Strategic Leadership

Strategic leadership is the ability to anticipate and envision the future, maintain flexibility, think strategically and initiate changes that will create a healthy organization living out its vision and mission in the community within and outside the walls of the church. Strategic leadership consists of the relationship between the external environment and the church's vision, mission, strategy, and their execution.

This is how we shape each of these areas, both traditionally in the Strategic Leadership model and secondarily from an Appreciative Inquiry model:

• Vision - "Where are we headed?" or "How do we visualize our future?"
• Mission - "Who are we?" or "How do we live out our vision?"
• Strategy - "How do we get there?" or "How do we make it real?"
• Execution - "What do we do right now?" or "How do we live our plan out?"

Strategic leadership does not necessarily come naturally to the leader and is often not welcome with open arms by the stakeholders within the organization. There are some strategies for thinking strategically and navigating uncertainty:

• Anticipate threats and Opportunities - Effective leaders constantly test the waters of their organizations - talk to the leaders & people within the church leaders along with leaders & people out in the community. They identify early signs of change both favorable and damaging.
• Challenge the Status Quo - Strategic thinkers question their own assumptions  and processes to look for opportunities to improve. They are curious and want to learn which they do by asking powerful open ended questions.
• Interpret Trends - Leaders look for patterns in what they find out and observe. They dig deeper trying to understand new insights rather than accepting the easy answer. Leaders do not accept that things need to stay the same practicing the idea that if you keep repeating the same process you will get the same result.
• Achieve Alignment - Leaders need to get buy-in from the stakeholders and key members of the faith community who may have different, even conflicting viewpoints and interests. Everyone must be aligned in the same direction to achieve the vision, even if all do not agree with the details of the change.

Forming Strategic Leadership: Be consistent and positive in language so when people repeat the same thing conjures up the same thing with everyone else... without a clearly articulated vision that everyone understands and buys into - people pull in opposite directions - that makes it tough to go where the community is being called to go... Focus on abundance not scarcity and possibilities not barriers,

4E Encourage, Equip, Empower, & Engage - Preparing the Ask

The cornerstone to engaging volunteer servants and leaders successfully is to encourage them to find what God is calling them to be, then equiping those volunteer servants, then empower each servant, and then engage them in the ministry. This process needs to be focused on the mission of the organization and intentional in its consistent application. The process to encourage leaders starts with developing a role description for the opportunity. This understandingof the servant role is very important for the success of the process. Misty Molloy, a volunteer engagement expert, believes that creating a good system of information in a data base and then creating tools that support the process.

The development of the role description starts with the creation of a Servant Opportunity Description based on a templete of questions that are posed to the Ministry Leader seeking volunteer servants. The SOD is designed to help the leader answer the question: "What does the servant need to be successful?" The questions are asked in a way to create a very detailed profile of the position that equips the leader to encourage and explain the service opporunity to potential volunteer servants.

WHO?

• For whom possibly would this be a good fit? ( leave the possibilities open by considering the gifts, heart, abilities, and personality desirable for this role.
• To whom does the volunteer servant work with and who is the leader of the ministry?

WHAT?

• How would a servant volunteer be successful? 
• What are the opportunities presented by the opportunity?

WHEN?

• Describe all the aspects around time?
• Commitment length (ie: one month?, one year? how often?)

WHERE?

• Describe all the aspects around location? 

WHY?

• What will be the immediate impact from the volunteer servant's participation?
• What is the greater purpose? 
• How is this opportunity tied to the BIG PICTURE?
• How will this opportunity allow them to follow the organizational mission?

The development of the role description starts with the creation of a Servant Opportunity Description based on a templete of questions that are posed to the Ministry Leader seeking volunteer servants. Asking these question create the foundation to move forward with encouraging new servant volunteers.

Developing Leaders Continuously

Leaders in many faith organizations are typically appointed for a period of time, often three years. This frequently happens once a year and often as a process of seeking people to fill open leadership roles. At Assurance UMC, we seek to grow leaders through an intentional process of identifying, encouraging, equipping, and apprenticing leaders through a year around process. 

The process is tied to the church’s singular mission to follow Jesus to “Grow and Go”. Assurance is Growing Disciples (followers) of Jesus Christ so that we can Go serve Christ in the world. In “Growing and Going”, we emphasize the 3 S’s: Spirit, Serve, and Share. We grow our Spirit in worship, prayer, and small group connections. We grow by Serving others inside and outside the walls of the church. And we Share our gifts and the good News that God loves us all.

One of the key leadership development initiatives is in deepening discipleship to develop current and future leaders through intentional identification of apprentices; create candidate pools in order to ensure adequate numbers of equipped candidates; and provide training/equipping opportunities. This LEAD process: ‘L’  Learn Leadership Skills; ‘E’ Encourage SHAPE; ‘A’ Apprentice Others; and ‘D’ Disciple Through Grow 7 GO.

These are some key results from this LEAD process:

ü  Identification of Apprentices - We continue to find future leaders to work alongside current leaders through intentional invitation. We explore member gifts through SHAPE, participation in small group and ministry work, and a heart for leadership.

ü  Candidate Pools – We create pools of candidates for leadership positions that have been pre-identified as candidates last year and throughout this year, many of whom have received encouragement and development opportunities during the following year. We believe in co-chairs for our administrative teams for continuity of leadership. We believe ministries we are called to start should have three leaders at their inception: one who is the visionary leader, one who is the logistics and equipping leader, and one who is the inviter/nurturer of volunteers and partners to come alongside.

ü  Leadership Training & Development Opportunities - We continue to develop manuals and training events for our leadership. We believe a leader at Assurance should serve where God has equipped them and have a heart for Grow and Go.

This is what we hope will be accomplished by our year around lay leadership team:

Ø  Fill the key leadership roles with our church community

Ø  Discuss and recommend that a new leadership structure be adopted that is more conducive to successful missional and vital UMC congregations

Ø  Support the future leadership needs of a multi-site church

Ø  Recommend Leadership Celebration and Development Days

Ø  Affirm GROW & GO characteristics of Spirit, Serve, And Share as a part of leadership

We seek to build the leadership of the faith community intentionally all year long.

Discovery and Value Stream Mapping – Powerful Change Foundation

Strategic Lean Six Sigma and Appreciative Inquiry are powerful change agents within organizations. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and the Appreciative Inquiry process (4D) step of discovery forms sustainable change foundation. This new emerging process is called Appreciative Lean Six Sigma.

The Discovery element in the 4D model focuses on identifying the strengths and successes of an organization. This complements the lean tools of value stream / business process mapping. The appreciative questions provide recognition of strengths and confidence within the teams. This affirmation creates ownership during the value stream mapping process while maintaining a perspective of the larger picture throughout the organization.

Value stream mapping discovers and identifies each step of a process from inception to completion. Each process step contains specific elements:

• What work is being done? (value added & waste)
• Who is doing the work? (people)
• How is the work being done? (machine, process)

These process steps are then mapped out in a visual manner and utilized through the continuous inquiry process (5 Whys) to determine the value added and waste. These ‘5 Why’ questions focus on discovering a root cause problem and identifying an optimum solution. Analytical tools and measures along with lean and six sigma tools are applied to improve and stabilize the process.

The challenge within an organization during this discovery and problem recognition process is the commitment of the people to the improvement opportunity. Often the value stream mapping is seen as a direct threat to individual security and competence. Complaints arise regarding the recognition of past value of the work and the individual performing the tasks being reviewed in the value stream. Organizations desire maximum buy in from associates during this value stream mapping process. Generally this buy in is sought to be attained through training on the competitive purpose and an understanding of the methodology. Often this leaves an organization feeling unrecognized and in a constant state of being unsettled. This leads to a general resistant to change.

The 4D appreciative model during the change phase of discovery offers an opportunity to create a more positive environment for the application of lean change. In the 4D Discovery appreciative questions using how questions such as “How has this process benefited the organization? Or a people / relational inquiry such as “How have this team achieved successful results through utilizing this process under evaluation?” This leads to affirmation of success and forms a solid base to achieve long lasting continuous improvement.

Value stream mapping used in lean six sigma improvement processes and business process mapping remains a very powerful set of change tools. 4D Discovery questions and stories provide depth to the value stream mapping process. This increases the ownership and excitement surrounding the result, creating sustainable change.

Leveraging AI for Lasting Transformation

Leaders of faith communities face challenging times and circumstances. Sometimes through vision and foresight ... sometimes due to the pressure of changes enfolding around them, these leaders must make fundamental and significant changes in the ways of the congregation. 

Often the challenges of change can be overwhelming: resistance builds, confusion and misinformation swirls about, and the first steps into the unknown are tentative, not bold. Language helps create the environment for positive change or the solidifying of negativity. Scarcity rises up: "not enough money", "not enough time", and "not enough people". Barriers form standing in the way of progress: "those people are different", "we don't do it that way" and "we don't know how".

The language of scripture is one of God's Abundance in the face of a world of scarcity... where we are never enough ...or have enough of anything. In God we are enough and we have blessings in abundance. God is a God of possibilities in the face of challenges when you trust in Him, yet the world throws up barriers to what God has placed on our heart.

The language of abundance and possibilities forms the foundation to look at our faith community from strength not weakness using a proven model of change: the Appreciative Inquiry Model. This model forms the shape of our collective conversation and change model. 

The practice of using AI to celebrate the blessings and resources that the faith community has been given by God which is what gives life. Leveraging these strengths by asking questions like "what do you want more of" leads to a reflection of "what might be?" During this stage of the change process, the congregation is invited to envision "what it might be like in the future" if the congregation changes some of their practices and goes where God is leading them. Throughout the process it has been bathed with prayer and scriptural reflection.

Asking the question "how do we make this real?" moves the congregation into a season of co-creation where "what should be" is developed and planned. These steps and plans are then placed into motion through empowering and resourcing the plans. This results in sustaining the momentum of the change process.

Appreciative inquiry coaching offers a model for change that builds an environment for change that is about abundance, not scarcity... possibilities, not barriers.