How to Execute a Strategic Plan at Your Church – Crafting the Plan

Too many leaders attempt strategic planning without fully considering their past and present circumstances.

As I’ve said in the past several posts, the better (and more honestly) we evaluate who we are and where we are, the better we’ll be able to define a strategy that moves us to where we want to be.

In this NEW POST, we move along from Defining Reality and Position” to step two: Develop a strategy

If you need to better understand strategic planning, I hope these articles help.

How to Execute a Strategic Plan at Your Church – Where Are We, Really?

If you want to execute an actionable strategic plan, you need a practical process. 

Effective strategic plans do not just present where you want to go – they begin with a complete understanding of where you are. And who you are.

That’s the goal of the first segment of strategic planning. And it ends with a reality check.

In this NEW POST, we’ll finish out the “Determine position and reality” portion of our strategic plan.

How to Execute a Strategic Plan at Your Church – The One Unifying Question?

All actionable and pragmatic strategic plans follow a similar process:

1. Determine position and reality
2. Develop a strategy
3. Design the tactics
4. Measure the progress

Part of the first step is to ask the ONE that defines our strategic true north while creating unity within the organization.

In this post, I give you that ONE KEY QUESTION.

How to Execute a Strategic Plan at Your Church – Differentiation

Have you ever heard or used the term “Points of Differentiation?”

Differentiation is what makes you, you. Differentiation is essential to your brand, product mix, and market positioning. It’s also part of your culture.

When you are working on a strategic plan, determining your position and reality requires you defining your differentiation.

You don’t want to lose it when you plan for the future. The opposite, in fact – you want to leverage it!

How do you define your points of differentiation? In this NEW POST, I give you 8 questions to get your started.

How to Execute a Strategic Plan at Your Church – Values and Culture

You can’t begin designing a “HOW you’ll do it” strategy until you understand the “WHO you are culture.”

This is an often skipped step in the strategic planning process.

Attempting to design a new strategy without first understanding your current culture results in 1) a plan that cannot be executed or 2) a plan that creates a new and potentially unwanted culture.

In this NEW POST, I outline the steps to evaluate your current culture and define new aspirational values.

This is the second post this week on Strategic Planning. Make sure you look at the previous post for the full context.

How to Execute a Strategic Plan at Your Church – Defining Success

Success will be accidental and unreadable if you don’t have a strategic plan.

This is beyond your mission and vision statements. Well beyond!

The strategy is how the mission and vision come to fruition.

All great strategies are built strategically in this order:
1. Determine position, reality, and success
2. Develop a strategy
3. Design the tactics
4. Measure the progress

In this NEW POST: I give you some crucial tactics to determine success.

Follow along for the rest of the conversation as we outline the full strategic planning process.

Remove these 4 Emotional Obstacles to Maximize Your Potential

Maximizing potential is the greatest organizational goal. If you have a mission and vision, the gap between where you are and what you’re experiences represents potential. You can close this gap, but there will be some emotional obstacles along the way.

4 Steps to Remove Stereotypes in Leadership

Do you tend to see people by their differences or their similarities?

I get this is a loaded question, but pause for a moment and think about it. Imagine you’re walking down the sidewalk and a person is approaching? What do you see? What do you notice? How do you react?

This concept hit me in the face a few days back as I entered a tattoo shop with my daughter for a nose piercing. Hers, not mine! 🙂

On the surface, this tattoo shop owner and artist was nothing like me. Thirty minutes later, I realized we were basically identical. And I could have missed that reality completely.

In this NEW POST, I give you 4 steps to help remove our stereotypes.

As a leader, this is a key skill to finding talent and people we may overlook.

Why Competing With Yourself is the Best Competition

Are you competitive?

The answer is “yes.”

Most of us are competitive. At least to some extent.

You may not be the ultra-competitive type who throws tantrums when you lose (FYI: if you are, that’s another post.). Perhaps you’re much more laid back and claim to be uncompetitive. But that’s not wholly accurate. Every single person lives with a version of competition. Some are stronger, and some are more hidden, but competition is present for every person – especially every leader.

Some versions of competition are hazardous to our health. But there is ONE version we all should embrace.

In this NEW POST, I outline two bad competitions and the one we all need.

Evaluating Leaders by Evaluating Their Followers

When was the last time you tried to evaluate your leadership? Or the leadership of a peer or direct report?

Perhaps you were conducting an annual review. Or maybe it was a leadership development conversation. Or, maybe you felt the need to improve your leadership team and couldn’t decide who to add.

Evaluating people is complex. It’s not like a math test. With math, it’s evident if a solution is right or wrong. 1 + 1 always equals 2. Unless you’re doing calculus. I don’t understand calculus.

Math solutions are black and white. Evaluating people is often as gray as gray can be.

One failsafe evaluation criteria for leadership success is the quality of the leadership they attract. You’ve heard the phrase, “Birds of a feather flock together.” This is always true. People tend to attract those like themselves.

If you hire a strong leader, they will attract strong leaders. People more relationally driven tend to attract and be drawn toward others who prioritize people over projects. Task people attract fellow getter-doners.

One of my first church staff hires was a production technician. He was a magician in the technical production of a fully portable church. He was exactly what we needed at that moment. Our struggling church was meeting in a school. We weren’t allowed to leave so much as an extension cord in the building when we left every Sunday afternoon. This hire was a God-send for our team and me.

Two years later, we were meeting in a semi-permanent space. The management of portable church was giving way to the leadership of a rapidly growing church. Our team needed strong leaders, not executors, and I found myself in a challenging situation. Our former production stand-out was not the leader we needed in this new season.

This reality became apparent when I looked at those whom he attracted — fellow technicians and executors. There is nothing wrong with being a technician or executor, but when you need vision and leadership, you need vision and leadership. Looking around this staff member, he had attracted people like him, which was insufficient for our future and this position.

People of a feather.

If you struggle to evaluate and define those on your team, look at the people around them. Who do they attract?

Strong leaders attract strong leaders.