The staff at New Vintage Church just finished studying Tony Morgan’s notes on building volunteer teams.  The staff of a non-profit think about one thing all the time: “I need to recruit volunteers.”  This thought drives us all the time.  Hope these notes help even if you are not in the non-profit world because these are great principles to be applied wherever you work.

Becoming a Volunteer Driven Church: Five Keys to Building Healthy Volunteer Teams – in case you haven’t figured it out, you’ll never have enough money to hire enough staff to accomplish your ministry vision. The only way it’ll happen is if you engage volunteers. I will share five simple strategies to connect people in serving opportunities at your church. These proven principles will help you grow the impact of your ministry while reducing the need to hire staff.

Six Steps to Building Healthy Senior Leadership Teams: Never do Leadership Alone! – Based on Tony Morgan’s eBook Take the Lid Off Your Church, this presentation is designed to help you rethink your structure beginning with the senior leadership team.

A Summary of the Book Written by Patrick Lencioni

By Paul D. Borden

CHAPTER SEVEN:  SEIZING THE ADVANTAGE

1. The person in charge of the organization is crucial to the success of any effort to build a healthy organization.

2. The leader needs to set aside time to launch the process.  Then usually comes with an initial off-site meeting.

3. Then the team puts together the playbook.  This is then followed by rigorous implementation (this takes discipline).

A Summary of the Book Written by Patrick Lencioni

By Paul D. Borden

CHAPTER SIX:  THE CENTRALITY OF GREAT MEETINGS

1.   Bad meetings are the birthplace of unhealthy organizations and good meetings are the origin of cohesion, clarity and communication.

2.   Healthy organizations have four types of meetings:

1)    Daily Check-In (5-10 minutes)
The daily check-in minutes are to clear the air about any administrative information that is helpful for people to know.  They provide quick resolution to minor issues that can fester and create unnecessary busy work for the leadership team.

2)    Weekly Staff (45-90 minutes)

Weekly staff meetings are run on a real-time agenda.  This is done by getting everyone in the meeting to share their top priorities for the week in 30 seconds or less.  Then the leader decides what is most important to discuss in the meeting by going to the playbook and looking at what is most important now.  Colors are assigned for what is being done well, what is being done okay and what is not being done.  The meeting focuses on what is not being done and about that which is most important.

3)    Adhoc Topical (2-4 hours)

The Adhoc Topical meetings are to deal with critical issues that have a long term impact on the organization and take significant time and energy to resolve.  Such items could include, direct competition to the organization, a disruptive change to how all related organizations function, a major threat from the culture, a drop in the morale of the organization etc.

4)    Quarterly Off-Site Reviews (1-2 days)

The purpose of Quarterly Off-Site Reviews is to step back and get a fresh perspective, often a “big picture” look, about the organization.  In one way or another, the meeting should be an evaluation of the four disciplines of team, clarity, communication and human systems.

A Summary of the Book Written by Patrick Lencioni

                                                                            By Paul D. Borden

CHAPTER FIVE:  REINFORCE CLARITY – DISCIPLINE FOUR

1. Leaders make sure that the answers to the six questions are not only communicated well but embedded in the organization.

2. The organization needs to institutionalize its culture without creating a bureaucracy.

3. The best human systems are usually the simplest and should be tools to reinforce clarity.

4. Recruitment to the organization is fundamental for health.  People must be hired in relation to core values, which means the answers to the six questions form the basis for interviewing and hiring.  The process to hire should be no more than one page front and back to describe and apply.  The leader’s involvement is key in hiring and should involve some process that takes it out of the office.

5. Orientation should revolve around core values and the answers to the six questions.

6. Performance management is almost exclusively about eliminating confusion.  Good processes are designed to stimulate the right kinds of conversations around the right topics (the answers to the six questions).

7. Members of a leadership team take responsibility for ensuring that compensation and rewards are given to remind employees of what is most important (the answers to the six questions).

8. Direct and personal feedback is really the simplest and most effective form of motivation.   Financial rewards are a satisfier not a driver.

9. Firing must occur in relation to the organization’s values.

It’s my natural tendency to try to do 10 things all at once.  I read 10 books at a time (and never finish any of them), I do 10 projects at a time, and I try to have 10 conversations at a time (FB, twitter, email, call, text, etc — if I seem distracted when you call, I apologize).   The same temptation is also true for us organizationally at the church (and any church or organization for that matter).  Jim Collins has written extensively on this in his book “Good to Great” about staying focused on doing what only you can do and what are you the best in the world.  Focus on that and nothing else.

At New Vintage Church we have decided to be very focused and do only ONE thing.  NOT 10 things but ONE thing.  And that is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.  So what is our strategy?  We do this by creating environments where people are encouraged and equipped to pursue intimacy with God, community with insiders, and influence with outsiders.  Therefore our responsibility is to simply do ONE thing  - create environments and God’s responsibility is to change lives.  Simple but hard to do.  Here is a great illustration on why it’s so important to focus on ONE thing and NOT ten things.  Watch this video and I hope this helps you understand why it’s so important to focus on ONE thing.

A Summary of the Book Written by Patrick Lencioni

By Paul D. Borden

CHAPTER FOUR:  OVERCOMMUNICATE CLARITY – DISCIPLINE THREE

1. Once a team is cohesive and has answered well the six critical questions the team is then ready to over communicate to the rest of the organization.

2. The transfer of information is different than having people understand, internalize and embrace any message.

3. Those following leaders are looking to see if the leaders really believe and mean what they are communicating.

4. The point of leadership is not to keep people entertained but to mobilize people around that which is most important.

5. Leaders need to go throughout the organization spreading true rumors.

6. Leaders must exercise cascading communication.  The leaders clearly tell their direct reports what they need to hear and then tell their direct reports to go say the same things to those they oversee.  There are three keys to cascading communication:

1)    Message consistency from one leader to another (Clarity trumps wording)

2)    Timeliness of delivery (24 hour period)

3)    Live, real time communication (Done face to face)

7. In top down communication the message must be consistent.

8. In upward and lateral communication the message must be consistent, it is not a democracy.

THE ADVANTAGE

A Summary of the Book Written by Patrick Lencioni

By Paul D. Borden

CHAPTER THREE:  CREATE CLARITY – DISCIPLINE TWO

1. The requirement for building a healthy organization is creating clarity which is about achieving alignment.

2. For the most part alignment is not a behavioral or attitudinal problem.

3. The problem comes when the leadership team is not in lockstep about some very specific issues.  The failure to eliminate small gaps at the top, create greater misalignment as one goes down the organization.

4. Clarity requires more rigor than just a mission statement.

5. The leadership team must provide answers to six simple yet critical questions.  The six questions are:

1)    Why do we exist?
This is also known as the core purpose.  This purpose must be completely idealistic.  Answering this question does not end the clarity purpose, it is only the beginning.  This core purpose must be true.  It is not about marketing.  It can fit a variety of categories:  the customer, the industry, a greater cause, the community, employees or wealth.  This means two organizations in the same area or industry may have two distinct core purposes.

2)    How do we behave?
This question is based upon an organization’s values and it demonstrates what the organization will not tolerate.  There are different kinds of values.  This questions is directed toward just two or three corps values.  The question is not directed toward aspirational values (what not the organization hopes will become a value), permission-to-play values (minimum behavioral values) or accidental values (ones that have come about unintentionally).  Two key questions must be asked:

• Is this trait inherent and natural for the organization and has it been apparent for a long time?
• Are we more committed to this value than 99 percent of those in our line of work or ministry?   

To identify that core values are really core is to identify the members of the organization that embody the values and tell why those people are admired.  Next you identify those who thought the highly talented drive those around them crazy.  And then you see if the leaders themselves really embody the values.

3)    What do we do?
This is the simplest of the six questions and takes the least amount of time to answer.  The answer however must be clear and straightforward.  It is not to be crafted to help with marketing.  Instead it needs to be so clear it is plain.

4)    How will we succeed?
This question determines strategy.  An organization’s strategy is the collection of intentional decisions an organization makes to thrive and differentiate itself from those organizations that are similar.  It is the plan for success.  The organization lists all it does.  It then groups things that are similar to establish categories or themes.  It is these themes or categories that form the strategy.  These themes or categories will change as the landscape shifts and changes.

5)    What is most important?
This question addresses the two problems of organizational A.D.D. and silos.  Every organization must have a single top priority for a given period of time.  It is the thematic goal or rallying cry.  It is singular, qualitative, temporary, and shared by the leadership team.  It answers the question; if we accomplish only one thing in the next x months what would it be?  This rallying cry is more to focus the leaders than the entire organization, since if the leaders are focused so too will be the organization.  The cry is the collective responsibility of the entire team.  Defining objectives are the general categories of activity required to achieve the rallying cry.  After the objectives are stated the team takes on identifying their operating objectives.

6)    Who must do what?
All the leaders need to clearly and unambiguously stipulate their respective responsibilities that they will do when they go back to their day jobs.

The Playbook:  This is a simple document that captures the clear concise answers to the six questions.  It must be short, no more than a few pages (two pages is best).  All the leaders keep the playbook with them at all times.

THE ADVANTAGE

A Summary of the Book Written by Patrick Lencioni  By Paul D. Borden

CHAPTER TWO:  BUILD A COHESIVE TEAM – DISCIPLINE ONE

1. Teamwork is a strategic choice not a virtue.
   A leadership team is a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization.
2. The team should consist of 3-12 people.  (However, over 8-9 can cause problems).  People on small teams spend much of their time seeking clarity, confident they can regain the floor easily.  Including people for political correctness or fear is not good leadership.
3. Collective responsibility implies selflessness and shared sacrifices from team members.  Two of the biggest sacrifices are time and emotion.  (They lose time for other responsibilities and engage in difficult and uncomfortable discussions).

4. Most of the team’s objectives are collective ones.  Members of teams are honored and rewarded for team accomplishments more than for individual ones.

5. There are five behavioral principles that every team must embrace to be cohesive.  These behaviors are:  building trust, mastering conflict, achieving commitment, embracing accountability and focusing on results.

1)    First Principle:  The trust required for a cohesive team is called, vulnerability trust.  Achieving this trust requires all to share some personal histories, profiling (with some kind of an assessment tool, e.g. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), avoiding the fundamental Attribution Error (attributing negatives about colleagues to their intentions and behaviors while attributing their own negatives to environmental factors), and having the leader take the lead in being vulnerable.  Without trust teamwork does not occur.

2)    Second Principle:  The fear of conflict (productive/ideological conflict which is the willingness to disagree around important issues and decisions that must be made) is always a sign of problems.  The tendency is to avoid discomfort which transfers it to larger groups of people causing people to play it safe when discussing key issues.  Leaders must find the ideal point of conflict which is between artificial harmony and mean-spirited personal attacks.  Leaders mine for conflict, provide positive reinforcement of conflict and create clear expectations and guidelines around the way conflict needs to be handled.

3)    Third Principle:  A team cannot achieve commitment without proper conflict.  Consensus is different from commitment.  To avoid consensus (decisions usually made too late and with disagreement) teams use a “disagree and commit” strategy.  The leader’s job is to break ties by making a decision.  Such behavior avoids passive agreement that achieves little.  Therefore leaders demand conflict.  They want specific commitments at the end of every meeting.

4)    Fourth Principle:  Peer-to-peer accountability is the primary and most effective source of accountability on a leadership team.  Truly committed team members can confront peers without defensiveness or backlash.  Leaders model this by holding team members accountable in front of team members.  Good leaders confront both about that which can be measured and behaviors.  Conflict is about issues and ideas, while accountability is about performance and behavior.

5)    Fifth Principle:  The whole purpose for all of this is to achieve results, which is the measure of a great team.  The goals must be shared by the entire team, which means everyone has the same priorities.  The leaders make sure that team members have a higher priority about the team then their own areas of responsibility.

A Summary of the Book Written by Patrick Lencioni

By Paul D. Borden

CHAPTER ONE:  THE CASE FOR ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH

 There are three biases that hinder leaders from embracing organization health:

1)    The Sophistication Bias:  Organization health does not require great intelligence or sophistication, just uncommon levels of discipline, courage, persistence and common sense.

2)    The Adrenaline Bias:  Becoming healthy takes time and the issues appear not to be urgent, when in reality they are.

3)    The Qualification Bias:  It requires a level of conviction and intuition that many overly analytical leaders have a hard time accepting.

An organization has integrity (is healthy) when it is whole, consistent and complete, that is, when its management, operations, strategy and culture fit together and make sense.

Being smart is half of the effective business equation; the other half is being healthy.

• Smart:  strategy, marketing, finance and technology (decision sciences)
• Healthy:  minimal politics and confusion, high morale and productivity and low turnover among good employees

Major difference between successful companies and mediocre ones is health not smartness.  Healthy organizations get smarter over time since they do not allow dysfunction, ego and politics to get in the way.

Health involves four simples disciplines:

1)    Discipline One:  Build a Cohesive Leadership Team

2)    Discipline Two:  Create Clarity

3)    Discipline Three:  Over Communicate Clarity

4)    Discipline Four:  Reinforce Clarity