Key Takeaways:

The learning and growth perspective aligns your human resources (staff and volunteers) and your physical and technological infrastructure with your strategy.

Define your organization’s learning and growth needs to support the strategic objectives on your strategy map:

- Technology and infrastructure requirements.

- Organizational culture requirements (does your culture align with the core values on your strategy map?).

- Core competencies (knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal attributes of your staff and volunteers).

Consider the time, energy, attention, and finances that your staff and volunteers have available and whether they are serving internal “customers” (others working within the organization) or external “customers” (those your organization serves).

Resources:

Michael D. Watkins, “What is Organizational Culture? And Why Should We Care?” (Harvard Business Review)

Edward J. Cripe, 31 Core Competencies Explained (Workforce.com)

CPA Canada, The Chartered Professional Accountant Competency Map

Asian Efficiency, TEA: The 3 Pillars of Productivity You Need to Unlock Your Full Potential

Key Takeaways:

Your internal processes can support relationships your organization has with:

- New ways to serve those you’re currently serving or new people you could be serving (or a combination of the two).

- Deeper relationships with those you’re currently serving.

- Effective relationships with external stakeholders.

Your internal processes can create opportunities for operational excellence:

- Improve your current processes by reducing costs and increasing speed and quality results.

- Fully use your assets.

- Manage capacity.

Remember that internal processes are the foundation required to support and achieve the objectives you’ve set in the beneficiary/stakeholder and stewardship perspectives of the strategy map.

Resources

The Organized Money: How to Start Getting Organized for the New Year

Key Takeaways:

The stewardship perspective of the strategy map encompasses your finances, physical assets (assets you can touch), and intangible assets (assets you can’t touch such as your website and social media presence).

There are two main stewardship strategies:

- Grow your revenue by finding new donors and by increasing donations from current donors.

- Make your current revenues and assets more productive by reducing direct expenses (costs associated with running your programs) and indirect expenses (costs you would have regardless of whether you were running any programs) and by using the assets you already have more efficiently.

What are your next steps?

- List every way you receive money and every physical and intangible asset you have.

- Brainstorm ways that you can grow your revenue and increase productivity by using the ways you already receive money and the assets you already have.

- From your brainstorm ideas, decide on 3-5 objectives that directly support your beneficiary/stakeholder objectives, being careful to balance the growth and productivity approaches.

Key Takeaways:

Make sure you define your “customer” clearly and correctly — beware of serving your “employees” instead of your true “customer”.

There are three general customer value proposition strategies:

- Operational excellence focuses on streamlining operations and reducing costs.

- Product differentiation focuses on creating a product or service that stands out from the crowd.

- Customer intimacy focuses on personalizing a product or service based on a customer’s needs and cultivating a long-term relationship with customers.

No matter which customer value proposition strategy is used, the basic aspects of a product or service, customer relationship, and brand identity need to be maintained to appeal to those you serve.

Ministry organizations will usually choose to focus on customer intimacy — getting to know the people they serve so they can tailor their services to their needs and create ongoing relationships with them.

Resources:

Art of Manliness Podcast Episode 518: The Quest for a Moral Life

Competitive Strategies: Operational Excellence, Customer Intimacy, Product Leadership

Key Takeaways:

There are two sides to everything: a strength can also be a weakness and vice versa; a threat can also be an opportunity and vice versa.

Use PESTLE to help you think through the factors that can present opportunities and threats to your organization.

Don’t be afraid to ask for an outside opinion on your organization’s strengths and weaknesses. The opinion may not be completely correct but there may be a nugget of truth that you can use to improve on your weaknesses. You may also be pleasantly surprised at what others think you do well!

The people in your organization and the organization’s culture are often big factors in an organization’s success.

Key Takeaways:

A vision statement defines what the organization is working towards and why.

A mission statement defines how the organization is going to get there and is made up of three components:

- The impact the organization will have.

- The audience the organization wishes to impact.

- The one to three actions the organization will take to have an impact on its audience.

Values represent who you are as an organization and are used to make organizational decisions.

Strategic themes and results are medium-term goals and the outcomes the organization wants to see when those goals are accomplished.

Key Takeaways:

* A strategy is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term goals under conditions of uncertainty.

* Jesus and Paul both used strategies in their ministry (Matthew 10; Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; Acts 17)

* A strategy map can help communicate your strategy within your organization:

- People tend to remember visual representations of ideas better.

- A visual representation of your strategy can help you identify holes you need to fill to achieve your organization’s goals.

- People can see how they fit into the strategy and why what they do is important.

Resource Links:

Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, Harvard Business Review, “Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It”

One-Page Balanced Strategic Plan Example for Government Not-for-Profit

Key Takeaways:

A CEO focuses on the future of the organization rather than the details of how things get done.

It’s best not to approach a problem as if you know the true answer already.

Be careful not to solve the symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself.

Micromanaging and trying to do everything yourself often leads to burnout.

Communicate with and ask questions of those who are closest to the work to find out what could be done differently or what changes they would like to see.

There’s usually more than one “right” way to do something and it’s important to be looking for the new “right” way to do things.

Everyone should have the freedom to learn skills as they develop and then to put their own spin on them.

Create an environment where people feel comfortable to learn at their own pace.

People get confidence when they feel trusted. It gives them the confidence to keep going.

People often learn the most from their mistakes. Mistakes may be costly in the short term but they usually become valuable lessons for the future.

Resource Link:

Cornerstone Baptist Church — Stratford Podcast: Work as a Blessing + Interview with Cindy Dockendorff (interview starts at 27:30)

Key Takeaways:

* A CEO is:

1) The highest ranking person in an organization.

2) Responsible for the overall success of an organization.

3) The ultimate authority in making final decisions.

* The CEO reports to and is directly accountable to the board of the organization.

* A CEO’s responsibilities are:

1) Making major decisions.

2) Managing overall operations and resources.

3) Being the main point of communication.

Key Takeaways:

Church leaders and pastors are running organizations with little to no training on how to do so.

Churches and faith ministries are similar to family businesses — in fact, churches are families!

While business training could help church leaders run their organizations better, most business training does not focus on non-profits much less churches!

This podcast will explain management principles and ideas specifically for use in ministry contexts.

20- to 30-minute episodes will be released every Monday.

Please let us know if you have suggestions for helpful topics or something you’re struggling with that you’d like to have addressed!

Resource Link:

Harvard Business Review Ideacast Podcast Episode 777: What Sets Family Businesses Apart