Wildly Important Goals
Have you read The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals, authored by Sean Covey, Chris McChesney, and Jim Hurling? If not, it’s useful, and I recommend it. The tips that you will find in that book are not only helpful for businesses, but also for churches.
Not long ago I ran across some notes that I took when I first read the book, and I thought I’d share them with you in the hope that you can use them in your church. Hey, we can even use these recommendations in our individual lives!
First, the authors encourage us to determine our Wildly Important Goals (WIGs).
These are goals that can make all the difference in a life or an organization. They are goals that are big, challenging, and motivational. Too often, we get so wrapped up in the day-to-day activities of life, that we don’t think much about the bigger goals that we want to reach. Can you relate?
To determine these goals, the “wildly important” ones, the authors write that we might ask:
“What is the one area where change would have the greatest impact?”
That’s a great question, isn’t it! Focusing on the answer to that question would be well worth our time!
The authors believe that one of the keys to productivity and growth is to apply more energy to fewer goals.
Sounds good, right? So, they encourage us to focus on just 2-3 WIGs beyond what we need to do day-to-day to keep our lives, organization, or church running. They estimate that we may spend 80% of our energy on day-to day demands. (They write that these are demands “in the whirlwind” of daily or frequent activity.) That would leave 20% of our energy to be spent on the WIGs.
Here’s a tasty morsel by Jim Stuart, someone the authors quote:
“To achieve a goal you have never achieved before, you must start doing things you have never done before.”
I’ve heard something like that before that has been credited to Albert Einstein:
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Further, the authors discuss four important principles regarding goals. I’m sure you church leaders will see how these principles make a lot of sense.
Goals need clarity. Make sure people know what the goal is.
You’ll want to build commitment to those goals.
Collaboration on accomplishing goals is important. You’ll want to tell people specifically what they need to do to reach the goal.
Successful organizations believe in accountability. They hold people accountable for reaching goals. (In my experience, this is a tough one for churches!)
Finally, the authors of this book give us a formula for creating our wildly important goals.
They write that all WIGs should implement this equation: “From X to Y by when.” That is, we should include in our goals where we are now, where we want to be in the future, and give the goals a termination date.
For example: We want to grow our average Sunday morning attendance from 200 to 300 by June 1, 2026.
So, what do you think? Does any of the above ring true with you? Want me to break this down further, reply “yes” here. Or, share with me one of your WIGs!
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