Imagine a minivan parked on the side of the road.
Now imagine shifting the van into neutral. Please give it enough oomph to make it 500 feet to a gas pump right up the road if needed.
What if this same van was on a slight incline? Feel confident?
You may need a friend to assist.
What if the opposite were the case? What if the road was sloping downward?
Does that change anything for you?
Of course, it does.
Why?
Momentum changes everything.
You’ve heard us talk about momentum if you’ve been around us at Development and Leadership Coaching.
Development work is the work of growing and leading others in giving.
It’s all about momentum.
How do you get momentum?
How do you keep it?
How do you regain it if you lose it?
This time of year, we’re well past our planning stage, our winter overwhelm, darkness, and burnout.
One of the countless things I appreciate about Jesus’s teachings is that he brought complex matters down to their simplest forms. Economically, I find it helpful to consider whether we are facing headwinds or tailwinds that will affect giving decisions.
Recently, headwinds have built up from historic success and growth levels, with unusual losses and failures, the far-reaching psychological behavior impacts of COVID-19, volatility in markets, and significant shifts in assets both up and down.
Inflation, fiscal experiments from the government and private industry, civil unrest, ideological conflicts, and global tensions are nothing new, but they all come together regarding economic headwinds.
Picture a ship sailing across the ocean. A tailwind helps you. It propels you faster. It allows the vessel to cut through the water.
A headwind, on the other hand, slows you down. It makes forward progress difficult. It works against you.
In today’s world, as leaders, economic headwinds affect people’s thinking long before they affect their wealth.
If you feel less wealthy, you act differently.
Meta issues in our contemporary world would affect you most if and when they overwhelm your reserves and ability to improve. If you fail to get better faster, you get hit hardest.
Rather than spend a ton of time trying to measure and discern to what degree this can affect you, put your efforts into building up your cash reserves, strength, health, and energy in your organization. Directed efforts will help you absorb hits as they come and get better faster.
At Development and Leadership Coaching, we connect the dots between intensity and building momentum.
Create intensity by shifting your paradigm of time. Modify your awareness of it.
Planning will cause some anxiety. That’s okay. Some stress is healthy.
Pick a date in the future connected to a goal of importance. How many days between now and then? Hone in – be more realistic. How many working days? How many working weeks?
Change your awareness of time and how you use it will change dramatically.
Create momentum.
Another great way to change your intensity is the idea of 10X your goal.
Write down what is the total giving goal for this calendar year in your organization. What will success look like by the end of December? Write that number down and then ask yourself, what does it look like to multiply that by 10? Or another way to say it is to say, “Let’s make that goal our goal for every month.”
Then ask, as an organization, what would we do differently to put ourselves in the position to achieve that goal? Change the way we look at time and the use of our energy.
For some people, this can be very anxiety-producing, to which I would say, “You’re okay; that’s okay.” A byproduct of good planning is anxiety.
Good planning creates anxiety because you send your brain down the road ahead, and we don’t know the future.
You could also say, “What if we just changed the goal? What exactly do we do to put ourselves in the position to see our yearly goal achieved every single month?” It’s a tremendous way to change up your thinking.
Another excellent but often overlooked tool is the humble but mighty calendar. I am amazed at how people need to use calendars better.
I have grappled with this and concluded that technology and the proliferation of the personal computer are primarily to blame for our skill deficit.
Our use of calendars changed.
We used to carry around a paper calendar, a book calendar, or a notebook.
Digital calendars, try as they may, do not do as good of a job as physical calendars at showing you expanses of time.
If you use a digital calendar for your ongoing work, use a visual paper calendar on the wall for planning.
Use a calendar where you can see yourself, the team, and the work on the calendar at least three months ahead.
I would challenge you with this and see if it keeps your time usage the same, how you measure the intensity, and how you establish and maintain momentum.
You lose track of your place in the year and your progress when it’s just day after day after day after day.
Avoid this day-after-day trap by operating in a rhythm of seasons.
We recommend the thanking season or thanking and reporting season. Then an asking season, then a follow-up season.
Cycles mobilize effort in seasons.
God doesn’t call the equipped; He equips the called. Sometimes we work against Him rather than alongside Him.
Don’t be your worst enemy this season. God wants to propel you forward. He is our tailwind, no matter the headwinds we face. Yet we must lead our teams. We must foster momentum.
Keep moving forward. Keep pushing. I look forward to hearing how you apply these principles to your ministries.
As you continue to put your planning into ACTION this year, you may find our Rapid Success Projects tool to be helpful.