Just this last week I was fortunate to hang out with the leadership staff from Central Christian Las Vegas. I have walked away impressed with the clarity of their mission and the purposefulness of their plan imprinted on my mind. Jud Whilhite (Senior Pastor) has formed a great partnership and what seems to be a great relationship with Mike Bodine (Senior Leader). Between the two of them, they have the leaders and people of Central heading in an unmistakably specific direction that by all appearances is producing remarkable results. There are many leadership concepts that I could jump on to from my time with them, but here is one that rang through with all of the staff that I talked with…
— think STRATEGIC not TACTICAL —
[Strategy: a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result | Tactical: the maneuvers themselves]
Where do you want to go?
What does your organization really desire to accomplish?
What are the key steps to getting there?
I think we are used to these kinds of questions, but for most of us, we are buried in the busyness of the daily ‘how to’ so much, that the big picture seems way too big and, to be honest, way too far off for it to be our reality today. As Micheal Gerber puts it in E-Myth Revisited, we need to “work on our business, not in our business”.
What is to be found in Vegas is a lesson for us all on the outcomes that can be produced by having a clear big picture goal in mind and then doing what ever it takes to dial in our organizations in order to get there.
First let me say that as leaders and as an organization the Central Vegas people know who they are and who they aren’t - they are truly working to play to the strengths of the team, their community, their culture and their available resources (which are few). Second, they have a very clear outcome in front of them that they use to create team member buy-in. But here is the important part… as leaders they have asked themselves the very hard questions about what it would take to get from where they were to where the want to go - this is the STRATEGIC PLANNING. “Next Steps” that create movement within the strategic plan towards the goal are what energies become focused on. This is probably the hardest and most important application of this key phrase. Vigorous application of any strategy is going to result in very hard decisions. When this plan had enough shape (finished doesn’t really compute in strategic planning because there are always adjustments to be made) the executive leaders engaged their minds to walk through the TACTICAL DETAILS.
So often times it is the nature of people and organizations to get stuck on doing right now items. This phrase, “think strategic not tactical” becomes imperative in the daily grind of work. When you think tactical, you think of all of the reasons why you can or can’t achieve imperative next steps. Sometimes when you think tactical, you convince yourself that you can’t get the thing done because you don’t posses the current know how or resources. You are focused on pieces of the goal, not the goal itself. You are stuck in the trenches of every battle, not engaged in the planning for victory of the war. Leaders must be strategic thinkers.
A big picture (strategic) view point allows you to properly weight the importance of each tactical move. A huge key in all of this is that it should produce efficiency in your organization that eliminates items, products, position or functions in that do not have a direct corollary to the strategic plan and big picture goal. I know from my limited time with the leadership team of Central Vegas, this has been a challenging, sweaty, gritty, painful and yet rewarding process.
Fundamental exercises for today: (pick one to work on)
- Did you think about where your organization is ultimately going today? Did it produce a change in how you worked and decisions you made?
- Is your strategy clear and on the lips of your key leaders?
- Are you identifying and eliminating items in your organization that are not tied directly to the goal? OR can you identify new items that are missing from your organization to create movement in your strategy?
- Are you guilty of thinking too much about ‘how to’ and not enough about ‘what to’ do next? If so, what is once to-do that you can give away so that you can focus on what your organization ought to be doing next?
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Special thanks to my good friend Chris Trethewey for making my time with your leaders possible. Also, thank you to Aimee Auvil for all of your assistance with arrangements and information. Your whole staff was great, encouraging and re-energizing for ministry ahead.
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