The following is my talk outline for my Casting the Vision Daily To Keep Your Team Aligned talk given at the 2013 Orange Conference.

If you have questions feel free to leave a comment. In the meantime, here’s my talk outline.

Alignment is such a key issue for leaders. More than almost anything else, misalignment can derail even the clearest and most compelling vision. We’ll look at how leaders get misaligned and what you can do to keep your team on the same page.

1. In a perfect world, alignment would be automatic.

2. A leader never has to work at getting a team unaligned – it happens all by itself.

3. Organizations naturally grow toward complexity, (inner) competition and confusion.

4. Over time, minor misalignments become major gaps and, as a result, the common mission is lost.

5.  Just because you start in the same place doesn’t mean you end up in the same place.

So how does misalignment happen?

1. Misalignment rarely happens in a church on the mission and vision level

2. Misalignment almost always happens on a strategy level.

3. In particular, strategically unaligned programs become divisive because what you’re involved in becomes the mission

4. Leaders forget to talk about why we do what we do.

Why unites

What and how divide

Five Ways to Build and Keep Alignment

1. Take personal ownership of the strategy as leaders by:

1. Creating clarity around strategy.

2. Eliminating all competing programming (less is more).

3. Creating a common language.

4. This greatly reduces personal agendas.

2. Empower people who are already onboard.

a. Some of them are on your team…some are not.

b. Look for like minded leaders…with a proven track record.

c. Focus on strategic alignment, not just missional alignment.

d. Use financial records if necessary…giving is evidence of where the heart truly is.

e. Prioritizing the “who” of team will reduce friction and speed alignment as you discuss the “what” of ministry.

3. Build trust.

a. Trust is easiest relationally when people are aligned missionally.

b. Trust impacts speed:

i. Where trust is low, speed goes down and costs go up.
ii. Where trust is high, speed goes up and costs go down. (see Stephen M.R. Covey…Speed of Trust)

4. Eliminate alignment killers:

a. Unclear wins.

b. Ministry clutter.

c. Infrequent communication (your mission vision and strategy should never be ‘old news’ to anyone)

d. Infrequent relational deposits.

e. Infrequent follow through.

5. Stick to your strategy long enough to see if it works.

a. People aren’t used to alignment.

b. People aren’t used to clarity.

c. People are used to getting ‘their own way’

Ultimately, people gravitate toward a clear and compelling mission, vision and strategy.

And eventually, they even align themselves around it.

Those are my breakout notes. For more information on aligning a team, you can read this post that outlines 5 things I learned from North Point about team alignment.

What questions do you have about keeping a team aligned?

Here is the outline for my talk called Gaining Ground While Standing Strong: Five Strategies for Leading Change Amidst Opposition that I delivered at Orange Conference 2013 in Atlanta.

Change is one of my favourite subjects. In fact, this talk is a very short summary of a few of the key ideas in my latest book, Leading Change Without Losing It (you can get more info or buy a copy here.)

Why Do People Change?

People change when the pain associated with the status quo is greater than the pain associated with change.

Strategy One: Do the Math

People typically divide into four groups:

Early Adopters

Early Majority

Silent Majority

Opponents

Most leaders make two mistakes:

They assume loud=large

They assume volume=velocity

Although the opponents are loud and claim to represent ‘everyone’, they don’t. They represent about 10% of the population.

Although they claim to be going somewhere, opponents typically have a vision for the past, not for the future.

Focusing on the early adopters and early majority will help you navigate change.

Strategy Two: Choose Your Focus

You can focus on who you want to reach, or who you wan to keep.

Shifting your focus engages your fear.

is it more frightening to lose a handful of people or never accomplish your mission?

Would you rather lose the opponents, or the early adopters.?

Strategy Three: Find a Filter

Without a filter, everything sounds compelling.

As a leader you need to develop the questions that will shape your future.

The two question I ask are:

Is there a biblical argument in what the opponent is saying?

Is this the kind of person we can build the future of the church on?

If the answer is no to either question, listen graciously and move on.

Strategy Four: Attack Problems, Not People

Separate the people from the problem.

Turn to God. Because if you don’t turn to God you’ll turn on them.

Empathize with your opponents.

Wait a day before responding to any kind of correspondence that upsets you.

Strategy Five: Don’t Quit

Most leaders who change the world don’t move every five years.

Find good friends you can talk to.

Create an encouragement file (save anything positive that comes your way).

Develop a devotional life that has little to do with work.

Those are my notes. What are your questions about change?

I talk to so many people outside the church who say they get along better than people in the church. If church people behaved like they tell other people to behave, they might come.

I’ve met so many Christian couples who just couldn’t work it out. Famously, the Christian divorce rate is almost identical to couples that wouldn’t call themselves Christian.

And as Christians, most of us realize fighting is destructive and likely unChristian, but we don’t know what to do about it.

The truth is that all of us fight.

Couples fight.

Church leaders fight.

Boards fight.

Denominations fight.

Siblings fight.

Friends fight.

Staff fight.

Parents fight their kids.

Kids fight their parents.

Sometimes I fight with myself.

Okay, you get the picture. People fight.

And the stakes are high. Families, churches and friendships break up as a result. And unchurched people stay away.

But since this week we’re talking about lessons I’ve learned from Orange, I want to share one with you that changed me forever.

Shortly after Reggie Joiner and I met, we started working on some ideas that would eventually find its way into our book, Parenting Beyond Your Capacity. During that process, I learned about a very different kind of fighting.

I learned how to fight for the heart. Let me explain.

You can fight with someone. Or you can fight for them.

These two small words– for and with–represent a world of difference in how you fight.

Most of us have only ever had someone fight with us. If someone fights with you:

It’s a zero sum game.

They need to win and you need to lose and you need to win in order for them to lose.

The people who fight care more about themselves than anyone.

Both walk away feeling diminished–usually even the ‘victor’ does over time.

Contrast that with fighting for someone. When you fight for someone:

You’re fighting for them so you want to see them better off.

The fight is happening because you want to see them win, not because you want to win.

You care more about their interests than you do about yours.

Both walk away replenished– with the relationship stronger in the short and long term.

Even if the other person doesn’t respond well, you have done everything in your power to help them, not hurt them.

Fighting for someone means you want their best interests to prevail, not yours.

It means that when there’s conflict, the conflict is about moving through an issue so the person you’re fighting with is better off, not that so that you are right or feel vindicated.

And finally it means that everyone leaves better than before the fight rather than depleted. Relationships are stronger and the issues got dealt with in a way that actually helped advance the mission.

You know who taught us this?

Jesus.

No one modeled fighting for someone (rather than with someone) better than Jesus. As his enemies nailed him to the cross, he said “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

What they didn’t realize of course, is that this Jesus they were killing was dying for them. He was fighting for them while they were fighting with him, and it changed the world.

So what do you think would happen if parents, church leaders and families started fighting for each other rather than with each other.

Question….when was the last time you fought for someone rather than with them?

How could that change your family? Your church? Your life? The world?