Strategic Planning for Ministry Teams

Yo, what up, family? So I'm gonna get on here just for, like, I'm gonna really try to make this one pretty quick. I'm not gonna, I can definitely kind of nerd out in these type of topics. But I'm gonna touch on a few things here with just, so let me back up. So this won't be necessarily to talk about the, the organizations or ministries or whatever in a like faith-based— like we know that the word is important, we know that the Holy Spirit is important, all of that. But I'm more so dealing with the administration side because even if you're in a local church, I think this will help you, uh, but this can really work with anything, like any organization, uh, any, uh, just ministry, business, or whatever. I think you'll see some value in it. And some of you might already know about this, but I work as a senior agile coach, which I think it translates just about in any secular out there, to be honest. And then of course, I'm an associate pastor. And so as a senior agile coach, now what I do is I primarily focus on the enterprise as a whole and then product and technology or product engineering, where I can coach the individual teams, team of teams, and then getting up into coaching the executive to, again, looking after the entire organization. So it's a lot of nuance there. But what I love about that role is because depending on if you subscribe to more of the professional coaching or the agile coaching, you kind of have to know when to pivot, when to be a consultant, when to be a teacher and all that different, when to be a mentor, when to coach, and when to model. So you start thinking about systems and all that. That's kind of my background and what I spend most of my time in day to day working in a software, software company, tech company. So that being said, so some of the transferable principles when it comes to the hiccups, again, whether you're leading an individual ministry, a small team, small group to the organization as a whole, I think a lot of things translate. It's just about scale. Um, so leading a small team is typically easier than leading again the whole entire organization. Um, so that's why you want to make sure, like we talk about, we, um, use a framework called Scrum. And so I tell people all the time, like you can have like 1 or 2 teams where a small startup or something, a build out, and they have a really good Scrum team. But then say things like they start to create multiple Scrum teams, that's when it gets challenging, especially if, uh, you have a Scrum team has bad habits and you try to scale, so you really start scaling bad habits. And this kind of segues into like the AI conversation where I think AI is a powerful tool. I love it. I use it to say the least. And but again, it's a powerful tool. I think some of the same traps that we're falling into goes back to the agility phase where it's like agility to solve agility to solve it. And no, you have systemic issues, data issues and all this type of stuff that you don't confront. It just brings those things up where AI gets you there there even a lot more faster. So that being said, uh, let's talk vision. So I don't, I don't think we have a shortage of— sorry, I just— I don't think we have a shortage of vision problem. Typically what I look in the most simplest forms of vision is like, where are we going and what, why does it matter? That's typically what I look at. Like, I try to think about vision like that and, and sit with it and stress test it and say, okay, is this clear? Is it something repeatable that I can say over and over and over? Kind of seeing yourself is the chief reminding officer, uh, when it comes to vision. Strategy is what choices are we making to get there. So, um, most ministries or organizations that I work with, even in working in my day-to-day job, it's like the problem is not vision itself, but for the most part, where it starts to be a gap is when we get to that strategy stage, which also makes delivery— or if you say like your coordination and tactical operations, all that type stuff, it just, it, it makes it a nightmare because this is like what work is actually moving and is it producing the intended outcome. And so essentially, man, we want work connected to the right intent or the right outcome. Like, we should always kind of have a desired outcome in mind. And then also too, especially in this world, stay highly adaptive. Um, and that's a whole nother conversation. But that being said, uh, so I'm not going to really too much touch on the vision and delivery, but I do want to talk about impact mapping. So why it matters. So I use this with a lot of product teams and now I'm starting to test it again in ministries and organizations, whatever, outside of what I do day to day. And impact mapping is just basically the way I understand it is just like a strategic planning tool or framework, whatever, that doesn't suck. Like it's just, it's super lightweight. To me, technical, and it just kind of helps you see what you're building. Because a lot of times when we're doing strategy, we hear vision, we don't really believe in going to the board or working with people that are very skilled in this area that can help people see visually versus trying to hold all this stuff in their head. So like it's helping us actually see what we're trying to create and making those assumptions crystal clear. So I'm going to just use a ministry idea. Yeah. Yeah, like think about it, you're a men's ministry. So if you're— and again, this scales across just about anything, but say things like, like, so if you're in there and you're just starting out or taking over or leading or serving as the leader of the men's ministry or whatever, um, say for instance, like, the first thing that comes up, hey, what is the goal? Why? So this kind of should be like your vision communicating to this, like, why are we doing this? Okay, so again, this is just me taking a stab at it, so I'm sure it could a lot better. But okay, help men grow in spiritual maturity and biblical brotherhood. Okay, like that's why we're doing this. Um, or to create a culture where men are sharpened, encouraged, and challenged one another biblically. So again, community. Like that's, that's what I'm thinking about when I'm hearing— if I'm starting to kind of put terms to it, um, and things like that. So you'll kind of flesh that out. And please don't just drop this in AI, let it fill it out. The beauty in this is coming together as a group in the collective ism of that group because there are nuances. You can leverage AI anywhere you want to, in my opinion. But with certain things, man, like you hold a unique nuance that, yes, let it support you. But you know the community, you know the struggle, you've seen, you think like all this type of stuff. So lean in and do the work like think critically, course pray and work on this with your team. So that being said, now you want to move like actor. So this is the who, whose behavior do we want to impact? Um, so we want to— you don't want to just say— typically say we want to just impact men. Okay, I get that, but go a little bit deeper. Like, I want to impact people that are showing a behavior of just being spiritually disconnected. Like, you know, you can work on your terminology here, whatever, but that's kind of the behavior. Like, I'm looking at men that, that seem to feel very disconnected spiritually, just getting whatever reason. Or I'm looking at a behavior that men that want to lead better at home at work, in a local church. So that's the person that I'm trying to impact. So that now we're kind of narrowing it down. It's going from this all up here to I can actually see something. So then the next thing you want to ask is how, like what type of impact? How should our actors' behavior change? Because again, we don't typically think through this. And I love this one because it's so lightweight. But what happens is, is that, okay, men move from surface Christianity into Christianity to intentional discipleship. So again, it's like, man, you know, I want like, I want to get out of these surface level conversations, just these hit and miss. Hey, how you doing, brother? Be blessed. You know, stay up, whatever. Now I want to move into like actually helping grow, doing life with one another within and outside of the four walls. And you see these arrows where all of this is just kind of how these things can feed into one another, but don't Worry about that right now. Let's just focus on the columns. So then men build authentic relationships instead of remaining isolated. So again, this is kind of going back, you see, to where these two feed into one another. But then you come down here, want to leave better at home, work, and church. So here we are, men build authentic relationships instead of remaining isolated. So again, like, it's just that's where we're going with it and just trying to say, Okay, that really answers like the spiritual disconnect as well as men that want to lead better. Uh, and then vulnerability and growth are valued over image management. So you're trying to impact— this is how you're trying to do that, like that behavior through vulnerability, through safe spaces, through cultivating trust. Like that becomes value. And then now more and more men are less concerned with maintaining an image, uh, and saying, hey man, I want to lean into this because I actually want to grow. I I want to be this person, not just project that I'm this person. And what are the deliverables? Like, what, what can we do to support the required impacts? So this is where you start getting into like monthly brotherhood night, like again, a dedicated space, mentorship connections between older and younger men. Mentorship goes both ways. Like a younger man can help the older man, an older man can help the younger man. And so it's just that, that multigenerational mentorship, I believe, is what they call it. So again, now, As you do this, you work through and you start to just kind of make decisions. So this is super, super light, very, very basic. Like I said, a lot of you probably have a lot, way more better ideas in that space. But again, vision, strategy, deliver— delivery is helping you connect the vision, like let the strategy impact, like what decisions are we trying to make? Again, what are we actually doing? What is it producing towards that intended outcome? So, and then the last thing is, is this is kind of popular in what they call the flow, Kanban, Kanban, however you want to pronounce it, framework or methodology or whatever you want to call it. Like I am a framework person and you can mix and match whatever and blend. But one of the other things I would say, and I did this a while back, is just I think we need to get in the habit more of not micromanaging. But making things visible. Not every little thing, but for example, this was a men's ministry. We was just unpacking this, and maybe I should have just moved these cards over here. Um, it's kind of like, okay, what's in it to do? Like, like, just get a whiteboard or something simple. You can do it virtually. It's a lot of different tools out there that you can leverage this. Um, but okay, this is your backlog, this is what's upcoming, you know, you're consistently prioritizing this. This, this is what helps you stay adaptive. You know, you can— this is just basic, but you can get into initiatives to roll down into all that type of stuff. They roll up and roll down, roll down, whatever to do. So then you see in progress and you see this word WIP here. This is work in progress. So then you can do WIP limits. So a lot of times, sometimes with especially like you look at some ministries, I like— they only have like 7 dedicated leaders, but they have 40 things in flight because no one took the time. It's like you want to put a limit there. So it's like, nope, we're only going to— it can only be 10 things in this column. So if you want something in this column, something has to get completed, has to get canceled, it has to get dropped out, something. So you start to kind of— because you want the system to kind of help start dictating the behavior. But for the most part, you can see everything in flight. You can start looking before you commit to something else. Are you overcommitting people? Hey, we got 2 too much, they were loaded. Uh, so this is real good where like a lot of knowledge work and stuff, it's just good to visually see it. And then again, it kind of helps surface those right conversations because you're trying to foster, uh, oh yeah, that's it, feedback loops. Um, and that's— I might do a separate video on that because I'm already over. See how quick time goes, man. So, um, that's another thing that we need to talk about, like feedback loops, uh, in the context of like a lot of teams where they have like these daily syncs, um, and so— or you can go into weekly syncs or biweekly syncs. Like it's all about But the longer your feedback loop is, the more you give time for assumptions and lack of planning and adjusting and adapting. So you can do these things async, you know, or a combination of both, Zoom, like virtual, whatever. And then you're done calling, you go back and you start to actually take some time to celebrate what you've accomplished and all that stuff. And then to see like, man, this is how much. And then like, say, anybody can kind of come in. So if you don't want to start, like, I personally recommend that you you can do one at your local place, but also really highly say that it's a lot of cloud-based tools out there. So that's it. That's it. Just something that you can think through. Look, I'm down for any conversation with anybody, any leader. I have a whole lot more. We can get into empathy mapping. Like, how do you understand the market that you're in and thinking through, we say the customer, but how do you think through trying to meet that soul out there? So it's just a lot of dope things again, and man, especially in the church, just praying and all that. So, uh, hope this helps, hope some value. And again, uh, man, always down to reach out and talk and nerd out on stuff like this. Be blessed.