Do You Struggle with this Leading Cause of Ministry Misfire?

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I’ve written many times about the dangers of what I call the pursuit of problem-free.  I’m pretty sure that the dogged search for problem-free solutions delays more ministry than anything else.

Ready to pull the trigger on a new strategy to connect people?  Can’t do it.  First, we need to look for a strategy that connects the maximum number of people with a minimum of risk.  Coaching system broken?  Let’s turn over one more rock and see if we can find a fail safe system.

With me?  The pursuit of problem free.

Turns out that the pursuit of problem free is not the only issue.  Turns out there is a another leading cause of ministry misfire.  Know what it is?  It’s called the optimization of the status quo.  Essentially, it is the attempt to tweak strategy to gain a slightly better outcome.  You know how this works.

“We connected 78 people in 5 new small groups…what if we tweak the way we follow up on sign-ups in order to decrease the sign-up to show-up ratio?”

Is that bad?  Nope.  Optimizing performance is a good thing…except when it comes in place of the next idea.

One of the most important books I digested in 2013 is Roger Martin’s Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works.  I love that book.  So good and very, very helpful from a strategic standpoint.  Martin makes the very important point that:

“The optimization of current practices does not address the very real possibility that the firm could be exhausting its assets and resources by optimizing the wrong activities, while more strategic (opportunities) pass it by.”

Oh my.  Know anyone who spends most of their time optimizing current practices, the status quo, instead of finding the best way to _________?  See also, Supercharge Your Ministry Impact with These 5 Questions.

What do you think?  Want to argue? Have a question? You can click here to jump into the conversation.

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