The Advantage

I have long enjoyed the wisdom in Patrick Lencioni’s books on leadership (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Death by Meeting, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, et al.).

In his book, The Advantage, Lencioni proposes that “the single greatest advantage any company [you can read “church”] can achieve is organizational health.”  This, “because the health of an organization provides the context for… everything else that happens within it.”

Lencioni suggests that the single greatest indicator of organizational health is clarity.  An organization [church] has clarity if the leadership can answer these six critical questions:

1.     Why do we exist? (what is our mission?)

2.     How do we behave? (what are our core values?)

3.     What do we do? (what is our activity?)

4.     How will we succeed?  (what is our strategy?)

5.     What is most important, right now? (what is presently our “rallying cry”?)

6.     Who must do what? (what is our playbook?)

I found the book had several “takeaways” for leadership on the South Carolina District, especially the need for a single top priority or “Rallying Cry” – what Lencioni refers to as “The Thematic Goal.”  This question – “If we accomplish only one thing over the next nine months, what should it be?” – will be the focus of the next strategy meeting of our district leadership.

What is the “one thing” the church you serve must accomplish in the next year?