Video Transcript: Organize

Being an effective manager. Task number six, organizing the example of  Joseph. Genesis 39:2, the Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered and he  lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord  was with him, and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did. Joseph  found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of  his household and entrusted to his care everything he owned from the time he  put him in charge of his household and all that he owned, the Lord blessed the  household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on  everything Potiphar had, both in the House and in the field, you get the  impression that Potiphar had a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff going on, and what he  really needed is someone to organize it, somehow manage it, keep track of it,  make sure it was all running well. Joseph was an organizer when he got thrown  in prison. Later on, he did the same thing in prison, when he finally got out of  prison and he helped, helped the Pharaoh understand his dream. The Pharaoh  put him in charge of all of Egypt and the food situation. Joseph was an  incredible organizer, and people recognized that and promoted him. There's a  tremendous need for people to take the many, the complex, and make it simple,  Daniel probably was a good organizer as well. Daniel 2:48 then the king placed  Daniel in a high position, lavished many gifts on him and made him ruler over  the entire province of Babylon, so there's a lot of stuff, and placed him in charge  of all its wise men. So he had all these people to manage and take care of. Why  is organizing a key gift in the success of any organization, and why is? Why is  organizing one of the tasks that a manager must learn how to do? Number one,  there are many parts to everything. The average car has 30,000 different parts.  Every car you see on the road has 30,000 parts that make it a car. Let me tell  you about one part my my brother in law works for an engineering firm. I live in  Michigan. He lives in Michigan. A lot of cars are produced in Michigan, in Detroit. And he works for a firm that makes machines to make parts for cars. And I was  there once, and they were making this machine. They had been working on it for three, four months. The machine ultimately would cost three, $400,000 to the  person who would buy it. And all the machine did it was this, this huge machine  took up a room. All this machine did is make the part of the car that connects the visor. You know, the visor is the thing you pull down when the sun is in your eye.  You're driving down the road. Here's your windshield, and then you pull down  your visor, and that is somehow connected. There's a tube and a bar. I don't  know exactly how it's all connected, but this machine would take the raw  material, bend it, attach it, put this thing on it. It did, like, three or four things, and then it just kicked out that visor part. And just like, like an assembly line, it would  just produce, you know, 1000s and 1000s of those every single day that was just one part on one particular car. Every every part on the car needs a big three,  $400,000 machine that's making this thing so that the complexity of everything is is astounding. Number two, everything is wonderfully complex and must be 

simplified. We can't keep track of 30,000 things. We can't hold all of that into our minds. Success is in the details of things. Well, what is organizing? Just a little  exercise, just to help you think about what we're trying to do when we organize,  we got an ant, we got a cow, we got a spider, we got a horse, we got a  caterpillar, got an elephant, we got a fox, got a mosquito, we Got a fly, one more. I think pig. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. We got 11 things. There 11 is too many  things. Okay, we can't hold on to that. We can't think about what that is. We can't it's, I suppose you could memorize that, but it take you a while to do it. We need  to simplify. 11. How do we take 11 and make them two, reducing 11 separate  things into two things? Well, we have animals and we have insects. So instead  of 11 things, we got to keep track of. We only have two things. That's what  organizing does you have a closet? You're going to put all kinds of stuff in it.  Maybe you're going to put 1000 put 1000 items in that closet. If you put them in  randomly, you're not going you're not going to be able to find a thing that you  want. But what we do is we organize the closet on the tough top shelf, we put all the things that relate to paper and pads of paper and things and pens and things related to that. Then we got forms on the second shelf, and then we have, you  know, and you just take all the different categories and you stick them on  different shelves. And so instead of 1000s of things, you have six things, you  have six shelves that have all kinds of things, but they're all related to each  other. That's what organizing is. Well, where does a manager start organizing? If you're in a nonprofit, if you're in a church, or maybe you're in a for profit  business, and you're in charge of managing and organizing this company or this  organization, where do you even begin? I think the best place to start is the  organizational chart. The organizational chart is all the stuff that you do and and  the relationship of those things and who's in charge of them. So in a church, a  church, if you start writing down all the things that you do in your church, yeah,  we have sermons, we have services, we have music, we have pastoral care. We do educational things. We have classes. I mean, if you start writing everything  that you do, there's a huge list of stuff. You know, it's if you made a circle for  everything that you do, you'd have circles all over the page and and how do you  even think about all the things that you do. So I took our church and all the  things that we do, and I reduced what we do as a church, our mission,  everything, all the tasks, all who's doing what, into four. Our church does four  things. There's a lot of things we do, but I reduced it all to four, we can think  about four. So here's the organizational chart. And you see, there's four  sections. One has to do with the worship service. We worship together, and all  the things related to that, we do outreach, and all the things related to outreach,  we do education, and we do member care. Everything we do falls into one of  these four categories. So it's easy to think about our church. It's easy to think  about what we do and organize all of this, because there's only four things. Now  let me zoom in on each one of these. I'm in charge of the service. See the see 

little circles around me all relate to the service. My wife Marie, is in charge of the music, and then around her, she's in charge of the sound, she's in charge of the  projection, she's in charge of the video. We videotape the services and so on.  So she's in charge, I'm in charge of her, but she's in charge of all kinds of things. And then all the other things that are related to the service, the welcome, the  coffee, all those things are are somehow connected to me. I'm the one that has  to encourage the people and keep them going, motivated, and so on. Then my  associate, he's in terms he's in charge of the outreach. So any special thing that  we do as a church, he's in charge of short term missions, long term missions,  anything that we do in terms of outreach, we have a farmers market that is on,  that's on our property every Saturday. He's in charge of that. He's in charge of  any special thing that we try to do, anything related to outreach, he's in charge  of then education. I'm in charge of the education. So on the one side, we have  all the typical things that most churches have, the kids programs, the youth  group. I'm in charge of the faith formation of our church. So things like baptism,  we have a we have something we call my Bible. Where we where we get  parents to give a Bible to their child, their first Bible, and they have to write  verses in the Bible, and they have to present this Bible in a in a worship service.  We have our version of a bar MIT Bar Mitzvah, you know, when a kid turns 11- 12, years old and and there's a way to do that. So I'm in charge of that. I'm in  charge of what we call profession of faith, where they have to take a class and  they join church at some point in their life. I'm in charge of the marriages and the weddings. I'm in charge of anything that has to do with faith formation. I'm in  charge of our programs, as I said, the kids programs, the now, I don't run all  these things. I don't do all these things. I have a coordinator that does these  things, but ultimately I'm like, my focus is on those kinds of things. We have  what we call Pathway Church University, where we try to get average people  teaching a class on something. We have people teaching pottery. We have  people teaching how to ride a horse. We have, we have, we challenged all our  people to try to teach something in a year, every person in our church, try to  have a class on something, whatever you're good at, whatever you're interested  in, but there has to be a spiritual component to whatever that is. And so we have average people teaching photography, all kinds of things. So there's we call  those electives that people can take. And then we have our core classes, church history, Bible knowledge, those kinds of things. All these are taught by lay  people. And so this fall, we're going to have another whole session of that. And  so I have to get these people, the teachers, organized, and when they're going  to do it. Some of them are Sunday morning, some are right after church, some  are Wednesday or evening, whenever they want to do it. And our goal is just  have a class, and if only one person signs up, that's that's a great opportunity to  share with one person. Doesn't matter how many people come into the class. So we literally have all kinds of people teaching all kinds of things, and it's really 

great. So I'm in charge of anything related to the education. Then my associate  is in charge of the member care. You see on the one side, we have a whole  small group system. So there's a small group leadership meeting and all the  different small groups. But then there's the counseling, there's the specialty  groups, there's fun groups, there's sports groups, anything related to any kind of member care where we're trying to make a difference with members. He's in  charge of it. So it's very simple. And then ultimately, the Consistory, which is our  board, they're sort of in charge of the staff. They're in charge of everything. So  it's very easy for a Consistory, you know, we meet once a month, and then they  simply sit down with us and I report on the two areas that I'm in charge of, and  my associate reports on the two areas that he is in charge of, and the whole  church all these circles. I mean, there's a lot of circles there, but it all is  organized around four simple concepts. So how are we doing with our church  circles? How are we doing with our education? How are we doing with our  outreach? How are we doing with our member care? With four simple questions, we can look at the whole church and all those many circles get reduced to four.  It's a way of thinking about things, a way of organizing things in a way that you  can deal with it. Here's your more traditional chart. You know, you have that you  know, someone in charge, and then you have maybe five captains, and then  under that, all these different boxes. You can organize it this way too. We like it  in this circular thing, because it doesn't seem like a hierarchy. It doesn't seem  like, you know, you know, like I'm in charge. We're here supporting one another.  You know, the censure. Really, God is in charge, and then he gives us authority  to do things. It's not like, you know, chain of command. So we're in this together. But it however you organize it. It just makes all the many boxes simplified into  the few, and that's what organizing does. So you start with the organizational  chart. From there, in all those circles that you saw, we made a job description for every single one of them. What's a job description? Here's an example. You  know, the title. You know, small group coordinator, summary, summary  description. You know, what does this person, do they manage and take care of  all the small groups, tasks and responsibilities? So what are their tasks? Well,  they have to call them, meet with them. There's a meeting once a month. You  know? What? What are the tasks? What are the responsibilities? What not?  What are the minor functions, things that happen once in a while, but not all the  time. Who's the supervisor? Who's in charge of this group. What are the  qualifications? What are we looking for in terms of this particular job? What are  the skills necessary, the experience desired, the working hours. How many  hours is so we have one of these for every single one of those circles that you  saw, and then we put it into a book. This is our church. Now, when we're looking. Looking for someone, we just turn to the page. Here's the description. You know, when we're looking for someone, we publish it and go, this is what we're looking  for. And so people know exactly what to look for. They know who's in charge of 

what. If they have a question about some area of our church, they can just look  at the chart and go, This is who I need to talk to it makes everything simpler. So  you have an organizational chart. Every single function every person has has a  job description of what it is and what it is that they do. Then number three,  

project management schedules. So if you're you're going to have a retreat. You  know, in some ways, I had to learn management over over time, because my  natural inclination is not to manage. I'm more of an idea person. So I remember  in my first church like, I think we should have a camp out. Let's have a church  camp out. Idea out there done. I mean, that's how I thought it was, like, you  know, what else is there to think about? But someone has to sit down and go,  Okay, we're going to have a camp out. Where are we going to have this camp  out? Someone has to research campgrounds. How's this going to work?  Secondly, are we going to have meals together? Are we going to eat separately? If we're going to have meals together, what are we going to do? Who's going to  buy the food? What meal are we going to have? What's in, you know, if we  decide we're going to have this kind of meal, what ingredients do we need?  What, what utensils or whatever do we need to cook all these meals? So I know, when we did the camp out, someone came up with this scrambled egg omelet  thing. You throw it in a bag, and so you need so many cookers, and you need so many ingredients, and someone you know, who's going to buy it, when are they  going to buy it? Where is it going to be stored? There's all these details. Are we  going to have a program? Are we just going to show up in camp, or are we  going to have a theme, verse, a little thing to work on? On Sunday, we're going  to have a service. How are we going to do that service? Is it going to relate to  the theme that we're doing it? There's all these things. We're going to have fun  together. How are we going to force people to play together? Are we going to  have some games? Are we going to have some competitions? What are we  going to do? There's all these things that have to be organized and come into  order. And so a project management schedule is like, Okay, here's the next  three weeks. Who's going to do what by when? That's what a manager needs to do. Someone has to get the food, someone has to get the list, someone has to  get the games, and when are they going to have it done? And well, that has to  be done on Wednesday. So you literally take a calendar and you actually put  names and start dates, completion dates of all the different pieces and parts that make up this project, policy manuals. We just started doing that more in our  church. You know, I was never one that was big into that. But what a policy  manual does is it takes the work that you did on something, we have to figure  out, how are we going to have a safe church? And there's all these rules, at  least in the United States, about how to be safe and how you know, when adults are working with kids, you have to have two adults and all these things, and and  you do all this work, and then a year later you have to do the work again,  because you didn't write any of it down. So now we have, we have a policy 

manual. In the policy manual go all these job descriptions, so that when we go  back to something, or when we're trying to get people to do something, we have  it all written down. This is, this is how our retreat is run. This is how we did it last  time. You don't have to start from zero. You just look in the policy thing and you  see how something was done. My wife keeps track of all the services and what  music we use. And last Christmas, last Easter. This is the order. This is what we  did. So when I'm thinking about this year. I just asked, Well, what'd we do last  year? What do we do four years ago? And well, let's take some of that. Let's  adjust some of that. It's a way of organizing and thinking about all the stuff that  goes on. Otherwise you have to keep repeating the work over and over again.  Finally, time management. Time management is, what do you do with your time? Periodically, I'll have our staff, actually, for a week, write down what they're doing every 15 minutes, because, you know, a week goes by and you go, Well, what I  do? I don't know. Well, I made a sermon. I think I had a meeting, and sometimes you have no idea what you really doing with your time. Are we spending our time on the things we really want to spend our time Well, time management is a way  to keep track of that. Time management is a way to keep track of your day. Keep track of your week. Here's an example. You have you have the time on the one  side. You have the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday on the other side. I once took  a time management class, and there's all these things you can do with time  management, but the most helpful thing I'll just give you one little tip, the one  thing that I got out of the class that made a huge difference with my own ability  to keep track of stuff and not worry. See, one of the problems we have in life is  there's so many things and so many schedules and so many people that want  something from us, and so many you know, this week I have see, I have  tomorrow night, I have a wedding rehearsal, then the next day I have a different  wedding to go to, and then the next day I have that wedding that I have their  wedding rehearsal, and then I have Sunday, the whole church service. I have all  this stuff, all these things to keep track of. And you know, generally, when you're  younger, you just keep track of all these things in your mind, but, but it gets to be too many. So someone will come to me and they'll talk to me about something,  oh, there's another thing that I got to do, and I just try to remember it, or I can  write it on my to do list. But now my to do list has 20 things on it, and as it has  20 things that are unfinished, I'm already getting nervous about all these things.  I have all these things hanging over my head, and I don't know when they're  gonna drop. And I think, I think I have something Saturday, I don't remember  what it is. So you're, you're inundated with all these things. So what I learned at  a time management class is, when you have something come up, you know,  someone, there's something I have to work on. I have to work on this thing. Do I  want to think about that? When do I want to think about that next? So I will take  that, I'll take that stuff that I'm working on, I'll throw it in a drawer, you know,  drawer B, and then I don't want to think about that for two weeks, so I go on my 

calendar two weeks from now, and I put do something with drawer number B.  That's it. Now. It's in drawer number B. I don't have to think about it, worry about  it, do anything with it for two weeks. And I didn't even have to remember that it's  in drawer number B, because two weeks from now, I'll be looking at my  calendar, and it'll say, go to drawer B because there's something you got to do  there. Well, what is that? I don't remember, but I just go to drawer B and there it  all is. So you take things right away, you know? I get something in the mail, I  have to do something with this. Instead of just putting it on the desk, I go to my  calendar. When do I want to deal with this? I don't want to deal with this right  now. I want to deal with this a week from now. I put it in drawer C, and I'll just  say, look in drawer C, and it's done and it's off my plate. So I never have this  huge list of stuff that has no way I can possibly get to today. So my day is  whatever I think I can get done today, and I don't worry about all the other stuff  I've got going, because it's going to come back to me without me working at it,  without me trying to remember it's going to come back to me when I need it.