What's A Leader to Do?

“In the past two and a half months, we have done over a dozen meetings with people who are angry and upset about the vote to change our denomination's policy,” one church judicatory staff person told us recently. “And we’re exhausted.” He looked it, too. 

This leader is dealing with a hard situation but not a unique one:

• People in his organization are unhappy. 
• They are threatening to take their "business" elsewhere. 
• And he has to decide how he's going to deal with that. 

So far he and others on his team have been chasing around their territory trying to prevent people from making good on their threat. That not only doesn't seem to be making much difference to the people who are angry–in some ways it's just adding fuel to the fire–it's also killing him and his team.

What's a leader to do?

This past September we wrote an article offering leaders 5 tips for getting through a crisis like this. But we think that before any of these ideas can be helpful, this leader has a decision to make. He has to answer the question: 

Am I going to allow myself to be trapped by the expectations that come with doing life and work in a consumable model? Or am I going to strive to live and work in renewable ways?

In a consumable model:

• Your bottom line is doing whatever you have to in order to ensure the survival of your organization over and against your competitors.
• The very thought of losing resources (e.g., money, customers, "members," etc.) sends you in a tail spin. 
• And you'll do whatever it takes to avoid that, even if it goes against your own values, even if it kills you all.

In a renewable model, your bottom line is doing what matters to you, to your organization, and to the world. (For our church friends, doing what matters is directly connected, of course, to what matters to God!)

Even if you've already committed to making the shift to a renewable way of doing life and work together, when you're in the middle of a crisis, it can be hard to remember "what matters" to you at a bottom line kind of level. It's easy to get sucked back into the old, consumable expectations. It'll help to have a teammate, friend, coach, mentor, consultant, therapist, or somebody to help you remember who you are and what really matters to you (and your organization). If nothing else, print these words on a big piece of paper and tape them to your wall or make them your screen saver or write them on your bathroom mirror (i.e., put them someplace you'll see them all the time):

Be who you are;

See what you have;

Do what matters!

If you haven't already begun making the shift from a consumable to a renewable way of doing things, a crisis can be the perfect opportunity to stop the madness. We're not saying that if you commit to living and working in renewable ways, it'll fix your problem or solve your crisis or make those unhappy people feel better. It might. But it might actually, for a time, create even more chaos and uncertainty in your organization. Maybe even in your own life. Hang in there. Do not let yourself get dragged back into the old way of doing things. Remember how it sucks the life out of you! Remember how rarely it produces the results you want, anyway. Make the choice to do what matters and stay focused on that at every single step. 

Until you do, no amount of chasing around trying to solve the crisis you're in will make a difference. Just ask our exhausted friend.

Comments

[Steve Fiechter]

Thank you SO much for these insights! I think it's "spot on" to say that chasing after unhappy "customers" is simply bad business...but sadly, it seems, business as usual for many (just now intensified). If we've been running our organizations as people-pleasers, perhaps it's no wonder our level of effectiveness has been questionable.

I don't believe that any organization, run on fear, can ever thrive.

[Kelly]

right you are, steve.

i heard somebody famous once say: "those who want to save their lives will lose them."

saving our own lives/organizations cannot be our bottom line.

enough said.

thanks for jumping into the conversation!