Will they follow me?

A leader's worst nightmare is to have nobody following.  Yet, I have seen this happen time and time again when it comes to developing, communicating and implementing strategy.  In my last post I underscored the importance of getting maximum buy-in at all stages of developing a strategy, and it's even important to get buy-in about the need for a strategy before that!  Here are some of the methods for doing so. 

Pledging Meeting

Before beginning the process of developing a strategy, it is sometimes necessary to get your people to buy-in to the need of one.  This, in itself, can be something of a task, especially if some of your people feel that they’re "doing just fine, thank you very much". 

It is important to paint a picture of the reasons for the need for a strategy; to give time and space for outlining recent trends, the size of the task of reaching the unsaved and the capacity for delivering compassionate care.  In many cases it will be necessary to quantify decline and project where that will end up if there is not a change of direction.  

Near the conclusion of this process, but before you actually begin the development of the strategy, you could consider having a pledging session. 

During the session, corps members place an anonymous, unsigned, sealed envelope on the holiness table during a time of prayerful reflection.   

The envelope will contain a commitment slip offering a few alternatives for them to tick boxes.  They may be something like:

 ð       I pledge to help discover God’s vision for our corps 

 ð       I am not yet ready to help discover God’s vision for our corps  

 ð       I do not believe that we need to discover God's vision for our corps

This will also help the leader to confirm his informal estimate that he has sufficient buy-in to continue the visioning exercise. 

Prayer Commitments

Get people who are part of the corps to commit to praying for the development of the strategy, and particularly to seek God’s direction for the corps. Ask them to feed through their answers to pray to you, so that they can be considered for collation into the strategy document. 

Informal conversations

This is an effective way of getting ideas and input in the early stages, and can be quite effective because, generally, people are more forthcoming in casual conversations than they are in formal processes such as interviews and surveys. 

There are some important things to be aware of, though.

1.    You don’t have to talk to everyone, but you do have to get a big enough sample for it to be representative (a typical corps is too small for sample sizing calculations to be useful, so it’s down to gut feel for this) and you have to make it known that anyone can take the initiative to talk to you in this way. 

2.    Make sure you get a diverse range of ages, interests, gender, etc. 

3.    Make sure you include the people who are generally opposed to change, to your leadership, or that you find generally difficult to deal with.  Miss them out now at your own peril later.  

A Survey

Surveys can be a bit wooden and limited in usefulness, but if you already have the beginnings of where you might be going, they are a helpful in sorting out Option A from Options B, C or D and at the very least provide another tool for engaging people in the process. 

Workshops

Workshops are, by far, my favourite tool for moving a group towards consensus.   The back and forth in the room has the power to draw on bucket loads of dynamics that dealing with individuals in one-on-one discussions cannot.  These dynamics can be brought into play to bring members of the group closer to agreeing on a vision statement that they are reasonably happy with.  Sometimes it might get heated, and at other times it might be moving or laughter filled, but it is all grist for the mill and moves you closer to the goal.    (Of course, as a leader you have to have the confidence and skills to be able to manage the dynamics in the room, but if you don’t feel confident, it’s quite OK to ask an outside facilitator to do so.)

It is often good to go into the workshop phase with an early draft on the understanding that it can be totally dismantled by the group if they choose too (It never is, but they need to know they have the right to do so.)

Circulate Final Draft

The final draft, which should be almost set in concrete, should be sent around to the stakeholders to get their final comments before taking it to your board to get official sign-off.

Board Sign-Off

Whatever level of board you work with (corps council, divisional), make sure you get a good understanding of the content and the implications.  At this stage you may even have to appear over-cautious in spelling everything out, especially those aspects that will appear negative to some people; “So you understand, Bandmaster, that this means downsizing the band by 50%, right?”  If people have surprises further down the track, it will always be your fault and never their own! 

Now you are ready to communicate the strategy and start implementing it.  These will be the subject of my next post.