by Todd Adkins
When leading change in your church, you must create and capitalize on visible wins, the flywheel concept. A flywheel is difficult to start turning, but, once moving, its momentum keeps it going forward and gets easier to move the faster it goes.
Keep in mind Napoleon’s three groups. If some of your troops don’t see these early wins, then they are likely to leave the battle up to you. Your leaders must be re-energized along the way by achieving meaningful goals that are visible and celebrated to demonstrate that progress is occurring. Celebrate change leaders in front publicly at every opportunity to shift the behaviors in your culture and continue to win over others.
This framework will help you identify short-term wins in your first 90 days of implementing change.
First, determine the risk of the objective. Is it a high-risk, low-risk, or somewhere inbetween? Next, assess the rewards of that decision. Are they high, medium, or low? Mark the box where the two intersect.
Now it’s important to understand that if things are too high of a risk, too low of a reward, or the matrix isn’t just quite right, you don’t do those things. If you fail early in the change management process, it will be difficult to recover. You really want to focus on those things that fall in the upper right boxes of the 9-box. Another element you must consider is visibility. Is it seen or unseen? As a change leader, you want visible early wins that hit clearly defined goals that align with your milestones.
Adapted from Leading Change in Your Church. Download the FREE ebook here.
