Four Questions That Will Inspire Breakthrough Thinking
How dry is the cement around what's possible in your discipleship effort? Pretty firm? Room to wiggle? As we continue to think about how to help more people experience genuine life-change, I find myself drawn again to ideas in Gary Hamel's The Future of Management. Here are four questions he uses to maximize the chances for "precedent-breaking" innovation:
- "What's the 'tomorrow problem' that you need to start working on right now?"
- "What's the frustrating 'ether/or' you'd like to turn into an 'and'?
- "What's the espoused idea you'd like to turn into an embedded capability?"
- What the 'can't do' that needs to become a 'can do'?
Just stop for a moment and think about those four questions. Imagine pulling together a team of folks that are really invested and engaged in the life-change process at your church and spending time on any of these questions. Think you'd have a great discussion? Absolutely. Think getting some answers up on a flip chart might be a great first step? Definitely. Not the last step...but certainly the first step.
Hamel makes the point that "what's lacking is not insightful analysis, but truly bold and imaginative alternatives to the management status quo (p. 40, The Future of Management)." What's he saying? Simply that getting answers to these four questions is only the beginning. Think though, about what you could do once you had the answer to any one of these questions? Think about how you could pull your team into a great discussion about how to develop authentic capabilities! It would give you a whole new way of looking at your ministry.
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[…] for much of this journey, you know that a great question beats a prefab answer all the time (see Four Questions That Will Inspire Breakthrough Thinking and The Right Answer to the Wrong Question for more. Also see Distinctives of the Three Types of […]
[…] chart out the milestones that lead to the new preferred future. I love talking through this concept with coaching and consulting clients. I particularly love the part where they begin to fine tune the preferred future for their organization. It’s so freeing for them to begin to tease out what it will look like for them to arrive at a new destination. In the case of a small group ministry, what kind of people they’ll produce. Or a church that begins to think about the difference they’ll make in their community. It’s very exciting and very rewarding to be part of that process. Ever gone there? I really encourage you to give it a try. It makes a huge difference. Identifying a preferred future, a grand future, and the steps that lead there will help your organization break free from the status quo. […]
[…] “that” is. Instead, an unreasonable facsimile is what’s been attempted. Next Steps: Read Four Questions that Will Inspire Breakthrough Thinking and The Paradox of Expertise. Printer FriendlyEmailSource: Mark Howell Live Tweet […]