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What needs to change in your church or organization right now?
I suspect you could list several things.
Some of the issues you are facing don’t have clear solutions.
Many do, though.
What’s keeping you from implementing these solutions? What’s keeping you from fixing the problems?
If we sat down together, you’d offer plenty of reasons the solution cannot be quickly executed. After all, if it were an easy fix, it wouldn’t still be a problem! But you feel somewhat held back, don’t you? You know how to fix the problem — or you at least know how you’d like to begin fixing the problem. But it feels impossible to move forward. Why is that? What’s holding you back?
It’s rare to see only one element holding leaders back from making progress. It’s most often a combination of issues. Let’s look at four:
Your Organization
Organizations are designed to organize and orchestrate what is in place today. But not necessarily tomorrow. There is an instinctual tension that exists between the management of a machine and the innovations required to make it better.
When you look around your company, church, non-profit, or whatever you call it, how much time and energy is spent orchestrating what is? Organizations are designed to do this and are incredibly adept at it! By default, every organization works against progress because progress creates chaos and adds complexity — the enemies of effective and organized orchestration.
Question: How and where is your organization working to maintain what current is while resisting what could become?
Are you leading or managing?
Your Strategy
I am a strategist at heart; therefore, I spend much of my client time working on strategy with senior leaders and executive teams. After reviewing dozens and dozens of business strategies, one thing is blatantly apparent:
Every model is built for a moment.
Think about it. Strategies are always formed for momentary realities. When a company, church, or organization forms a plan, it’s predicated on the time of its formation. This is how strategies are designed.
One of the most famous approaches is the SWOT process. To form a SWOT-based strategy, you consider your organization’s current internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. This is a tried and true mechanism for developing a strategy, and the outcome of a SWOT analysis can be precisely what’s needed at that very moment.
But what happens when an internal strength ceases to be a strength? What happens when a key (I.E., strong) staff member resigns? What happens when the community changes? What happens when culture shifts or customer preferences change?
You get the point. Current strategies are designed for momentary realities.
Question: How is your current strategy meeting the demands of your actual reality?
Are you so busy working in it that you can't find time to work on it?
Turning information into application is the secret to success. Anyone can form a strategy. But it takes a unique leader to fully implement the change.
Change Management
When I worked for a consulting firm, we specialized in helping clients solve problems. That’s basically all we did. Occasionally we were blamed for creating problems to solve, but that’s another story.
Inevitably, every solution required something to change. Whether it be the organizational chart, product mix, or service offerings, something always changes as part of solution execution. I mean, it’s hard to solve a problem without changing something. If nothing needs to change, we wouldn’t have a problem!
At our firm, change was a big deal. It was also the most challenging aspect of consulting. Anyone can uncover a problem. It took a unique approach to implement the solution. To help ensure we served our clients well, our firm had an entire department dedicated to change management. That’s all they did. They came alongside each consulting engagement and client team to help lead the change process.
I doubt you have a change management department. If you did, the complexities of change wouldn’t be holding you back.
Question: How is an inability to change keeping you from moving forward?
You manage change, but you. must lead people.
The only constant in life is change. If we can’t understand how people process and experience change, we’ll never lead a successful change effort.
People Leadership
Leading people is a never-ending challenge. People are always tough to lead. But people are why we lead.
Effective people leadership requires we hold two things simultaneously: truth and tenderness. Great leaders are willing to have hard conversations, admit organizational realities, and make difficult decisions. They also do these things with a compassionate, people-first posture. One without the other holds leaders and organizations back.
Too many organizations are held back when point leaders refuse or are unwilling to grasp these two leadership realities. An “all truth all the time” leader is left with only positional authority to make progress. As you’ve probably experienced, these leaders rarely attract or retain great leaders. A leader relying on positional power is left relatively alone in time.
On the other hand, the compassion-at-all-cost leader is beloved, often because they never push their team forward or hold people accountable. I’ve seen many leaders over my lifetime of leadership who were loved because they allowed everyone to remain comfortable. These leaders aren’t leading. But they are loved.
Question: How well are you holding truth and tenderness? How well would your team say you hold truth and tenderness?
I don’t know your organization’s specifics, but I do know every organization can improve in one way or another. When you see a problem and are ready to solve it, which of the above issues holds you back the most? Next, how do you plan to push forward in the face of organizational, strategic, change, and people resistance?
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