Who is Waking Up Thinking About It?

About a year and a half ago I was the spear head of a new ministry launch at my church.  Energy started off very high and people were excited with what we were about to partake in.  In fact, at one point I had more people willing to help and support than we had a need for.  Clearly the initial launch was an out of the ballpark success.  I was feeling great about the direction of this new initiative.  I remember heading home and thinking to myself in the car, “People are bought into the mission!”

Several months later I was in a completely different spot.  I was feeling stressed out, tired, and over stretched.  I had made a big leadership mistake.  There were so many people willing to help, however, I wasn’t willing to delegate responsibilities of this new ministry to them.  In a short time I was overwhelmed with other aspects of my position and was unable to focus on the new ministry.  People were truly bought into what we were doing, but as a leader I hadn’t encouraged or given opportunities for people to use their talents, resources, and time to advance this area of ministry.  Something had to change…

I remember sitting down one night to write down all the things that I had to take care of in a day.  The sad results of this showed that at the time this new ministry wasn’t on the list.  I realized that NO ONE WAS WAKING UP THINKING ABOUT IT.  Quickly I pulled together different members of the team and asked what areas they were willing to work with and even take over.  To my surprise people were ready and willing to take over different aspects of the ministry.  At this point things turned around, at this point there were people waking up thinking about the ministry. 

Realizing this concept has changed the way I lead.  Recently I was working with a group of teachers on a school wide behavior program.  We had a full afternoon to brainstorm and create new ways to improve school wide behavior.  The afternoon was filled with fantastic new ideas and modifications that we could implement at our school.  However, there was one problem.  We had all these ideas written down and that was it.  If we would have left it at that I guarantee that we all would have woke up the next morning and went on with our normal way of doing business, but we didn’t end it at that.  With about 20 minutes left in the meeting we went through the “Who is going to wake up thinking about this” exercise.  Using our notes we read off ideas and people volunteered to take ownership of it and see it through to completion.  In the end there were several good ideas that we simply didn’t have the time or energy to tackle at this point, and this was okay because we knew that the things taken ownership of will be achieved.

Using the “Who is going to wake up thinking about this” exercise has been a game changer in my leadership experience.  It takes us from a place of cool ideas and thoughts to a place of reality and results.  So I encourage you in all aspects of life (your work, church, or family) to ask yourself, who is waking up thinking about this?