When navigating uncharted waters (the theme of this week’s posts), one of the best leadership ideas is: find an expert. I had the opportunity yesterday to talk with a pastor who is responsible for leadership in a particular area of ministry that is uncharted for us. What made it so helpful is he serves in a church with 4,000 in weekly attendance. He has twelve years of experience in that environment and during that time he has seen the church grow from 3,000 to 4,000 people, so he has the kind of experience that could be extremely helpful to me as a leader who is in the process of leading a local church into the 1,000 people per weekend “waters.”
As I spoke with the pastor I realized not everything he said was immediately applicable in our situation, and some of it may never be applicable, but much of what he said was transferable to our situation, and provided a starting point from which our leadership can make informed decisions that will lead to informed commitments and actions. Everything I’ve said may be intuitively obvious to some of you, but sometimes it’s the intuitively obvious that we overlook. It’s so simple we forget to do it.
I have known for a long time that finding an expert can make a big difference when moving into uncharted waters, and yesterday’s conversation underlined that truth for me. The experience and expertise of someone who has “been there and done that,” who has learned from the missteps along the way, and who is willing to share it is invaluable to leaders who want to make the best use of available time, talent and other resources along the way.
Whatever uncharted waters you’re navigating today, you’ll do well to consider finding an expert who can help you navigate them. Sometimes the resources will cost time and money, and the question is one we must ask ourselves all the time: is the resource and investment or an expense? In other words, will my pouring time and money into the resource be an investment in charting the uncharted, or an expense that costs us time and/or money, but doesn’t make the way ahead any clearer. As every leader knows, sometimes you don’t know whether it was an investment or an expense until farther along the course, but we are leaders because we are in a position to make those calls.
If you are heading into uncharted waters in any area of your organization, and if you are healthy and growing, or wondering why you aren’t you probably are, then take some time to consider whether investing your time and other resources into finding and expert and getting help is a step you need to take.
Here’s to leading better by evaluating whether to get the help of an expert–today!