Episode 004: Strategy Map — Introduction

Key Takeaways:

• A strategy is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term goals under conditions of uncertainty.

• Jesus and Paul both used strategies in their ministry (Matthew 10; Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; Acts 17)

• A strategy map can help communicate your strategy within your organization:

  • People tend to remember visual representations of ideas better.

  • A visual representation of your strategy can help you identify holes you need to fill to achieve your organization’s goals.

  • People can see how they fit into the strategy and why what they do is important.

Resource Links:

Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, Harvard Business Review, “Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It”

One-Page Balanced Strategic Plan Example for Government Not-for-Profit

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Transcript

Hi, church leaders! Welcome to the CEO Pastor podcast. My name is Cindy and I am your host for today's episode. My goal is to provide the management expertise every church leader needs to produce the ministry experience every church leader wants. We'll skip the jargon and cliches and focus on ideas that will help you accomplish the church's mission in your unique ministry context. Ready? Let's go!

I'm really excited about today's episode because we're going to get into the foundation of all organizations. So today we're going to talk about strategy and I'm going to introduce the idea, the tool of a strategy map. So first thing we're going to do is define strategy because it's important to understand what a strategy is before you begin, and then I'm going to describe the overall purpose of having a strategy map.

What is a Strategy?

So first, what is a strategy? A strategy is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term goals under conditions of uncertainty. And whether or not an organization has a written strategy that's well defined, they're implementing a strategy of one sort or another. And even in our actual, everyday lives, we implement strategies. Just imagine how you would go about saving for a new home, or saving for a new car, or saving for that vacation or actually how you're going to go about doing your vacation.

Let's say, for example, if you wanted to go to Disney World, you would have to have a strategy to see everything you want to see in Disney World. That place is huge and there's a lot of logistics needed in order to get everything done that you want to get done. So even in our everyday lives, we use strategies.

So it's even more important when you're an organization and you're trying to coordinate a lot of resources and a lot of people and a lot of things and money that you have a clear, defined strategy so everyone knows the direction that you're going in and are able to clearly understand what needs to be done and why it's so important to do those things.

The Strategies of Jesus and Paul

Now, you may be thinking, "Ooh... I'm in ministry. Like, this sounds really corporate and it just kind of makes me feel a little gross." Well, I would like to argue that Jesus had a strategy that he outlined for us in Scripture. The clearest place where he discusses his strategy, especially for his ministry while he's here with us in bodily form (he's always with us, of course), he outlined it in detail in Matthew 10, the entire chapter, but I'm just going to read a very short version of that same strategy that he outlined in Matthew 10, which is found in Mark 6:6-13:

Then Jesus went from village to village, teaching the people. 7 And he called his twelve disciples together and began sending them out two by two, giving them authority to cast out evil spirits. 8 He told them to take nothing for their journey except a walking stick—no food, no traveler’s bag, no money. 9 He allowed them to wear sandals but not to take a change of clothes.

10 “Wherever you go,” he said, “stay in the same house until you leave town.11 But if any place refuses to welcome you or listen to you, shake its dust from your feet as you leave to show that you have abandoned those people to their fate.”

12 So the disciples went out, telling everyone they met to repent of their sins and turn to God. 13 And they cast out many demons and healed many sick people, anointing them with olive oil.

So even from that short passage in Mark 6, we can see that Jesus had a strategy that he taught his disciples for how they were to go out and preach while he was with them in person. Just a walking stick, no food, no money, no change of clothes, but you can wear sandals and stay in the same house. That is a strategy. He told them exactly how he wanted them to go out and fulfill a mission that he was sending them out to do.

And specifically in Matthew 10, he also says only go to the villages in Judea, which I find extremely interesting because that strategy that he talks about Matthew 10, he completely changes when he gets to the Great Commission in Matthew 28 where he tells people to go into the whole world and preach the Gospel and make disciples. And then the reiteration of that in Acts 1:8 where he says they will receive power from the Holy Spirit, which will allow them to have the ability to be his witnesses, first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, then in Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth. So even that is a strategy: first, start where you are right now in Jerusalem and then move out from there. So Jesus has a very clear strategy for his disciples and also for us now that he has ascended into heaven.

And also, if you read in Acts, Paul has a strategy that he uses when he's preaching in different places all throughout Asia Minor. He first goes to the synagogue in the city that he's visiting and he teaches the people there about Jesus and that Jesus is the Messiah that they've been waiting for. Once he gets the message out to the Jews who have the foundation necessary in order to understand the Messianic prophecies of the Messiah that is to come and explain how Jesus is the Messiah they've been waiting for, then he goes out into the Gentile areas and teaches them.

And Acts 17 is particularly interesting because, at the end of Acts 17, it talks about how Paul goes to Athens and he's noticing all of the statues and altars to different gods and he sees one that's addressed to the "Unknown God". And he uses that in order to teach the people of Athens, who have no background in Messianic prophecies or in Judaism at all, he uses that to teach them about Jesus. So he's even using the surroundings that he finds himself in when he goes to different areas in order to reach the people on their own level with whatever foundation they happen to have at that time.

Those things are a strategy. They have a general plan to achieve one or more long term goals -- in their case, it's to spread the Good News about Jesus being the Messiah -- and they're certainly working under conditions of uncertainty. They don't know what they're gonna encounter when they go to these different places. When Paul goes to Thessalonica in the beginning of Acts 17, he's not welcome there at all. But then when he goes to Berea next, he's very much welcome there. And then he gets chased there by the people from Thessalonica and he gets chased out of Berea and then ends up in Athens. Yeah, it's definitely uncertain when he goes into these places and tries to teach them about Jesus being the Messiah and the resurrection. There's a lot of uncertainty there. You don't know what the response is going to be.

So we can see that both Jesus and Paul (and, of course, the other apostles and disciples), they used a strategy when they went out to teach people about the resurrection, about Jesus, about all the things that Jesus has done for us and how he has come to save us from our sins. And we can also see that that was very clearly defined. They knew exactly what they were going to do when they went to preach somewhere. They knew what they were going to say, how they were going to respond if there were issues there. They had a very clear direction. They had a clear message. They didn't have to think about what their message was. They may have to tweak the approach in order to reach the people where they are, but they have a very clear objective, a clear goal.

Strategy Map

So that leads us into the strategy map. The strategy map was created by two gentlemen named Kaplan and Norton and they first wrote about it in the Harvard Business Review, and I will link that in the show notes and also on our website, ceopastor.com, so you can see the article there where they discuss the strategy map in detail. So they're the ones that created the idea of the strategy map, which is a visual representation of your strategy.

Now, why is it important to have a visual representation of strategy? Well, I don't know about everyone else, but I'm a pretty visual person. If I see a picture of something or I can envision it in my mind, I tend to remember it a whole lot better. I can see the relationships between everything that I'm seeing, I can see the colors if there's colors, I can see the shapes, I can see everything and it imprints that a lot more strongly on my mind.

So when you have a strategy map that you've clearly defined, and you can see the relationships between everything that you're doing, it allows you to communicate your strategy a lot more clearly to people that you're working with in your organization. So they're not sitting there like, "Well, I heard some words that I'm just forgetting." Like, if you can accompany your words with a visual picture of where you're going, then people tend to remember it better and also understand where they fit. When you have a map, a visual, it shows the relationships between the different elements of your strategy. So you can say, "Look at this, if we do this right, then this will be the effect of doing this right." So it shows a lot of cause and effect.

You can also, especially if you have it visualized when you're working on your strategy map, you can see, "Uh-oh, I have a hole here. I don't know how what I'm doing here is going to help my strategy get me to the outcome. I have a hole that I need to fill with something else in order to take me step by step from one thing to the next in order to achieve my goal. So I have to figure out how to fill that hole in order to be able to reach the next phase of the strategy and to get to the goal." It's just like building a bridge. If you have a huge gap in your bridge, you're not gonna be able to get to the other side even though you've got parts of the bridge on one side and parts of the bridge on the other. You have to bridge that gap with all of the elements and stepping stones of your strategy. So a strategy map will let you see, "Oops, we have a hole here we need to fill."

And also, when people are looking at that map, they see how what they do in specific fits into the strategy. Like, it's really hard to get excited about cleaning up the kitchen when you don't understand, if I don't clean the kitchen, then we might have issues with compliance for food safety, we might have issues with people who are coming in behind me being able to use the kitchen, we might have issues with rodents and things that come in that no one really wants in their kitchen. It kind of makes it gross for cooking food and making food for next time and it causes other issues. Like, you have to have extra costs to bring in pest control and then you have to clean up whatever mess the pests leave. It's not a good idea.

So, like, it's hard to get excited about seemingly low-level jobs. But once you see where they fit into your strategy, then you can say, "Oh, my job is actually important" and these... and then you understand why cuz you can see it in the map. If I don't perform my job, then we can't get to the next step in our strategy, the next level. So you tend not to neglect doing your job well when you have an understanding that my job is actually important. I'm just not here doing things for the sake of doing things. I'm actually doing something that is integral to what we're trying to accomplish here overall.

So that's an encouragement to people. There's nothing, in my opinion, that's more discouraging than doing work and not knowing why you're doing that work. If you're doing a job and you're like, "I don't think anybody even notices whether I'm doing this job. Maybe I'll just kind of skip and nobody will even pay any attention. They won't even realize." Like, that's discouraging. You don't want to be doing things that are not helpful to people. You want to be doing things that have meaning and that you understand where it fits in with everything else. So the strategy map shows you how some of the intangible things that you're doing and the tangible things that you're doing -- so all of your ideas and your... your work and and how you're doing everything -- how that turns into tangible results and fulfills the goals of the strategy, the direction that you're trying to go into.

Next Steps

So I would encourage you to read or at least skim the Harvard Business Review article by Kaplan and Norton that I will include in the show notes, a link to that article. And I'm also going to do a link to a strategy map for a not-for-profit organization. Now, this strategy map is for a government organization and, as we know, governments, they get their revenues from taxes so they know what their revenues are going to be, to a certain extent, from one year to the next so they don't have to worry about raising revenue or earning revenue in the same way that other organizations do. So that aspect of the strategy map will be a little different than your organization in most likelihood, but it will give you an idea of what a finished strategy map will look like when you have all of the elements in place.

And, as the weeks progress, I'm going to take different elements and explain them in depth. And then you can follow along and hopefully I'll give you some ideas or some different ways of looking at things so that you can incorporate them into your... your thought about creating your strategy map.

And also, if you have any questions as we move through this series, please send them in because I'm planning on doing a question and answer episode at the end so that we can get some of these questions answered and have a fuller understanding. Like, if I miss something or if there's something that's a little bit different that you... that you can't figure out how to fit in in your own context, please let me know and I will try to answer those questions the best that I can.

Our Next Episode

So in our next episode, we're going to be discussing the vision, mission, values, themes and results that you want to get from your strategy map. You can't create your strategy unless you know what all of these things are. These are the foundations for the strategy map. So the strategy is the foundation of the organization so you know where you're going, but the foundation of the strategy itself is the vision, mission, values, themes and results. So I look forward to having that discussion with you in our next episode.

Thank-you for joining me for today's episode of CEO Pastor podcast. I hope you discovered an idea that you can apply in your unique ministry context. Head over to ceopastor.com for more resources and meet up with me and other church leaders on social media for further discussion. Any questions or suggestions? Email me at podcast (at) ceopastor.com. And don't forget to share, rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast to help spread the word that managing ministry better makes ministry better.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai