Have You Identified the Milestones that Lead to Your Preferred Future?

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milestoneDo you have a clearly defined preferred future but still struggle to know whether you are moving in the right direction or will ever arrive? If so, it may be that you've missed an essential step in the process. What step? Developing milestones that lead to your preferred future (and indicate you are moving in the right direction).

What is a milestone? Webster defines a milestone as "a stone by the side of a road that shows the distance in miles to a specified place." A modern understanding of milestone is "an important point in the progress or development of something: a very important event or advance." For our purposes, a milestone is an attainable step that points to the preferred future. See also, Are We There Yet? Milestones that Lead to the Preferred Future.

The identification of milestones is an essential step in the strategy of arriving or progressing toward a preferred future. Milestones also play an important role in the strategy of developing "next steps for everyone and first steps for their friends." See also, Foundational Teaching: Next Steps for EVERYONE.

Here are some examples of milestones:

  • By December of 2020, we will have 100 small groups, and 70 percent of them will have an apprentice.
  • By June of 2021, we will have 10 test-drive "coaches" and every new group will be assigned a coach.
  • By Easter of 2021, we will implement a "first step out of the auditorium that is easy, obvious and strategic."
  • By September of 2021, we will identify a single best next step for everyone (core, committed, congregation and crowd) and a first step for their friends (community).

Have you taken the step of identifying milestones?

Identifying your preferred future is an important assignment. After all, as the Cheshire Cat said to Alice, if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." The important work of gathering a team and carefully describing what the preferred future of your church or your ministry will be like is an essential step in getting to there. But unless and until you do the hard work of identifying and implementing the milestones, the steps that lead to there, your effort will be a non-starter."

The important work of gathering a team and carefully describing what the preferred future of your church or your ministry will be like is an essential step in getting to there. But unless and until you do the hard work of identifying… Click To Tweet

Ready to identify and implement some milestones?

Let this be the day that you spend a few minutes getting a meeting on the calendar, where you can spend an hour identifying the team that will spend an important morning identifying the first 2 to 3 milestones. 

It all can begin by getting a meeting on the calendar. Or you can put it off until next Monday. Remember, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

 

How to Design NEXT Steps and FIRST Steps is a 4 part mini-course will help you rethink your current plan and reimagine a more effective and more productive next step strategy. You can find out about it right here.

Image by Peter Reed

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2 Comments

  1. Tim Weems on January 20, 2016 at 10:12 am

    Can you give a few examples of what milestones would look like from a group leader’s perspective?



  2. markchowell on January 21, 2016 at 3:50 pm

    I don’t really have a post about milestones that is specific to group leaders but this one describes the journey from “host” to leader and might be helpful: http://www.markhowelllive.com/help-a-host-become-a-small-group-leader/