Will Mancini

The secret to processes for discovery or mastery is to avoid straight line thinking. There are two important times when making a “b-line” for something will hinder you. I use both of these diagrams frequently when I navigate the Vision Pathway. 

The first diagram I use is called the “clarity spiral.” I use it when for any visioning process to illustrate an important truth of process: In discovery, vital movement at the beginning of the process will feel indirect and therefore slow. This indirect movement includes steps of preparation, orientation, and perspective development. But with each process step, like a 4 hour collaborative meeting, the movement toward the center speeds up. The first two meetings take you only slightly close to point B, but in the last two meetings you can zip around pretty fast. I had one pastor validate the spiral by using the illustration of his kitchen renovation. He said it felt like his kitchen was a mess all of the time, until the end, when it all came together quickly. If you are leading a discovery processes, lead the journey and set expectations with the spiral . It will buy you the patience you need in the beginning. 

Like a discovery process, you also can’t follow a straight line  in a mastery process.  This simple idea was drilled home in Set Godin’s little book gem called The Dip. Here is the picture from the book. The premise is that you can’t move directly, via straight line, from a basic state to a mastery state in any category. You actually have to go through a season or stage where greater effort yields less results. I call it the tunnel of chaos. It is critical to anticipate this stage to know when enduring the dip is worth it or a waste of time. Any good coach appreciates the dip and the role of encouragement, support and direction to guide someone through it.

Where can you use these drawings this week, or this month in your leadership?

I want to share some thoughts as I focus more and more time on training other consultants, coaches and pastors on how to facilitate visioning. This year will represent a significant shift from my primary role of leading vision processes to reproducing vision processes.  While I have been apprenticing others from day one, the current shift will have me focusing more on apprenticing full-time navigators, training pastors, and making tools (including but not limited to new books). Read this related post on why I write.

As I share these thoughts, I want to encourage you toward reproducing your own vision. Consider these questions:

• How will your vision spread today without you being directly involved?
• How much time do you allocate to working on vs. working in the ministry?
• Who are you apprenticing right now?
• As you have experienced God’s blessing in ministry how have you become a bottleneck?
• Now that you have delegated what you don’t do well, how have you multiplied what only you can do well?
• If you were hit by a Mack Truck today, would the legacy factor of your life take your current vision much farther? 

In the series on the Art of Not Being There, I will share more with you on:

• How I am reproducing Church Unique’s Vision Pathway in a Church Unique Experience “kit” in cooperation with Group Publishing. The kit will be designed for church teams to do a vision process on their own through workbook, videos, and lots of tools that go along with the Church Unique process.
• Introducing the people I work with and how I am building the team at Auxano
• Our own strategy for scaling and expansion without diluting our culture and vision
• Special days on my blog dedicated to the craft of facilitation and great white-board learnings

I look forward to your interaction on the art of not being there.

I recently posted why every church is in transition. The next natural question is how do you lead in transition? While leading change is real work,  I think that most leaders make it more difficult than it has to be. Why? The single greatest problem in leading change has to do with the source of meaning in the organization. If you can keep your eye on the ball of meaning, then leading and experiencing change is a whole new ball game.

Here is one principle to focus on: If you want to lead change, change the common denominator first. Think of the common denominator as the most-likely, most common, source of meaning for people every day. The common denominator in your organization today is most likely “the how.” By “the how” I mean  how I, as an individual, get things done, and how we, as an organization, get things done.  The immediate challenge presented with this source of meaning is that “the how” must change to stay viable.  Therefore we want to anchor meaning in something deeper than the “how.” And there are at least three alternatives: what, why and where. (What are we ultimately doing? Why do we do what we do? Where is God taking us?) Properly understood and articulated these can and will sustain a timeless sense of shared meaning.

Therefore your four big roadblocks to leading transition are the four reasons why “the how” is so persistent, even addictive in becoming the deepest source of meaning. Consider:

1. The oppressive, automatic dailyness of “the how”
2. The concrete nature of “the how”
3. The personalities and relational connection within “the how”
4. The tendency to affirm and recognize “the how”

For all of us, “the how” stares is in the face daily almost forcing us to find meaning from it and the patterns, comfort, relational connections, and successes it creates.

But ultimately meaning is waiting to be discovered, found, nourished and celebrated in the what, the why and the where of the organization, not the how. Make no mistake, when vision is clear people are usually more than glad to change “the how.”

A recent consulting engagement provides a stunning illustration of “the how” as a common denominator.  While working with a church in Rochester, NY, I learned about Kodak’s massive decline in the last decade as a global juggernaut in film-based photography. At their peak, Kodak had 82,000 people in Rochester and had 85% of the world market share in film-based photographic imaging products. Now they have 7,000 people in the city and less the 20% of market share. The simple reason boils down to the problem of “the how” as common denominator. Ironically, they were the ones to invent and even patent digital-based photography methods. But the shear momentum and hubris of “the how,” that is,  making images using film, eclipsed the future of making images any other way. Rather than inventing and then leading the new day of photography, they invented it, only to let others to develop the future.

What if every day Kodak employees had been reminded:

1. Our “what” or our big idea is capturing image (and nothing else)
2. Our “why” is beauty, and cherishing human memories, and making image capture accessible to all.
3. Our “where” is doing whatever it takes in innovation and research to lead the world’s ability to capture images.

You can see very quickly how much meaning is creating without having to mention “the how” of film-based processing.

On Tuesday, the Atlanta co::Lab kicked off in typical fashion, talking about our need to reimagine vision & steer clear of thinkholes.  In this first session we do an engaging life map exercise where each church presents a “tradeshow” display of where they’ve been and why they’re at the co::Lab. Given the amazing diversity in the room, one unmistakable dynamic really struck me- every church is in transition.

What’s true of this unique subset of leaders is true anywhere. If you haven’t named it yet, transition is the new normal for the church. Transition is ubiquitous.

Consider these 8 mini-snapshots of transition from the co::Lab churches. Which one do you relate with?

 2 year-old church running 65: ”The first two years we were focused on doing. Now we want to focus on being; we want to start envisioning a new future that’s not running on a hamster wheel.” 

150 year-old Presbyterian church running 250: ”We have set sail for change and we are too far ahead to go back.  But while we’re off shore, we’re not exactly sure where we are going.”

 10 year-old community church running 2500: ”We have always been on mission but how we manifest that mission is different at this size; we need clarity how to do that.”

 25 year-old Southern Baptist church running 220: The team drew a picture of an old church building with the steeple removed. The steeple was replaced with tree growing from the roof.  The caption said, “We are a re-plant in an existing church.”

 0 year-old church with 2 planters: These guys are building their core team and currently have 5 (including girlfriends and wives). At the top of their life map they wrote the word “UNKNOWN.” How’s that for transition?

 1 year-old church running 30: ”We are transitioning from building a stable theological core to focusing outward on cultural engagement.”

 13 year-old church running 1200: “The last two years was a season of pruning and navigating the “train wreck” of an attractional-missional collision. We are now sensing a new day of fruitful mission, but not sure what it will look like.”

40 year-old church running 1300: “We are above average in too many things, pulling in different directions.” The picture of activity without progress was conveyed as a large, new interstate and mix-master, but with no signage. These guys are ready for directional clarity!

Why is transition normative? Our time and place in human history baptizes us with change in many ways:

•  Massive economic shifts
• Communication & technology revolution
• Proliferation of mirco-cultures (increased diversity of age, ethnicity and consumer preferences)
• Declining influence of the church in the West
• Increased diversity of emerging church models

And the list goes on. What kind of transition are you navigating? 

On Good Friday it is interesting to note that our Savior’s leadership was riddled with transition. The climax of which is death, preceding resurrection, preceding ascension.

In the next few weeks I would love to meet you and share with you some of the experiences, principles, skills, and tools for discerning God’s direction and casting vision in your ministry.

ATLANTA CO:LAB (starts March, 30)

Tomorrow (no it’s not too late) come to Mountain Lake Church for the kick-off of the Atlanta Vision co::lab. This is the first of 5, 4 hour sessions that we will do (1-5pm), once a month on a Tuesday afternoon. The cost is $300 per month.  We are pretty much full, but we could take one or two more teams if you were really interested. E-mail me if you are interested. 

SAN ANTONIO: METHODIST LARGE CHURCH INITIATIVE (April 12-15)

This is going to be a great event with lots of opportunity to interact, including a pre-conference workshop. Here is more information. 

ORLANDO: EXPONENTIAL PRE-CONFERENCE LAB (April 19-20)

I will be leading a Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning time workshop (6 hours of training) before Exponential as well as leading some break-outs. I would love to meet you here, and it only costs $49. Sign up through Exponential. If you do mention this post to me via e-mail, and I will bring you a FREE collaboration cube. 

CHICAGO: Q CONFERENCE (April 27-19)

As always, I can’t wait for the unique Q Conference . This is a fabulous time to connect and if your going to be around, let me know.