6 Major Mistakes Connected to Leadership Strategy

leadership strategy
Adobestock #139852599

Share

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 50 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 six 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.

Continue Reading...

Dan Reilandhttp://www.injoy.com/newsletters/aboutnews/
Dr. Dan Reiland serves as Executive Pastor at 12Stone Church in Lawrenceville, Georgia. He previously partnered with John Maxwell for 20 years, first as Executive Pastor at Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, then as Vice President of Leadership and Church Development at INJOY. He and Dr. Maxwell still enjoy partnering on a number of church related projects together.

Read more

Latest Articles