One of the three core areas of consultation that I provide to organizations is a staffing and structure review. Because we produce a custom structure for every organization, I don’t have any templates to share with you.
What I can offer, though, are several questions that shape how we arrive at our recommendations. Whether you are operating a church, non-profit or business, these same principles about creating a healthy structure will certainly apply.
- What is your strategy to accomplish your vision? We base the structure on the core strategy. One of the most frequent questions I get is can we review the staffing structure first? I never do that, because the ideal structure is always based on a clearly defined strategy. For organizations that have not clarified their strategy, we offer the StratOp process.
- What are the strengths of your current team? We review not only the roles people currently fill but also the way each person is wired up. We lean on Leading From Your Strengths for this. What are their gifts and skills? What are their experiences? How does their personality impact their contribution? What are they most passionate about? We try to make sure current staff are in a role that is a best fit for them and the organization.
- What’s the leadership capacity of people on the team? We pay attention to the 4 Stages of Leadership to determine who has the capacity to lead tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands. There’s no assessment to determine leadership capacity. It’s all based on looking at how a leader has demonstrated leadership capacity in the past — that’s the best predictor of how they’ll live out their leadership role in the future.
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