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Becoming WillowBack.
I run across churches all the time that are struggling to break out of their old mold. They see flagship churches execute services flawlessly with tremendous attention paid to the details in areas such as lighting, sound, service flow, building cleanliness and guest services. They see this and think, "We are going to have to do things differently." They are no longer satisfied with how their teams execute church compared to the "model" church they have just experienced (I'll call it WillowBack). They have been enlightened and things are going to change...
This enlightenment is often followed by a knee-jerk get-together with their lead team to talk about what they saw at WillowBack and show them how serious we are about immediate improvement and the unwillingness we should all have to tolerate anything less than this perfection. Team leaders pound the table with passion and commonly say something like, "We just need to get rid of that person who does the PowerPoint. I told him to do it this way and he didn't do it." In their newfound pursuit of improvement, they become ready to eliminate anyone who does not deliver flawlessly. What is driving this leader is a picture in the leader's head of perfection and he is frustrated by those around him who cannot or will not deliver on what he sees. The once happy-go-lucky minister has become a heavy-handed enforcer in the pursuit of flawless execution (which he calls "doing things with excellence"). Does this at all sound familiar to anyone?
Here's the deal... You do not become WillowBack overnight, and the way you learn to execute well is not by creating a culture of tyranny. The secret is standards. Standards are the greatest tool for training your team and they are, for the most part, missing in the church today. Why? I think we feel so grateful for Bob (the guy who volunteers to do the PowerPoint), that on his first day, we do our best to make sure we do not upset him. After all, what if he stops coming? Then what are we going to do? No, what we will do is give him the least amount of information about his duty we can (as we do not have time to really train him) and then we will put up with him not doing it perfectly since he is so faithful (of course he has no real idea what perfection to us is), until one day we get fed up and fire him from his post and crush his spirit by telling how he "never" does it right, when we never trained him what right is.
There's an old adage: Set your expectations, then inspect what you expect. This is about training and managing based on standards. Tell the PowerPoint guy, "Thank you for volunteering, you have joined a team that has very high standards and it's an honor to be on this team. I am in charge of training you and what we will go over are the standards for this position; I will cover not just how to do your job, but why to do it that way. I will give you a vision for what it looks like when you do it perfectly, and we will make that vision into a standard. I want you to be an ace and will meet with you every week for the next month then every month going forward to discuss how well you are meeting the standards. I'm expecting great things from you."
Then, when you meet to give feedback, you are able to collaborate with Bob on how to improve things as he has bought in as an investor in the process of rising to the standard. This is a picture of what managing by standards looks like. Standards are not rules. Rules are what you must do. They are driven by consequences. Standards are what you could do. They are driven by vision. The main difference is the culture that is created. Rules create an atmosphere of fear and trepidation. Standards create an atmosphere of ownership and healthy pride in doing things well.
So here's the deal, you don't do it as well WillowBack. So what are you going to do about it? You have a choice. You can build your change around rules or you can become a better leader and train people to uphold and raise standards with vision. Standards will require more forethought from you as a leader. It will require that you create a visionary job description and give positive and corrective feedback on a regular basis. It will cause you to dedicate more to training than you ever thought you would. It is a lot of work. But, it's up to you.
In the end, would you rather be a part of a church that is known for its rules... or its standards?
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