I am currently serving as Vice-President and chairman of a committee at my church responsible for providing a future home for our congregation. We’re a small but committed group, meeting in a location that has sold. We are forced to make a move to another location.
I attended our monthly board of trustees meeting to assess the current thinking of the other Trustees. After hearing the treasurer’s report on the nitty gritty of dealing with the day-to-day economics of running the church, I realized a new kind of thinking would be necessary.
In order to create a solution to the challenge facing us, we won’t be able to use conventional planning tools, based on our financial history. As I pointed out yesterday, that approach is too limiting.
The new thinking required must be of the creative type I referred to. “No duh”, as Ana and Michelle, my daughters used to say to me, before they developed the deep reverence and respect they have for my opinions now.
Well, I know that is obvious. What is not so obvious is where that new level of creativity must come from. Many times when undertaking a task of this magnitude, we’ll access our sub-conscious-minds in the form of meditation or prayer to search for the answers we need. This is a necessary but not sufficient approach. This is a normal path for us to take when we want to be in a creative mode and solve a problem. But many times the more creative ones amongst us tend to prefer to work alone. This suggests that there is a resource available to us if we know how to use it.
What our church must do, and perhaps would apply for you as you tackle a “biggie” in your life, is to recognize that we can’t do it alone. A “biggie” might be, “How do I get more customers? Or “How do I find the right job for me?” or “How do I sell my business?” or “How can our club increase its membership?”
Here are 5 steps we can take to achieve our goals:
1) Pull a group of people who have a stake in the situation together and enlist their cooperation in finding the solution to the problem. I, as an example, will make a presentation to our congregation and tell them what we need to do and ask people who are interested in the future viability of our church to bring their best ideas to a solution finding meeting.
2) Remind ourselves that people will support a world they help to create.
3) Teach them how to do the kind of necessary creative thinking needed to find the solution.
4) Help them tap into their own right-brain thinking to look to the future.
5) Set small attainable goals that are within in the capabilities of the individual members of the group, have them execute and praise them publicly for there accomplishments.
If this doesn’t work, let’s ask the group what would work and persist until we achieve our goal.
Success thought for today:
“IMAGINATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN KNOWLEDGE. KNOWLEDGE IS LIMITED. IMAGINATION ENCIRCLES THE WORLD.”
-Albert Einstein
Byron
byronethompson.com
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