strategy

What Mazda Can Teach You About Core Values

June 11, 2019 By Daniel Im

With so many options out there, how do you choose?

I remember the first time I went grocery shopping without my parents and feeling paralyzed by all the different options for salad dressing. I only had one job—to buy salad dressing—yet I couldn’t make the decision.

Do I go for classic ranch or caesar? What about garlic caesar? And why are some cheaper than others? Raspberry vinaigrette sounds good too, but balsamic vinaigrette is the safer option.

And now with Amazon and online shopping, it’s even worse. There are over 8,000 results for “salad dressing” on Amazon!

Well, fast forward several years later, I felt the same way when shopping for a new car…

…but this time, I saw the leadership lesson underneath the surface.

Did you know that clay is still used to design cars? No, I’m not referring to a small lump of clay or Play Doh that you model into a miniature car. I’m referring to full life sized models of cars made out of clay!

Okay, to be honest, I didn’t know that clay was ever used to design cars, but it makes sense as a medium…of the past. From 1927 to the end of the 1950s, Harley Earl of General Motors used clay to design cars. But that was then! These days, car companies have 3D printers, design software, and virtual reality at their disposal, so why would they still use such an archaic method for design?

I didn’t understand why, until I came across this one particular Mazda commercial.

Now, is Mazda the only car company using clay to design their vehicles? By no means! Yet, that commercial helped me see Mazda cars as sculptures of art, rather than hunks of metal or utilitarian modes of transportation.

The WHY Behind Your Decisions

June 26, 2018 By Daniel Im

Have you ever thought through the WHY behind your decisions?

In other words, why do you make the decisions you do? For example,

If you have a Saturday open on your schedule, do you play a round of golf with your buddies, or go to the swimming pool with your children?
If a meeting is cancelled, do you catch up with your email? Check social media? Or. read the news or a book?
When the kids go to bed, do you watch Netflix? Read a book? Work on a project? Or, talk with a friend or your spouse?

These decisions are often subconscious—they’re underneath the surface. We make them without thinking. They are our habits, our defaults, our normals, or our vices.

Many of our decisions are often subconscious—they’re underneath the surface.

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Whether you realize it or not, many of these kinds of decisions have already been made for you based on your values or principles. These are the very elements that set the status quo for us.

If this is true, wouldn’t it be worth your time to do a little introspection and uncover the why behind your decisions? Your values and principles?

A while back, I came across Amazon’s leadership principles. I like how they describe them,

Our Leadership Principles aren’t inspirational wall hanging. These Principles work hard, just like we do. Amazonians use them, every day, whether they’re discussing ideas for new projects, deciding on the best solution for a customer’s problem, or interviewing candidates.

Change or Die: A Few Steps to Effectively Introduce Change

May 8, 2018 By Daniel Im

“It takes courage to be a change leader in the church. Opposition and resistance often come frequently and fiercely. But too much is at stake to do otherwise. . . . The choice is simple: change or die.”

Thom Rainer, in his book Who Moved My Pulpit?, couldn’t be more right in his statement here. The fact is, if there’s anything constant in ministry and in life, it’s change. (I wrote an article here on Leading Change in the Church).

If there’s anything constant in ministry and in life, it’s change.

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When it comes to introducing change, your change initiative will face one of three fates:

The Difference Between Vision, Strategy, and Values for your Church or Ministry

November 28, 2017 By Daniel Im

Let’s talk about where your church is going, what it’s going to do to get there, and how it’s going to do what it needs to do.

Recently I filmed a 90 Second Leadership video for LifeWay Leadership on how to distinguish the difference between vision, strategy, and values.

I hope you enjoy it!

If you like what you saw on this video, I elaborate on this concept further, and provide audits and templates to help you develop your vision, strategy, and values in my book, No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry.

Click here to watch other 90 Second Leadership videos by LifeWay Leadership.

Stop Getting Sidetracked by the Urgent

August 16, 2016 By Daniel Im

Take a look at the agenda and minutes of one of your recent leadership team meetings:

What percentage of the meeting incorporates administrative or operational functions and what percentage focuses on high-level strategic issues?
Which items will significantly help advance mission?
Is there a way to delegate some or all of these operational issues to another team? If so, how? [1]

These questions, as outlined in Shelley Trebesch’s Made To Flourish: Beyond Quick Fixes to a Thriving Organization, are intended to help you diagnose a common mistake that many organizations make: allowing the urgent to overtake the strategic.

Oftentimes, in meetings, it’s easier to brainstorm ways to solve the immediate parking issues, rather than plot out the church’s long-term strategy for city impact. Or, it’s easier to talk about ways to increase generosity and funding to meet this month’s budget, rather than thinking about how to move your church towards self-sustainability once the external funding runs out. The fact is, unless you consciously take steps to do otherwise, the urgent will always trump the strategic in your meetings.

How did we get to this place? Why is this the case?

Well, here is what typically happens in a growing church or organization. Let’s take a new church as an example. You start with the leader. As the church grows and you develop leaders to head up the different ministry departments, you begin having meetings with them. This team essentially becomes your leadership team because they are the ones in charge of getting things done in those areas. So right away, your leadership team is representative. While you might try to talk strategy in your meetings, the fact is, they weren’t recruited into their positions because they were good at strategy—you recruited them because they were responsible and knew how to get things done. Or, even better, you recruited them because they were warm bodies and had a lot of free time…okay, also because they love Jesus. No wonder the topic of your meetings always returns to logistics and operational matters—this is why they joined the team in the first place!