Mistakes connected to strategy affect your energy, resources, timing, morale and your overall ability to make progress toward the vision.
Every church has a tendency to become more complicated as it grows larger and becomes older. If you want to test this principle, compare any new church plant to a long-established and larger church.
In a recent podcast, Craig Groeschel stated that “Growth creates complexity and complexity kills growth.” That is so true!
It’s like a speed boat compared to an aircraft carrier. The carrier is powerful but turns and moves much more slowly. It’s a complex vessel requiring thousands of crew, sophisticated technology and strategic operation. Not to mention over fifty aircraft. The speed boat is fast, nimble, and relatively simple but has far greater limitations.
So how can we retain some of the speed boat features with a growing factor of an aircraft carrier’s ability?
One key principle is to decrease strategic mistakes. This does not suggest playing it safe or being risk adverse. It’s about merging wisdom and strategy to gain the greatest impact from your ministry efforts.
As an organization grows a certain amount of increased complexity is unavoidable, but we don’t have to allow healthy growth to become an organizational anchor, rather than a momentum enhancer.
What are the major mistakes related to strategy that we can avoid by intentional leadership?
Note: the following 6 points can serve as a good conversation guide for your lead team or a ministry department.
6 Major Mistakes Connected to Leadership Strategy
1) Settling for complexity when simplicity is the better direction
It’s a strange, but true paradox that it’s easier to allow a church to become complex rather than to work with intentionality toward better and simpler solutions.
The “strange paradox” is that there’s nothing easy about complex, and it’s exhausting. Yet, left to find its own way, the church will always become more complex.
That’s the paradox. If we settle for the church becoming unnecessarily complex, allowing ourselves to be swept along by the daily busyness of the church, we end up less productive, more exhausted and the machine takes over the mission.
In short, we trade the benefits of strategic simplicity for the ease of settling. The better way is to intelligently and prayerfully challenge the natural flow of the church toward complex.
2) Driving major decisions without alignment
As mentioned, larger organizations move slower. More meetings, slower decisions, more policies. So the frustrated response is to jump over good process by skipping important steps.
The desire to make progress and move faster is good, but leaving key leaders behind is always a bad idea. Alignment is essential.
Alignment doesn’t always mean agreement, but includes a locking of arms and moving forward together without hesitation. This full support at a heart level allows the whole team to stand stronger even when the heat is on.
Alignment doesn’t always include approval. Not everyone “votes” (that would be settling for complexity) but a sense of openness to others thoughts and ideas is part of a healthy culture. It’s not “rank” that wins, it’s the best ideas.
Take the time you need to bring in (group by group) all key leaders and the whole team to gain alignment before announcing any major initiative. It may slow you down temporarily, but ultimately, you’ll travel much faster and prayerfully farther.
3) Allowing distraction to become the pre-occupation.
Distraction is one of the Enemy’s chief tactics to slow us down and get the church stuck, but I’m not convinced it’s always the Devil’s fault.
Like settling for complexity, allowing distraction to own the day is easier than staying on purpose and fighting for the mission.
Distraction is a common derailer of leadership in the local church. The many things that demand our attention in the moment crowd out our real purpose; to reach people for Christ.
When the church attempts to meet every need, we can miss meeting the real needs.
Focus is genuinely difficult, candidly, because the needs of the moment drown out the longer term, more important, and vital concerns. When this occurs, the machine has taken precedence over the mission.
You’ve had those days, maybe weeks or longer when you know you’ve been crazy busy, worked hard, but it seems like you didn’t make any progress.
Where do you start?
Identify two – three chief distractors in your life and ministry and intentionally take steps to eliminate them.
4) Mistaking a smart idea for a God-ordained idea
I love a good idea! Good ideas are often the solution to a problem that allows us to keep making progress. And when the good idea seems like its also a smart idea, that’s the best.
A good idea is one that works. That’s a good thing. A smart idea carries layers and nuances of solution that provide a depth of progress. That’s a great thing.
Yet, there is something even better, a God-ordained idea.
We love good and smart ideas, but there is something powerful in play when you know the Holy Spirit has clearly provided a solution, strategy or direction that we know did not come from our ability alone.
A key element in any boardroom meeting is prayer. A good agenda brings purpose and clarity, but prayer brings unity and power.
5) Assuming that consistent execution always accompanies a good strategy
The longer I lead in the local church the more I’m convinced that it’s in the strategic execution of our plans that we falter, not in vision or commitment to Jesus.
Rather than changing your plans and strategies when they seem repetitious or stale, improve them and remain consistent. Keep going. That will always give you more progress than the sideways energy of creating another new plan.
Very few teams launch a plan that is doomed to fail, it’s the lack of sticking to it that brings failure.
Yes, plans need to adapt and be refreshed, but stay the course.
If you are bored with your strategy, don’t find your joy in a new plan, find it in new people who benefit from your plan.
6) Tolerating behaviors and attitudes that break down healthy culture.
If your staff culture breaks down, your ministry strategy breaks down no matter how good it is.
In part, and ironically, we unintentionally tolerate what is unhealthy because we love people and lean into grace.
The cause for the breakdowns is not because the team is difficult or problematic, its human nature. Your team wants to do well and win.
- For example, without exercise and a good diet our bodies break down. Without good mental input our minds grow lazy. Without healthy friendships our emotions wear thin
Similar human realities are alive in your team.
- Further, we run at such a pace that we don’t take the time to catch something early when it’s small and not a big deal.
- And finally, most church leaders don’t like to confront, and therefore procrastinate and may not be good at it.
Take some time to reflect on these 6 strategic mistakes. They will help provide a thoughtful and progress-oriented conversation for your team.
One approach is to discuss 1-2 of these 6 each meeting.
