How does it happen where you work? What is the filter that you use to determine if a decision is the right one or not. Here’s a great quote that exemplifies a great filter for making decisions. It’s taken from the book Made to Stick (p. 29):
Herb Kelleher [the longest-serving CEO of Southwest] once told someone, “I can teach you the secret to running this airline in thirty seconds. This is it: We are THE low-fare airline. Once you understand that fact, you can make any decision about this company’s future as well as I can.“Here’s an example,” he said. “Tracy from marketing comes into your office. She says her surveys indicate that the passengers might enjoy a light entree on the Houston to Las Vegas flight. All we offer is peanuts, and she thinks a nice chicken Caesar salad would be popular. What do you say?”The person stammered for a moment, so Kelleher responded: “You say, ‘Tracy, will adding chicken Caesar salad make us THE low-fare airline from Houston to Las Vegas? Because if it doesn’t help us become the unchallenged low-fare airline, we’re not serving any damn chicken salad.'”
I probably wouldn’t have used his language, but I think his response offers some powerful lessons on how to make decisions. For one, the CEO was clear about the core mission of the company. This allowed him to make concrete decisions easily and quickly.
Many think, though, that simply having a mission statement will become that filter, but it’s not true. I thought that by adopting our current purpose statement (to lead our Carrollwood community to become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ) my ails would subside, and everything would become crystal clear. It didn’t happen.
Here’s what I’ve learned since then.
As a church pastor, there are numerous questions that I could possibly have to deal with. Everyone of those possible projects and ministry opportunities could multiply my work load and stress. In our church, though, I’m attempting to move to a model of ministry that vastly eliminates difficult questions. Here’s the question- “will it bless and help the weekend worship servive, or will it bless and help the small group system?” If the answer is no, I don’t want to do it. If the answer is yes, I want to try it.
This is based upon an administrative and small-group paradigm as presented in the book Activate. The book Simple Church was a huge step forward in helping churches align their method to their mission. So in a typical “Simple Church” they would have a purpose statement like “Love God, Love People, Serve the World.” Loving God would correlate with the weekend worship service. Loving people would connect people to small groups. And serving the world would usher people to get connected to a service ministry. This sounds pretty simple, but it basically just makes a church reshuffle it’s ministries to point to a particular area of purpose. I believe the Activate method is better and is much more simple. In this paradigm a church only does two things: a weekend worship service and small groups. Any ministries are run through the small group system.
I’m not there yet, but I look forward to the day when my decision making process has been made exponentially more simple.
What about you? What filter do you use for making decisions? How has it worked? Where are you trying to go?
Rodlie, you have a good way of communicating. This stuff is good! All of it. I love this filter concept. I wish we had one for our denomination. Some would say we do… the Three Angels, but from my perspective, not very many people know what that is. So what is the filter for my church? I don't know, we don't have one. It has got me thinking…
The three angel's messages as a filter is an interesting idea. I'd love to hear more about that sometime…