In the last year our network of churches (Groundlevel) has begun a process of developing, alongside partners in South Africa and the USA, a program for churches which we have together called GHK. GHK stands for: Great Leaders, Healthy Churches, Kingdom Advancement. The first wave of this program involves an evaluation of where we are today and then a process of target setting for incremental improvement.
Within this journey I recently did a session for our connection called Setting Good Targets in which I talked about the following 3 steps for target setting and the connection suggested I post it to my blog, so here it is.
1. Clarify The Win:
The question to ask is, “What does Success look like?” Having a mission statement or even a vision is no guarantee of success. Direction and not intention is the greatest indicator of future progress. A few thoughts about the win.
- A Win is Only A Win when it is connected to Mission.
- Clarifying the Win is about asking the right questions, monitoring the right measurements.
- Most Church Teams are scrambling to identify the win because no one clarified it for them and they desperately want to win. This is why focus and purpose changes. This is why we experience volunteer burn out.
- A Win puts everyone on the same page, it creates alignment.
- A Win prioritises everything.
- A Win usually means people work harder, trust more, give more.
Action:
a) Sum up the Win in a single statement.
b) Keep the Win as specific as possible.
c) Keep restating the Win.
2. Think…What is the Next Step?
This allows us to make sure that our actions are taking us to where we want to go.
- Our tendency is to over programme. A programme is not necessarily a path. Don’t add programmes add steps.
- Programmes are often need focused whereas steps are vision focused.
- A series of steps can move people/an organisation sequentially towards the win.
The question here is, “What is the Next Step?” And the follow up question is, “How do we make it obvious what the next step is?”
Action:
a) Define where you want people/Organisation/Ministry to be.
b) Make the next step Easy
c) Make the next step Obvious
d) Make the next step Strategic
3. Narrow The Focus:
Everything naturally drifts towards complexity and not simplicity. We usually try to do too much and become A.D.D. churches, multi-focused with lots of ministries.
The key question to ask is, “Where are we headed?”
- Failure to narrow the focus has the greatest impact upon unbelievers. Unbelievers aren’t clamouring for our attention, unbelievers aren’t saying, “Let’s start this new thing…”
- Because we do too much it probably means we should stop something.
Action:
a) Ask, “What works best.”
b) Identify what gets in the way.
c) Stop anything that gets in the way.
Paul Benger 