I’ve decided to share a secret with you today; one valuable nugget of knowledge that has made a tremendous difference in my working life over the past two years. It’s one simple sentence that has helped me clobber difficult projects, shave hours off meetings and bring leadership together in fruitful conversation with creative types.
What is this magical question I speak of?
“What do you want to accomplish through this?”
Simple, right? All hyperbole aside, when I started approaching projects and tasks with this question in mind, it made a dramatic difference in the outcome of just about every project it was involved in. It helps me accomplish three things:
It Gets to the Root Problem
It’s all too easy to focus on the symptoms instead of addressing the cause. You can spend hours nitpicking the details of a design or the layout of a communication piece, but many times you simply get lost in the details because you’re asking the wrong questions.
When you establish the goal of anything you create, it’s a lot easier to troubleshoot the little things and set firm benchmarks for what would make the project successful.
It Helps Teams Think Outside of the Box
People get attached to their own ideas… especially the ones they borrow from another successful force out in the marketplace. I think everyone is familiar with the frenzied office “pop-in”: “I saw X down the street is doing X… We should be doing X too!”
The problem is, these sort of projects typically fail because the intended goal is unclear. You fall into the “me-too” trap by trying to keep up with the cool stuff the joneses are doing instead of chasing after the results the joneses are seeking.
Initially removing the method/medium from the conversation will do wonders for helping your team think outside of the box around a desired outcome. What brings success for one ministry may not work the same in your neck of the woods.
It Adds Focus to an Entire Project
It’s hard to mess a project up when the goal is always in focus. Try to nail down the top five things you want to achieve with any project, and test everything you do against those goals. If it doesn’t aid the mission, cut it out!
So there you have it… my secret weapon. Wield it wisely and use it to knock something out of the park for your ministry this week.
It’s so simple, but so true!
Thanks, Scott! That’s the beauty of it. I like to think of it as my little meeting-ending hand grenade
Love this article! I can’t tell you how many pastors have come up to me after a presentation on the challenges of social media, and have worriedly asked me questions about how to put up a Facebook page or start Twitter. They seem so passionate about entering the new electronic age, but have absolutely no idea what they want to accomplish. These tools are getting too complicated to just jump in and see what happens.