Great missions turn into routine jobs if they aren’t pursued by great teams.
Two weeks ago was one of my favorite weeks in ministry over the last 20 years. My entire team from The Unstuck Group gathered in Atlanta for training and fun.
We are a remote team of 25 people, so we prioritize meeting together in the same location at least once each year. Needless to say, this is a huge investment. Not only do we pause all our consulting for one week (which costs us a significant amount of money), but I’m also paying for the entire team to travel to the same location.
Why do I make this investment? The first reason is because I really believe in our mission.
We are hyper-focused on helping churches get unstuck. Because of that, we are constantly trying to improve our effectiveness in carrying out that mission. This year we have taken a huge step forward by completely refreshing our entire Unstuck process. I wanted to gather everyone on our team to train all our consultants on the new tools we’re using to help churches get unstuck.
The second reason why I make this significant investment, though, is more important to me than the first. This may sound a bit heretical for a strategy consultant, but I actually think there’s something more important than the mission of The Unstuck Group.
It’s our team. It’s my team.
Whenever someone asks why I started The Unstuck Group almost 10 years ago, I always start by explaining how I want to help as many churches as possible get unstuck. But, I quickly follow that by expressing the one thing that’s more important than our mission. The primary reason I started The Unstuck Group is because I wanted to create a mission that would allow me to build a great team.
The “team” aspect of accomplishing the mission has always been more important to me.
The 25 people who get paid by The Unstuck Group probably wouldn’t have joined the team if it weren’t for our mission.
However, just to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have pursued this mission if it weren’t for the team. I’m a little bit biased, but they are a GREAT team!
Let me brag on them for just a moment. Over the last 12 months the team has:
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Launched a weekly podcast that has well over 100,000 downloads in the last year.
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Developed the Leading an Unstuck Church online course to equip church leaders around the world (including our friends in Norway!) without requiring anyone to travel to Atlanta for in-person coaching.
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Rolled out The Unstuck Church Assessment which has been completed by more than 1,400 churches and 7,500 church leaders. (You can take it too. It’s free.)
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Started the quarterly Unstuck Church Report based on data from our Vital Signs tracking, and now the report already has 4,200 subscribers. (You should subscribe as well. It’s free, too.)
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Developed a brand new online solution for collecting and tracking our Vital Signs data to track the health of hundreds of churches. (Make sure you’re subscribed so you can watch for details about how to participate in 2019.)
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Served over 150 churches through on-site consulting engagements where we help churches of all sizes assess their health, develop a vision and ministry strategy for the future, restructure their staff to support their mission and implement a focused action plan. (Planning without action disturbs me!)
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Maintained phenomenal customer satisfaction scores with the churches our team serves. Our “net promoter score” is consistently in the 80s (range of -100 to 100) which is well above the industry average for consulting firms.
My team is knocking the ball out of the park! They’re doing great work. But you need to know this about me…
I love our team more than I love our mission.
Great missions turn into routine jobs if they aren’t pursued by great teams. Click To TweetThat’s not to say we don’t have a great mission. Like I said, I don’t think I’d have such a great team if we didn’t have a mission to help hundreds of churches make a growing Kingdom impact.
And that’s not to say we don’t hold each other accountable for results. I wouldn’t love the team as much if we weren’t helping each other get better at what we do.
You may view life differently, but the older I get the more I realize that the mission isn’t everything. It’s important, but it’s not enough.
Great missions turn into routine jobs if they aren’t pursued by great teams.
And that’s why I’m proud to be an Unstucker!
