Over the past several years I’ve lived in two countries, six cities and driven in over a dozen countries.

Despite her inability to pronounce German and Ukrainian street names until well after we’ve passed it, I have grown to love and appreciate Google maps!

Without “her” I would have been desperately lost on multiple occasions.

I also like to drive with music playing, typically a bit on the loud side.

There is a setting inside of Google maps that allows you to have it automatically decrease the volume of the music when it needs to give you information about upcoming turns, changes, hazards or “faster routes”.

Without this feature enabled, I would have missed many turns, exits and opportunities to arrive at my destination safer and faster.

As a leader in business, organizations and ministries over the years I wish I had this feature installed in our “systems”.

We attempt to introduce a new ministry, initiative, program or opportunity to the team, the church, the organization and for some reason nobody moves into it, let alone toward it.

Why?

Because we refuse to turn down the “music” of every other thing we are pumping through the systems!

The bass driving the pulse of ministry, the drums bang out a steady cadence of weekly activities, the lead guitar plays the melody of special events and the vocals calling out, “sign up for this, sign up for that!” in four part harmony!

Somewhere a quiet voice says, “turn left” or “take the exit” or “faster route available” but no one hears it, no one responds and our ministries and organizations are left rerouting.

Again and again… and again.

What we want people to hear doesn’t get heard.  They don’t move in the direction we are guiding them toward.  As a result, we fail to engage them and we lose momentum.

Under the Hood

Imagine you’ve got your new vision, plan, product, initiative dialed in and the communication is set…

Then, the Children’s Ministry team finds out you’re not promoting their need for volunteers (again) this weekend! Men’s Retreat doesn’t get a fourth weekend of promo from the platform! New member class, which has happened the first Sunday of the month for 5 years, doesn’t get into the bulletin.

Your

“I can’t believe you turned it down, that’s my favorite song!”

“Wait! I love this part!”

Performance Tuning

So how do you turn down the noise and move people toward the mission and vision you are called to?

A huge amount of organizational discipline!

Build out a rolling calendar not around activities but around Vision!

• What do you need to promote, cultivate and celebrate throughout the year to enable people to fully engage and move into the vision?
• When do you need to do it so they have enough time to make the move?

So far, that’s pretty easy, we probably do that already. The next step is where you start frustrating people.  But, we’ll save that for another conversation!