Orange ’13: “Casting the Vision Daily to Keep Everyone Aligned” Notes
Carey Nieuwhof led this time.
You can dream dreams and navigate change but if you don’t have alignment in the church, it will be all derailed.
Alignment isn’t Automatic
- In a perfect world, alignment is automatic
- A leader never has to work at getting a team unaligned. It naturally happens
- Organizations naturally go towards complexity, inner competition and confusion
- Over time, minor misalignments become major gaps and, as a result, the common mission is lost
Just because you start together doesn’t mean you end up together
How does Misalignment happen?
1. Misalignment rarely happens in a church on a mission or vision level
2. Misalignment almost always happens on a strategy level
3. In particular, strategically unaligned programs become divisive because what you’re involved in becomes the mission.
- what helps is that we are only going to do the things that support the mission.
4. Leaders forget to talk about why we do what we do.
- Why unites
- What and how divides
Your best friend as a leader is the “why”
5 Ways to build and keep alignment
1. Take personal ownership of the Strategy as a leader by:
- Gain clarity around that strategy
- eliminating all competing programming (do less for more)
- create a common language
2. Empower people who are already on board
- we all have an existing church and a future church. Some are already on your team and some are not. Look for like minded who leads with a proven track record (what they have done in the past, they will likely do in the future)
- focus on strategic alignment, not just mission alignment
- use financial records if necessary
- prioritized the “who” of team reduces friction and speeds alignment as you discuss the “what” of ministry
3. Build Trust
- trust is easiest relationally when people are aligned missionally
- there is a direct relationship between speed and trust
4. Eliminate Alignment Killers
- unclear wins. It turns you into people pleasers
- ministry clutter
- infrequent communications (never assume they know)
- infrequent relational deposits. Hare to stay aligned when you don’t talk
- infrequent follow through
5. Stick to your strategy long enough to see it work
- people who change the world don’t change ministries every 5 years
- people aren’t used to alignment
- people aren’t used to clarity
- people are used to getting their own way
Ultimately people gravitate to a clear and compelling mission, vision and strategy
