a container that holds all church activities in one meaningful whole. Without this orientation, individuals within the organization will forget how each major component or ministry activity fits to advance the mission.

When you don’t have a strategy, or your strategy isn’t clear, a threefold problem can occur:

• too many ministry or program options and no prioritization;
• ministry options that have no relationship with one another;
• ministries themselves have no connection to the mission.

Having a clear map – one that shows how you will get things done – is a strong indicator that the effectiveness of your mission will go through the roof. Strategic clarity can birth a quantum leap in your ministry.

Build for team alignment rather than individual accomplishment.

THE QUICK SUMMARY: Execution IS the Strategy, by Laura Stack

In today’s world of rapid, disruptive change, strategy can’t be separate from execution—it has to emerge from execution. You must continually adjust your strategy to fit new realities. But, if your organization isn’t set up to be fast on its feet, you could easily go the way of Blockbuster or Borders.

Laura Stack shows you how to quickly drive strategic initiatives and get great results from your team. Her LEAD Formula outlines the Four Keys to Successful Execution:

• The ability to Leverage your talent and resources
• Design an Environment to support an agile culture
• Create Alignment between strategic priorities and operational activities
• Drive the organization forward quickly

She includes a leadership team assessment, group reading guides, and bonus self-development resources. Stack will equip you with the knowledge, skills, and inspiration to help you hit the ground running!

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

If members of your team are working hard but have lost focus of the mission of your organization, you are facing a double threat: your overall mission is not being accomplished and your team members are likely heading toward burnout.

The most successful team members work together for more than a paycheck or for keeping busy. They are engaged in the mission, and feel that they are an important part of achieving that mission. They are serving with a sense and purpose of something that is greater.

On the other hand, team members who have lost focus on the mission of the organization may just be going though the motions of working together. When this occurs, the organization is entering a danger zone.

Even those who work the hardest will inevitably crash and burn in their productivity if they lose track of the mission. Help them reorient and align themselves if they’ve lost their focus on their mission with a 4-R Reconnection Strategy.

Reestablish awareness. Have team members evaluate their current positions by asking, “Which of my activities contribute most of my value to my organization.” If they can’t answer that, have them invest personal time in figuring out where they got off course and how they might fix it.

Realign them. Make sure the mission and their perception of it match up. If your team becomes misaligned, they may be wasting time on the wrong things. If that is the case, it doesn’t matter how hard they work to get the job done; their productivity will crash.

Repair their connection. Once your team members know where they are and where they should be, have them make any necessary course corrections. After that, help them tweak or overhaul their workflow process to get it back on track and in sync with the mission.

Rededicate them to the mission. Have the team members reaffirm their commitment to your organization. Help them understand how each contributes to the collective effort to move the organization forward.

Laura Stack, Execution IS the Strategy

A NEXT STEP

Using the Four-R process above, realign your leadership team to the mission of the church.

First, write “Our Mission” on the top of a flip chart page and hand every person a sticky note. Without looking at phones, tablets, or printed materials, have each leader write the mission of the church from memory on a sticky note. Place all the notes on the flip chart page. Discuss the results, noting the degree (or lack of) shared knowledge of the church’s mission. (Remember Howard Hendricks’ ageless quote: if it’s a mist in the pulpit, it’s a fog in the pew.)

Now write the actual mission on another flip chart page, and with a renewed focus on the missional mandate of the church, have each leader write ministry activities that CONTRIBUTE DIRECTLY to the mission on one color sticky note and ministry activities that while good, DO NOT CONTRIBUTE DIRECTLY to the mission.

How can your leaders help each other to focus activity toward mission accomplishment? How can you learn from each other and lean toward God’s calling for the church? Record some specific initiatives and next steps on a third flip-chart page, assigning responsibility to a team member.

Taken from SUMS Remix 38-1, published April 2016

This is part of a weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders. SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; and each solution is taken from a different book. As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

> Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Alignment, Church Unique, Laura Stack, SUMS Remix, Will Mancini, team alignment

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The Lasting Impact of Leading Up

by: David Putman

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I am fortunate in that I serve on a high performance team (auxano.com).  I would go a step further and say that I’ve had the good pleasure of serving on a number of high performance teams throughout my life.  At the same time there have been occasions and seasons when the senior leader was absent or distracted from providing the leadership the team needed and desired (sometimes I was that leader).  Perhaps you can relate!  As a consultant it is not unusual for me to be approached by someone who is frustrated or struggling with the senior leader. At the same time let’s face it, we are all human and regardless where we are in the leadership pipeline, we can fail at leading those below us.

If you are in a situation where you are not being led well, what you may not know is, you can and should do something about it.  I would go one step further and say you are part of the problem.  That’s right!  We all are responsible for helping lead those above us!

When it comes to leadership it’s important that we lead in all directions, or what Bill Hybels refers to in this short video teaching as 360 degree leadership.  By 360 degree leadership he’s referring to our need as a leader not to simply to lead those below us, but to lead those on the same level and above as well.  What you may or may not realize is that when it comes to leading, an effective leader spends more time leading up than he does leading down.    An effective leader leads from the center.

Which leads me to the question I want to address.  How do you lead up when your leader is not doing an effective job at leading below him or her?   Let me suggest three things I want my leader to know:

• What I need to be successful at my job.  I want to make sure my leader knows what tools I need to be most effective.  This could include training, people, resources, technology, job description, clarity, time, and a whole host of other things.

• What I can excel at and make my greatest contribution. I also want my leader to know how I can make my best and ultimate contribution.  I’m not helping the team achieve our overall vision if I spend my time on meaningless tasks or responsibilities.  I want my leader to know what I can do best and add the most value to our organization by doing.

• What I need help with.  I want my leader to help me problem solve.  Maybe I’m doing a task I need to be doing, but I’m stuck.  I want him to know it long before it becomes the organization’s problem.

​
All this starts with good communication.  I’m going to do everything within my power to make sure I have a relational connect with him/her and that we meet on a a regular bases. The last thing I want is for my leader to only see me coming only when I have a laundry list of problems, complaints, or needs.  I understand that over time, if we don’t connect or meet regularly, we are going to suffer from distant decay, which simply means our relationship is going to deteriorate, no matter how well things are going.

Yes it is true everything rises and falls on leadership.  The question is whose leadership?  I think we all know the answer.  Take responsibility now.  Regardless of where you are in the leadership pipeline, lead well!  You won’t regret it.

Learn more about the impact of leading up – connect with an Auxano Navigator.

> Read more from David.

Tags: David Putman, Leadership, Leading Up

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Eight Reasons You Are Wasting Your Resources

by: Thom Rainer

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Most churches keep their members so busy they don’t have time to do ministry.

Indeed, I spoke to a lay elder of a church recently who told me he simply did not have time to get to know his neighbors because he was so busy in his church.

Something is not right with this picture.

In an earlier post, I talked about how our churches can become more intentional about doing real ministry instead of busy work. But in this article, I address how churches became so busy. Perhaps understanding the origins of dysfunctional busyness will help churches avoid this problem in the future.

1. Activities became synonymous with ministry. I am familiar with a missions support group in a church. It includes over 30 people, representing over 20 percent of the weekly worship attendance. The group is very active with fellowships, meetings, and speaker events. But the missions support group has never supported missions, nor have they ever been involved in missions. But they sure are busy.
2. Programs and ministries are added regularly, but few or none are ever deleted. This reality is glaringly obvious at a church in the Southeast with an average attendance of 60. The church has 15 committees and nearly 30 different programs and ministries throughout the year. They almost have one ministry or program for every member. They add some activity every year, but they never delete the dead or useless activities.
3. Programs and ministries become sacred cows. They were once the pet project of a particular member or a group of members, alive or deceased. The thought of eliminating the non-functional ministry started by Sister Harriett or Brother Frank 35 years ago is deemed blasphemous.
4. The alignment question is not asked on the front end. Even a good ministry may not be the best use of time for a church. In one church, the membership voted to initiate a ministry because one person had become a believer through the ministry in another church over a two-year period. But the church members never considered if there might be other ministries that could be more effective and better aligned with the direction of the church.
5. Silo behavior among the different ministries of the church. A worship ministry in the church began a new ministry that required extensive volunteer help. But the leaders never considered they were hurting other ministries in the church. Members don’t have unlimited time; they have to make choices.
6. Lack of an evaluation process. Most churches have an annual budgetary process. That is an ideal time to ask tough questions about existing ministries and programs. Very few church leaders take that opportunity.
7. Ministry becomes facility-centered. In other words, if it’s not happening in the church facilities, it’s not “real” ministry. As a consequence, we keep our members too busy to do ministry outside the walls of the church.
8. Lack of courageous leadership. It takes courage for a leader to look at the busyness of a church and say “no” or “enough.” Some leaders would rather not rock the boat and, as a consequence, lead a church toward mediocrity and malaise.

We are wasting too much time, energy, and money in our churches. Often we are doing more things and becoming less effective. It’s time for busy churches to become simple churches.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn how to avoid wasting your resources.

> Read more from Thom.

Tags: Execution, Thom Rainer, wasting resources

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Regular, Healthy Sleep Patterns Will Make You a Better Leader

by: VRcurator

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Who takes care of the caregiver?

Does being focused on serving the needs of others makes it easy for you to neglect your own health?

In your role of a leader and servant to your church, you probably push yourself to a point of exhaustion and beyond, rationalizing that you don’t have time for diets or exercise or that you will catch up on sleep later.

The reality is that the more you neglect your personal health, the less effective you actually are at caring for the spiritual health of others. Nodding off during meetings, eating greasy fast food while you drive, and collapsing on the couch during family time after work can be as destructive and sinful to your ministry as a moral failure.

Many leaders struggle with caring for their own health and well-being, and have become defeated and frustrated through the years as quick-fixes and January resolutions have come and gone. It is easier, and way more fun, to give in and neglect your own health.

Living a healthier life makes you a better leader, and your health starts with a good night’s sleep.

THE QUICK SUMMARY: Sleep Smarter, by Shawn Stevenson

Sleep Smarter is a fun and entertaining look at how sleep impacts your mind, body, and performance, without skimping on the “how to’s” to get the sleep you really deserve.

Whether you’ve struggled with sleep problems, or you’re simply interested in living a longer, healthier life, you’re going to be blown away with what you learn.

Here’s just a sampling of what you’re going to discover:

• Why you need to sleep more and exercise less to get the best fitness results.
• How to feel more energized and refreshed on less hours of sleep.
• Why poor sleep quality depresses brain function and leads to poor performance.
• What exercises you can do to instantly improve your sleep quality.
• Why going to bed at the right time is more important than how many hours you sleep.
• What mineral deficiency can cause severe sleep problems (and how to fix it).
• How to calm your mind so that you can fall asleep faster.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

A good night’s sleep is as important to your overall health as breathing and eating. You may think you are resting, but while you’re sleeping your body is busy tending to your physical and mental health and getting you ready for another day.

Here’s another way to look at it: nothing kills your ability to get things done faster than a bad night’s sleep. Repeated studies have shown that sleep deprivation causes significant loss in productivity. A yawn signifies more than just being tired; it means you are having trouble staying awake and making good decisions.

Studies from Harvard Medical School have shown that sleeping less than five hours a night increases the risk of death from all causes by about 15 percent. Researchers understand that sleeping too little causes disruptions in underlying health conditions and biological processes like glucose metabolism, blood pressure, and inflammation.

So not only is sleep important for maintaining alertness, energy for daily duties and health – lack of sleep can lead to serious medical conditions.

Isn’t it time you got a good night’s sleep?

Sleep is not an obstacle we need to go around, it’s a natural state your body requires to boost your hormone function, heal your muscles, tissues, and organs, and make your mind work at its optimal level.

Sleep is the secret sauce.

There isn’t one facet of your mental, emotional, or physical performance that’s not affected by the quality of sleep.

The big challenge is that in our fast-paced world today, millions of people are chronically sleep deprived and suffering the deleterious effects of getting low quality sleep.

The consequences of sleep deprivation aren’t pretty either. Try immune system failure, diabetes, cancer, obesity, depression, and memory loss, just to name a few.

Studies show that sleep deprivation is a missing component to nutrition and smart exercise that could help you shed fat for good. Other studies show sleep deprivation encouraging cancer, Alzheimer’s, depression, and even heart disease. In a society that is overworked and under-rested, it’s more important than ever to pay attention to issues associated with not getting the sleep that we require.

High quality sleep fortifies your immune system, balances your hormones, boosts your metabolism, increases physical energy, and improves the function of your brain. Without all of the essential benefits that sleep is providing, you will never have the body and life you want without giving your body the right amount of sleep.

Always remember the value of your sleep. You will perform better, make better decisions, and have a better body when you get the sleep you require. The shortcut to success is not made by bypassing dreamland. You will factually work better, be more efficient, and get more stuff done when you’re properly rested.

Shawn Stevenson, Sleep Smarter

A NEXT STEP

Contrary to the mantra of the busy leader, you can’t sleep when you’re dead. As noted above, lack of sleep will actually hasten illness, and ultimately, death.

Fortunately, there are a number of proven tips to help you have a better night’s sleep, be healthier, and live a better overall life.

If you are not currently practicing the following sleep tips, why not try them over the next month and see if you are not sleeping – and feeling – much better.

Journal your general feelings of well being, areas of your health you would like to improve, as well as statistical data on blood pressure, weight etc.

Next, identify one to two of the tips below that you will put into practice for the next 14 days. Give your body time to adjust to the first two tweaks then take on the next adjustment. After 60 consistent days of improved sleep habits, again journal your general feelings of well-being and statistical data.

Compare the two journal entries and use the improvements you see and feel to inspire commitment to continue to get great sleep.

• Follow a regular sleep schedule – Study after study has shown that our bodies obey regular rhythms of sleep and wakefulness. When you shortcut those rhythms, you are shortcutting your health.
• Manage nighttime stress – Research has shown that stress is a leading cause of sleeplessness; furthermore, worrying about not getting enough sleep can actually keep people awake.
• Eat right – Avoiding caffeine and spicy foods in the 4-6 hours before bedtime will probably keep you from a good night’s sleep.
• Exercise – Even moderate amounts of exercise will enable a good night’s sleep.
• Make sleep a priority in your overall health and wellbeing – Commit to say “no” or to not watch “just one more episode” on Netflix each evening, because establishing a healthy sleep routine is a foundational step in increasing your overall health.
• Turn off the screens – The “friendly glow” of mobile devices, laptops, and television screens, and even e-readers not only gives off unnecessary light in your (hopefully) darkened room, the content of those devices causes unnecessary stress right when you need to be reducing stress.
• Talk to your doctor – It may be the last on the list, but lack of sleep may be an early indicator of serious health issues. If you’re not resting well, make an appointment to talk it over with your doctor.

Are you ready to start your journey to a healthier life? Is it time to make some changes? Go ahead – start with a good night’s sleep tonight!

Taken from SUMS Remix 27-2, published November 2015

This is part of a weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders. SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; and each solution is taken from a different book. As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

> Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Shawn Stevenson, Sleep Smarter, healthy sleep, sleep habits

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How Cultural Understanding Drives Church Effectiveness

by: Ed Stetzer

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In each era and each cultural environment, the church defines its missiological quest in culture.

Now, that does not mean that everything is on the table. There are marks of a biblical church that matter in every cultural setting. However, each church has a quest to figure out how to engage its community and organize its ministries. That’s its missional quest and every church should ask such questions.

Taking into account the missiological quest, churches then ask based upon the current cultural moment what is the most effective way to accomplish the tasks of a biblical church? This is the cultural question.

While the missiological quest should never change, the answer to the cultural questions do change.

Though not in every way, the how of ministry is in many ways determined by the who, when, and where of culture.

Observing Paul’s missionary journeys show that he employed different strategies, methods, and/or terminologies in reaching Jews compared to those used in reaching Gentiles. The mission (and the missiological quest) was the same, but the cultural question changed the way he engaged the host culture.

With the cultural question constantly changing, this gives us contextualized church models.

It’s not just an evangelism question; it’s deeper. How we do church also changes from one culture to another. For example, how long does the service go, what approach to music, how to we disciple, etc?

Think of it this way: Missiological quest + Cultural question = A contextualized church model.

Let me illustrate the above.

Thoughts from the Seeker Church Approach

Think back to the seeker church movement.

Many such churches blossomed in a day when a lot of boomers were asking questions about church and faith and rejecting established traditional churches. In addition, given that many thought church was boring and irrelevant, they attempted to enliven church with its children and youth programs, the music, and the preaching style and content.

When I planted in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1994, I utilized many of the methodologies of this model. We didn’t try to demean other churches. Rather, we tried to communicate our different approach to church. I also (occasionally) wore a Hawaiian shirt, shoes without socks (I know; don’t judge me), and we had a band that sang contemporary music.

Soon after, many other churches in our community also had a contemporary service!

They wanted to have a contextualized church model—and that’s the right impulse.

They asked questions about what approach to church, within bibilcal norms, would connect most effectively with the context.

Given the cultural milieu at that time, the answer was: implement a genre of music that would resonate with people in the culture; provide them with substantive, practical, and relevant programming for their children; let the sermon topic and content be on their level, not for the religious elite; and if a building is built, make sure it doesn’t resemble a spartan, dated church building of the past century.

I’m not saying this was all great and perfect, and we did not do everything like everyone else, but I am saying that it aligned well with the context, and many such churches reached a lot of people (and many of them also discipled well).

Now, looking back, some may contend the seeker church model was wrong (and continues to be). I’m not writing to evaluate it, though I think that is a worthy undertaking and have done so in the past.

However, my point is the model lined up well with its culture. Looking back over the 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s, seeker church approaches reached a lot of unchurched and dechurched people—those who were disenfranchised from the traditional church.

While it worked then, this model is no longer as well aligned with the predominant cultural milieu. The shift is not true everwhere, but most would say that the seeker model does not engage our culture as well today, partly because culture has shifted to more of a negative perception of the church and organized religion in general.

In other words, there are still seekers, but now many don’t see the church as the place to find answers. Seeker strategies are predicated on the idea that they are.

Although people claim to be more spiritual they are skeptical of institutions, including religious ones, thus they opt out of organized religion altogether. Therefore, for the most part it doesn’t matter how “cool” or “relevant” churches are.

Those who would have gone back to church because of the “cool-factor” have already gone back.

Changes in Approach

What we have witnessed over the last decade or so, particularly in newer church models, are many in the church trying to engage the missiological quest for a new generation. So, new church models are taking into account the spiritual, post-Christian, pluralistic, skeptical, individualistic, consumerist, and diverse culture.

The church then thinks through the practices and methods that would be most effective at reaching the culture.

In his book Gaining By Losing, J. D. Greear asserts, “[I]f we want to reach the next generation, we are going to have to equip our people to reach them outside the church.”

That’s a question shaping new models of church of church practice.

Hold Your Mission Tightly and Your Models Loosely

When you look back on the last fifty years of church models, what you will find is that the models were most effective in their mission when they were contextualized (geared to their host culture). This drives some theologically-minded people crazy, but it’s what we train and require missionaries to do.

And, we must not forbid our churches to do the very thing we require international missionaries to do.

In other words, models were the result of the church understanding its missiological quest and asking the cultural question.

What we must learn is models come and go, for the culture is always changing and shifting. This doesn’t mean we cannot learn from each model and incorporate those things that are still effective. However, the takeaway from church models and cultural alignment is this: hold your mission tightly and your model loosely.

Be firm on the mission, but flexible on the methodology.

> Read more from Ed.

Tags: Church Effectiveness, Ed Stetzer, cultural, cultural understanding

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4 Unsung Traits of a Biblical Leader

by: Michael Kelley

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A simple online search for “leadership” yields 734 million results including definitions, articles, magazine subscriptions, videos, and books. If you add the word “Christian” to “leadership” you trim the results down significantly, but there’s still almost 12 million. But for this article, I’m less interested in the definition and the process of leadership than I am the connotation that comes with the word.

What do we think of when we think of leadership?

Most of us, I believe, think in terms of charisma and inspiration. That leadership is about moving people to your way of thinking of doing through the sheer force of your personality. That because of your passion, rhetoric, and drive you can move people to follow where you are going. And while there is merit to that line of thinking, it assumes that leadership happens in front of a crowd. But I’m finding more and more that some of the strongest leaders I know aren’t necessarily recognized as such. These are those who don’t have a huge audience and don’t overflow with rhetorical skill, but instead are a constant source of steady strength and resolve behind the scenes.

They don’t lead masses, but they lead their families. They don’t lead the movement but they lead meetings. They don’t lead the online community but they lead their co-workers and their friends, though no one has officially knighted them as the leader. And in these quiet leaders in the home, in the marketplace, and in relationships, there are certain qualities of leadership that often go overlooked. These qualities don’t have the same notoriety as qualities like great speaking ability or persuasive words, but they are nonetheless present in spades in those who do their leading in the most quiet of ways.

Here, then, are 4 often overlooked qualities of a Christian leader:

1. A leader tells the truth.

A true leader doesn’t just tickle the ears of the people who have fallen in line behind them. Instead, they are willing to engage in the unpopular business of truth telling. That doesn’t mean they are abrasive, wielding the truth like a jack hammer. But it does mean they are willing to engage in the difficult conversation that makes both them and the person or people they are talking to uncomfortable. They choose not to placate those around them because they know the truth is important and worth fighting for. They are courageous enough to stand on principle in their home, in their job, and in their relationships even though doing so might be costly.

What does this look like? In the family, it looks like the adult who is more committed to being a father or mother than to being the best friend of their teenager. In the marketplace, it looks like someone who is willing to quietly object for the good of the people they serve even at the risk of the bottom line. Relationally, this quality of leadership is borne out when a person isn’t content to let their friends make bad decisions, but instead engages willingly in honest and difficult conversations, for they know that the best thing any friend can do is help another friend walk with Jesus.

2. A leader is willing to get dirty.

Many times leaders are those who are out front, and part of the danger of being out front is that you don’t know what life is like within the pack. But the Christian leader is not content to spout directives without actually following up and through with the people who are hearing them. Instead, the Christian leader is also the burden bearer, one who not only sets the direction but picks up the rope to help pull the load.

What does this look like? It looks like a leader who actually knows the people he or she is leading, and they know them well. A leader like this isn’t afraid to be interrupted with real life concerns, and they do things like make notes to themselves to check back in regularly not for the purpose of achieving an objective but simply to be informed about what’s happening in others lives. Leaders who are willing to get dirty feel deeply the struggles of those they are leading in their home, church, or workplace. Their hands are dirty with real life stuff and not sanitized with cursory and surface knowledge.

3. A leader is decisive.

Leadership is about making decisions. A thousand times a day. And one of the overlooked qualities of leadership is the ability and willingness to make those decisions – hard decisions – in a timely manner. I know for me, as a leader in different environments, the prospect of making so many decisions on a daily basis often feels like a weight. Sometimes, a crushing weight. But the Christian leader doesn’t run form this responsibility. It’s not that they relish it, either, but that they know they have a job to do. They have a job as a father. As a mother. As a manager. As an elder. And they mean to see that job done.

Leadership looks like a person having it all together and boldly charging into the future, but the true guts of that leadership is, I believe, the courage to make actual real-life decisions in real-time with real people. Day after day.

4. A leader knows when to listen.

When I think of great leaders, I think of the person who has the plan. The one who charts the direction. The one who inspires with the rhetoric. But one of the most overlooked qualities of the Christian leader is knowing when to just shut up. The temptation for the leader is to believe he or she always has to be the one with the great idea. But leadership is at least as much about empowering and listening to others with great ideas as it is about generating them on your own.

The Christian leader knows when to listen to their kids. Their spouse. Their co-workers. Their team. And the true leader knows when someone else has a better idea than they do, or at least has brought some information to the table that should make him or her reconsider the direction they’ve planned.

Sure leaders are out front. And most of the time they’ve got some charisma. But don’t overlook the unsung qualities of true leaders. And don’t sell short those who exhibit these qualities even if they aren’t the best ones to give the speech at the end.

> Read more from Michael.

Tags: Leadership Traits, Michael Kelley, leadership qualities

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How to Focus Better by Failing Faster

by: VRcurator

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Congratulations – your church has just completed its third year in a row of growth! Weekend worship attendance is growing at 20% per year; your offerings are ahead of budget; and participation in small groups has increased steadily toward your goal of 75% of worship attendance. These are only the leading indicators of a successful growth curve.

While your church may not fall exactly into one or more of those growth indicators, success is likely happening in some area of ministry.

But beware – success brings its own new problems everyday. What were once easy decisions in your church four years ago now have now become complicated, cumbersome, and confusing. Your leadership team has likely grown, and chances are, your leadership in terms of group dynamics and interpersonal communication has not kept pace.

It is time to stretch your personal development and lead your church to stay focused and make timely decisions. If you are experiencing success and feeling the resulting complexity, consider failing fast.

THE QUICK SUMMARY Design to Grow, by David Butler
In today’s world, every organization is at risk of having a “Kodak Moment” – watching its industry and the competitive advantages it has developed over years, even decades, vanish overnight. The reason? An inability to adapt quickly to new business realities.

Established companies are at risk, but it’s no easier being an agile startup, because most of those fail due to their inability to scale. Tomorrow’s business winners—regardless of size or industry—will be the ones that know how to combine scale with agility.

In Design to Grow, a Coca-Cola senior executive shares both the successes and failures of one of the world’s largest companies as it learns to use design to be both agile and big. In this rare and unprecedented behind-the-scenes look, David Butler and senior Fast Company editor, Linda Tischler, use plain language and easy-to-understand case studies to show how this works at Coca-Cola—and how other companies can use the same approach to grow their business.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

Church leaders usually treat failure of an activity or initiative as something to be avoided at all costs. The “F” word frightens us to no degree because we have been told that to admit failure means that you are a failure. Fail once and you’re a failure.

So engrained in our culture is this tenacious notion that we tend to forget that the most common experience to all of us is the experience of having failed at something. We all have plenty of failures in our personal and organizational lives.

However, in a fast-paced and growing organization, it is actually very important to fail fast. This doesn’t mean that you should be aiming for failure of course, but instead be willing to recognize failure and accept that failure quickly and logically.

Trying to avoid failure on something can lead to more time and money being wasted unnecessarily.

There are two key benefits to failing fast:

• Learn from mistakes
• Find success faster

By learning to fail fast, organizations can learn faster and become smarter, which reduces the risk of being disrupted.

New ventures don’t have the kind of resources big organizations do in people, time, or money. Living in a world that could literally end tomorrow, they don’t have the luxury of fearing failure. They must embrace it. In fact, they try to fail as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next thing – whatever that might be.

Any organization or team can launch a new project, campaign, or initiative the way startups do. Learning what people need or want, building a prototype, measuring what worked and what didn’t, then doing it all over again, are techniques that anyone can embrace.

If you have a problem with the idea of failure, substitute the word learn, since failing faster essentially means learning faster. Each failure makes you smarter by helping you better understand what works.

David Butler, Design to Grow

A NEXT STEP

The failure of an idea or activity did not occur in the event itself – it was a journey from concept to completion that included many decision points along the way. In order to gain the most benefit from a failure, take your leadership team in a time machine journey back to the beginning

At your next staff meeting, identify a recent “failure” at the top of a marker board on the farthest point on the right. Be careful to separate the leadership behind an event from the actual event that was less than successful. If you are the senior leader at the table, consider leading with a failure from your sphere of influence, and in humility undertake this exercise to model leadership for your team.

First, explore some of the “why” behind the failure label, making a list of reasons. Highlight the main verb or action.

Next, draw a horizontal line extending from the failure all the way to the left side of the marker board.

Ask what significant decision, action, or moment happened right before the failure, and write to the left of the failure, again highlighting the main verb or action. Repeat this question with each successive step.

Now, repeat this process from right to left, until you have an overview of all the events that led up to the particular situation.

Review the sequence of events, noting probable cause and effects. On a chart tablet, write key learnings from this exercise that can be applied to your next idea or activity and identify at least one system or process change to make as a result.

Don’t be discouraged by your success – as Auxano Founder Will Mancini writes in Church Unique:

Every leader must contend with clarity gaps and complexity factors. Clarity gaps are the logical areas where obscurity and confusion enter the leader’s communication world. Complexity factors literally wage war against the leader’s practice of clarity by making it difficult to maintain focus. When it comes to clarity, new levels bring new devils. The higher the leader goes, the harder the leader must work to stay clear.

Taken from SUMS Remix 23-2, published September 2015

This is part of a weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders. SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; and each solution is taken from a different book. As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

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Tags: David Butler, Design to Grow, Fail Fast, SUMS Remix

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