Patrick Lencioni
As I mentioned a few days ago here, I just finished the book by Patrick Lencioni called Silos, Politics and Turf Wars. It was tremendous and has huge practicality for the church, so I've been looking forward to this session as well:
- We think we are being Christian when we are being nice. But being nice isn't always being loving.
- "Silos" are those walls that are between departments in an organization. Silos turn colleagues into competitors.
- There are certain groups that don't have Silos: Emergency room, soldiers on a rescue, firefighters. It is the power of a crisis.
- A crisis pulls a team together. You can get the power of a crisis by having thematic goals.
- Thematic goals must be single, qualitative, temporary. and shared across the organization. You ask, "If we accomplish only one thing during the next X months, what would that be?"
- Under the thematic goal you have Defining Objectives.
- You always have the Standard Operating Objectives also...this is the normal everyday stuff that doesn't change.
- If you only focus on the "normal" stuff you lose interest. It's not exciting. It's not fun.
- The Thematic Goal becomes the basis for your staff meetings. Give yourself a green, red, or yellow on each of the defining objectives and standard operating objectives. Then spend your time on the reds and maybe yellows.
- Patrick used three church case studies and each of their pastors shared how this process worked for them.
- If you don't have a shared thematic goal, then every one makes up their own. Then you end up with Silos.
- If everything is important, then nothing is. There are many good things your church can do. You have to choose what is most important.
- Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Don't wait for perfection...this is messy. Get it 80% right and change it as you go along.
Two final sessions tomorrow.