Video Transcript: Checkpoints and Partners
Welcome. We've come to the final video in our discussion of skill number three, setting objectives and establishing accountability as we continue to work our way through our course, developing great commission skills. Now the focus of today is going to be on checkpoints and partners. It's helpful to divide the distance between the present date and the calendar target into short segments with checkpoints when we get to a checkpoint, we're able to evaluate whether or not we have met the requirements of that checkpoint, and so we know either that we're on target, on time, or that we're slipping behind. Now if for some reason we're ahead. Hallelujah. You know, I'll take that every time, but that's usually not the case. You know, by breaking the Great Commission objective down into short steps that that lead to a string of checkpoints really helps us to measure our progress. Now, human nature is to procrastinate, and I want to make sure that you don't lose sight of Parkinson's Law. You don't lose sight of the law of procrastination. But here's the thing, checkpoints and accountability partners help leaders overcome the natural human tendency to procrastinate. Well, first of all, let's focus on checkpoints. I want you to think about an objective that needs to be completed in, say, six weeks. Let's, let's determine that on Friday of week six, that is our ultimate target. That is our ultimate deadline. Now, one simple way to approach this objective would be to break down the time between now and then into one week intervals, using Fridays as the checkpoint dates. So on Friday one of that first week, we would have a list of what's necessary to have been completed by that day. I know Friday two requirements for that day. This would be very simple, and here's what that might look like, something like this, where we've got Friday 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, identified, and adjacent to each of those Fridays, we have put a list of what's required on that Friday. So this is obvious how this works. Let's say you get to Friday three, and you take a look. Well, by then, all the requirements for Friday one, two and three should have been taken care of. If not, you're behind schedule. Now there's a lot of great reasons to use a technique like this. Good things can happen. You know, first of all, you've got a plan, a plan that works against and guards against Parkinson's Law and the law of procrastination. You know, by spreading the workload evenly over six weeks, you avoid that last minute crunch that often accompanies completing objectives by using this calendar spacing as well as the workload pacing, you avoid having to work under pressure, And so you don't lower the quality of your work, and if you do fall behind, you find that out early in the process, and you can make mid course corrections well before you reach that bitter end. Now, with this chart in mind. I want to share with you an example of a project that I had encountered when I was in seminary, and I want to share with you how I handled that. I was part of a course. This was the last semester of my master of divinity degree, and it focused on the spiritual development of pastors. The idea was, you know, we're about to graduate and with a master divinity degree, and for the vast majority of these students, this is going to lead
to licensure. And credentialing and serving in some pastoral function. So the idea was to use this class time to come up with a, you know, a personal spiritual formation plan to guard against difficulties that we might have in ministry, as well as to strengthen us in our faith, in our disciplines. So it's a very interesting class, and I appreciated this class. It started in late August and was going to run through December. Now, one of the assignments was to submit five, two page papers throughout the semester, anytime during the semester. But here's how this worked. What we were to do was to take any particular item or subject comment that came up during a class period, and we were to write a two page paper that sort of emerged out of that particular comment. And then the way that the assignment ran was that was to be turned in at the next class period, and that was mandated. So let's say the class met on a Thursday. If you wrote a two page paper based on that class content, it had to be turned in the next Thursday, and could not be turned in later. Now, you know what this did was it forced students, at least it attempted to force students not to procrastinate. In other words, you couldn't wait to the last minute and then write five papers and turn in all 10 pages at one time in the last class period, you had to distribute these throughout the semester, and whatever class period you selected, you had to write and turn it in at the next class. So I guess typically, there were maybe 16 weeks in these classes. So you had probably 15 opportunities to select something and write your two page paper and turn it in. Now let me tell you how I handled that. I always wanted to be ahead of the game at the beginning of the semester, when the slate was clear, there was much more breathing room than later in the semester. So every chance that I had to front load assignments in the early parts of a semester, I would take advantage of that. So what I would do the first the first week of each semester, each of my semesters in seminary, the first class would always hand out a syllabus for that class, and the syllabus would include reading assignments and exam assignments. And you know, give you a rundown of all the things that were going to happen throughout that period. It would include papers that needed to be done, presentations that you might need to make. Well, once the first week would was passed, I would sit down with all of the syllabi from my various classes, and I'd lay them out side by side, and I take my calendar, and I'd start to mark everything that was going to be due in all of my classes, and I would spread them out as much as the syllabus would allow. Now my goal was to have a bird's eye view of the workload for that semester. Now I might add that when I went to seminary, I was already 40 years old, and I was working a job, and I had four children at home, and so I could not waste time. I could not afford to get backed up. If I got behind, it was going to be over for me. And so that was my habit. I would plan out reading assignments, presentations, papers, examinations, everything that was going to happen in the semester all spread out entered into my calendar. And you know, if I noticed that in a particular week,
it was a super heavy week, then I would realize maybe I should move some of these assignments a little bit forward. Maybe the week before that was a little lighter, so I would spread the load out a little bit now, when it came to this particular course, I mean this to me this was a piece of cake. So what I did, this was the first class, right? What I did was, when that assignment was explained in that first class, I made a mental note, I am going to take the first five classes as the classes for which I'm going to write these two page papers. It just so happened that this class was late in the afternoon and I would typically be going home after this class, so I made the decision in that class that day, as soon as I get home, I'm going to go to my computer and I'm going to think through what was said, I'm going to read through my notes that I've taken in the class, and I'm going to select some item, and I'm going to write my two page Paper right then and turn it in next week. So I think that class ended at something like five o'clock, six o'clock, something like that. But by the time I got home, sat at my computer, wrote my two page paper by 6:30-7:00 o'clock that night, I'm done the next Thursday, I turned it in, and that Thursday, when I got home, I wrote my second paper, and then my third, and my fourth and my fifth. So five weeks in, I'm done with my five papers. I don't have to think about that assignment for another minute. All right now, later in the semester, when there was about, I don't know, two or three weeks left in the semester, I happened to be meeting with my faculty advisor, who happened to be the professor that was teaching that class, and we got to talking about that assignment, and I said to him, I said, Well, you realize what I did with that assignment? He said, Yes, I do Ken. And he said, frankly, I don't see how. I don't see any other way to do this. The way that you handled it was exactly the way it should be handled. But he said, Would you believe that I have some students in this class that haven't turned in papers, and there's not enough weeks left for them to reach five papers? What is wrong with that picture? Well, they're not utilizing checkpoints, they're not utilizing calendar commitments. They're not thinking through workloads and distribution of time and energy and effort. And so what's going to happen is, you know, their grades are going to suffer, but also what they can draw out of being in that class is going to suffer. Now I will say this like, like I mentioned, I was 40 years old at this time, I was probably almost 42. I probably wouldn't have done that if I was a 25 year old student. I wouldn't I wouldn't be that sophisticated in my thinking. I wouldn't have learned enough about time management by that point. But knowing what I knew then about time management, that was a solution that was so obvious, you know, I didn't even have to think about it. It was almost just reflexive. So that's how we wanted that's how we want to leverage the calendar. That's how we want to leverage checkpoints to give ourselves breathing room so that we can accomplish what needs to be accomplished in a very high quality way. Now let me take you a step further in looking at ministry on a deeper level, what I'm going to share with you now is another excerpt from a different section
of the Go project, road map, Tracker than I show tracker than I showed you in the previous session. Now what you're seeing here is a little bit more sophisticated, filled out version of the tracker where implementation checkpoints have been identified. You see the categories in these columns, what needs to be done. When did it need to be done? Who is going to do it? How is it going to be done? Why are you doing this? What is the purpose behind it? What's the motivation? Now, I recognize that this is highly detailed, and many of the projects or assignments that you might be working on, you know, won't need anything quite this in depth, but I wanted you to see what this looks like now. The beauty of something like this is that once you think it through and you fill in your boxes, you've got a plan. You don't need to think about getting it done anymore. You just have to think about execution and the when column can be blended in with an actual calendar so that you're setting your calendar targets to make sure that your checkpoints are are encountered in a timely way. Now that's all I'm going to say about checkpoints at this at this moment now I want to, I want to shift gears over to thinking about partners, working with a partner, working with a partner or a team of partners, naturally generates accountability. That's a very important reality naturally generates accountability. Here's the thing. It's one thing to get behind yourself individually, but when your partner has to pay the price for you not living up to your end of the bargain. That really hurts not just your partner. It hurts you. I, I get very upset when I let someone down. And so having a partner builds in accountability, even though all on my own, I should be disciplined enough to get the job done. Sometimes I'm just not. But if I've got a partner to be responsible for, if I have a partner to answer to, I am going to be much more diligent about fulfilling my end of the bargain. Now perhaps the loosest or worst case scenario would be to work on an objective with no checkpoints and no partner. Goodness knows how you would ever get anything done. So here's a question for you, what does having a partner bring to the table? Well, there are several things that you see listed here. First of all, a partner brings companionship and added strength. You know the expression two heads are better than one. You've also got a division of labor. You've got shared responsibility. The list goes on and on. I know again, when I was in seminary, the workload was was so intense. There was so much to do, there was just too much to do. And so in certain classes that were just overwhelming with the amount of work we would, we would gather as teams, and we would, we would divvy up certain assignments, and then we would share, like if we were researching, for example, I had one particular class Where the practice of that professor was to simply lecture, and these were three hour courses, so that would be almost three hours of lecture at one time, and you're taking notes feverishly, and you're coming across names that are being mentioned, phrases in Hebrew and Greek and Latin that are being mentioned dates counsels, documents, and part of the assignment was, anything that gets mentioned in
class needs to be researched. Well, if one person tried to research all of that, it would just be impossible, but we would have teams of four or five people, and we would divvy up these various items, and maybe I would end up with four things, and I would go and I would research those, and I would put together my notes, and I Would photocopy them and give copies to the other folks on my team. Now they're doing the same thing for me. So when we get together at the next class, we're all distributing our research notes so that we all have benefit of everyone's research, and we're working as a team. And you better believe I was never going to show up without my part done. I was not going to let the team down. Let myself down. So you've got the companionship of people that you're in the trenches with, and you've also got this added strength of more than one. Secondly, a partner brings motivation and a reason to produce on time. I don't know how you're wired, but you know, I never wanted to be the weakest link. You know, if something, if something, fell through for my team, I didn't want it to be because I had dropped the ball, that I had not lived up to my end of the expectation. And so I found that, I found that it was important to me to deliver for my partner, for my team. And you know, make note of the fact that Jesus, you know, sent out his disciples two by two. Military operations are all often set up with a a buddy system. We've got the three musketeers All for one and one for all. You know, I operational ethics seem to ride on this value of a partnership, accomplishing a task, a mission and objective. So I just, I can't say enough about the value of incorporating partnership into your desire, your quest, for reaching objectives. And finally, a partnership creates multiplication. Now I don't want to go too far with this, but it's been my experience that when you take one committed leader and combine that committed leader with another committed leader, you get more than one plus one. There's some kind of exponential dynamic that takes place that seems to expand the partnership far beyond the simple addition of one person and another person. I can't really explain exactly what that's about, but I'm finding that it's not just one plus one equals two, but the capabilities of one multiplied by the capabilities of another, seems to increase the quantity and quality of what can be accomplished in terms of delivering on your great commission objectives, setting Great Commission objectives and establishing accountability are greatly advanced and expanded by leveraging checkpoints and partners. Now that wraps up my discussion on checkpoints and partners, and as we close out this final video for skill number three, I just want to briefly touch base on the six skill topics that we've covered in these Last six videos. First of all, there was life transformation focus, setting Great Commission objectives and establishing accountability is focused on life transformation. You know, guiding a church in its mission, to reach, to nurture, to grow people in their faith. It's not about transaction. It's about transformation. Secondly, we talk about simple and measurable when we're setting Great Commission objectives and establishing accountability, we begin by carefully
and prayerfully crafting GCOs that are simple and measurable. Simple provides clarity and understanding. Measurable provides accuracy in evaluating the process. Then we looked at quality and quantity, setting Great Commission objectives, establishing accountability requires this consideration of both quality and quantity as we craft our GCOs. Quantity might be easier to address in statements, because obviously they're so measurable, quality is a little bit more difficult to measure, but I do believe that high quality should be built into the ministry culture, so that over time, quality is just embedded in all that a church does, including the crafting of great commission objectives to the glory of God. We talked about completed actions, the value of having great commission objectives that are viewed as completed actions. You know what's important? What's important is, what is accomplished, not what is intended, and that's what we get when we use that technique of completed actions. Then we look at calendar commitments, you know, organizing our work according to clear deadlines that are firmly rooted with high respect for the calendar, recognizing that we don't want to get pushed to the limit and have to operate last minute under pressure. By being smart, by being wise, by being thinking things through ahead of time, spreading things out, we can do a much higher quality of work under much less pressure. And then finally, what we just completed work with checkpoints and partners. Having those checkpoints, having partners, has a way of moving projects, moving assignments, forward in ways that are much easier to work with, much more successful in accomplishing, effectively doing the things that we set out to do without being under pressure, under stress, last minute frantic, and part of that, of course, is having that gear five focus mode time where we can really zero in on the highest of priorities to be given our absolute best work. Now this completes. This completes our study of those, those six, those six skill topics. It completes our study of skill number three, establishing accountability for the objectives that we have set. And so we're going to wrap this up. Looking ahead. We'll be moving into skill number four. Skill number four is called Managing ministry time, so we're going to take a very deep dive into handling ministry time in a way that allows us to get the most out of our time. Now the first skill topic that we're going to look at next time is called time allotment. How we allot our time is going to be a valuable thing to consider as we consider how to best utilize the time that we have to get the most out of our time, I just want to thank you for the work that you've put in thus far. I look forward to the second half of our course. You know, we're now through with skill number three, and we're moving into four, five and six. So I appreciate the work that you're doing. I'm trusting that you're finding it valuable, that God is working in your life in ways that are that you're able to leverage these things to your advantage. So I just simply pray for God's blessing on you as you continue your studies, and I will see you next time Amen.