It’s the time of year when resolutions and plans, hopes and dreams, are pasted on our mirrors, stuck on our walls, or presented in PPT strategy sessions. As an organizational leader and an individual the problem I have with resolutions is not the planning—it’s the execution!
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Recently I was at an event where the speaker had written “flawless execution” alongside the diagram of his talk. Wow, that got my attention. Can you believe the first thing he said was he wasn’t going to do the talk he had planned. He spent the next twenty minutes of his sixty-minute time slot talking about himself! His info, when he got to it, was good. But we lost one-third of his time! His problem wasn’t his planning—it was his execution!

Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy in their book Execution say, “Execution . . . is a discipline of its own.” Here are four ideas that can help you and your team practice the discipline of execution in a way that makes sense, gets the job done, and doesn’t make us feel like failures.

Fluid planning
I have a friend who was a naval navigator. He once told me, “Navigating is easy. As long as you know where you are leaving from and where you are going to everything in between is fluid.” Fluid planning has the why, the reason for our plan, as its starting point. Its ending point is what we want to accomplish. If our why is strong and our what is appropriate everything that lies between is the fluid plan.

Inconsistent Action
One of the major breakthrough events in my life was when I accepted the idea that consistency is not king. And that’s not an easy idea to accept. We’ve all been told the fable of the tortoise and the hare—right? But life doesn’t come at us consistently. Life comes in waves, in fits and starts. Inconsistent action gives us permission to let our energies and focus meet the demands of life while returning us again and again to the action necessary to achieve results. Inconsistent action reduces the guilt that paralyzes us and which can eventually so demotivate us that we quit.
Hurtful reality
Reality is hurtful because it’s the force we’re always having to adjust to. Reality refuses to leave us alone. It interferes with our plans (which are obviously great because we made them). The hurt of reality, however, is primarily felt in relation to our unwillingness to accept its presence. The more we resist reality the more pain it applies. Instead of viewing reality as the enemy accept reality as a constructive guide. Reality rewards us when we work with it and redirects us when we get out of sync.
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Fearful Courage
A plan is an act of courage in and of itself. But, as soon as we make a plan public, from the moment we take the first step, fear climbs onto the seat beside us. Fearful courage accepts the fact that fear and courage are companions. So when you feel the fear creeping up on you look around to see where courage is. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is acting in spite of it.
Flawless execution is probably the mythic unicorn of strategic planning. I pray these four ideas encourage you to keep on executing your plans for the good results you want to accomplish.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. —Peter Drucker

Moving from Launch into the long growth phase of church planting means recasting vision over and over again. There’s no end date that you’re ramping up for, so you keep recasting vision for things like presence and deepening presence. It means developing a consistent rhythm for small groups, Sundays mornings, and service. It’s like creating a mini launch three times every year.

Remember back at the beginning of this story, we talked about Jared and Laura going to strategy lab? Initially it was to take their dream and turn it into a plan. But that plan was built on a framework that wasn’t there yet. So, after a couple of years, they went back to Strategy Lab with some experience under their belts, and rebuilt the plan using what they’d learned along the way.

Just recently, they went to Strategy Lab for a third time, this time not as a dream, but as a church. They were able to work on their yearly calendar and set goals for Christmas, Easter, and the start of school.

This little church has a big heart. Twice this year, they’ve given their whole contribution to support their neighborhood elementary school. They’re feeding hungry people, giving warm coats to people who need them, and shining God’s light in a corner of our country that proclaims itself to be “beyond” its need for God.

But light speaks.
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Here’s what one Google reviewer has to say:
“This place is the Light of God, pure and simple. All are welcome. Every single being. Which is what church ought to be everywhere in my oh so humble opinion. A far cry from what we see out there in much of the church these days. Here -one is received, nourished and so cannot help but want to deliver the same to those in their every day."

Jared, who lost a brother to addiction and hard life choices, wanted to be in the lives of people like that brother. So he sought out the shelters and the detention centers. He volunteered to help victims of domestic violence and to ride along with the police. He and Laura, with their neighbors, saw repeated evidence that drugs were being bought and sold right beside their house. Instead of throwing their hands up in despair, they went to work. For months, they documented cars’ makes and models, time of day, license plates, and more. When they’d amassed enough evidence, they turned it over to the police, who were able to break up a drug ring in North Seattle because of the Kings and their neighbors.
 
Earlier this year, North Seattle United met to worship. 16 churches from North Seattle gathered in unity and solidarity. It was exciting, energizing, inspirational.
 
The next morning, Jared went to his office. The sidewalk outside was littered with heroin needles. The temptation was to crash back to earth with the reality of darkness in Seattle. Jared allowed himself that initial pessimism, but then he said, “No. Let’s not be depressed by how little difference we have made. Let’s let the reality propel us to change.”
 
Even when they feel like they’re not making a difference, they are. They continue to address real life head on, convinced that even when they feel like there’s no movement, there is.
 
Jared reminds himself that the 10 months it took to break up the drug ring was about persistence. And if that doesn’t feel like they made a dent, it’s just a reminder that the enemy is strong, but our God is stronger.

​We must be diligent. God will not be defeated.

When Jared and Laura skydived into Seattle in 2014 (not literally, but it was just as scary), they had their plans, their dreams, and their expectations. Piled on top of their own expectations for success, were those of their church partners, supporters, and coaches.
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But moving into Seattle quickly brought a couple of truths to light. Seattleites do not easily fall into relationships with each other. The Kings were moving from Nashville, a highly Christian city where people are open to each other to a place where people are closed and suspicious. The metro area of nearly 4 million people may represent half the state’s population, but many people in Seattle feel completely alone.

Hey everyone,
 
I was praying over you this morning, asking God to open up your church for new people whom God will bring to bless you.
 
I regularly keep my eye open for ideas and resources to help you. One of the resources I’ve been paying attention to lately are the videos from Pro Church Daily. These guys are worth listening to. They’re classic millennials. Working with churches is what they do. They keep things short, direct, and innovative.
 

This morning I watched their video “How to Reach People When You’re a Church of 50 or Less.” Here’s Brady’s phrase that caught my attention:
 
“If you want to get somewhere you’ve never been, you need to be willing to do things you’ve never done.”
 
Here are three statements we talk about within Kairos that help us take those steps that move us forward to growth:

1. I don’t know what to do. 
   This is a knowledge question. If we don’t know something, we can’t do it. The way beyond this is to open up our imagination through exposure to others. Become an explorer of what others are doing.
   
   
2. I don’t know how to do it. 
   This is an experience question. I find myself here a lot. I know about something, but I don’t know how to do it. The way through this is to partner with those who are doing what we want to do so we can learn from them.
   
   
3. I don’t want to do it.
   ​This is the motivation question—and it’s the tough one. Before we can make progress with this question we’ve got to investigate why we don’t want to do it. This takes courage because it often asks us to address our fears. Am I afraid to fail? Am I afraid of what it will require? Am I afraid how others will react? But it’s going to take courage to grow, so we might as well start it now.

 
Brady’s challenge is to make this year a year to try things out.

If you want to do it, but don't think you can go it alone, we're putting together a Spring Surge group to help each other through. Click here to download a Spring Surge Preview Calendar to see if it's something you're interested in.

Let’s do it!