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.