Archives For Assumptions

Dealing with Your Unconscious Incompetence

April 24, 2012 — 2 Comments

Author and leadership consultant Dr. Sam Chand observes in his book, Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code:

“People have an almost limitless capacity for self-deception. We don’t know what we don’t know and are therefore unconsciously incompetent. If we were aware of our deficits, we’d ask questions and find solutions, but because we’re not aware, we stay stuck in the status quo until something shakes us awake” (p. 41).

There’s an element of not knowing what we don’t know that sounds crippling, almost even hopeless. If you don’t know that you don’t know something, where do you even start? There’s obviously not a fool-proof answer to this question. In fact, the answer to your “how do I know what I don’t know” question isn’t what you don’t know. Confused?

There are thousands of “I don’t know what I don’t know’s” out there that I will never know. And I can’t frantically search for the answers I don’t even know that I need. Instead, the only way to deal with our unconscious incompetence is to cultivate a set of ingredients that make it easier, and more likely, to discover what I don’t know. What are those ingredients? I suggest five:

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In Leadership, Personal Growth Assumptions, Competence, Humility, Leadership, Questions, Wisdom
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Four Strategic Thinking Strategies to Shape Your Church’s Future

June 9, 2011 — 2 Comments

For several months I’ve been meeting with a team of leaders to evaluate and innovate our discipleship strategies at Christ Church. These planning times are essential to clarify direction for the future. Unfortunately, strategic thinking at many churches too often looks like a rehashing of last year’s ideas or a carbon copy of the church’s strategy from down the street. However, the best way to innovate for the future is not to rip off someone else’ strategic plan. Leaders must cultivate strategic thinking practices that will shape the future of the church. Here are four strategic thinking approaches I recommend:

1.  Scan, Measure, & Analyze the Present - Before you can decide where you want to go, you need to understand your current reality. Here are four ways to get your head around your church’s “here and now”:

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In Church, Leadership, Organizations Assumptions, Church, Future, Innovation, Measurements, Organizations, Planning, Strategic Thinking, Strategies
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4 Signs That You’re Missing the Future

May 10, 2010 — 1 Comment

Sometimes churches and organizations have a bad case of nearsightedness. They get so focused on the hear and now that they don’t see their greatest opportunities on the horizon.  I recently heard Gary Hamel describe it like this: “Organizations miss the future because they over invest in what is at the expense of what could be.” Here are four signs that your church or organization is nearsighted (over investing in what is) and is aimed to miss the future:

1.  Misguided Planning:  I can’t tell you how many organizations (churches especially) think planning is nothing more than whipping out the calendar and filling it with activities.  If all of your planning is focused on scheduling events, then you’re making a serious, nearsighted investment in “what is.” The future requires you to think and plan with “strategic flexibility.”  In most cases, calendar planning could be renamed “carbon-copy planning” because it’s nothing more than a repeat of the previous year’s programs and events.

2.  Unchallenged Assumptions:  I find it interesting that research conducted by Matthew Olson, Derek van Bever, and Seth Verry pinpoints assumptions as the common culprit in stalled growth.  In their article, “When Growth Stalls,” published in Harvard Business Review, they state that stalled growth is the result of management’s failure to bring the “underlying assumptions that drive company strategy into line with changes in the external environment.”  When we fail to challenge our assumptions, we drive our churches into irrelevance at warp speed.

3.  Budget Handcuffs:  Many churches and organizations are wearing budget handcuffs because every dollar is allocated to existing programs, buildings, and salaries.  I recently heard Willowcreek Community Church describe a line item in their budget called, “Winds of the Spirit.”  Each year Willow allocates a certain amount of money that doesn’t have a program name attached to it.  It’s simply money set aside to be used as the Holy Spirit directs the leadership.  This allows leaders to be innovative without being handcuffed by the budget–it gives them resources to fund new, innovative thinking.

4.  Idea-Repellant Cultures:  If you’ve ever sat in a meeting where new ideas were treated like the Bubonic Plague, you know exactly what I mean by “idea-repellant cultures.”  If your culture doesn’t have room for new ideas to breathe, you’re placing the kiss of death on your future.

Question:  What are other signs that a church or organization is going to miss the future by over-investing in what is?

In Culture, Leadership, Personal Growth Assumptions, Culture, Future, Ideas, Organizations, Planning
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Did Your Assumptions Kill Your Growth?

March 5, 2010 — Leave a comment

All of us have assumptions.  Your assumptions influence how you behave, how you interact with people, and the practices you employ in your organization.  When leaders assume, they’re assumptions affect their decisions and their decisions shape the organization’s culture and outcomes.  In their book, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, & Total Nonsense, Jeffry Pfeffer and Robert Sutton assert that “Following deeply held yet unexamined ideologies” is a flawed and widespread basis for decision making. 


So what’s the big deal about assumptions?  If everybody has them why does it even matter?  In their Harvard Business Review article, “When Growth Stalls,” Matthew Olson, Derek Van Bever, and Seth Verry make a very important observation about assumptions in their company case studies:

One culprit in all our case studies was management’s failure to bring the underlying assumptions that drive company strategy into line with changes in the external environment–whether because of a lack of awareness that the gap existed or was widening, or because of faulty prioritization.    

In other words, while numerous factors caused growth to stall in the companies they studied, the common denominator was their “underlying assumptions.”  Now here’s the real kicker:  “When we examine individual case studies, we so often find that those assumptions the team has held the longest or the most deeply are the likeliest to be its undoing.”  Your assumptions can kill your growth.  Olson, Van Bever, and Verry propose that organizations create a team to hunt for the organization’s “most deeply held assumptions about itself and the industry in which it operates.”  

There’s another angle to the assumptions challenge.  It’s really easy to assume that what another organization is doing will work in your organization as well.  So in an effort to jumpstart growth, we often rip off an idea from another organization and assume it will work in our setting as well.  Pfeffer and Sutton propose that organizations ask a series of assumption questions before trying a business idea or practice:

1.  What assumptions does the idea or practice make about people and organizations?  What would have to be true about people and organizations for the idea or practice to be effective?

2.  Which of these assumptions seem reasonable and correct to you and your colleagues?  Which seem wrong or suspect?

3.  Could this idea or practice still succeed if the assumptions turned out to be wrong?

4.  How might you and your colleagues quickly and inexpensively gather some data to test the reasonableness of the underlying assumptions?

5.  What other ideas or management practices can you think of that would address the same problem or issue and be more consistent with what you believe to be true about people and organizations?

Assumptions are a big deal–a really big deal.  It takes discipline for a leader to dig deep and discover the assumptions that are driving the organization.  But the payoff can be huge if you’re willing to hunt.  What are the assumptions driving your organization?
In Leadership, Organizations, Personal Growth Assumptions, Decision-Making
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True & False Assumptions About Playing to Your Strengths

August 17, 2009 — Leave a comment

Playing to your strengths is much more than a neat idea. It impacts you and the organization you work with. Research by the Gallup organization of two million people has revealed that there are 34 primary talent themes. You can read about them in Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath or Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham. Based on their research, Gallup has determined that most organizations are built on two flawed assumptions:


Flawed Assumption #1: Each Person Can Learn to be Competent in Almost Anything

Flawed Assumption #2: Each Person’s Greatest Room for Growth is in his or her Areas of Greatest Weakness

This reality is much more than a personal issue. How you ask? Globally, only 20% of employees working in large organizations surveyed by the Gallup organization feel that their strengths are in play every day. Furthermore, most organizations operate at only 20% capacity. In other words, when you fail to play to your strengths, the organization you serve with takes a hit. Not only are you unfulfilled, but the company you work with is only reaching a fraction of its potential. Imagine what would happen if your entire team was fully engaged in their work by playing to their strengths the majority of the time. Employee morale would sharply increase, customer satisfaction would no doubt go up, and the mission of the organization would aggressively move forward. For this to happen, managers need to embrace what Gallup has identified as the two assumptions that guide the world’s best managers:

Assumption #1: Each Person’s Talents are Enduring and Unique.

Assumption #2: Each Person’s Room for Growth is in the Areas of His or Her Greatest Strength.

While it would be easy to lead based on the early assumptions, the truth is that playing to your strengths will deliver the greatest results. The question is, do you understand your strengths? And the follow-up question is, what are you doing to grow your strengths to their fullest potential?
In Personal Growth Assumptions, Personal Growth, Strengths
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