“If your expectations are absurd, you won’t hit your target. If they are too low, your accomplishments won’t mean anything. A realistic goal not only helps you define potential hurdles, but also helps you define how your team should be organized and who should be on it.” Lt. Cmdr. Jon Cannon, Leadership Lessons of Navy SEALS
Making change in your organization is not about identifying issues and systems that aren't working. Discovering and describing who you are and who you want to be is the foundation for future success. As a mentor of mine used to say, making external change without focusing on lasting internal change is like “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” The passengers may feel more comfortable, but the ship is still heading toward a disaster. Too often leaders want a quick fix, a “silver bullet,” that will bring about prosperity without much pain. They choose to copy what someone else is doing or develop a style that emulates a successful organization without doing the hard work of defining who they are and where they are going. Organizational change is hard, painful work. It starts on the inside and moves to the outside. If we don’t look to the inside first, we become like the leaders that Jesus warned His followers about in Matthew 23. These leaders concerned themselves with external appearance and had no concern for what was happening on the inside.
Discovering and describing who God is calling you to be as an organization means taking the time to develop your mission and vision. There are many methods for developing a mission and vision. A Google search of “developing a mission statement” reveals over 11 million hits. Amazon.com provided over 20,000 book options when I inquired about developing a mission statement. One of my courses in the Masters of Strategic Foresight program at Regent University was Strategic Planning and Change Management. During this course, I reviewed numerous books and websites, each proclaiming they had the correct methodology when it comes to developing a mission, vision and strategic plan. Each of these methods are being successfully used by some organization. This research led me to the conclusion that the most important factor is the commitment and “buy-in” of the leadership team. Find a system that you have confidence in and go with it, or bring in someone from the outside who can guide you through a healthy process.
What does not work is having the senior leader design and develop the mission in isolation. The mountaintop experience may have worked for Moses, but in today’s culture and environment, collaboration and cooperation are vital. The senior leader is an important participant in the process, but others must also be involved. This does not mean that the entire organization needs to gather together to develop the mission and reach consensus. A small group of leaders can successfully guide the organization through the development of the mission. A key is to envision who God wants you to be and to grasp what your organization is uniquely positioned to do.
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