Gaining & Sustaining Momentum- Andy Stanley

• Gaining and Sustaining Momentum
  
  Momentum:
• If you have momentum, you need to identify why you have it- otherwise you’re one stupid decision away from losing it
• Businesses that lose momentum immediately have meetings, planning to try to get it back, churches will allow years to go by to not identify it as long as they’re paying the bills
• Churches with momentum need to consider that there are particular systems and decisions that are creating it- "I don't know, God is just blessing us" is an incomplete analysis.
  · New, Improved, Improving- 3 Elements of Sustaining Momentum
• “New” triggers momentum
• Momentum can be positive OR negative
• Negative event/negative momentum .. think 9-11
• Negative event/positive momentum ....People give, heroes appear
• Negative circumstances are the great soil for positive momentum- Negative economy…=
• Positive event/positive momentum- New sports stadium
• Funny: When a pastor leaves it can create negative or positive momentum
  · Organizational Triggers to momentum: New leadership, direction, or product
  · If an organization lacks momentum, ask:"do we need new leader, direction, or product?" Churches tend to go right to new leader….
• Momentum is never triggered created by tweaking something old, it’s about launching something new-
• NEW must be a NOTICEABLE improvement- New AND improved- You can’t just name something different to create momentum
• Is this a significant improvement over what we did before? SIGNIFICANT- ask the questions… If it’s not SIGNIFICANT…. Don’t do it.
• You would rather have 2 things with momentum over 10 without momentum… Gets back to what we can do really really well….
• Even significant improvement has a shelf-life… Never feels new & improved forever
• Momentum is sustained by continuous improvement… THINK New products… “New and Improved” I stick with a brand when I believe they’re going to be continuously improving…they’re on the cutting edge always improving their product…
• Continuous improvement requires systematic, regular evaluation
  · Work to continuously improve not because you got complaints… it’s so you never get complaints…
  · Unfiltered evaluation- Nobody and nothing off-limits for potential improvement
  · Let’s make Sunday better on Sunday! After first service filtering…
  · New personel, programming, season, series, look, venues
  · Look for ways to upgrade presentations
  · Attend other organizations
  ·
• MOMENTUM STOPPERS
• Disengaged leader
• Overactive management
• Managers want to take chaos into predictability
• Leaders break all the rules
• Don’t put managers in leadership, don’t put leaders in management (types)
• Momentum requires margin and un-predictability- managers can’t be allowed to kill momentum by working to keep things predictable-
• Complacency
• Complexity- (one reason why there’s success in church start-ups…) Older organizations add complexity that sometimes needs to be stripped away-
• Breach of trust- moral failure
  Q & A:
• The "creators" of what is being evaluated need to be in the evaluation and guided through the "why" of the changes being made or programs being cut
• Life-cycle of programs/seasons- the younger the audience the shorter the cycles, high school, singles, etc Ask How long can we run it before we need to shut it down?
• We gave God credit for everything, anything bad was always the devil- we were left with no principles to find what God was blessing
• We pray for wisdom- God works through people, Noah still had to build the ark, the disciples still had to go out and preach
• Much more resources are needed to get initial momentum than sustaining (flywheel concept)
• Complexity: When there’s a great idea you can’t do because of “us”- then your/our organization is looking complex-
• Systems create behaviors…. What system is required to yield the desired behavior?