We are in week 3 of a series discussing 5 Characteristics of Organizational Change. We're discussed Increasing Urgency and last week talked through Embracing the Vision. This week we'll celebrate Short Term Wins.

We've all heard the numerous cliche's that speak to taking large goals and breaking them in to smaller, manageable tasks.

"How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!"

"Put one foot in front of the other!"

"How do you boil a frog? Slowly turn up the heat!"

When we're talking about significant change a key strategy for success in managing change is to do it incrementally. Obviously, there are times where this isn't possible - The house is on fire! I need for you to change your location and get out of the house NOW! ; ) - and the speed or rate of change needs to be taken in to account (among other factors), but the point is that the long term change is a sequence of short term goals, and each of these short term goals or wins needs to be celebrated and reinforced.

What gets celebrated, gets replicated!

As a Dad with still young kids (I've got a 9, 5, and 3 yr old), it wasn't too long ago I was in potty training mode with my youngest, Riley. Like me, I'm sure each of you parents have your own version of "The Potty Dance" you would do when your young one successfully made it to the toilet (wonder if we should all demonstrate our versions of the Potty Dance at the next Huddle?). This is a great word picture of celebrating short term wins. It builds self confidence and momentum towards the longer term goal.

What can you celebrate in your leadership role? Now I'm not talking about making up stuff or celebrating things so insignificant that undermines the celebrations, but each of us, myself included, can be more aware of what's going on around us and look to catch people doing something right... and dance like you've never danced before!

This week celebrate a short term win in your world with someone else.

What'd you do?

In part 2 of our discussions on 5 Characteristics of Organizational Impact, we'll focus on Embracing the Vision. As people begin to hear the vision and buy in to it, it shows in their attitude and actions. Obviously, the first critical part of embracing a vision is whether or not you can clearly articulate the vision at Harvest Church.

There's a distinct difference between mission and vision. We've spent a good bit of time in the past months speaking to our mission as a church.

Mission: "Living life as though Jesus were living through us."

Mission answers the question, "What are we doing?" It is a compass that gives clear direction and action.

Vision is like a developing Polaroid picture of the adventure our mission places us on.

A great biblical example of this is God's direction to Moses. At the burning bush experience, God tells Moses that he is to be the point leader to deliver His children from Egypt to the Land of Promise. God's direction or compass to Moses is to deliver His people, but later in Deuteronomy 8:7-10 (NIV) no less than 14 times, God describes the better future of what's in store for His children:

"For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills. When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you."

This is one of the most picturesque descriptions in scripture. It is living language that illustrates the anticipated better and intermediate future. "Clear mission, while critical, never creates a heroic sacrifice in and of itself. It is vision that moves the heart on a deep level and engages the imagination with God-sized dreams" (Mancini, Church Unique, p. 180)

In your area of leadership, how would you describe the "land of milk and honey" of the better future? Does that align with Harvest's overall vision? Are your thoughts, actions, conversation, stewardship, etc. reflective of embracing this vision? Are you contagious in your passion for the vision?

Discuss one action this week that is reflective of your Embracing the Vision.

In a previous post I outlined 5 Characteristics of Organizational Impact and challenged our leadership to begin a discussion about how we're leading impact in our specific area of service. This week, let's focus on how we Increase Urgency.

Think about your area of leadership or service at Harvest Church. Identify what "here" looks like or the current reality of your leadership role. What's good about it? What do you see is an opportunity to improve your impact and how would you facilitate that? Specifically, what is it that you need to Increase Urgency about the current state to the preferred better future state of your leadership influence?

As you know, one of the key purposes for The Huddle Leadership meeting is to equip you as leaders with the information and knowledge you need to lead well in your specific area as we together accomplish what God has called us to as a church. In The March 2010 Huddle meeting we discussed not only specific information relevant to Harvest, but a bit more on the "why" and "what" behind some of the changes we've seen over the past 18 months or so as we strive to make an Impact as a church organization.

In this Huddle Meeting, I specifically taught on 5 Characteristics of Organizational Impact. 

• Increase Urgency - People from within the church start telling each other, "We can't stay here."
• Embrace the Vision - People begin to hear the vision, buy in to it, and it shows in their attitude
• Celebrate Short-Term Wins - Momentum builds within the church as people carry the vision while fewer resist change.
• Don't Let Up - People make wave after wave of impact as the church vision is fulfilled
• Make it Stick - New and winning behavior continues despite the temptation to revert.

If you were not able to make it to The Huddle in March, I'm attaching 2 reference files for you:

• 5 Characteristics of Organizational Impact Handout PDF Download - This is a handout we covered in the meeting.

I've also asked that Huddle Leaders participate in a discussion here on this blog

Interact with the Harvest Leadership Community on this blog and discuss how you are living out the Impact action in your leadership roles:

• Week 1 - March 15 through March 21   -     Increase Urgency
• Week 2 - March 22 through March 28   -     Embrace the Vision
• Week 3 - March 29 through April 4        -     Celebrate Short-Term Wins
• Week 4 - April 5 through April 11           -     Don’t Let Up
• Week 5 - April 12 through April 18        -     Make it Stick

Hopefully we'll encourage one another, provide ideas, and simply challenge each other to make an impact where we lead.

Sure love you guys and blessed to lead with you,

 

Crull Chambless
Executive Pastor

Since our meeting last month, I've been asked a couple of times some variation of who is invited to The Huddle. As we have discussed in the past, leadership is influence. However, not everyone who has influence is in a leadership role at Harvest Church. In some cases this is because people do not know what their first step is to get in leadership, but statistics show (and believe me, Church Leaders are astute at knowing this kind of data!) that most people do not serve in leadership because they have not been personally invited.

Admittedly this can be frustrating at times from a staff perspective. Announcements (both in writing on weekly bulletins and on the web, and verbally from the pulpit), lobby tables, flyers, etc. ultimately serve to just elevate the noise in our communication. The most effective for someone to serve in leadership is the same (no surprise) as the most effective way for someone to attend church - someone invited them.

The Huddle is made up of those in the church who we (staff) can identify as leaders. This is anyone who carries responsibility for a task, team, schedule, must be in a time and place on the weekend, etc. The roster of these individuals was put together by the Harvest staff who submitted names of their individual ministry teams to ultimately build a master list from which invitations are made. Those names are then flagged in our database and invitations are then emailed out.

Now, some of you may know someone who's in leadership but did not get invited. There are a few reasons we have identified that may be the cause of that:

• Simple oversight. Their name should have been submitted and for whatever reason, was not.
• Lack of email address. They have in fact been identified but have never been invited. Our communication channel for this expects leaders to have access (and check) an email account. We are not trying to be exclusive in any way (other than being in leadership), but also are not allocating time to individually contact people. We just don't have the capacity to do so.

If you know anyone who should be attending, but is not, please encourage them to ask their pastoral contact (i.e. if they are in student ministry, ask Kyle, Worship, ask Todd, etc) so we can identify them for future communication and not repeat the oversight. The goal is clear and open communication within expectations. The more leaders who are empowered and informed, the better!

I'd be remiss if I also didn't connect the dots on the power of an invitation. You, as a leader, know people who probably should be in leadership. Invite them!

Can't wait for next Tuesday!

-cc.

A good definition of disappointment, or rather what causes disappointment is "what occurs when expectations go unmet." When I first heard that my first thought was, then good communication is a key combatant to disappointment! Let's talk!

In order to help with communication between Harvest staff leaders and volunteer leaders a new environment called the Leadership Huddle was first held in September 2010. During that meeting approximately 100 leaders from Harvest gathered to discuss key items of note Harvest has dealt with, is dealing with, and expected to deal with. The goal is to equip and empower our leaders to be more effective in their own influence and leadership.

At the beginning of this meeting, several key ground rules were laid out that I called key expectations. These are expectations that all leaders should have with one another, but specifically what staff leadership expects of those serving as key influencers at Harvest Church:

• We expect key leaders to buy in to the Mission and Vision of Harvest Church. There are a number of great churches in each area where Harvest has a campus. The expectation is that you as a leader align with the mission and vision God has given Harvest. We are a unique expression of the local church with philosophies and methodology that may change from time to time, but our theology will never change. 
• We expect key leaders to be proactive as a leader and influencer. The goal of The Huddle is to equip you with knowledge and information. There is an expectation that you will be an advocate for Harvest Church and proactive in communicating clarity of what God has called us to do.
• We expect key leaders to be contagious. Being in leadership does not mean that you are better than someone not in leadership. It simply means that you have chosen to get out of the stands, off the sideline and in the game. There are others who are not experiencing the joy and blessing of serving in this capacity and you, as a leader, are constantly on the lookout for someone else who needs to be blessed with responsibility. It's not about what we, Harvest Church wants from you, it's all about what we want for you. 
• We expect key leaders to be submissive to pastoral leadership. Your pastoral staff are called to lead. This does not mean that they are perfect. Far from it. It does mean that at some point or another decisions will be made that some in leadership will not agree with. Ironically, this is where submission comes in. You see, it's not submission until you disagree with the decision. This also does not mean that you do not have a voice. A key point of The Huddle is to encourage better communication. It is our hope that ideas can be discussed before decisions need to be made for input from you. However, at the end of the day the authority to make and ensure execution of key decisions rests with the Harvest staff, pastoral leadership, and Church Council.
• We expect key leaders to above all protect the unity of the church. Poor communication leads to assumption and discussion, which can easily lead in to gossip and sin. A good word picture of this is to imagine that as a leader you have two buckets. One is filled with water while the other is filled with gasoline. As a leader you must be spiritually and emotionally mature enough to know when to use which bucket in certain situations. There are times where you will need to throw a bucket of water on gossip, combating misinformation with truth gleaned from better communication. There are also times when you need to douse a situation with gas to fan the flame of something God is doing in your midst. In either situation, protecting the unity of the local church (any Christ-honoring church for that matter) should be your ultimate motivation.
• We expect key leaders to be sensitive with confidential information. Our hope is that over time we are able to discuss situations that the church will be faced with or are in the midst of facing to engage the council and wisdom of many and in some cases call you as leadership to prayer. At times some of this information could have a level of sensitivity and planned timing of public release that communicating prematurely could result in a negative outcome. Leaders are expected to be able to maintain confidentiality. 

God has richly blessed Harvest Church with leadership that you represent. Let us work together, as a family and body of Christ, to live life together as if Jesus were living through us!

In September 2010 Harvest Church started "The Huddle" a Leadership Gathering of Key Communicators of Harvest for the express purpose of improving communication between staff and leadership. The goal is to empower the volunteer leadership of Harvest to be better informed and equipped to lead.

In addition to a monthly meeting, targeted to be held on the 3rd Tuesday of each month, a regular podcast will be available covering leadership development topics and any other topic of interest to Harvest Leadership.