Chapter 20

CREATING AND SUSTAINING VISION

The Leader’s Role

Vision is fragile. It needs help — lots of help.

It can’t spawn itself. It can’t sustain itself. It can’t recalibrate itself. It tends to leak and fade. If left to itself, it takes the path of least resistance. That’s why someone has to continuously make sure that it remains appropriate, doable, and properly aligned with reality or it will morph into wishful thinking.

That’s where a leader steps in. Ultimately vision is the leader’s responsibility. It can’t be delegated. It can’t be neglected. It can’t be presumed upon. It has to be monitored. And in particular, there are four things that demand a leader’s attention. Here’s a careful look at each one.

1. VERIFY THE VISION

A leader’s first and foremost role is to verify the vision. That includes creating it (as we saw in the last chapter), but it also incudes monitoring it to make sure that it remains appropriate and doable. It’s a leader’s job to ensure that the hard questions are regularly asked and that the vision is constantly readjusted in light of the answers, even if the answers are uncomfortable or disappointing to hear.

Is This Appropriate?

A leader has to make sure that methods used to achieve the vision remain appropriate. Not everything that works is appropriate or ethical.

In the context of the church, a leader has to ask, “Does this align with biblical principles?” That doesn’t mean everything has to have a Bible verse to support it. But it does mean we can’t do anything that the Bible forbids or frowns upon.

In a business setting, the question is, “Is this ethical?” Merely legal is not the standard. Lots of things are legal but not appropriate. Perhaps the best way to shed light on the difference is to ask yourself this question: “What if what we are doing shows up on the front page of the newspaper?”

If your initial response would be, “Oh no!” then don’t do it. It’s not appropriate, no matter how common or legal it might be.

Is This Doable?

The second thing a leader needs to constantly verify is the likelihood of success. Is this still doable?

Again, as we saw in the last chapter, our vision has to be realistic or it’s a pathway to defeat and disaster. But it’s not enough only to ask that question at the beginning. We need to ask it continually. Some things that are realistic one day become impossible the next day. It’s the leader’s job to constantly check the reality gauge.

2. COMMUNICATE THE VISION

A leader also has the responsibility to communicate the vision. And the first step is to make sure that it’s understandable.

That sounds obvious. But it’s not. Lots of leaders communicate their vision in a way that confuses as much as it clarifies. To ensure that your vision is widely understood, it must be communicated in a way that is brief and eliminates all jargon and clichés.

Keep It Brief

Brevity is important. Just as with your mission statement, your detailed vision of what success will ultimately look like needs to be succinct enough that people can remember it and pass it on. It’s not limited to a simple soundbite like your mission statement is. But it still needs to err on the side of brevity.

When I was working on my doctoral dissertation, my advisor gave me some advice that not only helped me clarify my dissertation project; it also helped me clarify my vision for North Coast.

He told me I wasn’t ready to begin my research until I had it boiled down to an “elevator speech.” He claimed that if I couldn’t explain what it was about while traveling between the first and third floors, I didn’t understand it well enough to get started.

He was right. I’ve found that if I can’t explain a complex concept in a crisp way, it usually means that I don’t understand it. That doesn’t mean that the short version incorporates everything important. Of course it doesn’t. But it does mean that I get the big picture and I’ve got my arms around the core of the idea.

It reminds me of the way Jesus answered a theologian who asked him which of the thousands of commands in Jewish scripture was most important. Jesus told him, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”¹⁶

His answer certainly didn’t explain all the nuances of Scripture. But it explained everything that an illiterate farmer, maidservant, or shopkeeper needed to know to start living out his vision for their lives.

Avoid Jargon

It’s also important to avoid jargon. It never helps. It only obscures your vision.

The problem is that we don’t always recognize jargon as jargon. We use it because it conveys complex concepts in just a few words. Every field and industry has its own set of terms and phrases that are used as shorthand to convey complex and complicated concepts quickly. To insiders they are genuinely helpful.

But they are meaningless and confusing to those who haven’t yet been fully initiated. If you use any jargon, those who are new to your organization won’t have a clue what you’re talking about. But they won’t tell you so. They’ll act like they get it, because few of us are willing to ask for help when everyone else around us seems to understand what’s being said. Instead we smile and fake it.

I remember asking a church-planter what his vision was for his new ministry. He told me that his dream was to become a church with “gospel-centered preaching that produces missional communities carrying out the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.”

Ironically, his goal was to reach lots of non-Christians. Unfortunately, those non-Christians had no idea what he was talking about. The only people who understood what he meant where those who were already firmly entrenched within his tribe. Everyone else was left to feel stupid. His jargon turned an otherwise precise vision into something murky and obtuse.

Avoid Clichés

Clichés are similar to jargon but different. It’s not that people won’t understand them. It’s that they’re so generic and obvious that people won’t care.

For instance, if someone tells me the vision for his company is to offer customers quality, reliable service with a friendly and knowledgeable staff, I’ve tuned out long before he’s finished.

He doesn’t have a vision. He has a series of clichés. There is nothing that stands out as unique or special. There’s no track to run on. Who doesn’t want to offer their customers quality, reliability, and service? Who doesn’t want a staff that’s friendly and knowledgeable? I’ve never heard of someone who dreamed of building a company offering junk, inconsistency, and poor service by a staff of rude and ignorant slobs.

Repeat It Ad Nauseam

The final step in communicating your vision is to repeat it ad nauseam.

Again, as with your mission statement, your detailed vision of what success looks like can’t be repeated too often. Don’t worry if people look bored. Don’t worry if everyone has heard it a million times. Keep repeating the vision.

There will always be new staff members, congregants, and customers who don’t get it yet. They are your primary audience, not the folks who’ve been around forever and roll their eyes when you repeat yourself once again.

In fact, I’ve noticed that those who are best at communicating the vision are often lovingly mocked (to their faces and behind their backs) for saying the same things over and over. But they don’t care. They understand that the vision hasn’t been fully communicated until everyone can describe it in detail without prompting. They understand familiarity isn’t knowledge. They know it’s a good thing when folks know the vision so well they can jokingly mimic the stump speech.

They’ve won.

They’ve communicated.

3. BUILD A TEAM AROUND THE VISION

The third responsibility of a leader is to build a team around the vision. That means putting an emphasis on those positions that are most crucial to the vision and making sure you’ve put the right kind of people into those slots.

For instance, since our vision at North Coast emphasizes deploying people into kingdom service, our team is made up of player-coaches. We have some superstars, but they’re also great at coaching.

Building a team around our vision means that we would not hire a world-class performer who lacked the ability or passion to find, raise up, coach, and deploy others. No matter how gifted he might be, he wouldn’t fit our vision. We’d pass on the opportunity.

Yet this same person might fit marvelously in a ministry that has another vision. For a church that’s all about the weekend performance, the world-class performer would be a perfect fit. It all depends on the vision. People who struggle under one vision can flourish under another.

That’s why successful and innovative leaders don’t just find the best players. They find the best players who fit their vision. And depending on the specifics of the vision, some positions will be more important than others, and some traits essential in one setting won’t be important in another.

It’s the leader’s job to know the difference. We can’t just fill slots. We have to build a team, and we have to build it around the vision or else the vision will die.

4. PRESERVE AND PROTECT THE VISION AND VALUES

The final thing a leader can’t delegate to others is the preservation and protection of the vision.

It’s a leader’s job to carefully consider how every change, innovation, opportunity, and program potentially impacts the vision. Few others will have the same global perspective that the leader has.

Everything we do has unintended consequences. A wise leader will think through these unintended consequences before giving the okay to something that might appear innocuous, because it’s often the small things that undercut the vision — or send a powerful message about the vision.

For instance, the first time we outgrew our office space, we reshuffled the deck. We moved most of the staff to different buildings. But when I looked at the new office assignments, I noticed something that concerned me. Our small group pastor had been given a new office closer to his administrative team and farther from our top leaders.

On the surface that seemed like a great idea. Put the whole small group team together in one place to increase their teamwork and synergism.

But it wasn’t a great idea. It was a bad idea.

It undercut our vision in a couple of ways.

Let me explain.

Our vision is to have small groups as the hub of our ministry. Yet this new office configuration put the head of our small group department in a different building from me, our executive pastor, and the other primary teaching pastor. It would have removed him from daily contact with our top leaders (out of sight is out of mind), and it would have sent a subtle message to the rest of the staff that his ministry was no more important than all the others, especially since he would no longer be down the hall from the top leaders.

I stepped in and made sure his office stayed near mine.

Now that might seem like a small thing. But it was a crucial step to preserving and protecting our vision. Years later things changed. Our top leaders were no longer concentrated in the same building. So the head of our small group ministry moved to be nearer to his team. A bad idea had become a good idea.

These are the type of things that only a leader with a thirty-thousand-foot global perspective can see. And these are the type of things that a leader needs to act upon. Successful serial innovators watch for unintended consequences. They pay attention to them. They don’t make changes without making sure they support the vision.

When it comes to vision, there are some things that only a leader can do. They can’t be delegated. They can’t be ignored. They have to be done. Successful serial innovators know and accept the fact that they not only have to ignite the vision; they also have to continually validate it, communicate it, build a team around it, and protect it.

Because if they don’t. No one else will.