Vision Essentials 05

Don't Just Plan It, Do It!

Have you ever had a person make you a promise and not fulfil it? I have and it’s a big ‘let-down’, but more than that, it damages the person’s integrity because I would certainly think twice about trusting the words of that individual again. ‘Talk’ not backed up with action is just empty words.

Talking and planning, yes, are vital parts of vision building but they are the easy bits. Executing the plan is the hard part. It involves putting into play agreed decisions and policies to get the vision on the road and moving. This part of the process can be seen as ‘making good’ our words or promises. It will take courage, commitment, strength and the ‘will to act’ to see the kind of progress envisaged by the plan.

In the same way a person’s integrity can be damaged by failing to keep one’s word, so the integrity of a vision can be gravely undermined if key elements of the plan are not carried out. People will lose faith in the vision if what has been promised fails to materialise. They will also lose confidence in the leaders – the initiators of the vision. All this can result in the vision running into the ground and dying – and the cause? A failure to act!

Having done the work of constructing a strategic plan to achieve the vision, leaders must decisively go to the next step: ensuring that the various stages of the plan are efficiently executed. Where the vision is concerned don’t just plan it, do it! Don’t just plot the course, make the journey!

Key Points

Here are some key points to help:

• Make detailed schedules available to all team members and those leading key areas of the vision so they understand clearly where they should be heading, what they should be doing, and what targets they should be reaching
• Ensure that agreed decisions and action points are carried out within the agreed timeframe. This builds momentum and produces progress
• Get regular feedback from leaders and teams concerning implementation and the progress being made. This can be done in a variety of ways: written reports, one-on-one meetings, or full team meetings
• Hold to account those who are responsible for implementing decisions, carrying out scheduled action points
• Tolerate mistakes (because they’re a part of the learning curve and we all make them), but don’t settle for inconsistency and indifference. If team members or ministers with responsibility are not performing get with them, help them to discover the cause and resolve it. If the situation continues to be unsatisfactory and demotivating then the individual concerned must be released from that responsibility. The bottom line is the vision is too important for one person to jeopardise 

Finally

A highly regarded management consultant recently related this story:

I heard this story from one of our workshop participants. We were talking about values and how they play out in practice. Their organisation, a government department, has 'fun' as a stated value. With that in mind Janet (not her real name) thought it would be fun to take her team on an outing to the newly opened Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart. She mentioned her plan to her manager who suggested she should write a memo outlining her plans. The memo was sent to her manager's manager and the text was edited and massaged and eventually it was sent all the way up to the head of Janet's division.

That was six months ago and she has never heard a thing about it since.

What would you say is valued in this organisation? A company that values 'fun' should be teeming with 'fun' stories. It's a little difficult, however, to have 'fun' stories without fun experiences.¹

Don’t allow the vision to get stuck because of inactivity. In order to see and experience the reality of the thing we desire we can’t sit on the plans, we must execute them!

As the vision progresses the faith of the people increases, hope is renewed, the kingdom advances, and Yahweh is honoured. Everybody wins!

Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan. 
NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.
TOM LANDRY

Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.
DAVID STARR JORDAN

COLOSSIANS 3:17
And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord (Yahshua)

COLOSSIANS 3:23
Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for (Yahshua) rather than for people

JAMES 1:22
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves

Gracious Father I believe in the vision that you have shown us, and we’re grateful for the support you gave through the Holy Spirit that inspired us to create plans to achieve it. Help us now as we go forward to safeguard the integrity of the vision by diligently leading your people into it. Help us to put into action decisions that have been prayerfully made so that we can all experience real progress and renewed hope.

¹by Shawn Callahan – www.anecdote.com.au/archives/anecdotes/

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