When "the problem" is NOT the problem

Throughout the years I have noticed that when churches find stagnant or declining revenue (giving from members) the collective heads of leadership decide the pastor needs to do a sermon series on giving, there needs to be a Fall stewardship campaign where people commit to give some amount the next year, the bulletin has budget updates, and so forth. Generally, leaders fail to recognize that congregational giving is not "the problem." unsatisfactory revenue is a symptom of a problem, not THE PROBLEM. Trying to generate more revenue without addressing the congregation's (customer and consumer) relationship with the church's product is at best temporarily helpful. The problem is the congregation's sense of commitment to who and what the church is and the appeal the church's product has to them. Unless these are addressed, the church will continue to stagnate and die.

Such it is with commercial organizations. many executive leadership teams claim that sales or margins are "the problem." However. these are just metrics showing evidence of the quality of the relationship the company's customers and consumers have with the company's products.

Failing to satisfy these psychological factors within their customers and consumers is THE PROBLEM. Sales are the result of the quantity purchased and price paid by customers given the relationship they have based on these factors. Gross margins across time are the way customers respond to the array of product offerings and the value they see in each product. Net margins are the degree that the company's costs are producing better gross margins or sales or not.

When leaders of organizations focus on metrics as the problem, then they are not focusing on solutions to the problems. Look around your organization. See how often management says that that budget is a problem, or sales is the problem, or we must fix our margins, when the reality is that the company needs to improve the way they fit in with the world around them. Metrics are good to point out what is happening across time with the practices of the company and exogenous forces, such as competition, regulation, demographic trends, economic trends, etc.However, metrics are never the problem and only point to the problem. Metrics are symptoms. Nassim Taleb suggests that "the misuse of metrics is a psychological disorder."

When you go to the doctor and he/she weighs you, takes your blood pressure and your temperature. If any of these are worse than expected, the doctor does not say your weight is a problem or your blood pressure or temp is a problem (or they should not if they are good doctors). They say your weight points to poor eating or exercise or you temp suggests you have an infection. While we sometime treat symptoms, you only get well when the problem is solved.

Winning across time requires leaders to be strategic. This involves many things but especially it involves solving problems and not symptoms. Executive leaders can follow all the prescriptions for providing clarity and inspiration to their organization, but if they do not solve the strategic problems, they will not win.

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"if U can see my mirror, then I can't see U"

Recently I saw this reference to a mirror on the back of a truck. Obviously, it is a safety measure the trucking company uses to keep other drivers from getting to close to the truck as it goes down the road. However, it generated an interesting thought for me as I often reflect on the various meanings of what I see (no surprise here).

My work on LMX Concierge has reminded me of how difficult it is to see ourselves and others objectively. Because we are made as a unique combination of many needs, our perceptions have filters and biases that contaminate how we make sense of what we see. If we are a task oriented person, we view working with others differently than relationally oriented people. If we are dogmatic, then those who wish to operate in shades of grey confuse us. If we tend to take responsibility for what happens, then we can't understand those who are more likely to blame their situation or others for what just happened. there are many other needs we have and then there are all the combinations and degree of intensity that together make us who we are and make others different from us.

Now back to the mirror. The thought that hit me was that if we are driving through life looking through a mirror, then we are mainly seeing everything else through the lenses of self. If we are trying to lead others to accomplish their goals, to what degree are we really seeing the other person objectively? Mirrors reflect images of the real thing, plus we can't see other people or situations without seeing our self first.

The challenge we have as we engage others is to accurately see them without our biases and filters and without their facades. LMX Concierge is designed to present not only an objective profile of an individual but also an objective view of how the individual perceives the goal he or she is pursuing. This objective assessment of "personality in context" reveals the opportunities for greater performance (Engagement Gaps) and is invaluable in improving dialogue in a relationship. Judgmentalism is reduced and trust is increased. It's certainly worth a try, wouldn't you think?    @ www.lmxconcierge.com

Your problem is the status quo

All of us wish to make our life work so we don't have too many problems. We are all attached to our status quo, not because we are naturally resistant to change, but because we are naturally attached to safety, security, certainty and legitimacy of the statues quo. Interestingly, we resist change not because we don't value what is available to us in change, but because our status quo is sufficiently comfortable. The mistake we all make in trying to "push" others or ourselves to change is we focus on getting others (or ourself) to see the value in the new opportunity instead of seeing the risk in remaining in the status quo.

This is why salesmen fail to sell, why people keep unhealthy habits, why relationships stay stuck where they are, why parents can't seem to motivate their kids, why organizations experience results below expectations with their change initiatives, and why churches put forth the Gospel to apathetic hearts. People generally stay where they are not because they lack knowledge of the benefits of change, but because they lack the deep emotional sense that staying where they are is too uncomfortable.

So, as the picture above suggests, the key to change is not helping others through the discomforts of change, but to heighten a sense of discomfort with their status quo.

Our status quo then becomes our problem. We fail to move out and move on when there is benefit in the change because we are too comfortable where we are. There have been several times in my life where I knew I should be moving on but was too comfortable where I was. In these instances I would make an uncharacteristic mistake, which would then be met with uncharacteristic rejection. Not only did I not know why I would do something outside of my own standards, but the people that had always supported me met my actions with a revenge i could not understand. This was as if their hearts had been hardened towards me. This reaction made my status quo totally uncomfortable for me and i moved on.

Looking back I see that I needed to move on from where I was, but I could not in my own strength make myself abandon the status quo. It took an unexplainable series of mistakes met with unexplainable reactions from "trusted others" to create an uncomfortable enough status quo that i would willingly change. My problem was not my mistakes, nor was it the "bizarre" (at least to me) reactions of others, BUT my comfortableness with my status quo. Each time my change led to benefits to me and others that I could not have imagined before.

For those of us who trust in our loving relationship with God through Jesus Christ, we can see God's Divine Sovereign hand in these moments. God needed His chosen people of Israel to go to their promised land. Although they were in bondage in Egypt, they were comfortable where they were. God took a man Moses, his mistakes and unwillingness to lead, and then God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, who also betrayed Moses' trust, and God moved His people out of Egypt to their home land.

Because its our nature to seek certainty, change is difficult. While all change is not for our benefit, often it is. To change is not unnatural for us. To deal with the "discomfort" of change is not our problem. Our problem is the perception we have of comfort in a certain and secure status quo. Often our status quo has risks we do not see. Opening our eyes to the risks of status quo is the solution to our problem. Change is not so hard and can be fun. Getting on with it, however, requires us to be shaken loose from the status quo and seeing its consequences realistically.  

This is our human experience. The principles hold regardless of our Spiritual persuasion. Good change practices are better served when the focus is on making the status quo more uncomfortable more than making the change more comfortable. However, if we are believers, we can make sense of mistakes and difficult circumstances as God uses them to move us where He wants us. The risks we run as believers is that we fail to see that our comfortableness with our status quo may in fact be what's in our way of God's blessings for us, not God's blessings for us.