The Baseline of Excellence

I was working through a strategy plan for an organization and realized something quite simple yet often ignored in organizational culture... what do we measure ourselves on?

The predicament I observed is that we often we default to a scale that looks like this three stage model:

Poor - Status quo - Excellence

Now, I would imagine that most of us would agree that we desire to achieve excellence in our work, projects, programs, leadership, relationships, etc. But we fail to measure off the right index.

Most charters will begin with the baseline of excellence... this is where we hope to reach. But what happens is that as we grow there's a gap in leadership accountability and our baseline shifts from excellence to status quo and all of the sudden all our efforts begin looking great because of our baseline for measurement.

Lesser leadership will gravitate toward presentation of performance based on the status quo. Great leadership will always strive toward measurement on excellence. You can recognize this leadership in vision, challenge, hope, excitement, and engagement.

This is our challenge as leaders... to identify the core of excellence in our field (an ever changing goal) and draw our teams to this end. Much like Kouzes and Posner note in The Leadership Challenge, leaders must challenge the process.

Benchmarking Breakdown

Many organizations have fallen into an unhealthy trap in their view of benchmarking. Just as there are many great resources in business development... there are just as many ways to use them improperly. I've noticed organizations using benchmarking as a technique for their strategy and product development. Benchmarking was never intended to serve that purpose. This is a tool that helps organizations understand their market landscape and to learn other's best practices in certain pieces of their market. But the tool should stop here... this is not a means for determining strategic direction.

But why isn't it a tool for strategic direction? Simple. Strategic direction should strive to be unique, customized to clientele, principle-aligned, and specific to markets in a given time. Benchmarking starts with someone else's strategy and deducts from that point. Great vision is never a deduction. Great vision is always pioneering in method.

Where is benchmarking most useful? I would suggest that the most beneficial means for benchmarking is to explore principle, because principle never changes. But we must strive for what's unique and specific to our market - we'll never get that from someone else. In large part, this is our calling and our responsibility... to bear the image of our Creator in how we create and innovate for the future.

Fresh method and unique vision are both some of the greatest points of blessing given to us. May we never lower leadership to the deduction of benchmarking as a foundational practice. The people we serve deserve far better than that.

Change Without Compromise

I was fortunate to have some time with Brad Powell earlier this week, the pastor of NorthRidge Church in Michigan. I loved hearing his heart and passion for change, truth, and leadership. It was obvious to see the profound depth of perspective he has in leading change and challenging other to do the same.

Brad's theme is "Change Without Compromise" which should be an encouragement to us all. This theme sums up so many great points, especially the division of two things that certainly scare many people... change and compromise. Truth is, we can make epic changes without compromising our beliefs and foundations. Matter of fact, we are commanded to as Image-Bearers of God. Change, creativity, fresh look, innovation - this should be our market and one of our strongest abilities.

It was a great joy getting to talk to Brad about how his church has shifted in demographic and age, how he is almost more comfortable working with younger leaders than older now because of passion he has for their development, about principles that never change and the means to exegete them, and his perspectives on current models of ministry many of us have become familiar with.

There is great hope for us all... for churches and organizations alike. We must seek out change without compromise and we must have the leaders to take us there. This is our calling, this is our duty... to advance our work even further in means that engage the hearts and minds of people. The opportunities are rich...

Check out Brad's book Change your Church for Good - The Art of Sacred Cow Tipping on Amazon

http://changewithoutcompromise.com/

The Delegation Misconception

Very interesting to me how the idea of delegation is so poorly defined and used in today's world. I believe we mistake the idea of delegation and simply passing off work and assigning it to others. We go even further to reward people who can "delegate" well and consider them leaders.

This is all very systemic in our poor definition of leadership in today's world. Our role as leaders is never to delegate work, but to equip and prepare those people around us. Do leaders share work? Of course, but there's an intent at hand. Great leaders see all sharing of work and good delegation as an opportunity to equip, enable, empower someone.

The greatest investment we can ever make is in people; and we all know that we can't hold on to people forever. So why not make them the best we can while we have them - as a principle of good stewardship.

Delegation is an opportunity to lead and to lead others well - but it must be in terms of equipping them with the tools to be successful and the heart to see them succeed. True delegation is the sign of a great leader. Poor delegation is a sign of no leadership at all.

Take an inventory of your engagement of your team members and consider if you are simply passing off tasks or truly working to equip them well.