Making the Shift from Good to Great - Part 2
By: Sara Payne, Magnify Missions Coach
Email: sara@magnifymissions.com
My weekly visit to a local coffee shop recently brought me across this sign, “Be the one who decided to go for it.” I was reflecting on this idea in relation to our Magnify Missions Workshops. We’re moving into our fourth cohort, and I was thinking about our process of finding participants. We have to invite about 8-10 people to each workshop before we find the right people to fill 3 spots. To my surprise there are a lot of people who have every reason to attend (go for it), but don’t. I can see their potential. I know the workshop would help move them forward whether in their ministry, business, or personal life, but for whatever reason they pass on the opportunity. The book, Good to Great, by Jim Collins provided some helpful context for me in regards to this issue. What makes a person go for it? I think it’s those who are willing to go from good to great. It’s taken us about two years to figure out who our people are and how to find them. We’ve landed on what I call our solution criteria, which are the qualities and/or factors that have helped us identify our audience and clarify the focus of our work. Our journey is not unique, but the lessons we have learned can definitely be shared and applied by other ministries and businesses.
Face Reality (Confront the Brutal Facts)
Our work with Magnify Missions came out of a growing concern for the incredible rate of burnout among missionaries and small business owners. My first job was working with a mission organization overseas, and I’ve been a part of building a business with Magnify Learning. Ryan Steuer, who founded Magnify Learning and Magnify Missions, also worked with a missions organization in inner city Indianapolis and served as a pastor to a small rural community outside of Indianapolis. We’ve both seen the toll that missions, ministry, business (and education) can take on people. Our goal is to see people thriving no matter what field they work in. In essence we want to see people move from mediocrity, from just scraping by or even the good to truly great. This is where Jim Collins book, Good to Great, helps provide a framework for how to avoid burnout. While his work was primarily around large businesses, the principles and insight he gained can be applied in any arena. In his comparative research on companies he found, “The good-to-great companies displayed two distinctive forms of disciplined thought…they infused the entire process with the brutal facts of reality. (The second…is that they developed a simple, yet deeply insightful, frame of reference for all decisions.)” He goes on to say, “You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts.” So here are some of the brutal facts facing missionaries and entrepreneurs. According to Barna, approximately 1,500 North American ministry workers leave their work each month due to burnout (Lausanne Movement). A survey of 40,000 missionaries found that the main reason missionaries leave is because they can't sustain their support (AWBE). 4 in 10 small-business owners say they regularly finish the workday emotionally and physically exhausted. 42% of small-business owners say they have experienced burnout in the past year (Small Business Labor Crisis Report 2023 - Ramsey Solutions). Our goal is to help people face the reality of their situation. We work with a lot of people who have the passion and the vision, but they don’t have the facts or they are ignoring them. What do I mean by that? In essence, many people don’t know what it will take to accomplish their vision. They don’t know the costs. They are unaware of their finances. They don’t know how many supporters they need, how many clients will pay their expenses, what their expenses are etc. Early on in our work, we coached a client who had incredible passion and was doing amazing work overseas, but was severely underfunded. This client’s mission organization was aware of the problem, but not really addressing it. In essence they were not facing the facts nor were they helping their missionary face the facts, which in the long run would cost them an extremely valuable employee and hurt their ministry impact. They knew without proper support, this employee was going to have to leave the field and work they absolutely felt called to yet all of the focus remained on the mission and raising support was a backburner issue. As I noted, Collins' work is focused on companies, but there are also significant parallels to ministry. He writes, “There is nothing wrong with pursuing a vision for greatness. After all, the good-to-great companies also set out to create greatness. But unlike the comparison companies, the good-to-great companies continually refined the path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality.” The ‘comparison companies’ Collins is addressing either didn’t make it at all or survived but never became great, instead they remained mediocre. There are alot of ministries and businesses that face this same situation and the end result is burnout, which means leaving the mission field or their work entirely. This means that Kingdom work is at stake. We have to take the time to face the reality of our situation and look at it from a sustainability perspective. The brutal facts such as being underfunded, not meeting expenses, putting communication with supporters on the back burner, lacking a plan for growth or sustainability, not having work boundaries etc. can’t be ignored. If we get overly caught up in the work and ignore the facts, ultimately we undermine our own mission.
Action Step: Take some time to be honest about and assess your current situation. Evaluate the overall healthiness of your finances, your team/staff, your connection to clients/donors etc.
Find Your People
This summer I had the chance to watch some of the Olympics in Paris. As a person who likes to run, I found the racing events to be the most interesting. It was incredible to see all of the runners lined up ready and primed to go give it their all. I know a little bit about what it takes to train for a race, and it made me curious about the conditions each runner had experienced prior to this moment in time. Who did they train with? How did they improve? I’ve had running partners in the past. I’ve found that if I truly want to improve as a runner, I need someone who is as committed as me, but also better and faster than me. I need someone who will help me stay true to my running schedule and make me run faster when I would rather go slower. When it comes to propelling the work forward, whether ministry or business, the people we choose to work with and that our clients choose for their own teams and staff is key. We’re working with human beings here, so there is complexity and ultimately flaws and failures on both ends. Also, it’s not always fun to face the facts so you need to create an environment where it is safe to do so. For us, we first start by finding the right people - the ones who have shown they are committed to the work and willing to put in the time. Our interview process really has helped us identify the right people to put on the bus. Read my blog Making the Shift from Good to Great - Part 1 for more on this. We are purposeful in our questions, and we have indicators (criteria) that make it easy to identify who is a good fit. If you haven’t developed a company identity - core values, goals, avatar - check out the resource, Creating an Identity Overview, on our home page. We have found that bringing the right people into the right conditions - a beautiful, comfortable, and luxurious space where they can dream and a shared meal is a solid starting point for getting into the deep work we hope to accomplish. This work requires a lot of vulnerability and even humility on the part of our participants. Not only are you sharing your dreams for the future; you’re also sharing your current reality, which is not always pleasant and often can be uncomfortable. What we create and model in this space is what we hope they will go back and create within their own ministry teams and staff. The relationship that is established in the workshop then continues on into coaching. We see it more as partnering or collaborating in the work. None of us have all of the answers, but we have a Holy Spirit that can lead us and guide us. Plus two heads are definitely better than one. The world of ministry and owning your business is not only overwhelming but at times isolating. Many people don’t have a team or coworkers to bounce ideas off of and to help share the load. We help fill in that gap by being thought partners and helping people get to their own answers.
Action Step: Find a coach, mentor, or thought partner to help you navigate the challenges/complexities of your work as well as help hold you accountable to next steps. Pick someone who is a little farther along than you so they can help you grow.
Form a Culture of Honesty
Facing the brutal facts is a starting point, but to really propel the work forward you have to have form culture of honesty. For us, this takes place in our coaching relationships. For a ministry or business it takes place among your ministry team, staff, and with those you work with. Collins provides what he calls best practices for creating this kind of culture. His first practice in the process of what he calls, “creating a climate where truth is heard” is to “Lead with questions, not answers”. Asking lots of questions helps you to see where people are at in their journey and to gain a better understanding of where they want to go or even need to go to propel their ministry or business forward. As Collins notes, “Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.” Oftentimes people just need someone to process with or to listen to them. They often aren’t looking to you for the answer. They already have it, and you can help draw it out of them, which brings me to Collins next practice, “Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.” Once again this is about caring for a person. We’re looking for conversations here not arguments or getting people to do what we think is best. They may come to the same conclusion, but they won’t get there by force. This next practice for building a culture of honesty is my personal favorite. Collins says to “Conduct autopsies, without blame.” Our verbiage for this process is a bit more positive, but the spirit behind it is the same. We do a lot of reflection to help our clients and ourselves pinpoint what is or isn’t working. In our most recent workshop, we had an epic fail using a protocol that was not the right fit for the work we were doing. There was no finger pointing or guilt tripping. It was just an honest assessment of what had worked well and what hadn’t. In this case it was obvious we needed to change our approach. Our “autopsy” didn’t threaten the work; it made it better. Collins writes, “When you conduct autopsies without blame, you go a long way toward creating a climate where the truth is heard. If you have the right people on the bus, you should almost never need to assign blame but need only to search for understanding and learning.” We can’t build stronger ministries or companies without addressing what is not working or where we’ve failed. It’s a process of learning and growth. Jesus' own followers can attest to that. There was a lot of failing and missing the mark - James & John asking to be at Jesus' right and left hand, Peter’s denial, the disciples refusal to believe Jesus was resurrected. Jesus can work with our failure if we acknowledge it and then learn from it. This is where Collin’s last practice of “building red flag mechanisms” comes into play. As Collins evaluated good-to-great companies compared to their counterparts, he noted that they all had access to the same information when it came to growing or failing. He writes, “The key, then, lies not in better information, but in turning information into information that cannot be ignored”. Red flag mechanisms are your cues that something is not working. They are an indicator that a change needs to be made, that you need to pivot. If you get a text about suspicious activity in your bank account or credit card, you don’t ignore it, you address it immediately. You know that ignoring it could mean a world of headaches later. In essence you need to identify your ministry/business “triggers”. What data points will let you know something is wrong and that the work is being derailed? Find those “red flags” for your own ministry/business and then create a culture where noticing them is encouraged instead of being a threat.
Action Step: Create a culture where being honest and working together are valued. Plan intentional times for feedback/reflection. Do autopsies on what didn’t work. Identify your “red flags” and pay attention to them.
Being Intentional about Greatness
I recently heard a story that brings this entire idea of moving from good to great into perspective. A friend was sharing how she and her husband had just attended a pastoral conference. She said that both her and husband had agreed that the speaker was all over the place, and both were unsure what point he was trying to make. Unfortunately, he was the speaker for several days. She then went on to say that the conference had invited another speaker to do a segment at the end of the conference and that she had gotten more out of that 30 minutes than the hours of other sessions they had attended with the main speaker. I asked if they had a feedback form so they could improve for the next year, and she said she hadn’t seen one. What a missed opportunity! The reality is that this conference will keep happening every year, but without feedback from its participants it won’t move from good to great. Greatness doesn’t just happen. It’s those little changes, shifts, improvements that get us from a place of good to great. If we fail to stop and reflect though, then we just maintain the status quo with no real improvement or growth. I believe a life lived with God is supposed to get better over time. This means our work, our play, our relationships, our time should become more rich, vibrant and fulfilling. I don’t know about you, but I want to see what great looks like. I hope you’ll join me and more importantly that you’ll join Jesus in seeing what that could mean for your life, ministry, and business. For some practical action steps for moving from good to great, download our free resource, Moving From Good to Great Action Steps.
If you’re looking to begin your journey from good to great, consider joining us for a Magnify Missions Workshop.
Sara Payne is first and foremost a beloved child of God. She likes to surround herself with people who love Jesus, be out in nature, work out, cook, and drink delicious cups of coffee. She is married to Ryan, an amazing man who loves Jesus, and also is (in her opinion) a rock star with a band called Attaboy. They have one beautiful little girl named Isabella, who is a joy and delight! Sara’s first job after college was as a missionary serving overseas in Budapest, Hungary. She then transitioned into being a full time English teacher in a PBL school on the south side of Indianapolis, IN. There her mission field was high school students. After getting married, she worked for Magnify Learning as a Branding Manager and PBL facilitator. Since becoming a mama, she now works for Magnify Missions where she is able to combine her love of missions and teaching to serve and coach missionaries and Christian entrepreneurs around the world.
