Spin control

We hear it every day on the news channels. The government, businesses or individuals who have something to explain engaging in spin control. At its best, spin control is designed to get your facts out in as favorable a light as possible, knowing that others will spin your story in highly unsavory ways. At its worst, and perhaps all too common, spin control is used to rewrite the actual facts when they are not in our favor which amounts to dishonesty and lying. It is one of the reasons that many are rather cynical when listening to people who are obviously "spinning" reality to try to convince us of an alternative reality.

It is sad that many churches and ministry organizations do the same thing when confronted with situations that they need to explain and the simple facts of the situation will make them look bad. It is sad because truth is one of the fundamental characteristics of God's character and deceit or lying is one of God's all time "hates" (see Proverbs). 

I am not suggesting that all facts about all situations must be shared. What I am suggesting is that what is shared must be consistent with the truth and would stand up to scrutiny if all the relevant parties were present. Church leaders who are not as candid as they ought to be - either because it will make them look bad - or because they don't want to deal with the fall out find that their spin goes out of control when people start to realize that they have not been given the full story - or even a truthful story. Even when done in the spirit of "we need to protect the congregation" it does not work - and that is often an excuse not to be truthful.

I know of a recent situation where allegations of sexual abuse in a mission agency's past came to light. Rather than bringing it into the open, the board simply fired the chief executive (who had nothing to do with that era of mission history). He became the scapegoat and the agency tried to hide the facts of the past. The latter will not work.

I know of a pastor who recently left his pastorate over deep conflict with his board but the situation was spun all ways to Sunday rather than simply acknowledging what many in the congregation already know - leaving the board with even less trust than they had before.

Why are we afraid of truth? Again, not everything needs to be said but people are not stupid and truth, no matter how hard builds trust while lack of transparency kills trust. Organizations that engage in dishonest spin find that they get caught in that spin for years rather than just being honest, taking the lumps and moving on. Even secular consultants will tell you to get whatever is going to get out on the table quickly, apologize where necessary, share your next steps and start to move on and rebuild trust. It is always the best way.

Covering up has to do with our pride. Transparency has to do with humility. 

Red, Green, Yellow

Visual management is a tool long used in industry but has wonderful application to ministry as well. For instance, we evaluate our adherence to our core commitments in ReachGlobal with a series of defined metrics along with a color for each. Green means that we are doing well, yellow that we could be doing better and red that we need to pay attention to it. Behind each color is a comment indicating why we evaluated the metric the way we did. 

In the same way, as we define processes that we follow for various key functions we rate each process with one of the colors along with comments. This is easily done using Microsoft Excel. 


The colors are not about whether someone has done well or badly, in fact, yellow and red are not negative. Instead they represent "opportunity" to do something better. Red is an indicator that we have something that we really need to pay attention to.


Ministries are not good at evaluation, generally. Giving our metrics or processes a color along with comments is an easy way to start to evaluate what we say is important to us. If in fact, we don't honestly evaluate it is not really important to us!


Further, the colors give you a quick indicator of where you are doing well and where you can improve. Knowing that you cannot improve everything at once or solve all problems concurrently you have a choice from your visual management tool as to which you want to pay attention to now. 

The first time a team does this, everyone wants all the colors to be green. They never really are. Furthermore, if they were all green it would mean that you have nothing to improve which we know is never true. In fact, using colors honestly gives you a continuous management tool which is what we all really want. 

It takes a little bit of work but it is a highly effective tool! It is even more effective if you put them on a wall for all to see. People start to pay attention to areas where improvement is possible and they all get in the game.

Creating dialogue through questions

Good leaders learn to ask questions of those they lead in order to solicit feedback, create meaningful dialogue and help people think through issues. This is an important part of coaching and mentoring because good questions provoke thinking and the opportunity to dialogue more deeply on the issues that surface through the answers.

Often the natural inclination of leaders is to  tell rather than dialogue. The art of asking probing questions is one that is often not natural to us but can be learned. The more we do it, the better we become. Here are the kinds of questions that can provoke meaningful discussion with those we lead or supervise.

If there were one thing you could change about your job, what would it be?

How do you think our team is doing? What would make it stronger?

Where do you want to be three years from now personally and professionally?

Is there something you wish I would do differently as your supervisor?

Are there ways that I could make your job easier?

What is your greatest challenge and your greatest joy in your role?

Do you feel you are being used to your highest capacity? If not, what would you like to add to your responsibilities?

Is there anything you need from me that you are not getting?

As you think about our mission as an organization, where do you think we are doing well and where do you think we could do better?

Where do you need to push yourself for better results?

What percentage of your time are you working in your sweet spot and what percentage in your weaknesses?

Are you doing things that someone else on your team could be doing that would allow you to focus on more important issues?

Is there something you know you really need to focus on but have not found the time to do so? If yes, how can you reconfigure your time so that you can focus on that priority?

What leadership lessons have you learned in the past year?

How are you measuring results for your ministry?

What changes have you made in the past three years in how you live and work? What prompted those changes?

Do you have a mentor who speaks into your life outside of your supervisor? Who are you mentoring?

Talk to me about how you empower your team.

If you have favorite questions that generate dialogue I would love to know what they are.

Focusing on problems not people

It is interesting how we are usually think about problems. Something does not work, goes wrong, fails, is causing frustration and we automatically ask, "who is responsible?" In other words we go to a person and we go to blame.

It is the wrong focus! The focus should be on the problem and trying to figure out why the problem occurs and how it can be fixed. In many cases we find that the problem is not about an individual but about a process that is poorly designed.

It is instructive to take a problem that is frustrating in your organization and on a white board diagram the entire process involved with the inputs and outputs. Who is involved and what process is involved and where does the process break down and why? In most cases you will quickly discover that the problem is no caused primarily by individuals but by a flawed process that needs to be refined and fixed. In fact, any time there is ongoing frustration about something, the white board process picture should be drawn and analyzed. 

Now if after you have analyzed the process you discover it breaks down with a specific individual you can deal with the individual. But as a philosophy, focus on problems not people. 

One last thought. Every problem is an opportunity to refine systems, change processes, eliminate what is not needed and do what you do in a more effective way. A problem equals opportunity to do something better. That is why I like problems.

Sometimes our best action is no action

We are an action oriented society. Have a problem? Go fix it! Need something? Figure it out. The larger the problem, the harder we work. I understand that as a "strategist," "maximizer," and "achiever," in the Strengths Finder terminology. 

But.

Sometimes our  best move is to make no move until we have been still before God long enough to wait and listen for His promptings, or to allow Him to move on our behalf for us. Sometimes our biggest work is to resist our temptation to do anything at all and simply "wait on the Lord," and see what He does on our behalf.


Throughout the Psalms we have numerous references from David of waiting on the Lord for Him to act on His behalf. And that from a man of action, a warrior who understood that there were times to act and times to simply wait for God' to act on His behalf. As David wrote in Psalm 121:1-2, "I lift up my eyes to the hills- where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."


Perhaps we too often try to solve issues that God would like to solve for us if we were patient and waited on Him! Or, we act prematurely before He gives us the conviction that it is time to act. Our own level of anxiety can cause us to act prematurely and sometimes unwisely when waiting on God in prayer would have saved us problems and given Him time to act on His own.


This is particularly true in instances where we try to convince others to solve some problem in their lives (acting for the Holy Spirit - bidden or not bidden) rather than praying that the Holy Spirit would act in His way and His time in that individual's heart.


As my own faith has matured, I have learned to act less and pray more about issues facing me. I am constantly amazed at how God creatively solves issues that either could not have solved or in His fashion. When I am tempted to act precipitously I turn to the Psalms and remind myself that "The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore" (Psalm 121:8).

Scalability and growth

A secret of successful ministries is that they understand and build scalable systems that allow for growth rather than non scalable systems that stifle growth.

I remember doing a consultation for a church of 1,000+ and discovered in talking with the elders that they provided all the care for those in the congregation who were hurting. And, they were tired! What they had was a non scalable system for care because nine folks cannot provide care for a growing church. A scalable system of care would be where the care function resides in small groups which are easily reproducible as the church grows. 

In youth work, a non scalable system is one where the youth leader personally disciples all the kids. A scalable system is one where the youth leader raises up a team and designs ministry paradigm that allows for any level of growth because it does not all come back to him/her.

A simple test to give you an idea as to whether your paradigms are scalable is this: Ask the question, "If the numbers involved in what we are doing were to double or triple, could our current system accommodate those numbers? If the answer is no you have a non-scalable system. If yes, you likely do.

The reason we should care about this is that non-scalable systems will become a barrier to growth and we might not even know it. The youth worker who tries to personally disciple all his/her kids, may not realize that once their available time is used up as the group grows that growth might just stop as new kids realize that they won't get what they need in that group. Whatever the ministry responsibility we have, if it is not scalable, it will prevent the growth we desire and limit the spiritual influence we have.

As the leader of a missions agency, we constantly have to ask the question of scalability in recruiting, vetting, training, and the many systems within the organization. It is not unusual for us to realize that some system we have is not scalable and needs to be rethought. Everything we and you do in ministry has a system. Some systems are scalable and invite growth. Some are not and stifle growth. 

The Five Why Questions

A simple technique for getting to the bottom of problems is to ask the question "why?" – five times, to drill down to the heart of the matter. I learned this from Toyota motors and their problem solving strategy.

Here is an example. I am meeting with a church board of about fifteen hundred whose board meets twice a month from about seven to midnight – terribly long and inefficient meetings. I ask “why do you do this? I can’t imagine those meetings being very productive.” “Well we have a lot of stuff that we need to do” is the answer.

“Why do you as a board need to do all that stuff?” I ask.  “Are there not staff or volunteers who can do much of it?” “Well, I guess we’re not that good at delegating and think we need to be on top of everything in the church” they answer.

“Why do you need to be on top of everything? Don’t you just need to be on top of the most important things” I ask? “Good question, they answer. We just assumed that we needed to know everything. As I think about it that is kind of impossible in a church our size is it not? I don’t think we do a very good job of differentiating between the small stuff and the big stuff.”

“Why is that?” I ask. “Hmmm,” one of them says. “We don’t really plan our meetings very well. We just have this list of stuff that we need to decide and then the meetings go on and on and on. Our agenda is sort of like a shopping list of stuff we talk about.”

“Why don’t you plan your meetings so that you cover the big rocks first and let the smaller rocks fall to someone else?” I ask. “We never really thought of that,” they answer.  “But we like it.”

By drilling down with five “why?” questions we got to the heart of the issue. This board did not differentiate between key issues they needed to deal with and mundane issues that did not need their attention. And they made faulty assumptions about needing to know everything that went on in the church. Modifying this assumption and paying attention only to the big rocks along with a disciplined meeting structure could reduce their twice monthly meetings from five hours to two. So simple, but they had never taken the time to ask why they did what they did how they did it – in spite of the pain.

The next time you have a problem you would like to solve, try asking the question “Why?” five times, drilling down to the heart of the matter. You may be surprised at what you find.

Want to drill down further? Check out this link.