How Many of These 4 Essential Activities Are You Missing?
How Many of These Essential Activities Are You Missing?
What if it turned out that you spent your time and energy focusing on good things but not the right things?
What if at the end of the season you realized that while you were busy taking care of the squeakiest wheels, you were overlooking the bigger issues or opportunities?
What if at the end of your ministry you finally saw with stark clarity what you sensed was happening but never acted on?
Peter Drucker pointed out that “every institution must build into its day-to-day management four essential entrepreneurial activities that run in parallel.” He went on to point out activities, these disciplines, were not just desirable but “conditions for survival today.”
Here are the four activities that Drucker isolated as essential:
- Organized abandonment of products, services, and processes that are no longer the optimal allocation of resources.
- Organized for systematic, continuing, improvement.
- Organized for systematic and continuous exploitation of successes.
- Organized for systematic innovation.
Spend a moment and evaluate how effectively you are addressing each of the four activities:
Organized abandonment of products, services, and processes that are no longer the optimal allocation of resources.
Are any of your products, services or processes holdovers from a previous era? Are any of your products, services or processes still budgeted for even though less effective than they once were? Still allocated prime space or optimal times? Still occupy the attention of key staff or high capacity volunteers?
According to Peter Drucker, the organized abandonment of products, services and processes that are no longer the optimal allocation of resources is a condition for survival.
Organized for systematic, continuing, improvement.
Which of your products, services or processes are you systematically improving?
According to Peter Drucker, organizing for systematic, continuing, improvement is a condition for survival.
Organized for systematic and continuous exploitation of successes.
Which of your latest successes have you exploited by increasing the budget, moving to prime location or time, or adding key staff or high capacity volunteers?
According to Peter Drucker, organizing for systematic and continuous exploitation of success is a condition for survival.
Organized for systematic innovation.
How frequently are you setting aside time, energy, and budget to explore new opportunities? Craig Groeschel pointed out that “if you want to reach people no one else is reaching, you have to do things that no one else is doing.”
According to Peter Drucker, organizing for systematic innovation is a condition for survival.
Which of the four essential activities are you missing?
As you evaluate your ministry, which of the four essential activities are you doing? Which of the four activities are you missing?
What if they really are conditions for survival?
What do you think? Have a question? You can click here to jump into the conversation.
Image by Mob Mob
Further Reading:
- How Are You evaluating Your Small Group Ministry?
- Four Questions that Evaluate Small Group Model Effectiveness
- 10 Questions that Will Help You Analyze Your Small Group Ministry
- Evaluate Your Small Group Ministry with My Signature 10 Point Checklist
