Our Senior leadership Team gathers for face-to-face meetings every few weeks. Last week we decided to overlap our time with the Drive Conference in Atlanta. At the Drive Conference, church leaders from around the world get a chance to “look under the hood” of the ministries at North Point Community Church. Andy Stanley is their remarkable Senior Pastor - a unique combination of a great leader and a great communicator. Under his leadership, North Point has developed and honed systems and processes for their expression of the church. The purpose of the conference is to download these systems and processes into interested churches. It’s very prescriptive, but effective.
That got me thinking about organic vs. control, systems vs. creativity, flexibility vs. plan. Chances are a couple of those words you readily identify with and a couple of the others cause you to bristle. There is often a tension between two points of view. When you consider the other point of view, you probably either see it as confining and restrictive or wasteful and reckless. But what if the best approach is a combination of the two? What if you can have both? What if you need both?
The truth is the best organizations balance systems and creativity. An organization of systems without creativity is in decay and decline. An organization of creativity without systems will quickly burn itself out. Leaders need to make sure there is tension between the two points of view then manage that tension . To do that, they need to keep the overarching goal before everyone so that decisions are based on the desired result, not a personal preference.
Define the win…Develop systems for support…Explode creativity…Structure for release.
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