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Celebrate the Win

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Celebrate the Win

The political thriller Argo portrays the successful rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Iran during the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis. With the leadership of the Canadian ambassador and support from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the escapees left Iran with agent Tony Mendez under cover of a fake movie production.

When Mendez returns to the United States with the American hostages, his success is celebrated with the CIA Intelligence Star. But there’s no fanfare and no official recognition. In one of the last scenes in the film, Mendez’ CIA handler, Jack O’Donnell, explains:

O’Donnell: You’re getting the highest award of merit of the Clandestine Services of these United States. Ceremony’s two weeks from today.
Mendez: If they push it a week, I can bring [my son] Ian. That’s his winter break.
O’Donnell: The op was classified so the ceremony’s classified. He can’t know about it. Nobody can know about it.
Mendez: They’re gonna hand me an award, then they’re gonna take it back?
O’Donnell: If we wanted applause, we would have joined the circus.

Mendez and his team had accomplished something no one thought possible, but they didn’t receive the credit and they couldn’t celebrate the win.

Celebrating success in many organizations feels a lot like a secret CIA operation. We don’t celebrate as publicly or as often as we should. But just like Tony Mendez, we have an emotional need to revel in our accomplishments.

So what should we celebrate? Celebrate team success. Praise individual accomplishment. Mark important victories. Celebrate the small things. Celebrate the big things. Find something to celebrate!

Consider a few ideas to get the ball rolling:

  1. Create a culture of sharing. Your staff team should feel the freedom to share when something is working. Encourage that in volunteer leaders and staff. If needed, prompt your team to start sharing with your own stories. Then, go around the table and ask them to share a win with the group.
  2. Share wins or stories in weekend services. Do it on video or in person. Focus on vision-aligned, values-focused stories that reinforce who you are and where you’re going.
  3. Celebrate success in one paragraph (or less). Attention spans are shorter than ever, and you have to contextualize for that when you celebrate the win. Practice the art of casting vision and celebrating success in one or two sentences. Provide links to the full story for those who want it, but summarize the win concisely.
  4. Celebrate success frequently. Frequency beats length any day of the week. Share less content more frequently to capture the attention of more eyes and ears.
  5. Recognize wins in weekly communication. This is usually some kind of digital or printed newsletter or weekly bulletin. Make that piece about more than announcements. Use it to tell short stories or report a significant accomplishment.
  6. Use your website to tell the story. Use video, blog posts and stories to keep everyone in the loop about your success. Link back to your site in social media posts.
  7. Use social media to celebrate the win. Be creative in the images and words you use. Remember that photos, videos, web links and hashtags increase engagement.
  8. Use photographs to celebrate success. Show people living out the organization’s strategic vision. Show them working, serving and preparing. Highlight volunteers and celebrate their service as they live out the organization’s vision and values.

So what’s the Big Idea?

We all have an emotional need to celebrate the win. Celebrate the small things. Celebrate the big things. Find something to celebrate!

Resources


Source

Terrio, Chris, Argo, Directed by Ben Affleck, Los Angeles: Warner Brothers Pictures, 2012.

Create a Culture of Accountability

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Create a Culture of Accountability

People and churches respond to accountability in one of two ways. Either they pull back from the prospect of increased attention or they embrace the opportunity to reach their potential and achieve better outcomes.

Many of us don’t have effective mechanisms for accountability in our personal and ministry lives. For one thing, accountability is difficult. We would rather not push people and staff—paid or volunteer—to go further, do more and be more strategic. Most people don’t naturally seek to do more than standard operating procedure requires.

It’s also true that accountability requires hard decisions and choices that many church leaders don’t want to make. It’s easier to kick the can down the road and hope for the best. But it usually doesn’t work out for the best.

A real culture of accountability can’t skip over any of the truly important things. It has to be practiced regularly and cover vital parts of Christian life and witness. Churches need staff ministers who are accountable for:

  1. Personal Spiritual Growth & Family Time
  2. Professional Growth & Development
  3. Organizational & Ministry Objectives

Consider whether ministry leaders in your church are held accountable for those things. If not, it may be time to consider a few adjustments.

How can you build traction for a culture of accountability? Start with:

  • Clear Vision and Values – Each staff member knows who you are and who you want to be. There’s no substitute for being on the same page. Accountability begins with clear vision.
  • Global Objectives – Each team member knows what you’re trying to accomplish and how you plan to get it done. With clear global objectives, the team is rowing in the same direction.
  • Ministry Objectives – Proper accountability can’t happen unless departments harmonize their plans with “big picture” vision, values and strategy.
  • Realistic Goals – Ministry goals should be achievable with available resources. It’s futile to expect outsized outcomes from insufficient resources.
  • Regular Interface – Ministry staff and volunteers need honest feedback and coaching. A coaching discussion with accountability should happen at regular intervals.
  • The Freedom to Make Adjustments – Ministry plans are written in pencil not pen. Because plans are adjustable, fear and anxiety about accountability is reduced.
  • The Freedom to Fail (and Succeed) – New initiatives and ideas are encouraged, even when they might not succeed. Expect that a certain percentage of new plans won’t go as planned.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Church leaders should be accountable for personal spiritual growth, family time and professional development, as well as church and ministry objectives. Build a culture of accountability in each of these areas with clear vision, realistic goals and regular interface.

Resources

Make Decisions with the Eisenhower Matrix

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Make Decisions with the Eisenhower Matrix

Somewhere along the way, my three worlds—personal, professional and organizational—became saturated with activity. More responsibility, more worthwhile tasks and more can’t-miss family moments mean that decisions about what to do and when to do it are more important than ever.

A productive life doesn’t happen by accident. You don’t stumble upon great personal choices, plans, priorities and goals. One of the most important lessons about personal productivity is that you have to spend intentional time planning your daily and weekly schedule.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said it this way:

I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.

That statement is at the heart of the Eisenhower Matrix, a method for making consistently good decisions about time and your agenda.

I set aside my first hour on Monday morning to plan and prioritize the coming week. It’s my planned weekly time to make decisions about important, unimportant, urgent and not urgent tasks.

Here’s how it works. In what is now called the Eisenhower Decision Principle, tasks are evaluated and sorted using important-unimportant and urgent-not urgent criteria. Those tasks are then placed in one of four quadrants in the Eisenhower Box or Matrix.

You may do this intuitively but consider placing daily and weekly tasks in the proper perspective.  Sort important-unimportant and urgent-not urgent tasks to make good decisions about your schedule:

  • Know what to DO now. What IMPORTANT/URGENT things should be done immediately and personally? This includes time-sensitive items that have a deadline or problems and crises needing immediate attention. These are things that require your personal attention or presence and can’t be done by anyone else.
  • Know what to SCHEDULE later. What IMPORTANT/NOT URGENT things should be scheduled? This includes important tasks that may not have a target date or time limit. But since these things are still very important, you need to intentionally plug them in to your personal schedule. You might need to schedule things like strategic planning, relationships, goal setting or other significant tasks you can never seem to make time for.
  • Know what to DELEGATE to someone else. What UNIMPORTANT/URGENT things should be delegated? This includes routine items that can be done by someone else. These things don’t require your presence and that makes them a prime candidate for delegation. Ask yourself the question: Who can do it for me? You might need to delegate tasks like routine administration, scheduling, meetings and activities. If it doesn’t require your personal touch, then delegate it.
  • Know what to DELETE. What UNIMPORTANT/NOT URGENT things should be dropped? This includes everything we can live without in our personal, professional and organizational worlds. These are things that we can drop or eliminate from our routine to make room for more productive tasks. Examples include time wasters, low priority items, entertainment or anything else we can do without.

So what’s the Big Idea?

One of the most important lessons about personal productivity is that you have to spend intentional time planning your daily and weekly schedule. Know what to do now, what to schedule later, what to delegate to someone else and what to delete. Make better decisions with the Eisenhower Matrix.

Resources


Source

“Time Management,” Accessed April 23, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_management.

Shift Gears from Good to Great

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Shift Gears from Good to Great

There have been too many seasons in my life when I settled for the good at the expense of the great. It’s happened when I was too comfortable with life, my job and my organization, and the result has been something far less than what I’m capable of. In those moments, a lack of self-discipline and the absence of a personal growth plan created conditions where ruts and bad habits flourished.

Several years ago, I struggled with a prolonged period of complacency. Soon after the completion of a major project at work, and despite my best efforts to avoid it, I rested on the laurels of past success. Partly the result of burnout and partly due to a letdown from the “high” of a great accomplishment, good-enough work took the place of really great work.

It didn’t happen suddenly. Instead, a series of small compromises gave way to a habit of mediocrity. The difference between good and great was so slight that many didn’t even notice the change. For some friends and team members, good-enough living has always been standard operating procedure. These folks were satisfied with less effort and vision, and a lesser result.

After two years of vapid work, it dawned on me that I couldn’t go on this way. When the great is within reach and possible, the good just isn’t good enough.

Recognize that habits can progress in both good and bad directions. When you make future-focused choices, you build growth habits that lead to breakthrough results. When you make comfortable choices, you tend to reinforce habits that lead to apathy, complacency and mediocrity.

So how do we combat the slide toward good-enough living? Jim Collins wrote that:

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.

The simple answer is that great living starts with a decision to live intentionally. Make the decision to shift gears from good to great in every area of your life:

  • Spiritually – Glorify God in everything you do.
  • Financially – Save for your future and eschew materialism.
  • Intellectually – Learn something new every day.
  • Physically – Exercise your mind and body regularly.
  • Personally – Set personal goals daily and weekly.
  • Professionally – Grow in your professional skills and knowledge.
  • Organizationally – Give your best work every day.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Don’t settle for the good at the expense of the great. Make the decision to shift gears from good to great in every area of your life.

Resources

Use Medium-Term Goals to Stay on Target

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Use Medium-Term Goals to Stay on Target

Medium- term goals are a natural extension of weekly goals, details and to-do lists. They are the incremental checkpoints that have to be reached on the way to annual goals and objectives.

Let’s define the duration of goals this way:

  • Short-Term – 30 days or less
  • Medium-Term – 2 to 11 months
  • Long-Term – 12 months or more

We often associate goal-setting with annual goals—the type of goals typically set as a part of performance review processes. But while annual goals are important, they aren’t very effective as standalone objectives. In fact, recent evidence confirms that goal-setting should happen more frequently than once a year:

The traditional once-a-year setting of employee goals and performance review is totally out of date,” says Kris Duggan [co-founder of Silicon Valley startup firm BetterWorks]. “To really improve performance, goals need to be set more frequently, be more transparent to the rest of the company, and progress towards them measured more often.

Consider 3 ways that medium-term goals help you stay on target:

  1. Medium-term goals bridge short-term and long-term goals. While short-term goals form your daily and weekly nuts-and-bolts task list, you need bridge goals to steer you toward your long-term objectives. Medium-term goals fit the bill, providing a progress report at set times throughout the year.
  2. Medium-term goals are a natural time to make adjustments. If there’s a problem with your “big picture” plan, you’re more likely to discover it as you set and evaluate medium-term goals. Intermediate goals help you adapt to changing conditions and, if necessary, adjust the long-term objective.
  3. Medium-term goals focus on quarterly results. A study of big companies by consulting firm Deloitte found that: “Those which set quarterly goals are nearly four times more likely to be in the top quartile of performers.” It pays to set incremental checkpoints as you strive toward annual goals and objectives.

Quarterly and semi-annual goals can be applied in your personal, professional and organizational worlds. Whatever the area of your life, apply medium-term goals to stay on target:

  • Personally – Family, self-improvement and life development goals
  • Professionally – Career, work and leadership development goals
  • Organizationally – Business or ministry vision, values and OGSM-driven goals

So what’s the Big Idea?

It pays to set medium-term goals, especially quarterly and semi-annual ones. They bridge short-term and long-term goals and provide incremental checkpoints to make adjustments as you strive toward annual goals and objectives.

Resources


Source

“The Quantified Serf” (Schumpeter), The Economist (March 7, 2015), 70.

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