Nimbleness

By Rev. Patrick L. Clements
President, Church Extension Plan

In our rapidly changing world, the concept of strategic planning in the typical three to five year time horizon has largely been replaced by a 12 month or shorter basis.  The key component for organizational leadership in this season is to maintain an organization-wide sense of nimbleness.

Nimbleness is defined by our friend Webster as follows, “marked by quick, alert, clever conception, comprehension, or resourcefulness. Responsive, sensitive.”

Here are some key elements needed in an organization if it is to become or stay nimble:

• Have well-articulated and written mission and vision statements. These statements, along with a clearly written expression of the agreed upon core values, become the bedrock philosophical underpinning of all decisions going forward. They produce a bulwark against which to evaluate plans and results going forward.

• Have well-written goals which are both time specific and measurable. Among these goals should be a budget or financial plan for the period of strategic thinking covered.

• Have a dashboard of key indicators that speak to the health and direction of the enterprise on a daily or weekly basis. These reports must reflect reality and relate to the plan and budget. Measurement is an essential element of developing or maintaining nimbleness.

• Learn to listen both inside the organization among its publics and in the greater world. This involves being a lifelong learner who is actively reading the current literature in the area of focus of the organization and in the broader economic stage. We need to become world class in our ability to observe, explore and synthesize information to use in our process of leadership.

• Agree that mistakes will happen. The key is to make them quickly and to not repeat them. We need to be constant and relentless in our evaluation and course correction. We evaluate, versus plan, budget and the broader economy. Deal with reality, not what you want to see or hear.

• Avoid the paralysis of analysis. This is not to say that we don’t analyze. Rather it is to say that we do it constantlyand quickly. We then decide and move on – nimble, responsive to changing circumstances.

I know this is a tall order, but with God’s help and our attention to these matters, we can do it. We can stay nimble organizationally and meet the challenges of the day.