The Barrier of Stewardship
Staffing is your most valuable resource and, at the same time, can be the most difficult component to navigate. Maybe you’re at a place where you need to hire for a specialized position that you don’t have in-house, or perhaps you can’t utilize volunteers to accomplish tasks to the degree you desire. Getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats is critical for organizational growth!
The Barrier of Structure: Part 2
If you are regularly working on tasks well past normal working hours, you could have a structure problem. Give careful thought to your work-life balance. What would the ideal work-life balance look like for you in a week? Strive to build an organization that can function well without you.
The Barrier of Structure: Part 1
Do you expect your departments to grow? Will current facilities and technology suffice? If expansion is in your future, then a strategic plan must be developed to assess what structures are needed to pave the way for growth.
The Barrier of Systems
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “This is how we’ve always done it…” Would that be acceptable to you? Would you press into those routines to assess if they could be refined, to cut any excess, to add greater accountability, or possibly renovate entirely? If we’re honest, our teams and procedures could use some system assessment.
Part 3: Goals and Teamwork
Once you know your destination (vision) and have set guiding principles (strategies), you need to specify action steps for stakeholders to take. Your team should be clear on what their responsibilities are, how they are to do it, when they should be done, and how they know when they have been achieved. Here is a familiar and simple formula to help us remember how to define effective goals. They should be SMART.
Part 2: STRATEGIES ARE YOUR MAP
Vision, strategy, and goals are three very distinct components. They are all a part of the whole but stand alone in their function. To arrive at a specified location, you need a map (the strategy). They require thoughtfulness, teamwork, and developing specific action steps. While each part is important, no one element alone will help you realize your vision. Each is dependent on the other.