The Framework – The Next Two Questions Every Organization Needs to Answer, Part 4
Once an organization answers the first two of the 6 Key Questions – “what do we believe to be true?” and “what’s important to us?” it then needs to answer these questions –
Why do we exist?
What makes us distinct?
The answers to the first two questions, though absolutely critical, do not make an organization unique. But the answers to this second set of questions begin to highlight the essential distinctness an organization brings to the world.
Why do we exist? Mission
By answering this question an organization identifies its purpose for existence by focusing on the difference it’ll make in people’s lives and in the world. Mission is an action and outcome orientated statement and should be, in part, a response to the needs of the world in which the organization finds itself. For this reason, mission may change or adjust over time in response to the unique opportunities its context presents.
What makes us distinct? Brand (or philosophy of ministry for faith-based organizations)
Every organization has a brand (whether intentional or accidental) – it’s the attributes which make it distinct. An intentional brand requires thinking through the attributes of its products or services which are apparent to those who experience the organization, then making these attributes a reality in every part of the organization. The brand is the tangible expression of an organization’s mission, core values and statement of faith.
Answering these two questions is necessary for an organization to identify its unique calling and its distinctiveness in living it out.
In my next post we’ll look at the final two of the 6 Key Questions every organization needs to answer – “what do we want to achieve in the long-term?’ and “what do we want to become?”
To see SpringHill’s answers to the 6 Key Questions click here.
The Foundation – The First Two Questions Every Organization Needs to Answer, Part 3
As I’ve posted twice over the last month, about the 6 key questions every organization should answer. Over the next few posts we’re going to take a closer look at each question.
We’ll begin with the first two questions – “what do we believe to be true?” and “what’s important to us?” The answers are foundational and should never change, though they can occasionally be updated for clarity’s sake. The answers are the underpinnings for the other four questions. And like any good foundation, they need to be protected from any form of compromise.
Question 1: What do we believe to be true?
Typically religious organizations have a statement of faith or a confession that answers “what do we believe to be true?” drafted through blood, sweat and tears and then, unfortunately, ends up on the shelf somewhere. Yet in a world where truth seems to be like shifting sands, articulating what you believe can and should be integral to an organization’s DNA. There is not appropriate length to such a document; it depends entirely on what is held as true.
Even for non religious organizations I’ve come to believe that answering this question can be a unifying process and help provide clarity and alignment for the entire organization.
Question 2: What’s important to us?
Core Values, on the other hand, should be limited to 5 to 8 succinct and memorable statements that answer the question “what’s important to us”? They define what an organization should and shouldn’t do. Jim Collin says in Built to Last – “it is absolutely essential to not confuse core ideology with culture, strategy, tactics, operations, etc.” Core values transcend all these things while guiding their appropriate implementation. Refer to Built to Last for some examples.
With these two foundational questions answered an organization is ready to answer the next two questions – “Why do we exist?” and “What makes us distinct?” both of which we’ll look at in my next post.
To see SpringHill’s answers to the 6 Key Questions click here.
One Step Closer to Dunking a Basketball
Our son Mitch just told my wife and I that he dunked a dodge ball for the first time yesterday. Dunking a basketball has been a goal of Mitch’s and yesterday’s feat was tangible evidence of his progress towards reaching his goal.
He was proud of his accomplishment because, as he said, “it takes lots of small steps to accomplish a goal and yesterday was one of those steps in me dunking a basketball.” Our 16-year-old understands a powerful reality about reaching goals – if we want to accomplish a difficult task or reach a challenging destination we need to break it down into achievable steps and patiently work our way through those steps.
This process of breaking down a goal, task or project into smaller steps does a number of important things that increases the odds we’ll reach our desired end.
First, it forces us to think through, plan and count the cost of all that needs to be done to ultimately accomplish a goal. Mitch knows there’s more work to be done if he’s ever going to compete in a slam dunk contest.
Second, if we ultimately don’t achieve our goal, we have the consolation of having improved and being in a better place than we were before we started. Yesterday Mitch jumped higher than ever before.
Finally, and maybe the best reason for breaking down our goals into manageable steps, is it creates many opportunities for small victories which give us confidence and motivation to keep going forward. Dunking a dodge ball is a small victory and it fired Mitch up to keep moving along his journey to achieving his goal of dunking a basketball.
What goal do you have that would become more achievable if you broke it down into smaller steps?
Choosing the Right Measuring Stick
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Recently, at SpringHill, we’ve made an intentional change in how we evaluate our current performance. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts we track a number of indicators that help us gauge how well we’re performing against our goals and fulfilling our mission.
Even though, for years, we set annual goals, broken down by period (our year’s divided into three periods like a hockey game) and by month, our default position has been to compare our results to the previous year. There are many reasons we’ve done this but I think, at the end of the day, it’s been our desire to always improve that’s made last year’s results our measuring stick. So if we exceeded last year, we’ve improved and because improvement has been a higher priority than achieving our goals, we’ve been satisfied.
Then, over the last year, our team’s recognized that improving isn’t enough, that we work hard at setting achievable goals that align with our longer term targets. Our goals mean something. They’re important, even more important than what we did last year because, though we may be improving, the improvement doesn’t guarantee we’ve went far or fast enough to reach those long-term targets.
So we’ve made the change, it’s official. We no longer have improvement over last year as our measuring stick. It’s now our annual, period, and “split time” goals that we measure our performance against.
We’ve even taken last year’s numbers off our Scoreboard which we review in our weekly Huddle meetings. We’ll continue to use the previous year’s results as input into our goal setting as well as in helping analyze our current position but it’s now performance against our goals that will drive our work.
6 Questions Every Organization Needs to Answer, Part 1
Over the last week our staff and board reviewed our answers to 6 key questions every organization should answer. They are the highest level description of the destination and the guard rails every organization needs to assure long-term effectiveness.
Here are the 6 questions we reviewed and the place SpringHill provides the answers:
- What do we believe to be true? Statement of Faith.
- Why do we exist? Mission
- What’s important to us? Core Values
- What makes us distinct? Philosophy of Ministry
- What do we want to achieve in 15, 20 or 25 years? Big Hairy Audacious God Goal (BHAGG)
- What do we want to become in 5, 10, 15 years? Vision
The answers to the first 4 questions focus on the “now” and need to be a present reality within the organization. Thus they are the guard rails that keep the organization from getting off track.
The last 2 questions are future focused and provide the organization’s long-term destination. These answers need to be guided by and consistent with the answers to the first 4 questions.
All the answers should be treated like the Constitution of the United States – slow and laborious to change. Why? Because any change needs to appropriately involve every stakeholder group of the organization, and this takes time. If the answers keep changing it’s because the questions have never been truly answered.
Not only is it necessary to answer these 6 questions, it’s absolutely essential that the answers drive everything else in the organization. Every decision made within the organization is to be subservient to the answers to these questions. That’s why these answers are so important, and why they should rarely change.
Finally, we believe answering these questions not to be, a an act of calculation, but an act of discovery, a discovery that will pay richly in a long future of effective ministry.
To see SpringHill’s answers to the 6 Key Questions click here.
What We do During These Winter Months
It’s during these winter months that I’m often asked (mind you, rarely in a judgmental manner) “what do you and SpringHill do all winter long?” People know what SpringHill does during the summer – we have summer camp – but it’s the other nine months of the year that seem to be a mystery to people.
Now I’m not offended by such inquiries because they give me an opportunity to share all that we do during these busy months of winter. So, just in case you’ve also wondered, let me share with you the answer to the question “what do you and SpringHill do all winter long?”
In no particular order here’s a sampling of our work this winter:
Visit college campus’ across the Midwest to find, recruit, interview, reference check, do back ground checks and contract a 1000 people to work this summer.
Then prepare comprehensive and effective training for each of these 1000 new staff.
Create, plan and prepare 5 major programs and curriculums for campers and summer staff.
Make improvements to our property and facilities in time for our first campers to arrive.
Identify 65 church and ministry partners in 12 plus cities to host our Day Camps as well as identifying dozens of partners for 2013.
Market, sell, register, collect releases, medical forms, payments and answer the questions of parents for 23,000 summer campers.
Raise money to make the needed capital improvements and pay for 2500 camper scholarships.
Work out the logistics of weekly opening and closing days at 9 different SpringHill locations.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot, we’ll also serve nearly 12,000 retreat campers between now and the arrival of our first summer camper.
So as you can see, there’s no off-season at SpringHill, just a different season with different work. So as you think of SpringHill in the months to come, please remember this list and then pray for our staff that we’ll do all our work well, so that God might use our efforts to transform the lives of campers and staff we’ll have the privilege to serve in the coming months.
The All Staff Meeting
Eileen Zilch discussing some Key Indicators We just finished one of our 3 yearly All Staff Meetings this morning. We do one at the end of each of our three “seasons” scheduled along each of our three yearly Board of Director’s meetings. The meeting allows the entire staff to hear and interact with the same information that our board receives, including the results of the previous season and a look ahead to the rest of the year.
The meeting has evolved over time, moving from something that might be compared to a locker room speech to a more businesslike model. We continue to try to balance being “businesslike” and having that pre-game locker room feeling. Depending on the meeting we tend to lean one way or another.
The tone of today’s meeting clearly leaned towards more businesslike. Part of the reason was the large number of items on the agenda.
Our standard agenda includes:
Performance against our goals (see our weekly huddle goals –click here)
Progress on Key Initiatives
Ministry highlights and stories
President’s message (content varies meeting to meeting)
One other topic
We share the presentation responsibility among our management team. Today we had 7 different people present. Our goal is to share information quickly and succinctly allowing time for questions and comments by staff.
One of our biggest challenges has been the growing number of staff who have offices outside of Evart, MI. We’ve struggled finding reasonably priced technologies that would effectively include remote staff. Today, by using GoToMeeting, we had our best “technology” meeting yet, marked by a relatively high interaction between people in 6 locations. Not perfect, but less costly than people driving to the location.
Finally the highlight of these meetings is the simple fact that the entire SpringHill team is “together”, which, for me, is always a great thing.
Calling the Audible
What do you do when you’re hosting over 900 students and their leaders for a “winter” retreat and winter melts away? In light of it being Super Bowl weekend, you call an audible.
That’s exactly what our Michigan Retreats Team did this weekend after days of warm weather melted much of our snow (except, of course, on our tubing hill) including an anticipated Saturday with temperatures in the mid 40’s. So the team decided to open up activities we normally offer during the non winter seasons such as riflery and, of course, the zipline.
As a result, for the first time in SpringHill Winter Retreat history, we have students racing down the New Frontiers zipline. It was an incredible scene watching 100’s of students speeding down both the tubing hill and zipline at the same time.
Sarah Gillespie and her team making it happen But what made me proud was how our team looked at conditions outside their control (the weather) and instead of bemoaning them, searched for a way to take advantage of them, to create an experience that exceeded our guests’ expectations. It meant a lot of extra work – opening up activity areas closed for the season and having staff trained and ready to safely operate them.
Yet the team still called the audible, because the conditions “on the field” warranted it. And the result was a memorable and life transforming weekend for over 900 students and their leaders.
What made an audible even possible? Simple, our team already had a well thought out and fine tuned plan. I’ve often heard people ask “why plan if we’re just going to change it?” Well, you can’t change what you don’t have, if you don’t have a game plan you can’t call an audible.
Former staffer and long time volunteer Nick Deck working the zipline And, as our team demonstrated this weekend, when you have a great game plan then you’re in a position to call an audible, and the right audible can change the outcome of the game.
The Symptoms and the Cure for the Out of Control Schedule
This week I met with my friend and advisor Bill Payne. The topic I sought his input on was prioritizing and managing my time. It’s become a bigger challenge as my job continues to evolve in light of SpringHill’s growth (see my post Time – One of Most Valuable Gifts). As always, Bill provided wise and practical input.Below are the symptoms I’ve been experiencing over the last year and some of Bill’s wisdom to help cure the out of control schedule I’ve had. As you read, ask yourself – “are you experiencing any of these same symptoms?” If you answer yes, then join me in trying some of Bill’s input for yourself.
Symptoms:
My time and schedule feel like they’re being driven and managed by everyone else but me.
I’ve had barely enough time to do all that I need and should do in my role.
To accomplished both what I need to do and what everyone else has expected me to do, I’ve cut short or cut out such things as exercise, sleep, house and home projects, reflection time and planning, time with friends and even, I hate to admit this, at moments, time with my family.
The Cure:
Block out time in my daily and weekly schedule as “no meeting” times to assure I have space to do both the important things and the things only I can do.
Trust my team to do their work and to do it well.
Stop trying to please everyone by saying yes to everyone’s requests and begin to say no in appropriate ways. Bill promised that saying no becomes easier the more you say it.
Then stop feeling guilty when I say no.
Finally, stop over playing my desire to please, a good quality I have, until taken to the extreme – which is trying the impossible – to please everyone all the time.
The Truth about Faith and Planning
In Christian organizations we often live in the tension between faith and planning. The tension comes because we believe faith and planning to be polar opposites.
Christian history is full of stories of “great people of faith” who did miraculous things for God. We want to be a part of such stories. On the other hand, it isn’t nearly as appealing to be part of a story centered on a cold and calculated plan, professionally executed. Instead we want to “let go and let God” and become part of a “miracle”?
We want to be like Peter who stepped out of the boat to walk on the water but too often we ignore Nehemiah’s thoughtful and intentional plan to rebuild Jerusalem’s wall, or David’s strategic vision and preparation to build the temple. Did David and Nehemiah have less faith than Peter? Or how about this question, would you rather walk on water for a few seconds or rebuild a city or build God’s dwelling place on earth?
I know my answer; I want to do something significant and lasting. And to do something significant and lasting requires planning, preparation and vision. And it also requires prayer (re-read Nehemiah) and faith (re-read David’s temple preparation).
Like Nehemiah and David, God has called us to be stewards of our time, resources, gifts and abilities. As a result, a good steward plans and then assures those plans align with their master’s intentions. And the beautiful thing is, the better the stewardship, the greater the opportunity of being a part of a miracle.
Therefore we need to stop seeing faith and planning as polar opposites, instead we need to see them as essential companions in our work. When we do this, God will do His greater work, allowing us the possibility of being a part of a miracle that’s significant and lasting.
