One of the biggest challenges facing ministry leaders is getting bogged down in operational matters.  As Harvard Business School professor Kash Rangan notes,

Leaders typically ask, “Am I accomplishing my program?” But that is too narrow a view. Nonprofit leaders need to be more visionary. They need to stretch themselves more and worry about mission impact. I believe nonprofit leaders get too bogged down in operational issues, be it fundraising, or managing the board, or program execution. They need to be more strategic.” (Reference.)

Being strategic simply means developing a vision and a plan for the future.  Some suggestions as to how this can be achieved:

1.  Minimize immediate distractions. I have recently moved my computer monitor from the most prominent spot on my desk to the side.  This small action promotes my strategic thinking, rather than being captive to the constant interruption of attending to incoming emails.  Another way is to attend to emails only a couple of times a day.

2. Write a strategic plan. For a good overview on how to achieve this click here.  Warning: the danger with this is that ironically it can promote a focus on the operational load. This happens when the plan is viewed as some sort of final act. The key is to keep the vision fresh and to regularly think strategically; Where do we need to go to achieve our mission?  How will we achieve this?

3.  Spend time each week thinking strategically – for me this is best achieved early in the morning.

4.  Dedicated thinking time. Once a month spend at least a day out of the office dedicated to strategic thinking/visioning.

5.  Make it part of your conversations with stakeholders. Just about all communication should somehow reinforce your vision and plans.

…Mark Brown  http://brownblog.info/

Tim Costello (CEO of World Vision) is quoted in this article as saying; “There are 700,000 not-for-profit organisations and the latest fad today is under-30s wanting to start their own not-for-profit equivalent of what in my day was starting a rock band.”

Cool! This is good news, I have always wanted to be Kurt Cobain (Sorry I give away alot with that statement don’t I) and now it appears that my complete lack of musical talent will not limit my rise to stardom as I am involved in leadership of a Not-for-Profit organisation.

All jokes and vanity aside, I think that this was an interesting article. My initial reaction was concern that risks to the tax deductibility of organisations like Scripture Union are significant. Our tax deductibility directly goes towards allowing us to do more activities with young people. In fact it is a great way for the government to support the work of charities and community focused groups. It says to them, while we may not be able to fund you directly, we lift some of the tax burdens to acknowledge that you play an important role in the Australian community.

I know that this is not always the perception. After being interviewed on the morning program on ABC local radio regarding the future of our campsite in Busselton, there were many positive responses. However, one caller rang stating that groups like SU run corporate events, charge big prices and then avoid tax. Well I felt like ringing back and offering to show them both SU financial’s and the campsite booking sheet. No big profits there, bookings only for SU members, camps with young people and disadvantaged members from the WA community is what they would find.

So initially I lean towards saying; “Leave us alone, we do good work this review will only be bad.” Tim Costello saw things differently. He sees this as an opportunity;

“There are 700,000 organisations in the non-profit sector. It is too many. You have 2000 charities that
have at least one of their goals tackling breast cancer. This is inefficient and so I think the idea of a charities commission should be explored.”

in fact rather than resistant Tim states; “I feel positive about a standard regulatory regime.”

After some reflection I think that standards and regulations could be a good thing, helpful for people who want to volunteer or donate to a charity and helpful for groups like SU.

I also have reflected that it is interesting that my first preference was to “keep it all quiet”. Is this the response that people who see themselves “as ushering in the “Jesus alternative Kingdom which is open for all to examine” should have? Or was I just being a shrewd manager? Let me know what you think…..

It is 9 years old now, but there is a scene in the film, ’The Matrix’ where the main characters (Neo and Trinity) are running from the bad guys (Agent Smith and friends). They are at the top of a building where there only method of escape is a helicopter. Neo asks Trinity; “Can you fly this?”, she replys; “Not yet”. In the next scene she has downloaded into her brain all the information required to fly the helicopter, this takes merely seconds.

I often think of this scene as I watch people pick up different skills for different jobs and roles around SU. My observation is that it is getting easier to obtain the information and training required for a variety of tasks in a short period of time. Of course there are still many roles that require skills that can only be developed over a few years and our skills always require practice to become effective. Access to the information required for new skills though is now readily available from multiple sources.

In contrast to this a persons character cannot be downloaded. Character are the behavioural traits that we display or operate by. They develop over time and are often shaped quite strongly by the values and principles that we choose to adopt and put into practice. Throughout the Bible and the history of the people that follow God are stories of character being exercised, failure of character and outlines of what characteristics the people of God should develop.

Character in leadership is one of the three components that I believe go towards making a good leader. In particular I believe two characteristics that help leaders become great are they have a servant attitude and a determined will. While the term servant, is not always picked up in leadership literature. Alot has been written on the values of leaders being team focused, humble and having the emotional intelligence to be able to understand the needs of the people they lead. In hand with a servant attitude seems also to be fierce determination.

An important part of character are people’s personality, the bit that gives our character it’s flavour.

This is why I do not believe in Christian Leadership as a discrete subject. I believe that a Christian who has had their character developed and matured by time and experience who is then given the opportunity to learn some leadership skill will make a potentially fantastic leader in Christian contexts.

Well this is what I said at a leadership training seminar on the weekend. I also said that I don’t believe in Christian medicine.

While I believe that the character of a doctor or a physio may be influenced or guided by their Christian faith. The skills they apply are not unique to Christians.

I don’t believe in Christian leadership, is a position that I have been coming to over time and has become more firm for me in the last couple of months. I was most convinced of this while sitting in a session on Christian Leadership and the principles of Christian Leadership. The principles were excellent, no doubt about it, but I began to think that these principles would be excellent principles for a Christian who is a plumber or a Christian who is a lawyer as well as a Christian who is a leader.

You see leadership is a 20th century concept and as Ross Farley quotes in his book “following Jesus and leading people”; “Leadership, as we know it, is a twentieth century concept, and to trace our understanding of it to previous eras of Western Civilization (much less other civilizations) is as wrong to suggest that people of earlier civilizations knew what, for instance what computerisation meant.”

Ross goes on to say that; “this does not mean leadership did not happen in ancient times. Gravity happened before Isaac Newton discovered it, but people had no concept of gravity.” Leadership is a recent social science, with more and more learning about this social science being released all the time. Much of the learning is about the application of principles of human behaviour, similar to medicine being based upon our understanding of human biology.

I believe leadership is a skill that needs to be practiced. Similar to other skills people practice like plumbing or physiotherapy. So I think that leadership is no more privileged or special than any other skill. It is a unique skill because of how it is influenced by the character of the person who practices it. But, it is not a skill to be put up on a pedestal that requires special recognition or blessing.

Very quickly we decide Christian Leaders are the called or gifted ones. It becomes a status symbol pursued by those with egos that need to be satisfied and avoided by those who are smart enough to recognise they are not any more special than anyone else. When this happens we have Christians that could make good leaders avoiding the role and we are left with Christians who are using the role to fulfill unmet personal needs.

Along with this comes the idea that Christian leadership has to be specifically taught. This is sad because I have gained a lot from books on leadership that are not Christian but have examined leadership from a variety of angles. It is exciting to engage this material because again and again the relationship of leadership to ones character is closely linked. Maturity of character is emerging as a factor that will effect the practice of leadership. So if we want good Christian leaders we shouldn’t be encouraging them to learn about Christian leadership, we should be looking to encourage Christian’s with mature character to learn and practice general leadership skills.