How do some organizations and churches get themselves into a place of regular, predictable success? It’s less mysterious than you think. Author and business leader Les McKeown takes you through the seven stages of every organization’s life cycle, from early struggle to death rattle, and shows you how to find predictable success.
Welcome to Episode 112 of the Podcast.
Guest Links: Les McKeown
Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization on the Growth Track–and Keeping It There
The Synergist: How to Lead Your Team to Predictable Success
Links Metioned
The Canadian Church Leader’s Podcast
Scott Magdalein on Episode 93
TrainedUp’s Free eBook: Recruit and Deploy More Volunteers
Takeaways from This Episode
Les McKeown breaks down the seven stages of the Predictable Success cycle and how it relates to the modern church.
Early Struggle. It’s a struggle for a market, whether you’re a church or a business. People have to want what you’re offering. This lasts 1-3 years.
Fun. This is when the organization is at its most evangelical. Everyone’s coming in and having a good time. You’re growing, cash is flowing and everyone wants part of what you’re doing.
White water. Complexity is added. It reaches the point where you can’t improvise your way to everything. You have to manage in this stage if you want to continue to grow. To be part of the 20% who makes it past The Struggle stage, you need a leader who’s visionary, the person who sees the bigger picture and gets annoyed with detail, the operator, the person who’s going to make it happen, and the processor, the person who’s going to ensure things are will be done right.
Predictable Success. If you make it out of white water, predictable success is the stage where you need to scale. It means you can get as big as your industry will let you in whatever geographical arena you want to play in. This is what distinguishes predictable success from fun.
Treadmill. This is mirror opposite of white water. You’re an over-processed organization where you prioritize form over function. Face time becomes important and you start using the word “compliance” to describe your standards and procedures. No one wants to listen to the visionaries, and they start to leave. Everyone is going along with the process.
The Big Rut. There’s still tension, and there’s a challenge function. You’ve lost the power to self-diagnose, and the organization has lost any ownership of what they’re doing.
Death rattle. In this stage, there are artificial signs of life, and the organization is a dying entity.
Quotes from this Episode
CNLP 112: Les McKeown on Getting Your Church or Organization into a Place of Predictable Success Click To Tweet
CNLP 112: Les McKeown on Getting Your Church or Organization into a Place of Predictable Success Click To Tweet
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Next Episode: Rich Birch
Rich Birch has worked for 3 large churches that have launched over a dozen new locations, and he’s seen many small and mid-sized churches turn things around. What’s their secret? They do unreasonable things.
