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Leadership & Life
Building Your Strategic Muscle
Mal Fletcher
Strategic thinking involves the ability to project forward to a preferred future outcome and then to develop the practical steps needed to take us there. The church desperately needs strategic thinkers!!
Strategic thinking is more a skill than an art. It can be learned, practised and developed. There are many skills available to help us think more strategically. Here are a couple of examples that you might like to study further:
1. Brainstorming
Brainstorming is one of the most effective tools for innovative thinking. It allows people to release their inherent creative abilities in a stream-of-consciousness, free flow of ideas.
Brainstorming is a technique to get your mind working and to get you out of thinking along predictable lines.
In a group brainstorming session, leaders, designers or managers are able to throw ideas freely around the room, without fear of judgement or criticism. From those ideas, some of them wild and provocative, will come a short list of more viable and practical concepts.
There are two fundamental patterns for thought. Some writers have called them 'convergent thinking' and 'divergent thinking'. Convergent thinking is all about focus. It's about converging on an answer; narrowing the options down as quickly as possible. Divergent thinking, however, likes to remain open for as long as possible. It can appear very vague, as it seeks to explore many creative alternatives.
That's the beauty of brainstorming: it encourages divergent thinking in a world that constantly wants to rush toward a quick, predictable result. Brainstorming only works when people are released to be as innovative and daring as possible.
2. Future-projecting
This process has also been called 'long-jumping'. It's a technique that allows you to think about the future by taking a mental jump from the present. When athletes compete in the long jump, they take a few steps back before projecting themselves forward. How do we apply this to mental exercise?
Future-projecting begins with identifying an aspect of the future you would like to focus on, and a time frame you would like to project to. For example, you might ask the question, 'I wonder what a local church will be like in the year 2020?' In that one sentence, you have set both the subject matter and the date.
Now, you must take three steps back. Pick three times in history to go back to, trying to spread them out so that you have a feeling of change over time. For example, you might try using the dates 100 AD, 1600 AD, 1950 AD and today. Use your imagination and what you know of history to describe what churches were like at each of those times.
Now you are ready to launch yourself into the future. Take the date you chose in your question, 2020, and have some fun dreaming about what church might be like then. Write down any ideas that come to your mind, using your knowledge of human nature, technological developments, and trends in society. You don't need to be a scholar to do this - it should be fun.
Strategic planning involves a continuous process, a cycle, of thinking, planning, acting, then evaluating and back to thinking again. There are many skills available to help us think more strategically. Following on from the last issue of E-news, here are a couple more to get you started:
1. Mind-mapping
Mind-mapping sounds like some kind of new age gimmick for aura-reading. Actually, it's a great way of developing an overview of a situation.
Before I wrote The Pioneer Spirit, I draw up a mind-map on my notebook computer, using a piece of software designed for that purpose. My central oval featured the words 'The Pioneer Spirit'. That was the definition of the project. From there, I draw other ovals; some of them featuring the chapter titles and others dealing with practical issues like size, cover art and so on. Then, each chapter heading was given a series of branches. Each branch dealt with a key point I wanted to raise in that chapter. I could also add projected time deadlines for the completion of each chapter.
Often, when I sat down to write, I would look back at that picture. Of course, I was able to change it along the way as new things found their way into the book idea. However, having the picture in front of me has helped me to see the end from the beginning, so that I'm always aware of where I'm going. I use the same process in preparing articles and sermons.
We use mind-mapping in our TV production meetings, too. It's a great way to write up an agenda, because it allows you to add connected ideas without using words alone. And it's a lot more interesting to look at than a list written down the page!
2. Time-lines
The art of strategic thinking, remember, is to identify a preferred future and then develop practical steps that will take you there. The time-line technique is one tool that's used a great deal by project managers and strategic thinkers of all kinds.
Time-lining, like mind-mapping, starts with specifying your end target. Perhaps you have an event to plan. Draw a long line on a piece of paper and mark down, at the end of the line, the date of your event. The start of the line represents the present. Now, take a second piece of paper and brainstorm about all the tasks you will need to complete before the event. Then, make a more concrete list based on your brainstorm ideas.
The next step is simply to take the tasks and place them along your time-line, between the present and the event date. But don't work in forward motion - go backwards from just before the event itself. Specify a date for each task. Those dates will become your progressive deadlines.
Techniques like these can be a lot of fun, and that's important when you're trying to be creative. Jesus said that we must become like children if we are to inherit God's kingdom. If we're going to be inventive in a kingdom way, we must learn to create as children do - with an attitude of playfulness. The thinking tools described above should be used in fun ways, so that we can achieve a serious result. They are proven creative techniques that will help us to explore challenges and problems from unexpected angles. They can lift us out of our comfort zones so that we see things from a fresh vantage-point.
More strategic thinking tips in chapter on strategic thinking in 'The Pioneer Spirit'.
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