Ten Reasons You Need a Life Mission Statement

by: Will Mancini

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For decades we have heard of the importance of the life mission statement sometimes referred to as a personal mantra or life purpose idea.  But do you really need one? Can a simple little phrase make that much of a difference in your life?

The intentional living genre is literally the size of an ocean. Everyone is showing you a better way to “succeed in life” or a better methodology for planning your life or a new recipe for how to make New Year’s resolutions that  don’t suck.

And just about all of these approaches point to some kind of life mission statement or idea that’s a part of the mix. But most are ineffective. The reasons are pretty straightforward. The examples are often too generic or too lengthy because they are written on a whim without the context of good process and meaningful reflection.

For example, a top ranked Google search reveals a Fast Company article where they share the life mission statements of five famous CEOs. Two examples are:

• “To have fun in my journey through life and learn from my mistakes.”
• “To serve as a leader, live a balanced life, and apply ethical principles to make a significant difference.”

Really? While these sound nice they are a little too impotent and general, lacking a dynamic specificity. When people read examples like these it’s all too easy to write off the idea of having a personal life mission.

But in reality knowing your mission can be one of life’s most powerful tools.

Several years ago, I launched Life Younique, a training company that certifies church leaders to offer gospel-centered life designthrough their church. I have been passionate about helping people get life mission right–what exactly is the best way to know and name what God has created you to do?

So let’s start with the what and the why of life mission.  (We will leave how to write one for a different post.) Years ago I decided to call life mission a “LifeCall” statement. The most important reason is to see your mission in life as something created, designed and given by God. Therefore we are called not just to follow Jesus (common call to all people)  but we are called to accomplish something specific as a one-of-a-kind saint (your special assignment from God).

Your LifeCall is a brief and bold big idea that best captures today what God made you to do. Think of it as a golden compass pointing the way or a silver golden thread that weaves through every activity of your life. It’s the enduring rally cry of team-you; it’s the victory banner waving over everything you do. Ideally, every priority, project and penny is filtered through, guided by and championed for your LifeCall. Imagine every person in your sphere of influence being blessed better, served stronger and loved longer because you form a unique life mission every day.

Let’s unpack the definition a bit further: LifeCall is a brief and bold big idea that best captures today what God made you to do.

• It’s brief: Stay between six and 12 words
• It’s bold: Declare something that fires you up and makes you confident
• It’s big: Account for every relationship, domain or “compartment” of your life
• It’s best for today: Write it down now, even though it may improve over time
• It’s about God: Reflect God’s goodness and testify to his creative genius that is you
• It’s about doing: Capture a “being-doing fusion” that ultimately clarifies active output

Why is the knowing and naming your LifeCall so important?  In a nutshell your LifeCall enables you to do more of what you do best. It enhances every aspect of what it means to be human; to be alive as a follower of Jesus. Ponder these 10 benefits. Your LifeCall:

• Solidifies personal identity in a way that nourishes intimacy with the God who created you
• Generates internal confidence by revealing how God can use you each day
• Unlocks deeper motivation that energizes your tasks and relationships
• Refreshes others-centered thinking to build more love into the core of your being
• Shapes vocational planning that moves toward increased value to the world

• Empowers focused living by fortifying your resolve to say “no”
• Diagnoses frustrating misalignments in the variety of life’s roles at home and work
• Provides long-term orientation in the midst of suffering or difficult circumstances
• Produces increased passion that leads toward greater mastery and autonomy
• Guides lifelong dreaming that fills your days with optimism and hope

As you reflect on the power and beauty of articulating your own LifeCall, which one of the reasons is most significant to you at the beginning of 2018?

What is my LifeCall by the way? It’s to help you make yours more clear of course. But this is how I say it: Will exists to make a life of more meaningful progress more accessible to every believer. 

I have not written many blog posts this last year because I am working on my next book entitled Younique: Designing the Life that God Dreamed for You. I look forward to sharing more with you in 2018.

> Find out more about Younique here.

Tags: Life Call, Life Mission Statement, Will Mancini, younique

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10 Ways to Use Your Mission Statement Today

by: Will Mancini

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No, you don’t need a cooler mission statement so you can call it a mantra. No you don’t need a better sounding slogan. You need to know what the heck your church or ministry is ultimately supposed to be doing and you need to state in a clear, concise and compelling way. This is a leadership statement to direct and integrate all of your thinking, speaking and acting. Let me repeat- this is a leadership statement, not a marketing statement.

Start leading today by doing one or more of these activities.

#1 Rewrite your mission on a sheet of paper as many times as there are words in it. Each time write a different word in ALL CAPS. Reflect on each word of the mission. (Note: If your mission has more than 20 words in it, its too long. Proceed to idea #7)

#2 Look at your worship guide from last Sunday. List all of the ministry opportunity categories that were promoted and force rank them with regard to how effective each is at fulfilling the mission. (Great to do as a team.)

#3 Write the mission real big on a white board or white pad in your office and see how people interact with it.

#4 Ask the next ten people you meet in your church office or church service  if they know the mission of the church. (Make it fun and tell them you are doing research for blogger friend.) Pay attention to their response. (And let me know what happened.)

#5 Do this exercise with a person you are eating lunch with: Write the mission on a napkin and ask them, “What does this mission mean to you?” Listen. Then ask them, “When, if at all, did this mission come into your conscious thought?” Listen again.

#6 Create a five minute devotional using your mission, finding an appropriate biblical text to share.  Use the devotional with the different groups you lead this week.

#7 Read this FREE chapter from Church Unique on mission. It’s called Carry the Holy Orders. If you need to re-articulate your mission statement, spend 30 minutes planning time and decision-making steps to get it done.

#8 Make a list of five people that you believe model the mission of your ministry. Send all five of them a quick note to say something like, “Thanks for living the mission. You inspire me!”

#9 Write your personal “shadow mission.” What tends to drive you practically? What tends to drive your church practically? Go ahead and really write it out. (For example, a shadow mission might be, “We want to draw bigger crowds every Sunday with great teaching and worship.”  Compare and contrast the shadow mission with the real mission. Repent. Share this with other leaders.

#10 Spend time in prayer with you leadership team using your mission. Create time and space to pray through the mission and each word of the mission.

> Read more from Will.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more about your mission.

Tags: Leadership, Mission Statement, Will Mancini

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Do You Have a Blueprint for Ministry Model Change?

by: VRcurator

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Looking back, 2016 was truly a landmark year. From Olympics to Elections to Chewbacca Mom, the year contained moments worth sharing and remembering. The year contained new beginnings, new opportunities and the potential for new ministry impact.

Maybe 2016 was also supposed to be the year that you finally implemented a discipleship strategy, but there never seemed to be enough time, the right team or an applicable model. In this, the last issue of SUMS Remix for 2016, the Auxano team wants to help you jumpstart the implementation of an intentional discipleship strategy for 2017. We are proud to feature disciple-making strategy solutions from three foundational books of the Auxano Vision Framing process.

There is no time like right now to develop a discipleship strategy that engages hearts and inspires growing faith every day. Do not let 2017 slip away. Start building the disciples of tomorrow, today.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Innovating Discipleship, by Will Mancini

Everyone is talking about discipleship, but too many churches stick to business as usual. Sunday comes and Sunday goes. The preacher preaches, the band worships, money gets put in the plate and people get back to their busy, unaffected lives. Hasn’t God called us to more?

Will Mancini thinks so, and that’s what Innovating Discipleship is all about. Innovating Discipleship is for church leaders who have growing discontent for “best practicing” and “fast following.” Is God calling you to re-dream and re-invent beyond the ministry models that were handed to you?

In this potent book, Mancini uncovers the primary obstacle in the minds of pastors that keeps discipleship stuck – revealed through thousands of hours of coaching with church leaders. He calls it the “default vision switch.”

More importantly, Innovating Discipleship gives you a simple and powerful tool to guide you, step by step, into the freedom and confidence of real discipleship, for your time and your place. In the end, there are only four paths to getting the results you have always wanted. Which path will be right for you?

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

One of the greatest challenges in helping church leaders through a vision process is quickly getting them to agree on “what is,” “what could be,” and then “what should be.” How do you start? How do you bring all of these very different perspectives together?

There are three approaches to church strategy:

• More is more
• Less is more
• To be is more

Let’s ask three simple questions to identify what kind of approach represents your church.

1) Rhythm question: How many weekly engagements do we expect of people?

2) Purpose question: What are the purposes of the weekly engagements and how do they relate?

3) Environments question: Do these engagements take place in “church space” or “life space” or both?

Please don’t underestimate the simplicity and power of these questions. How a church answers these questions reveals an “operational logic” and an underlying belief system about the nature of the church.

Here is a brief description and simple diagram for these approaches.

MORE IS MORE

A “more is more” approach is seen in a church in which the basic operating assumption is that the more programs a church can offer in the “church space” the better. The hope is that more programs will attract more people and provide opportunities for spiritual growth.

LESS IS MORE

The “less is more” approach operates with the assumption that the church should provide a few high quality offerings. Whether or not these offerings take place in church space or life space is a variable. In addition, the church attempts to design these offerings so that they have a meaningful relationship to one another. Ideally, the program offerings are designed around a unified set of output (discipleship) results.

TO BE IS MORE

The “to be is more” approach operates with the assumption that the church should provide as little as needed in terms of weekly offerings in order to maximize output (discipleship) results in “life space.” With a greater focus on “life space,” each engagement is forced to have great clarity of purpose, and output (discipleship) results necessarily play a greater role in the church’s identity. This strategy requires a stronger presence of leadership and tool development.

Spiritual formation doesn’t happen in a program at the church. It happens by living your life. We really need to stay away from creating programs as our goal. Programs have their place, but they must be subordinated to the spiritual life.

– Dallas Willard

Think of your church’s ministry model as a pattern of “engagements” that are designed to produce certain outcomes. Engagements include any array of activities you offer from worship to mission trips. They are what you promote each week in your worship guide and everyday on your website. They include all of groups, classes, events, and initiatives that a church can offer. They include programs at church or anywhere away from the church, like a home-based life group or a community-based service initiative. If it’s a place I can go or something I can do in the name of your church, it’s an engagement.

Will Mancini, Innovating Discipleship

A NEXT STEP

Diagnosis – As you scan these three pictures above, which approach describes your church’s current strategy? Draw the diagram for your leadership team. Be sure to include all the various ministries you church currently offers.

Results – Looking at these three approaches to church strategy can help make connections between our ministry models and the results they are designed to produce. If you are unsatisfied with your current discipleship results, it is time to change your model.

Decision – Now you can better answer the question “Is it better to use our existing ministry model or to introduce a change?” What change would you introduce?

Every model of ministry today can be summarized by three different approaches; these approaches create a useful portal for discussing ministry model design for better results.

As you consider changing your current strategy or creating a new one, keep the following essential practices in mind.

Clarity: Innovation must be anchored in clarity first. Clarity isn’t everything but it changes everything. Clarity is the least understood innovation essential among church leaders.

Margin: If you don’t stop doing something, you’ll never start doing something better. Margin is essential. It’s the most neglected innovation essential to church staffs.

Heart: All innovation is a solution to a prior problem and people won’t care about your innovation until they emotionally connected to the problem. Heart is the most underappreciated essential for ministry leaders.

Team: Time and time again, the best ideas come from the collaborative engine of a team. For church leaders, leaning into team is the most inconvenient innovation essential.

Excerpted from SUMS Remix #56, December 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: Innovating Discipleship, Will Mancini

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The Real Measure of Making Disciples

by: VRcurator

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Looking back, 2016 was truly a landmark year. From Olympics to Elections to Chewbacca Mom, the year contained moments worth sharing and remembering. The year contained new beginnings, new opportunities and the potential for new ministry impact.

Maybe 2016 was also supposed to be the year that you finally implemented a discipleship strategy, but there never seemed to be enough time, the right team or an applicable model.
In this, the last issue of SUMS Remix for 2016, the Auxano team wants to help you jumpstart the implementation of an intentional discipleship strategy for 2017. We are proud to feature disciple-making strategy solutions from three foundational books of the Auxano Vision Framing process.

There is no time like right now to develop a discipleship strategy that engages hearts and inspires growing faith every day. Do not let 2017 slip away. Start building the disciples of tomorrow, today.

Develop the Measures of a growing disciple

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Church Unique, by Will Mancini

Church Unique, written by Will Mancini, outlines a new kind of visioning process to help churches develop a stunningly unique model of ministry that leads to redemptive movement. The process guides churches away from an internal focus to emphasize participation in their community and surrounding culture.

In Church Unique, Mancini explains that each church has a culture that reflects its particular values, thought, attitudes, and actions. It also shows how church leaders can unlock their church’s individual DNA and unleash their congregation’s one-of-a-kind potential.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

Imagine that you are sitting in front of five or six people at your church. They may be elders, council members, volunteer leaders, or members of your small group. For the sake of our illustration, imagine that these people are paid staff at the church.

Then you ask them the simple question, “What ministry bull’s-eye are you all aiming at together?”

Would you see blank stares in response to this question? Or if the staff does attempt an answer, the bull’s-eye descriptions are never the same. In other words, it is almost impossible to walk into a church where the top leaders have a shared articulation of what results they are looking for.

The question becomes, “How do you know when all of these components are working as they should? In other words, when do you hit the bull’s-eye?” The answer is found in defining Measures as Missional Life Marks.

Auxano defines Measures as a set of attributes in an individual’s life that define or reflect the accomplishment of the church’s mission. The Measures are the church’s portrait of a disciple and definition of spiritual maturity. Measures supply the standard by which the mission can be measured with respect to an individual’s development through the ministry of the church.

The old maxim goes, “Your mission is what you measure.” Every church feels the gravitation pull to measure only the ABC’s (attendance, buildings, and cash). The problem is that you can be very successful with the ABC’s but be a circus. So what measures are appropriate for kingdom-minded leaders in the missional church? By defining your measures, you can focus your church on the Spirit’s work of soul formation, and Jesus’ agenda for multiplication. 

Although Measures can be a straightforward and simple definition for pastors, it’s strangely missing in our churches. On a typical leadership team, most people could scratch out a basic definition of a disciple within five minutes. Yet years and years go by without ministry staff ever having a shared definition to work from.

Will Mancini, Church Unique

A NEXT STEP

Use the following exercises to determine the top-level outline of your Measures.

Teams should create four to six categories as the outline of their Measures. More than six will be difficult for people to remember. To stimulate creative juices, here is a sample of ideas and exercises to get you started:

Mission man: Have small groups of leaders draw a stick figure on a large white pad. Using parts of the body as a creative spark, develop a list of the attributes of a disciple that corresponds to the body part.

Red-letter maturity: Have groups scan the red letters of the gospel— the words that Jesus spoke directly. Organize them into no more than six categories that describe a mature follower of Christ.

Missional interviews: Bring in three to five people who represent the most missionally minded people in your church. Talk to them about their story and life practices of following Christ. Ask them to list the six most important characteristics of their walk with Jesus. See how their individual lists compare and from them develop your own.

Obviously, these exercises are meant to stimulate the expression of biblical foundations already present on the leadership team. For a more thorough treatment, find books and Bible studies to work through together. Of course you can always study the Measures of other churches like those found in Church Unique. But don’t get too preoccupied with the expressions of others. Do the hard work of your own process! At this stage of the process your focus should be on content—what are the most important four to six ideas you want to use to describe the missional life.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 56-1, issued December 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: Church Unique, Discipleship Measures, Measures, SUMS Remix, Will Mancini

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20 of the Most Important Things You Should Know About Your Church

by: Will Mancini

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Below you will find what I believe to be 20 very important, if not the most important things you should know about your church. Keep in mind these are things to measure about your church as an organization.  (This is NOT the top things to measure in terms of individual spiritual formation.)  I have told pastors for a long time I wouldn’t consider pastoring again unless I had the congregation’s commitment to measure these 20 things every two years.

But first the backstory…

For the last 12 years, the Auxano team has developed, used and refined a survey designed completely around the culture, vision  and strategic mid-term decision-making priorities of the church. I have led this process by turning over and inside out every possible church survey I could find. After about five years I felt like we had a good template to start with as we helped local churches with their specific needs and challenges.

We  have never advertised and I have never even blogged about this product. Why?  Despite its incredible benefit to our church clients we did not have the capacity to offer the service to churches unless they were engaged in our core experience called the Vision Pathway. The desire to bring this to more churches eventually led me to LifeWay Research. We have worked with them over the past year to bring the best survey to local churches that has ever been designed for YOUR LOCAL CHURCH.

Here is what we measure:

#1: Percent of new attenders in prior two years

#2: Guest percentage

#3: Profile of new attenders and guest including reason for attending

#4 Age of the church vs. age of the community

#5 Age of church vs. the age of new attenders in the prior two years

#6 Spiritual growth satisfaction

#7 Sense of connection to the church

#8 Giving patterns

#9 Adult conversion percentage

#10 Influence of ministries

#11 Group assimilation percentage

#12 Group assimilation obstacle identification

#13 Assimilation rate for groups and membership (if applicable)

#14 Serving assimilation percentage

#15 Serving assimilation obstacles

#16 Invitation activity

#17 Invitation obstacles

#18 Total assimilation percentages

#19 Strategic direction question cluster one

#20 Strategic direction question cluster two

What other things would you include on this list? The tool we use to get this info is what we call the RealTime Survey. Feel free to download our PDF about the survey by clicking here.

If you are interested in learning more, fill out this form and I’ll make sure one of my team reaches out to you.

Read more from Will here

Tags: Execution, RealTime Survey, Will Mancini, church survey

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The Most Important Decision to Lead By: Ministry Means or Ministry Ends

by: Will Mancini

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If you aren’t clear on your ministry ends you will always measure your ministry means. Think about it. If it’s easy to confuse ends and means than this becomes the most important distinction to lead by. I hate to break it to you as ministry leaders, but leading in the church is the MOST difficult environment to maintain this clarity.

How can immediately know where you stand with this distinction? If you don’t have clear language for both ministry means and ministry ends, you will necessarily be measuring means only.

For example, a ministry means is a small group. If your church has small groups you will have some language for this environment— home teams, life groups, etc. Ministry ends, on the other hand, is what that small group should produce, or facilitate or aim at in the life of an individual. Do your group leaders know the ministry ends for a small group?

• Have you every clarified your ministry ends as a church?
• What kind of disciple is your church designed to produce?
• Have you ever measured anything other than attendance and giving?
• What are the God results and spiritual output that you are really after?
• Do you think attendance alone is an adequate way to assess the accomplishment of the mission?

There is actually an entire world of articulating and living into ministry ends. It’s the most freeing thing a ministry leader can ever experience. Do you stop measuring means? Of course not. You still count how many people you have in groups. But you count other stuff as well. You count…

• How many 2:00am friends people have?
• How many people have experienced meaningful accountability?
• How many leaders have mentored other leaders?
• Who in your life has “refrigerator rights?”
• The confidence level of sharing the gospel?
• How many people have crossed a cultural boundary for Jesus?
• The level fulfillment of being a missionary in the workplace?

Lead with the end in mind.

Read more from Will here.

Tags: Assimilation, Duplication, Evangelism, Will Mancini, decision, ministry ends, ministry means

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The Eight Costs of the Pastoral Succession Crisis: Part 1 – Personal Costs

by: Will Mancini

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The challenge of pastoral succession is a topic of increasing interest for good reason. In the next decade we will see an unprecedented number of pastors hitting retirement age. In a recent study by Barna Research, we learn that the average age of pastors has increased by 10 years over the last 25 years and is currently age 54. In 2017, only 1 of 7 pastors are under age 40. In some denominations, the age is even higher. For example, one denomination, using Auxano’s new pastoral succession toolbox, has a much higher average age than the national norm–40% of it’s pastors are over age 60! 

But rather than focusing on the stats of pastoral succession and the coming wave of aging pastors, let’s take a closer look at what happens if we don’t “get succession right.” As a reader you are most likely aware that pastoral succession is a challenging and emotional topic to address for many church leaders. The purpose of this article is to wave a red flag with a spirit that says, “We must have this conversation.” For many church leaders that conversation needs to happen sooner than later. What really is at stake if a senior pastor fails to pass the baton to the next senior pastor? What kind of loss will a church experience if it doesn’t lovingly address this crucial topic at the right time? 

To capture the weight of the crisis, I will cover eight costs: four through the personal lens of the pastor himself and four through the lens of the congregation and the resulting broader impact. 

The Four Costs to Pastor

Failure to Thrive, Personally

The first cost to the pastor is the overall inability to thrive at a special season in ministry where transition is normative physically, logically and biblically for a leader.  As Will Heath, Auxano’s lead navigator for pastoral succession, shares often: “Every leader must move through the natural ministry seasons from “preparing” to  “doing” and then to “mentoring.” For example, a Levite priest in the Old Testament shifted the kind of work they performed at age 50.  Heath uses this biblical pattern as a guideline for helping pastors shift their “ministry season” to one of increased mentoring. I like the metaphor used by Bob Buford that leaders should navigate a journey from “warrior” to “king” to “sage.” The failure of succession planning keeps leaders working like warriors–laboring heavily like younger men do– when they should be transitioning to a “sage” stage where their experience and wisdom does the “heavy lifting” of work. 

Collapse of Trust, Relationally

Usually, people around the leader see clearly the “emotional block” and unwillingness to think through the succession planning question. Over time some of the best and most trusted relationships for the leader, start loosing the bond of solidarity. Ranging from mildly awkward to downright toxic, the entire dynamic of the leadership will shift. If the people in pastor’s sphere of influence are a leadership constellation, the stars will soon begin falling. 

Lack of Equipping, Strategically

The irony for the senior pastor who is not preparing to transition is that they rob themselves of the beauty of ministry in the final chapter– one that can and should be defined by equipping others. Robert Clinton in his classic work, The Making of Leader, emphasizes that the greatest fruitfulness in ministry comes in the later years as leaders lead from depth of character and a lifelong of learning. Pastors in their fifties, sixties and seventies have a bank vault of wealth to give away from their personal experiences, but often do so incidentally rather than intentionally. This is most evidenced in how they do the same thing the same way year after year in ministry. That is, they don’t change the mix of “doing ministry” and “developing others.” To use one of my favorite metaphors from Jim Collins they refuse to transition from “time telling” to “clock making.” They simply don’t invest into other leaders who will make the church stronger when their season of leading is finished. 

Forfeit of Legacy, Permanently

The most heartbreaking cost, short of moral failure, is the loss of a leader’s legacy when pastoring the flock long beyond their season of effectiveness. Again, it’s so easy for a senior pastor to be blind to their decreasing value as a “ ministry doer.” (Again, they might have amazing fruit as a “leader developer” but they don’t make the transition.) No matter how well a pastor leads over their lifetime, how they finish will mark how they are remembered. It’s like an airplane ride: it doesn’t matter how well your flight attendant service was at 30,000 feet if the plane crash lands. 

As you can imagine, the cost is very high for the leader who refuses to build a meaningful succession plan. But that’s not the entire picture, as the costs are even higher for the church. In a follow-up post will walk through the next four costs below. 

The Four Costs to Church

• Loss of Momentum, Organizationally
• Drain of Enthusiasm, Silently
• Death of Humility, Symbolically
• Fumbling of Influence, Culturally

What is a Pastor to Do?

Are you at a point to starting thinking about the succession conversation? Are you on a team to where this conversation is overdue?

Think about it: How will people celebrate your leadership when your day at the helm is done? It’s not too soon to prepare.

Tags: Will Mancini, pastoral succession, succession

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8 Tips on Engaging an Expert for Free Advice

by: Will Mancini

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After walking out of a crowded breakout session at the recent Exponential Conference, a guy handed me a folded-up note. The kind of note you get from your best buddy in middle school, crinkled and hand written. He wanted free advice.

Here is what the note said:

Will, I can’t (currently) afford your time, and I know your time is not only valuable but I’m sure very limited. I am not very good at what you are great at. I need to be better for the sake of the kingdom. If you can help me think about my Vision Frame and future dreams, I’d love to connect. No pressure– If you can’t right now, please don’t. Thanks for what you do.

The purpose of this post is not just to respond to my conference attender (his name is Scott) but to equip you with how to get free advice from experts and time with great mentors.

Why did Scott’s note trigger this post? I stand on the shoulders of  many superb leaders who were always willing to take the time for me. But the more I grew in leadership the more inaccessible the best experts became. And yet, I still found ways to get free advice and time with great mentors. 

There are times when I pay for coaching and consulting. I think every effective leader should. However, I have received amazing benefits by working hard to find excellent teachers and rare mentoring moments. Depending on your experience level and resource base, the next best step for you is probably some cost-free advice or a significant mentoring engagement.

TIP #1: Don’t waste your breath stating the obvious; like talking about time and money.

If you ever want to spend a moment with a great leader or a well-known expert, don’t tell them that you value their time. You just wasted their time by making the statement. Show them that you value your time, by the first thing that comes out of your mouth. (More on this to come.)

Don’t tell them that you don’t have money. The person you want to learn from is not thinking about the money. Making the statement, “I can’t afford you” is lazy at best and an insult at worst, albeit unintended. Scott, who wrote the note above, could have spent time with me and learned from me, if he was prepared to learn from me. Money has nothing to do with it.

Keep in mind that most people you might want to learn from didn’t become experts by worrying about the money. They became experts because they are passionate, focused and experienced at what they do. They is always a path to access if you really want.

TIP #2: Know what you want from them before you approach

You are not ready to learn from an expert if you haven’t done a little homework. Do you know  what you are looking for? Do you know where you are stuck? Have you located your issue in the would-be mentor’s body of expertise? Imagine the difference between the next two appeals: “Thanks for your writing.  I have a question about vision…” Or, “I really appreciated chapter 14 in your latest book, and I have a question about the napkin-sketch version of our disciple-making strategy.” You won’t get free advice if you don’t know what kind of advice you need.

TIP #3: Be prepared with precise questions

This tip is the most important in this list. In fact you should probably list several versions of the same question to hone down exactly the best way to ask it. An expert by nature is most motivated to help you where nuances are important to performance. Avoid big, giant questions that are too general and imprecise. These questions expose either: 1)  Your lack of pre-work or 2) Your passing interest in the topic that you aren’t really going to follow-up. Look at the questions below to prompt how to begin asking a quick question that could deliver big value:

• Would you invest a moment’s attention to tell me what you like best about this.
• Your second point today had to do with this.  Here is our current approach on this. What do you see as our greatest limitation?
• I have spent hours with a our team and have boiled down our best options to this and this. What question would you ask to help our team decide which one is best?
• If we were to make this decision, what do you fear we have failed to consider?

TIP #4: Use their “love language”

Make your presence interesting and engaging for the expert by showing that you know something about them. Penn State. Mountain Biking. The names and interests of my wife and kids. Kite Boarding. Favorite travel spots. Fishing for smallmouth using topwater lures on a river. If these things are salt and peppered into a conversation with me, I am going to lean into the conversation and laugh with you.

If the person you want to learn from has just spoken at a conference or has written a book, there will be plenty of things you can pick-up and use. Experts are people too. Make the connection!

TIP #5: Have next steps ready depending on their response

The most important free advice may require a little extra time or effort from the teacher. The key question is, how do you get access? It’s important to think through what next steps might be involved. For example, maybe you are asking permission for  15-minute phone call or a lunch appointment.  Maybe you need them to review something you have created. How do you get a next step of commitment from them? First follow tips 1-4. Then follow tips 6-8. But as you do think very carefully about the scope of your follow-up request. Have 2-3 options or different “sized” requests ready based on the feel and vibe of the conversation. If the expert feels engaged make the bigger ask. If they feel distant, ask for the smallest next step possible.

TIP #6: Make a “next step ask” by appealing to an investment paradigm 

The more inaccessible the expert, the more thoughtful the appeal of the request must be. I like to use an investment paradigm. What does that mean? It means that I position myself to be the best investment of their time and energy. I let them know that I want to increase their impact and legacy. I want them to know that they are missing a great opportunity not to invest in me. Of course this could easily become arrogant. So don’t make it sound prideful. It is about how important they are, not me.  It’s about how busy they are not me. I want to simply differentiate why they should spend 15 minutes on the phone with me.

Show the expert quickly, precisely, and humbly why your request is worth their time, without talking about time. Don’t be afraid to list a 2-3 things that you have accomplished.

For example, one time I asked Carl George, if I could spend 3 hours with him over a long meal. I let him know that I lead a team of consultants in a non-profit church consulting group that works with over 300 churches a year. I told him I want to multiply his learnings for my generation. And he was glad to give me his time.

TIP #7: Never leave the initiative with them 

The saddest thing about Scott’s note to me, is that he wrote his cell phone down and asked me to call him. He thought he was respecting my time, but he wasn’t. He put a thing on my to do list that I will never get to. (Remember I am willing to spend time with him.) If he would have stopped me and said, “What’s the best way to ask a brief but intelligent question about church vision when you are not surrounded by people?” I would have given him my cell number and told him when to text me.

TIP #8: Model respectful persistence 

The single greatest mentor of my life was Howard Hendricks. I learned that his love language, like many accomplished experts,  is genuine initiative. Many students would flock to him after his inspiring teaching sessions. The after-crowd was big, but the real follow-up was thin. Why? Prof, as he was called, was not very dynamic and funny one-on-one. People got bored quickly with him in smaller settings, because they didn’t know how to learn from him.

Thousands are interested but very few are consistently persistent. If at first the expert does not respond,  try again. Differentiate yourself with great questions, engaging follow-up, and real initiative.

As you can see from this post, I love to learn. Here is my favorite post on learning: 6 Radical Steps to Learning What you Don’t Know

> Read more from Will.

Tags: Expert Advice, Will Mancini, free advice

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Great Vision, Bad Execution: 6 Common Mistakes

by: Will Mancini

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Tags: Execution, Leadership Engine, Vision, Will Mancini

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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). 

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

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