Your Vision Should Be a Rough Draft – Leading Change Part One

Recently I was having coffee with a friend.  We were catching up on life.  He casually asked to write up my thoughts on leading an organization through change.

Naturally, I wrote an overly complicated, highly confusing, six page mess of theory and wanderings.

A week later I was talking with a different friend about an upcoming board meeting that needed a strategic session.  She described what she wanted.  It sounded a little like my six page mess, so (determined to get some productive use from my mess) I said I would throw some stuff together for the session.

Everyone got sick and the board meeting never happened, but the processing time was good for me.  Now I have all these thoughts, but no where to share them.  So I thought I would share them with you!

A lot of very smart people write about how to navigate change as a leader; so before we jump into this topic I want you to understand whose thoughts you are reading.  To be clear, I’m not an expert in this field in any way.  I’ve done no research (outside of personal reading).  I have not grown a group of three people in my basement into a multi-awesome-monstrous-super-cool-mega-gigantor church.  I’ve never written a book.  And no one asks me to speak.  Ever.

I do feel like I have seen a lot of change though.  I’ve been in professional ministry for a little over ten years now.  In my first job, the ministry I worked with saw massive, unexpected, rapid growth.  Then I was brought on staff at a church to help them build stuff.  That was a five year journey of constant change.  Then Wendy and I joined a small group of people to create our own church “thingy” (which is totally awesome).  And now I work at a 60+ year old church that is going through a  period of massive transformation.

So while I’m not an expert, I do feel as though I have seen change.  I’ve done a few things right.  I’ve made a ton of mistakes.

What I’m going to do in this series is walk you through what I’ve learned along the way.  It will take five posts (possibly six).  I’ll do my best to keep the posts entertaining and short.  Let’s dive in.

THE V-WORD

Whenever we are talking about leadership we have to start with the big V.

No.  I’m not talking about vacations, vaccinations, or Vanderbilt.

I’m talking about “vision.”

Vision is all the rage.  It’s suggested in all leadership books.  It’s talked about at every conference.  It is the starting place for all leadership advice.    Step one is always, “Develop a vision.”

This has always been curious to me because I’ve never met a leader without a vision.  Sometimes the vision is as simple as, “Maintain the status quo.”  But even then vision is still present.  With all the talk about vision, one would think there is a great deficit of it.  On the contrary though, I think the problem is that leaders have to much vision.

Vision gives direction.  It creates boxes to play within.  When you gather a team, the vision sets parameters.  It defines the work.  All of this is good.  As Aton Checkov once wrote, “If you cry ‘Forward!’ you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.  Don’t you see that if, without doing so, you call out the word to both a monk and revolutionary, they will go in directions precisely opposite?”

But something leaders often forget, especially passionate driven leaders, is that organizational change is a team sport.  And the more people taking ownership and playing the game, the better the outcome.

The problem with vision is that it excludes people from playing the game of change with you.  The more defined your vision is the more ridge it becomes.  The more ridged a vision is, the more of it you are going to have to sacrifice to let people join in the fun of creation and innovation.  And sacrificing about something you care about is always painful.   The more static it becomes the less ownership others are going to have of what you are building.

For my whole ministry career I’ve always sat in the #2 chair.  I’ve never been the “Head Pastor” or “Lead Pastor” or “Great Grand Poh-Bah.”  I’ve always been the “make the vision happen” guy.  When the vision was a sketch or a rough draft, the work was fun and inspirational.  When the vision was a final copy or a master piece, the work of hard and frustrating.

Have a vision.  But keep it a rough draft.

Next I’ll write about the repeated cycle of organizational life.

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