Strategic Banning

Despite the thoughtfulness of this strategic planning document, it neither inspires people to become a Church Unique nor provides practical, daily guidance for leaders. Why? Let’ s start by examining two very different approaches for any vision or planning document. The approaches can be defined by a subtle change in emphasis: Are we talking about the organization to people, or talking to people about the organization?  First, are we talking about the organization to the people?  The ministry plan with ten pages and eighty-four pieces of content emphasizes explanation and justification of all the activity in the organization.  The volume, complexity, and structure of the report are overwhelming to most ministry professionals, not to mention volunteers. To state the limitation of the classic strategic plan in one sentence, it misses the human element. Remember those large, multifold travel maps? I travel a lot and enjoy being with churches across the country. But if I had to pull out one of those cumbersome, old-school maps every time I jumped into my Hertz, I would go insane. Which side is up? What part of the map do I look at? Which ramp do I take? The map would probably end up in the back seat — never to be unfolded again.

An alternate approach asks, are we talking to people about the organization? The priority here is not the plan itself but the church leader, volunteer, or attender for whom the report is actually intended. In this case, the document leans toward simplicity in order to bring clarity.  Using the map analogy again, this is like getting directions from Mapquest.  I enter my starting point and my destination and get step-by-step driving directions with a highlighted map showing me exactly where to go. Simple, clear, and easy to understand. Undoubtedly, both kinds of map may be accurate, but only one gives me clear and specific guidance as to how to get to my destination without an overload of data.  These two case studies represent thousands of stories from similar vision teams and long—range planning committees in churches across our land.  

Three Fallacies
As we continue to recast vision, I want to take a moment to debunk strategic planning. I do this only to inspire better visioning. To be clear, though I ’ m offering a strong critique of strategic planning, I am in no way discouraging the process of  “ future thinking ” or planning in general.

I’m asking leaders to reconsider how they execute and express their planning work.  To do so, we will explore three key fallacies of classic strategic planning: The Vision Shredder, The Silo Builder and The Leadership Blinders.

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