In his book titled Making it All Work, David Allen sets forth a simple model he calls the Six Horizons of Focus. I have found this useful for my own planning and for teaching others planning skills. All of us have heard people talk about stepping back and “taking the 25,000 view” before. David Allen builds on this common phrase in a helpful way. He goes from the 50,000 foot level all the way down to the runway.

Runway: Next Actions
Next Actions are the tasks and steps you need to take complete open projects and fulfill all of your commitments. They include calendar items, phone calls to return, and daily task lists. Next Actions are the tasks or steps that you can do on a particular day without having to wait on other people. I find that knocking off a long list of Next Actions in a small block of time feels empowering.

10,000 foot level: Current Projects
This is simply a list of all the projects you are responsible for. He defines a project as anything you want to accomplish that requires more than one Next Action. This was a helpful definition for me. I currently have 16 open projects on my list. I keep home and family projects on the same list as work projects. You might choose to keep personal and work projects separate. The 10K level prevents big things from slipping through the cracks.

20,000 foot level: Areas of Focus
This level includes all aspects of your life where you have made commitments to yourself or others. Each of us needs to figure out our own categories at our current stage in life. My categories include self-leadership, home, family, business development, business operations, church, community, finances, and author. You might include a hobby that deserves its own category. Everybody needs to figure out their customized mix of categories that capture their whole life. I find that paying attention to the 20K level is the secret to maintaining balance in life.

30,000 foot level: Goals and Objectives
Everybody who is good at setting goals can simply plug them at the 30K level. For the rest of us, we need to take some time to figure out what big problems we want to solve each year or what goals we want to achieve. This level is reserved for quarterly and annual goals. I find that this level is the key to planning for about 15% of people and a useful exercise for about half the rest of us. Some of us just do better with a shorter, more immediate time frame. We are more problem solvers than goal setters. Yet some planning at this level a couple times a year can be helpful.

40,000 foot level: Vision
If you were wildly successful at accomplishing everything that you would like in the next 3-5 years, what would that look like? I like to suggest that individuals look towards their next life stage to anticipate upcoming transitions, such as no kids to two kids and working to retired. I’m shocked at how many leaders I’ve talked to who have no vision—zero—for what they will be doing after they leave their current ministry leadership position. They need to do some work at the 40K level.

50,000 foot level: Purpose
This is level the level for reflecting on life purpose and core values. We all have some understanding about how God has wired us and why he has put us here on this earth. You explore your multiple callings in life at the 50K level. A personal mission statement would fit here. What has God called you to do?

Bottom Line
Here is why I find this model so helpful. If I ever lack clarity about what I’m doing or why, then I need to set aside some planning time and move up one level. If I’m not sure what Next Actions are most important, I need to look at the project list. If I don’t have a hot clue as to what to write down for goals for the year, then I need to move up to the Vision level. If I don’t have a rough vision for my future, then I need to spend some time at the 50K level.

Weekly Review, Quarterly Planning, and Annual Retreat
I spend about two hours each week conducting a weekly review. Weekly reviews allow you to study the 20K and 10K levels to generate Next Actions. Every few months you may feel a need to take a look ahead further than the next week. This quarterly or semi-annual planning allows you to think about your goals and objectives. This planning time is useful for defining new projects that populate your 10K list. I do longer range planning between Christmas and New Year’s each year. This is a time to set goals for the year that will be more than mere New Year’s resolutions.

What would be your ideal planning cycle? Give this simple framework a test-drive and see if it works for you.

Some leaders can articulate their strategy well. Some recite their mission statement and confuse that with having a strategy. Others express what I call a “default strategy.” An organization in default mode usually tells you what they do and then has some variation on this answer: we‘re going to do the same things in the same way except try harder this time.

Sometimes an organization should do the same things the same way. At other times they need to make a strategic shift in order to increase effectiveness. The problem for ministry leaders is figuring out when to pivot and when to persevere.

If you sense that your way of doing ministry is becoming increasingly ineffective, trying harder is the wrong solution. Here are seven signs that it is time to make a strategic shift:
 Attendance is in slow decline
 Budget is in slow decline
 Key donors stop supporting you
 Client needs change
 The culture shifts
 New technology disrupts
 Organizational culture has grown stale

If you sense that your strategy is in default mode, then start asking questions. Hold strategic conversations with your staff, clients, donors and peers. Ask them what no longer works as well as it used to. Keep going until you have a fresh portfolio of strategic initiatives that will keep your organization moving forward.

It’s curious that these same people would never advocate for term limits to the players on their favorite sports team. Can you imagine benching the star quarterback for a year during a promising season because he has already led the team to the playoffs three years in a row? “It’s time to give someone else a chance to be quarterback for a while. We don’t want the team to get stale you know.”

If you swap out one-third of your players every year, then every year is going to be a building year.

It is good for a board to have official terms of service. But term limits tend to cause more problems than they solve. Here are a few:

Term limits cause an organizational learning disability. With new members rotating in continually the board has a weak institutional memory. They will tend to repeat the mistakes of the past. They will require board refresher training every 3-5 years because they keep forgetting how to govern.

Term limits drain board talent. When you bench your best players they will be difficult to replace. Board recruitment and orientation are time-intensive activities. Maybe your best players will be picked up by another team.

Term limits allow key donors to disengage. Retire a key donor? I suspect that term limits are often conveniently overlooked just prior to a major capital campaign.

Term limits weaken governance. When you retire an exceptional board chair and replace him or her with someone who has little experience, the board does not suddenly step up its game and get better at governing.

Term limits produce ineffective boards. Of course, some Executive Directors prefer it this way.
If a board decides to proceed with no term limits, it must have another mechanism for ending poor service. Getting stuck with the wrong board chair long-term can be disastrous for the organization. Board members who attend meetings faithfully but make no meaningful contribution to the board are taking up space and using up resources. Low-performing board members must be removed for optimal board functioning.

The solution involves short official terms, clear written expectations, and a robust board member assessment.

The shorter the terms the better. One board has one-year terms and board members are either asked to serve another or thanked for their service. Another has two-year terms and an assessment every two years. An organization with three-year or four-year terms can still opt for annual assessments.

This requires either a board chair or a governance committee with the courage to sit with each board member and have a heart-to-heart talk about their performance on the board. There is no way around this…and this is the real deal-breaker. Most boards are unable or unwilling to assess their own performance. We tend to be unwilling to speak the truth in love to one another.

The default solution to this problem is term limits. They serve as a passive mechanism to end poor service on a board. But term limits do not:
• Fix a failing board
• Make a board stronger or wiser
• Improve the ability to govern
• Revive a stale board
• Build cohesive teams
• Produce new vision

So would your board prefer an active mechanism of ending poor service using face-to-face performance reviews or a passive mechanism of term limits?

Here is the problem: Almost all the books and articles on leading volunteers promote transactional leader behavior. Even the ubiquitous advice to thank them. Verbally thanking volunteers is a kind of reward and therefore transactional leadership.
 
Here is a list of typical best practices you will find in most books:
 
Typical Advice for Leading Volunteers
• Clarify expectations about the work to be done
• Ask for a specific commitment of time
• Decide if open-ended or commitment with ending date
• Let them know ahead of time of any additional duties
• Tell the prospective volunteers what expenses to expect and how reimbursements will be handled
• Tell them ahead of time of any pre-existing problems
• Let them know what help, if any, they can expect from you
• Check with them to see how they are getting along
• Respect the prospective volunteer’s right to say “No“
• Thank them sincerely and profusely.
 
Now compare those behaviors to best practices for a transformational leader:
 
Becoming More Transformational
• Get to know the volunteers deeply as individuals, why they donate their precious time and what they are passionate about
• Ask them for solutions to real ministry problems
• Be positive and uplifting, eliminate sarcastic comments
• Invite them to be a part of a cause outside of themselves
• Tell stories about changed lives as a result of their work
• Set challenging goals
• Work to create a sense of shared vision
• Mold the group of volunteers into a high-performing team
• Be an example they can respect and learn from
• Make sure you are living according to your values
• Check to make sure you look and act like a leader.
 
Volunteerism would function a lot better if we lead in a transactional way and added transformational leadership to it. Why not be a transformational leader?

I recently returned from a board meeting for the Caspari Center in Israel. After the meeting the entire board attended a Caspari teacher training workshop in Beer Sheva for Messianic congregations. The training was conducted in Hebrew with translation into Russian and Spanish. Because there are so many recent immigrants in the Messianic community in Israel, any resources we produce are normally printed in several languages. Similarly, any workshops we conduct usually require translation into several languages. I was amazed to see five Israeli publishers marketing their materials at the conference. This is a strong sign of growth and maturity in the Messianic movement in Israel. The photo is from the ruins at Beit She’an, the city where the bodies of Saul and his son were hung on the city wall after being killed in battle.