For all the T.H.U.G. (totally humble unto God) Sisters who get some wise ideas. Get to those fabulous ideas quick and nail down the basics first.
1- Get your plan. You don’t field a ball until all the bases are covered. Start getting people in place, this gives them a few months to get their heads wrapped around what it is they are to do next year. It’s one thing to have a vision but what is the simple plan of the vision. And make it a God plan, a simple plan, easy for the team to communicate. Get your team involved now bouncing around the ideas for next year.
2 - Get out of your pajamas. Don't let the enemy take you out while you're still in pajamas, it's embarrassing. Wake up and get going. There is something to be said about hard work. I know a lot of people that work hard and haven’t experienced the kind of success they are looking for. However I don’t know anyone that experiences great success sitting around doing nothing. I love this qoute “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” Vince Lombardi. Hard work shows how serious you take what you do.
3 - Cut to the Chase. Get to the point. No sense running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off. Get to your goals with as little friction as possible. No more following rabbit trails. Keep it simple. No getting worked up and micro-managing every detail and being in a perpetual state of frenzy. UGH! No need worrying about matters you delegated to someone else. Cut to the chase means act before one problem leads to many more, especially when conditions don’t correct themselves. No more rambling on and on about how it used to be either, God's doing a new thing so let's get to it.
4- Get a good crew. Your only as good as the people you have around you. Two are better than one, because they have a good return on their work. A leader’s staff can make you appear much more competent than you are. Get them. Get a crew that is capable, reliable and honest. Once you get them let them know how much they mean to you. Fight to keep them. Pounding them all the time with your bi-polar disorder will run them off for sure.
5 - Enlist a Consigliere. That means get an advisor or counselor. Get a board of directors you meet with periodically. And then you know what LISTEN TO THEM!! What’s the sense of asking a wise person for some godly wisdom and then don’t listen to them. All your doing is wasting their time. A godly counsel doesn’t have ambition. They won’t flatter you. They tell you like it is. Godly counsel is a safe guard from your own petty and short sightedness. So no busting their chops if they tell you like it is.
Q4U: What does nailing it down mean anyway? What are some of the ways to nail it down?
Great post! One of the ways that I "nail it down" is to inspect what we expect. That means checking back with people after we've had a meeting. When I meet with my team, we plan things but all through the month I'm checking to ask, "So, how's this coming along?" I think as leaders we have to be careful not to do it too much (that would be micromanagement) but doing it just right is simply checking things we've all agreed on. This is the one thing that probably helps me more than anything -- that and listening to the wise people God has placed around me. All of us are smarter than one of us, for sure.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. In answer to your question, I nail it down by inspecting what we expect. Just following up with dialogue periodically on where things are at in the process (through email/phone or just in passing when I see my team members at church.) Doing it too much is micromanagement but doing it just right helps nail it down. And I think it's important to note I'm nailing down what we as a team decided, not my personal agenda. That and listening to my team's input -- two very powerful tools to nail down.
ReplyDeleteI love that ""inspect what we expect." That would eliminate a lot of problems.
ReplyDeleteOne aspect of nailing it down for me is getting it in my routine, a one time review of what I am to do isn't going to work for me, I have to remind myself constantly what it is that I am doing or suppose to be doing, until it almost becomes second nature.