Video Transcript: Things to Know About Change

Welcome back, as we continue to explore leadership together and what that means you'll  notice the title of this session, things to know about change, if you're going to have a vision,  and you're going to lead people to that vision to the accomplishment of that vision, and the  fulfillment of that vision, there's going to have to be changed. We've talked about many of  them, you know, sometimes it's changes in personnel, sometimes it's changes in, in facility.  But there's a variety of kinds of change, change in hierarchy. And in the system, people  leaving people coming in all kinds of change, you need to know about change theory. But just  as a reminder, this is what we've been talking about for a long time. Now, the leader interacts with a culture, which is how we do things here, to develop a vision for the future, something  that's going to guide them into the future, and then provide the impetus to do the prayer and  the planning that's necessary for that future to become a reality. That's what we're talking  about. Now change. As we talk about prayer and planning. Leading Change is important. Now  there was an old style of change, which I read about when I was early in ministry, and I didn't  know a whole lot about leadership at that time. And so I read a book, and it was by the person who was called today, at that time was called the leading church consultant in America. And  he talked about change. And we were going through a time where we needed to make some  changes. We had decided in church I was serving in California, that we need to change our  worship service. The church was welcoming and wanted to make an impact in its community.  But its worship style was old time pretty much. You know, we sang from the hymnal. In fact, in my tradition, we had an order of service that at one time, was declared to be the norm for  every church in the denomination so that if you went anywhere in my denomination, you get  the same order of worship. And it was a dialogic kind of experience. In other words, we'd have a call to worship at the beginning, where God would speak and invite us into worship  together, or the pastor would speak from Scripture and invite us into worship Come, let us  worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our maker, or some such verse, an  invitation, a call to be worshiping, and then we would respond as people with a song of praise. That was the first song and it was out of the hymnal church I was serving at that time had two hymnals, so one was a little more up to date than the other, but we'd sing some song of  praise out of one of those hymnals. And then there would be a time when God would speak  again to us, and he would speak about his will through the Word. And in my tradition, we read  the 10 commandments every single week. I don't know why, I don't know who thought that  was a good idea. But we talked about that being the will of God for our lives, and a teacher of  our own sin. And so then we would respond to God's word, we'd respond by a hymn of  penitence, and then then we'd be led in what was called the congregational prayer, the long  prayer, ongoing response, we would give an offering, and we have a song before the  message, and then the message, which is God speaking to us, and we'd respond in song  again. And then there'd be a benediction at the end, where God would speak to us and say,  The Lord bless you and keep you make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you  the Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you peace. And we were done. A wonderful  theory. But when we had done our study of the community around us, we found that that kind of worship was no longer relevant to them. In fact, we played the organ mostly, occasionally,  we would have a piano join that organ, we thought that was pretty progressive. But as we  interacted with our community and began asking questions out there, we found that the only  place they hear the organ played is in a ball stadium. And the only time they sing along with  an organ is in the seventh inning stretch where they start singing, Take Me Out to the  Ballgame, Buy me some peanuts, and Cracker Jack, I don't care if I ever get back. That was  their experience with organ. And so we decided that we had to make a move to more  contemporary kind of worship. You know the kind of worship that was led with instruments  that people were familiar with guitars, drums, keyboards, that sort of thing. Well, I read this  book on change. And it said, you know, you've got to unfreeze the status quo in order to make significant change. And then after you unfreeze the status quo, there's going to be a period of chaos. And in that chaos, you begin to choose those things that are going to become the new  Frozen status quo. So it was, in many ways a good idea. But we had been in this process for a  long time when I realized that we hadn't unfrozen the status quo. We had the beginning,  introduced at the beginning of the worship of praise time, where we had our praise team lead 

with a variety of instruments that we could supply, and it was two or three songs, and some  people hated them. They called them the choruses back then this is in the late 1980s. And  people would mock them saying, you know, what, what kind of songs do you sing at church?  Well, Mary, come home, Mary come home, the sheep or the meadow, the sheep or the  meadow, the sheep are in the meadow, we've got to move them to a barn. I mean I heard  that kind of thing back. People didn't like them some didn't. And so there's this pressure back. And so I began to realize, you know, something more had to be done if we were actually going to change the overall character of our worship. And so I read this book, we've got unfreeze  the status quo. And what usually does that we're going to talk about crisis in a moment crisis  does it. And so I decided to create a crisis. I invited a worship team. From a church that was  almost Pentecostal, it was the pastor who was somebody I was working with, because they  were going to plant a daughter church, on our behalf. Somebody had been working with him  and grew up as a Pentecostal. And so he had this attempt toward Pentecostal worship, which  for us was something to be appreciated, but only at a distance. And so I invited him and his  team to come lead worship. It was shocking to folks. We had people walking out, we had one  or two that didn't ever come back because they could see the right handwriting on the wall  and talk about unfreezing the status quo. People were upset. And the good thing is, by the  next week, what we had been doing looked very tame by comparison. And so some of the  complaints stopped. But I think I caused unneeded, unneeded anguish on the part of some  people and unneeded conflict that had to be managed after that. Well, since that time, the  late 1980s, there's been a lot of study on change. And one of the best known people to do this study is a man named John Kotter. Now, John Kotter there's a picture of him. At the age of 33.  He became a professor in the business school at Harvard University. And he has held that  position ever since. And he's gotten an honor after honor, he's written many books. The book  I'm going to be basing this lecture and the next one on is called Leading Change. He's studied all kinds of organizations and kind of tried to quantify what goes on in a corporation or a  business or a nonprofit, what goes on when they do successful change. And then he tried to  put that down into a formula, which has been used over and over and over again. And I hope  you find it helpful, it's been very helpful to me, as I've looked at the various components that  need to be in place, if I'm going to change things successfully, on the way to fulfilment of the  vision. So here are the eight steps, he says, Are these eight steps, and you can't skip any of  them. He says, if you try to skip one, it's going to make the change short term instead of long  term. And it may end up with the change blowing up. As mine blew up. In fact, there was one  person I remember used to stand with his arms folded any time we were thinking, singing any song that wasn't out of the approved hymnal for the denomination, and he would sit there  and just be quiet, and then he would sing lustfully when we're singing and it was that kind of  conflict. So what do you need to do to initiate meaningful change? Well, step one is establish  a sense of urgency that people have to know there's a reason for the change. And the reason  is compelling. Secondly, create a guiding coalition, you can't do it alone, Develop a vision and  a strategy. We talked a good deal about that. So I don't want to add into that, and  communicating the change vision, and then empowering for broad based action. In other  words, you empower people to make decisions, you don't try to make a fumble for decisions  that only you as the leader, only a select few leaders can make decisions, you generate short  term wins, demonstrate that the change is working, you consolidate gains and produce more  change. And then you anchor the new approach in the culture. Those are the eight steps. Now today, we're going to look more detail at one through five. And in the next lecture, we'll look  at six, seven and eight and a couple of other thoughts about change. So first of all, first step  is establishing a sense of urgency. Now, this is absolutely essential. If people are going to  change and it can't be made up. It can't be something that you're trying to create that people  feel is this makes it urgent and other things are not urgent. It can't be made up. It can't be  faked. It's got to be a real urgency based on you know, defining reality in the present. What  are the things that you see that require change? Now they can be facing a problem, that  you've got a problem that you've got overcome or it can be, we've got this tremendous  opportunity. And if we don't grab it now, we're going to miss that. And so, you know, for us in  that first church, it was a mixture that we've, we've got this problem, we are not relevant to 

our community. But we've also got this opportunity of music moving to this new community,  where there's going to be 150,000 people moving in and, the harvest is going to be great and  the fields are white unto harvest, we got to go there. That's a genuine kind of sense of  urgency. But this is very tricky, because many people will say they sense the urgency and  they won't. In fact, here's a quote from Kotter, as he reflects on this complacency of for power to stay where you are. He said, "I cannot count the number of times I have heard an executive claim that all the people on his or her management team recognize the need for major  change, only to discover myself that half of that team thinks the status quo really isn't so  bad." So the sense of urgency is necessary. Now what creates complacency, it's helpful to  understand that as you start thinking about how am I going to overcome complacency here  are the things that create a sense of complacency or happiness with the status quo. We'll  start at the top, the absence absence of a major invisible crisis. Some people just don't see it.  You know, I've talked before about Tom Rayner, and going into churches and, and they don't  see it, they've seen this gradual, gradual decline, they haven't seen a major change in their  church. And so as far as they know, things are okay, and they aren't, they aren't eager to  change things. And it's a powerful thing, especially if all the bills are being paid. We'll talk  about that in just a second. So if there isn't an obvious crisis, or at least one that you're  talking to people about, they're going to be complacent. They like it the way it is, the way  things are, is because people like it the way it is, and they don't want to change. Going  around clockwise, too many visible resources. That can be a problem. Because it can keep  people from grabbing on to the urgency about change. If you don't have enough, people feel  a sense of urgency. But if you have too much, they can feel okay. You've seen this probably  with offerings. In fact, I've been reading a book lately by a man that's called Unstuck. All of a  sudden, the man's name escapes me. But he talks about a danger point. But it's particularly  in churches. He's a consultant for churches. And he says there's a danger point when he said,  Enough money is coming in to cover the budget. He said, but the number of new people  coming into the church is about dried up. He said, That's a time when he said I can predict  with accuracy, that a huge percentage of churches like that are going to die. Because they  don't sense the urgency to change, the bills are being met. Low overall performance  standards. That's a tough one in the church isn't it? a company. That's easy. Hopefully, there's a structure in a company where, there are regular evaluations that are done, there are  performance goals that are set. And if those aren't met, there are things that have to be done. And the person has to meet these new goals has to go through some kind of training or  something like that. But in the church, we tend to do a variety of things that encourage low  performance standards. One of the things we do is we hire the wrong people. We'll talk about  that later, as we talk about building our team. But who you hire, when a church has a need.  Often, at least in my church experience we offer, we offer a job to a person who's available.  Now, in most cases, if somebody is going to work part time, they have to be one of a few  kinds of people. One they're usually homemakers mothers who maybe had a career before  they began motherhood, but they took time off for motherhood. And now their kids are  getting older and they want to get back into the work world. And so a part time position at  church is ideal for them. Now, sometimes you get some of those people who are wonderfully  motivated who got training who are professionals, but sometimes they're not. And so we hope that we can develop them, but we put up with low standards as a result. The other place that  you get people who want to work part time are from the retired community. People who are  are done with their work world and they're a little bored and they want to get back into it. And sometimes you can get really qualified people who want to take things further. But often you  get people who are slowing down their life and that creates It's complacency because there  are low overall standards, organizational structures that focus employees on narrow  functional goals. This is a function of you as a leader, and the leaders around you. That often  in the church world or in the Christian world, in the nonprofit world, we create job descriptions that are focused on tasks. In other words, we want you to come in and we want you to do  these lectures, we want you every Sunday, we want you to do a class for the middle school  group in our church, and we want you once in a while to do something that will gather them  to do fellowship. And, and that's your job. Unfortunately, it's not a vision based job, a vision 

based job would say, We want you to look at middle school. And we want you to find the best  ways to disciple middle schoolers into faith so that they come to profess faith, they're  baptized, if they haven't been they profess their faith, if they've been baptized, we want our  middle school community to be humming with with the Holy Spirit. And we want you to look  at how to do that. And tell us how to do that. That's a whole different approach to jobs than  oh, we need this job done. We need these people recruited for leaders, we need these people  done for this. That creates complacency. Because people could say, well, I'm doing my job. I'm doing my job. Internal measurement systems that focus on the wrong performance indexes. In other words, how do you decide what's, what is success? In the church world, it's often if the  money is coming in adequate to meet the budget needs. And we fail to look beyond that. And  there are a whole lot of other things we should be looking at in the church. Not just is the  money coming in? But But how's church attendance? What are the trends? There? Are people  growing in faith? How do we find that out? And how can we learn from them? Whether people  are growing in their experience of faith or not? Are people serving? Are they living out their  life in a variety of ways in their community in their neighborhoods? And are they serving in  the church ministry in various places we could check serve as all kinds of things we could  check. But we tend to focus on one or two things. In fact, it used to be ABCs, attendance,  bucks, and community. We just look at whether they're there or not. So that creates  complacency, a lack of sufficient performance feedback from external sources. You know, if  you measure yourself by yourself, you're always going to come up really well. There's an old  story about a guy, a kid who came to his dad and said, I'm eight feet tall. That kid was 10  years old, eight feet tall. How did you figure out your eight feet tall? Well, he had made his  own ruler. And so he measured himself by his own ruler, and by his ruler, he was eight feet  tall and ready to take on Goliath. It helps greatly to get an external source, we're going to talk about getting consultants in or people from outside just to give an objective view of what  you're doing in ministry. A Kill the Messenger of bad news, low candor, low confrontation  culture, people who aren't used to confrontation who aren't used to people coming and  saying, Hey, you're not doing your job. Those kinds of people in charge, the people who aren't confrontational in that kind of area, are going to contribute to complacency, because it seems like everything is okay. And then there's human nature with its capacity for denial, especially  if people are already busy or stressed and they usually are. And then too much happy talk  from senior management. In other words, we don't really want to see problems and so we just talk about how great things are, where we are, all of these kinds of things are sources of  complacency. And the only way to overcome them is to create a sense of urgency. So how do  you do that? Well, crisis can play a big role. Again, can't be a made up crisis can't be one  where you cry, Wolf. And turns out there is no wolf. You know, the story of that, or of the kid  who cries Wolf, and there's no wolf. And he laughs because everybody buys into his challenge, his sense of urgency, and then there's no wolf. And finally, there is a wolf and he cries Wolf,  and nobody will respond because they've been used to hearing the cry and responding by not responding. And so they've gotten into that lull that happens within the church. If you cry too  often, a sense of urgency, people are going to start tuning it out, especially if it turns out that  there's not a crisis. Now, again, the crisis can be one of two kinds, it can be opportunity out  there, or it can be problems internally. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in just a  moment, keeping the big picture in mind. In other In other words, reminding people of your  vision reminding people of the opportunity that exists where we are that you become the  person who's communicating the big picture. Help them look at long term history. Now long  term history can be a huge help in that because if people look back, they're not looking at the immediate, but they're looking back, they can remember a time often, when things were  better. I was in a small group once with a group of leaders from my denomination and regional churches and and we were just sharing what's going on in our churches. And we began talking about what what, what are the signs of things are just drifted a bit. And one man just shared  about how his church was dying, and they realized it. Said the average age is over 70 Since  but you know, we don't have any expenses, we own our building, we have to heat it, we pay  somebody to come in to preach, they didn't have a pastor. So we just love each other. And the last person that is alive is going to just shut the door and lock it. Turn off the lights and and 

the church will be done. And what a sad thing. But as we talked about the past, what was that church like once, and once upon a time, it was vibrant, with people coming to faith children  growing up, vibrant, same thing happened, somebody else in the group says, you know, I'm  just thinking, I'm thinking about our boys ministry. And we used to have 30 kids there. And  now we've only got like five or six. And our choir, look at our choir. And we used to be this  multi generational experience of praise to God and enthusiastic about it. now he said the  average age is probably over 60. And so if you get people looking back and you say, Wow,  things have changed. If they look just at the immediate past there, they won't see it, they just won't see it. And Andy Stanley refers to it as the old couch syndrome, you know, where you  got an old couch in your living room. And because you have it there, and you it's aged with  you, and you haven't even noticed it aging because it was so gradual. You just get used to it.  And so getting long term history will help people see Wait a minute, that couch is pretty beat  up. And if it's going to be functional, I got to find a different way of doing my couch. You can  bring in consultants that's helpful when somebody from outside an external source comes in  and said, Look, I've been looking at your church. And here's what I've noticed, I found that to  be, at times, incredibly energizing toward a new vision. And I'm somebody who fought that I  thought, well, I've got this great education. Now I have a doctor's degree, I know what's  wrong. And so I should be able to be the one who's the prophet, but I found that a prophet in  his own country is not often honored, as Jesus said, and to have somebody else come in with  expertise from outside and say, You know what you should be thinking about these things,  these things. And then another way to overcome complacency is to bombard people with  future opportunities, as well as the present problems. In other words, let people see that  there's something better. And when we talk about communicating the vision, you know, we've got to define how there is better than here. And so we say wow, you know, there's opportunity out there. And so we can create a sense of urgency toward it. Now, I just want to give you a  couple of examples of how this might work. I showed you this graph before with the church.  And you'll notice that it shrunk from about 450 people total in worship on a Sunday to a little  over 150. So you've got a two thirds drop in worship, attendance and membership over a  period of 15 years. Now a lot of questions come up when you see a graph like this like you say what in the world happened between 2006 and 2007, there was that kind of drop anyway. And you might hear about a variety of crises, you might hear about problems. And then there was  a pickup time after that 2007 to 2008, 2008 to 2009, where there's growth again and then  down, except for you know, 2014 to 15. There's a brief up uplift, uplift before the downward  trend picked up again. Now, I did not consult with this church. But I did consult with the  pastor. And I looked at this graph with him and I said, you are dying. You're dying. You've got  to be thinking about this. Your church does not have a long life unless something major  changes. And so he went back to his church. And he shared that message we're dying. And  they began talking about a strategic plan that would turn things around, but talk about killing  the messenger that church a year and a half later, basically fired its pastor. They didn't want  to grapple with it because it came up not in the context of God's vision for them. But in the  context of we just got to solve this problem. How do we get more people here, instead of the  problem that they'd lost their vision of people coming to faith and growing in faith. So that's  one here's another church Oh, this was totals. I'm doing a consulting thing with a group of  churches of which that one is a part in our area, in our denomination, we have the synod,  which is over all the denomination in one sense. And then classis, are the regional  representatives, while I'm on a team that's looking at this particular classis to talk about, you  know, what then lagging, and this is the graph for all the churches put together. And you'll  notice again, the trend is down. And so, you know, we're trying to figure out our team, how do we create a sense of urgency in a group of churches, of about, 22 churches? How do we  create a sense of urgency that will allow us to change together what we're doing as well as  individually within the church, but part of the age the urgency comes from, look what's  happening, and then showing churches what's happening in their own congregations. So  going the wrong way, sorry. Wait a minute, something's wrong, my. Okay, number two, excuse me, creating a guiding coalition. Now, you may think that all you got to do because you're a  leader is sit down and identify the problems and create a strategy for creating urgency, etc. 

But that's not accurate, you need more than one person doing this, you need a group of  people who have influence. Remember, when we're defining leadership, one of the definitions  was having influence with people. And so you need a guiding coalition that are going to work  through the steps of change with you and with the congregation. Because the reality is, there  are going to be people who are going to be more influential, influential than you, in bringing  people along with the change. So you're looking for people, who do you get? Well, you get  people who have positional power, there are people who are chosen in one way or another,  maybe as elders in your church, or presbyters, or whatever you call them, or your business,  there are people who are in charge in this nonprofit or whatever, you've got to get some of  them on this guiding coalition one or two, so that there's communication between the official  power and what you are presenting as far as change goes. Because if there isn't, you'll find  automatic kickback that if the people who are in positional power, are after find out things  after they're decided they're going to immediately raise up their walls of defensiveness. And  so you have people who have positional power on your guiding coalition. You have some  people who have expertise, I was really excited when we were going through change. And one of the people that I found out about just through conversation, a quiet guy, but turns out he  had a PhD in chemistry, but his passion was statistics. And so I gave him all the numbers from our church going back, like 15-20 years. And said now, put this together and tell me what you  can learn from statistics. And when he was ready, we got a small group together just to look  at these and hear his reflections. And it was magnificent. He had charts and graphs and all  this stuff that I wouldn't have ever thought of. But he had expertise that allowed us to see a  variety of things happening in children's ministry in youth ministry, in each worship service  that we had, and what happened when we started a second worship service and, and was  able to identify a variety of things that otherwise I couldn't see he had expertise, credibility,  you look for people who have credibility. Many people are not in positional power, but they  have power in the congregation, because they are people who are recognized as leaders, they are trusted, they are looked to, they are sought for their advice. These people are marvelous  to have with you. Because they'll often carry the ball for you. You don't have to be the one  always pushing the change. You will be somebody who's part of a team whose doing that and  people of influence who are helping you do that. I learned this as I was learning leadership.  When I had a great new vision for our church, we were experiencing growth. And so we  decided I decided that, you know, one of the things we should consider was becoming a  church that's planting daughter churches. And so I ran this through, it wasn't in the budget.  And I just ran through proposals about how we could get this done, we probably could get the  money together, why we should do it. And I didn't talk to anybody about it until I finally  presented it to the elders. And you know, I was a person who had a lot of leadership chips  stored up at that point, I had credibility with them. And so they approved it. And I went on  even though there were some some questions, some reservations on the part of some. And I  remember one of the persons who was not in official leadership at that time heard about it as  we just announced it to the congregation, that our goal now was to be taking people leaders  in letting them do a fishing expedition in our church for people to go with them out to a  nearby community and plant a new church. But that was part of it. And he said, You know,  we've got to have lunch. So he took me to lunch, he said, you know, he said, you've got what  you wanted this time. That was that was incredible leadership, he said, but he said, You're  carrying it all. He said, Have you trust some of us, we could carry the ball with you a long way. You don't have to be the only one identified with this. He said but if you keep doing it your  own way he says pretty soon the leaders among us are going to be abandoning you because  they weren't consulted. And they may have reasons that you haven't seen. And so you gotta  consult those are the kind of people, you get on board. And I was really pleased. This man  lives in California, I had a telephone conversation with him last week, because we still keep in  touch on a regular basis. And he's now in his 80s. And he was just asked by the church to  chair another building program, he chaired the six and a half year process of our relocation.  And now in his 80s, he's still going, and he knows he's got credibility. And so he's he still  there. You look for people like that you look for people who have leadership qualities, not  everybody has to be a leader. But you look for some who are going to be people who are 

going to take part of the task list and carry them out, they're going to be people who are  going to see the vision and, and be able to mold that vision with you. And the common thing  about them is that they will have a common goal. And that is to build the kingdom of God  where you are. So we've looked at establishing a sense of urgency, creating a guiding  coalition, develop a vision and strategy. We've talked about that. Communicating the vision,  we talked about that, that whole thing of how do you roll out your vision. But I just want to say here, use different forums, not just Sunday morning, not just the bulletin, just not just  newsletter. But some pictures of what's going on, you say use picture language examples. I'm  hoping to get some people to interview here. And they're going through a major change  within their two churches that are merging with a vision. They're not merging, because  they're in need with emerging because they have this common vision to make a difference in  the kingdom. And they have been producing videos for their congregations that are really  excellent communicators with some of the people who are on board, the guiding coalition,  telling about why they think this is important. Use a variety of means use Facebook, use  Instagram, use messenger, use whatever you've got to use, but do it over and over again.  Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Now I realized about myself over the years that this is an area  where I am weak. And I have to have people remind me to repeat the vision. Because I  figured that once I said it, you know and people bought into it. We're good, let's go. And we'll  check in with you in a year. But I went to a friend's church. He's part of the network that I  created of leaders that we get together every six weeks just to talk about leadership things,  things in our churches. And I was just incredibly impressed when I went to his church, I know  that they speak of their vision for ministry, as bridging the bayou. Now, what they're mean  there is that right next to the church is the poorest group of people in our entire area. It's a  trailer park, these people are under the poverty level, or they're in the ALICE category, which  means they're employed, but they can't make enough money in their employment to actually  meet the standard of living for the community. So you've got this poor place right next to the  church. And around the corner. Since we live on the shores of Lake Michigan and Spring Lake,  there's a bayou from Spring Lake, where there are homes that are worth a million plus. And so their goal as a church is to bridge the bayou to bring these two groups together to have these producing resources and people in order to reach these people and, and do that in creative  ways. And then create a lot of strategies for that. So that's the simple statement of their  vision. So I go to their worship service. And it was a delightful experience because in that  worship, there were four different people that verbalized the vision. A one guy was just  making some announcements. I don't know if he was an official person or not, but he was  making announcements. Another man was praying. The worship leader who was a woman  mentioned it a couple of times and introductions to songs. And then when the pastor got up,  he began to talk about the fact that we got this thing though. We got to be thankful for these  people in the church because they're heroes and began to call out people who had lived out  part of the vision. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. You can think you said it enough. And when  you think you've said it enough, you haven't repeat again, the vision. So number five, you  empower for broad based action. Now, this can be a challenge for some leaders, because we  like to control things. And so we've got to look at the barriers that exist to a broad based  empowerment for action. In other words, a generally speaking, you should have decisions  made at the lowest level of your organization possible. So often, controlling leaders like to  control every decision, so they become a bottleneck. So what keeps us from empowering  people to make decisions, the corporations have learned this, I heard a talk by the former  CEO of Home Depot here in the United States, it's an incredible organization, it's a home  improvement place where you can go and buy whatever you need to fix your home or to  expand it or to build a new house or whatever. You can get the lumber, the electronics, the  kitchen stuff, the doors, the plumbing, all of it in one place. Well, it's been a successful  business. And when he was asked, Why is it successful, one of the reasons he gave was that  they've empowered their associates, they don't call their people, employers, employees, they  call them associates, their associates in the company. And he said, every one of them is  empowered to make a customer happy, in other words up to 150 bucks, they can make the  decision right there. If they're talking to somebody who's brought back a tool, and it didn't 

work, make it right now, up to $150. Before you have to get somebody higher in order to  solve it. That's the kind of empowerment, I'm talking about, within an organization to be able  to make the decision now. So what stops that? Well former structure formal structures make it difficult to act, we're in the 12 o'clock position, they're often that comes through the job  descriptions. Often, as I said, when we write job descriptions, we make them task oriented.  Now, what a difference when we stop doing that, and we tried to encourage and develop our  staff to be a more leader conscious, and we began taking away job descriptions. And instead,  we created a quarterly a ministry action plans or maps. That's what that's what an employee  was working on from Ministry action plans, not a job description, where they could say, Oh, I  did that I did that I did that. And the change for some people was incredible. I shared with you about Special Treasures, our program for children and adults who have developmental needs  who are special. And the woman who's in charge of that was somebody who caught on to this. Now we could have written her job description, we could have created the structure. So that  you're responsible for making sure that there's a partner with each kid on the autism scale, in  our Sunday school program. And you should do something that equips these parents and  gives people we could have made a whole list of things that this person could do. But instead, we said, figure out what we have to do to do this. Well, we know that there are 8%, as I said  before, 8% of the people who have a child with special needs, don't go to church, or go to  church in our community, that means 92%, don't figure out what we got to do to make a  program that will meet their needs. And so her mind just began thinking and the program  began to morph and change. And there are things that are being added to it. Because she's  not thinking along the lines of tasks to do. But vision. A lack of needed skills undermines  action if you go to the right. As I said, sometimes we hire the wrong people in Good to Great.  Remember Jim Collins in the book, Good to Great talking about companies that went from  good to being great companies. One of his principles of action in that process is to make sure  you have the right people on the bus. If you hired wrongly, he said, it's the most expensive  mistake you're ever going to make. Because it takes so long to get rid of a person to get a  new person in to gain the credibility for that person, etc, etc. And so if you find that you're the people you're working with, have a lack of needed skills, they need training, and you have to  provide it and if training doesn't work, then you better bite the bullet. Because the vision is  what you're about. Bottom six o'clock, personnel and information systems make it difficult to  act. It's easy to create a system where people can't get the information they need. We  realized this when we found out that there are only two people in our church who knew how  to operate the database, well the database information about all the people their spiritual  giftedness where they're involved. You know how old they are, what kind of needs they have  in the family, what kind of special gifts they have that they want to be able to give to the  church. All of that's in there. But 20 People couldn't access it. Because they didn't know how  they didn't have the skill. And so it created this bottleneck of Oh, yeah, you know, I'll get you  that information, but it's going to be next week. And then bosses discourage actions aimed at  implementing the new vision. And in other words, bosses want to be in control. And so they  want to hear every decision, and they want input on every decision. These kinds of things  have to change. In order for change to happen. People have to be empowered to make the  change. And so these are the first five steps. You can't forget any of them, there taken from  creating a sense of urgency to getting broad based power to the people around you to make a difference. And that's going to help you as you go through the changes necessary for the  vision to become reality. Next time we're going to look at six through eight. So come on back  later.