Sense-making
I remember a few years back when our former Global President, Steve Sellers, was explaining to us how we tend to view our organization from the specific part that we are in. For instance, if you first encountered our movement on campus, you will assume that our whole organization looks like our campus ministry. Or, if you first encountered us through our Global Church Movements, and continued serving there, you might assume that everyone uses MC2 materials and knows what GACX is. Even our staff can be surprised to learn about all our organization offers people in their spiritual journey to help them know, love, and follow Jesus. Imagine how challenging it might be for a university student living in a big city who is a world-class athlete, a newlywed, and looking forward to a professional career in finance in a place where there are no churches to discover all that our organization has to offer as she lives out her faith in all of these aspects of her life!
Whether we are leading our part of the Great Commission or looking to help others understand what we have to offer, our work requires sense-making. Simon Seow, Senior Digital Strategist on my GDS VP Team and co-founder of Indigitous, describes this as going from the dance floor to the balcony. The dance floor is fun! It is a high-energy place where people are moving. But, it is hard to see all that is going on while you are grooving on the dance floor. To get a better perspective, you need to head up to the balcony. From there you can see more and identify needs and opportunities. How many people are on the floor and how many are sitting by themselves watching? Does the band need to slow down or bring more energy? Are there enough refreshments for everyone? What about the young man stumbling after twisting his ankle. He might need a doctor! You get the point. You can spend a lot of energy on the dance floor. While it might be hard to tear yourself away from the action, a good leader steps away from time to time to get perspective.
Our Global Executive Team of Campus Crusade for Christ makes a practice of doing that together twice a year. In September we met face-to-face in Singapore. We have taken turns focusing on each part of the organization–regions, strategies, and capacities. We take a look at how we are each doing our part to achieve our shared outcomes which are:
Helping national ministries make missional progress
Making progress in pioneering into missional gaps
Ensuring global strategy and capacity progress that serves and strengthens national ministries
Effective collaboration across the various ministries of our organization in our 7 regions
If we all merely stayed focused only on our part, we would not see how we are doing collectively at achieving these outcomes. We would miss opportunities and fail to address risks and challenges. As a result of our sense-making together, I left Singapore with some clear next steps we can take as Global Digital Strategies to do our part in the mission we share together as a global ministry.
Sense-making is an important part of our leadership rhythms. We need make time to sense-make for the team we lead as well as for our personal development. How are you making time to sense-make for yourself as you work together with others to make progress in your part of the mission?
