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,