Lecture

Welcome to lecture 7 in our advanced course in Leadership and Administration for Churches and Christian Organizations. We’re talking about the team leader as decision maker. Technology is zooming in, the computer cable winding its octopus-like tentacles around every task. Teleconferencing goes on, personal letters recede, there’s a multiethnic dimension to almost all aspects of leadership in Christian organizations, and “business as usual” is just not possible in terms of decision making. Baby Boomers are struggling to find their way back to the church, and the first one became age 50 on January 1, 1996. So dealing with decision making in our modern world is to flex with constant change while trying to hold on to those things which do not change, which we’ve talked about in earlier lectures.

How can we design effective decision-making paradigms in this kind of volatile climate? One thing, for example, would be to look at the Lord Jesus as the model decision maker. He clearly didn’t buy into accepted models of religious thought in His day. He came to serve rather than to be served. In death He destroyed all thoughts of some political effective Messiah who would wrest Israel from earthly oppressors. And after the resurrection, He re-explained the Scriptures to two disciples on the road to Emmaus that crumbled their traditional framework and their traditional understandings.

We’ve mentioned several times that, during His life, Jesus made no attempt to indoctrinate His disciples or cram them with knowledge. He encouraged them to draw their own conclusions from available evidence and trusted the Holy Spirit to provide all the further instruction they would need for the many things left undone. So, as I have encouraged you various times in this course, we want to be thinking about group leadership, team leadership, in which the leaders plural are involved in the decision-making process.

Let me talk for a bit about the causes of ineffective decision making. Indecisiveness has ruined the effectiveness of many leaders, and I think we can put our finger on some of the things that cause it. People who seem to have abilities to perform certain tasks often stop short of shouldering the responsibility, especially in decision making. There are a lot of things about leadership almost anybody likes to do, but decision making is one that comes tough for a lot of people; and ineffective decision making consistently surfaces two problems: the hesitancy to make any kind of a decision or the making of an inferior decision. I think both of these negative results can be traced to several basic causes.

The first cause is lack of clear-cut objectives. Sometimes leaders don’t act because they don’t know what to do. Think about a Sunday school superintendent faced with the responsibility of structuring a staff meeting for volunteers. When should it be held? How often should the staff meet? What should be the focus of the meetings? Unless she can determine, in initial planning stages, the kind of result she wants to attain, those kinds of questions are difficult to answer. Only when we clarify and specify objectives can we make decisions in such a way as to achieve those objectives.

The second problem is insecurity of position or authority. Sometimes leaders seem afraid to act for fear of the consequences. Perhaps a Christian college faculty member, for example, whose relationship with department chairmen is unclear. He’s not sure whether they respect his scholarship. He gets the impression that they may even consider his work in the department inferior, and because of that situation, an insecurity develops in that teacher’s mind. And he will have difficulty making decisions which might in any way demonstrate his authority in a manner distasteful to his peers and his chairmen. This is a time bomb waiting to explode, when decisions are set aside or criticized by that department chairman, by the boss.

The third problem is lack of information. Decision making becomes more difficult when no alternative seems clear or when all alternatives seem equally clear. We must collect sufficient information about the problem to narrow those alternatives, and decision making commonly requires us to select among alternatives. We limit information to demonstrate that some possible decisions are less valid than others. Sometimes that information will immediately focus on one course of action. We say, “Okay, this is it. Let’s do it.” At other times, the limitations chop away at possibilities until there’s only one respective alternative left.
Leaders who don’t actively seek all possible information before rendering decisions can cripple themselves in the decision-making process.

The fourth problem is fear of change; because, whether we admit it or not, we really would like to retain the status quo. We think of ourselves as change agents, and we’re out there as visionaries plowing new ground; but virtually every decision produces some kind of change, and there is therefore a threat to present modes of operation. Of course, the more radical the change, the more change will cause a fuss, and what will people say? The attitudes and opinions of people should be of great significance, especially in Christian organizations, but when these expected attitudes or opinions become detrimental to effective decision making—in other words, when we back off of what we believe is right in a decision because of what people might say – we have to bring all of that into proper perspective. Obviously, sometimes it would be wise not to make a certain decision because of what people will say or do. At other times, we need to have courage to go ahead anyhow.

Critical thinking is a major factor in all of this. Try this working definition for critical thinking skills: the ability to identify and challenge assumptions to imagine and explore alternatives based on the understanding that absolute truth does undergird our lives. When we define absolutes, we have to follow the model of the Lord and trust the Holy Spirit, as we said earlier, to lead us and to lead others into truth. We give people the freedom to discover as much for themselves as possible. So as administrators, teachers, and leaders, we provide an atmosphere in which critical thinking can flourish.

There was an article in Business Week not too long ago which described a creative design process related to the release of hot consumer items and how decisions were made regarding their design and function. It’s an interesting, kind of workable paradigm, I think, for Christian organizations seeking to provide an administrative structure and a leadership decision-making style that encourages critical thinking. We have a product that will transform the world—the grace of God manifested in Jesus Christ. As first-century Christians had to cross barriers, we have to cross barriers too. Expressions like “marketing” and “customer” or “designing for success” sound worldly to our Christianized ears, but they can provide impetus to recognize that our message deserves the very best we can give it to make it known.

Now one other thing about these products in Business Week is that they were designed with the user in mind. And the Business Week article that I refer to identifies seven essentials which mark the managing process and the decision-making pattern regarding this whole idea of bringing critical thinking to the decision-making process.

1. They were designed from the inside out. The customer’s use of the product, not the technology, central to all product development.
2. The teams that put these things together “partnered deeply.” I’m using the terminology of the article. The only way to unleash the power of design is to team up with relevant business units, or relevant ministry units, within your organization and help define new ministries or new avenues or new products. Partner widely, partner deeply, partner widely.
3. Traditional businesses are deconstructing into virtual corporations made up of internal and external departments. So designers have to partner with all what we call today stakeholders, the in-house folks in marketing, as well as the people outside.
4. Define the product up front. It’s critical to get the right product for the right market before committing to tooling and manufacturing. So in that up-front designing, decisions have to make sure that we’re moving toward the right goals. That brings us right back again to the idea of having clear-cut objectives before we make decisions.
5. Get physical fast. Prototyping provides visualization of a concept. It offers quick feedback from users and managers. And fast prototyping squeezes time out of the product development cycle.
6. Design for manufacturability. Design with parameters, such as the quality and the cost and delivery. In other words, when you’re deciding, this is not now creative thinking. Creative thinking and critical thinking are two different things. We’re talking about now getting down to what’s possible and making decisions on criteria such as function and ergonomics and what this decision is going to do and how these products are going to work out in the real world.
7. Number seven is very interesting. Surprise the user. Build in something extra. Deliver more than the customer buys. Create product loyalty if possible in a society that has virtually given up loyalty and commitment.

Not all of these seven steps relate to decision making, but they provide a framework of critical thinking. Two in particular, I think, aim directly at decision making, and I want to stretch them a little bit further: partnering deeply and partnering widely.

So let’s talk about group decision making, the new paradigm. In Em Griffin’s book Getting Together, he emphasizes five factors which mark a good decision:

1) Quality: how good a decision is it?

2) Time: how long does it take to decide?

3) Commitment: will all the committee or group members, everybody who’s involved here, all the stakeholders, really support it?

4) Attractiveness: did the process create an esprit de corps among committee members?

5) Learning: did the group learn during the process?

Then Griffin goes on to explore five different ways of making decisions and concludes that consensus best meets the needs and the demands of the five criteria. And I quote him when he says: “Consensus promises the wisdom of Solomon, together with a kind of member commitment, attraction, and learning that a leader dreams of.”

Now what about group consensus? Teamwork and decision making is the synergy of many minds, and it brings up that old philosophical argument about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. This has seized the corporate world, by the way, and yet it’s a very biblical, very first-century-church kind of attitude. So when a Christian organization pushes teamwork, it’s not buying into a secular concept. It’s reaffirming the need for the team and the group that started clear back in the Garden of Eden—“It is not good for man to be alone”—clear up until the demonstrations of the New Testament church throughout the book of Acts.

Even God is Three in One, each person of the Trinity eternally in relationship with the others, and each one no less God than the others.

So we are the ones who should be initiating partnership. We sometimes reinforce the opposite. One person comes marching down from his or her position of authority and says, “This is what we are going to do.” We tend to applaud Lone Ranger pastors who build large churches on the flimsy virtue of their own autocratic personality. We affirm Christian superstars, we’re awed by the ostentation that goes on, and we ignore the millions of people who live out team ministry day by day in churches and Christian organizations around the world. I think it’s very important that we make the case for group decision making on this principle, that it is a biblical principle, not something we’re stripping out of the secular corporate world.

Sandvig makes the case, I think, with great clarity. He says:

In light of strong biblical support for participatory methods, it’s surprising that more churches are not using them. Fears and misconceptions about consensus are prevalent and need to be addressed adequately before a church can adopt participatory decision-making structures. Apart from this, most pastors and leaders have become comfortable with authoritarian and representative structures and attitudes, and change is just too difficult.

Well, I agree, but I’m saddened by that. A major portion of what I’m trying to do in this course is to emphasize this whole idea of team unity and team ministry and team leadership.

Let’s talk a little bit more about that group unity. The “partnering deeply” implies trust and a willingness to dispense with that authoritarian rule so that everybody can be a part of the group. We’re not talking competition here, we’re talking cooperation. That’s the key word then. A cooperative environment is one which designs ways that the whole body can move forward, not ways one part can dominate the rest by claiming special insights about a decision affecting the entire group. “Partnering widely” applies more to communication process and organizational support of this integrated thinking.

Keep in mind that we want to build an environment which frees the depths of creativity in the human mind so that through the wisdom God gives us, we can discover new approaches and solutions to constantly changing problems and circumstances. Organizations like a church or a mission board, whose departments or divisions work at cross purposes, drain incentive for fresh ideas. That kind of climate promotes insularity rather than global or holistic thinking. We’ve got to get away from turf protection and get into this group unity and team consensus.

Obviously, churches and Christian organizations have to provide vehicles to build oneness. Retreats and meetings and large gatherings are okay, but regularly conducted staff meetings and cross-departmental or divisional or sectional meetings are essential. We need to get into meetings at a future lecture. We’ll bypass that for the moment.

Let’s move right to decision making and the problem-solving process. When we view decision making basically as a process of problem solving—and many leadership and administration books do just that—there are certain steps which we can delineate regarding how we solve a problem or make a decision. It can be outlined in different structures, and the one I’m about to give you is only one paradigm. The first three steps represent the process of studying the decision, the next three relate to making the decision, and the seventh has to do with testing the decision. So keep that in mind as we move ahead.

1) The first step is the orientation to the situation. How do leaders get familiar with the background of problems and the context in which problems arise? First of all, we might assume that we have some general experience in the area. And that experience and knowledge are the very factors which elevated people to leadership in the first place. So a Christian college departmental chairperson, for example—maybe the same one we were talking about a little earlier—confronts a problem. Professor Smith is threatening to resign at the end of this year. “Will you speak to him and see if you can talk him into keeping his position?” says the dean to the department chairman. The professional leader brings to that problem an understanding of adult psychology, an appreciation of the factors that motivate Smith’s action to either stay or leave, and some notion of what will happen if Smith has to be replaced. All of that is a part of the overall scenario, the orientation to the situation.
So during this first step of problem solving or decision making, we practice deferred judgment. This is the study stage, not the acting stage. It’s not necessary yet to know exactly what one will say to Smith or who will take his place if he leaves. First we attempt to understand why he wants to leave, why the informant happens to be the one telling the story—if it’s the dean or whoever it is, maybe another faculty member—and what’s the climate of this problem?

2) Step two identifies key facts. Now let’s recognize that we’ll never have all the facts in any given decision-making situation. We sift through information, which we receive, and we try to isolate and study data. And this particular step of the process requires acute observation of the problem. We better now know what the problem is and what kind of information we have here and how accurate it is.

One facet of this second step is asking effective questions. Such questions need to be open questions rather than closed questions. In other words, they should allow the respondent to tell what he knows rather than answer yes or no as if he were in a witness box at a trial. They should be leading questions rather than loaded questions. Instead of gunning for answers we think we want, as leaders we need to ask like catalysts, hoping to stir up important facts as people reply. Open questions rather than closed questions; leading questions rather than loaded questions; cool questions rather than heated questions. Some problem situations may aggravate the leader: “We’re not happy about this. We didn’t need this on our plate today.” Parents will often reply to children: “Why did you do that?” And the very question scolds rather than expects a legitimate answer. They don’t really want the child to say, “Well, if you’ll think about it logically, this is why I did it.” It’s a scolding form. We don’t want that. We’re not talking about heated questions. We want cool questions.

Effective questions also are planned rather than impulsive, especially at this point in the decision-making process. It may be necessary for leaders to think by themselves for a while before plunging into a problem. Whom should I talk to? How should I approach him? What would be the best time to raise this issue? One additional criterion is the idea that these questions are window questions rather than mirror questions. And this is very important, because these questions should allow us to look through clear glass into the problem rather than reflecting our own opinions or prejudices back into the situation.

3) Step three is identification of the major problem or problems. Not all decisions are problem-solving decisions. Some merely relate to selecting a course of action, but when an identifiable problem presents itself, we have to specify that problem before it can be solved. And how do we do that? We look for causes rather than symptoms. Wise leaders assume that all behavior is motivated. Sometimes the difficulty may be internal, such as sin in the life. Sometimes it may be external friction with other people in the organization. Whatever it is, we are trying to look for causes rather than symptoms.

We need to isolate the sections through what we call deductive reasoning. Now deductive reasoning proceeds from the general to the specific. Let’s get back to Professor Smith again. In the general view, Smith might leave the college; but the specific problem that we’re really dealing with is not Smith’s departure. The specific problem might be that he’ll leave the college because he’s not getting along with his wife, or he’s disgruntled about the curriculum, or he isn’t being paid enough, or whatever it is. That’s the real problem. The idea that he’s leaving the college is not sufficiently specific, or that he might leave the college is even less specific.

Third, here, we open-mindedly weigh all the evidence. This is still in step two. Don’t assume that all evidence which presents itself in response to any given decision or problem is accurate. Godly decision making combines knowledge and wisdom, leadership skill, and patience, under the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit.

4) Step four is the proposal of possible causes and the identification of one or more. Now we are in the acting phase. Step three focused on the identification. Now we aim at the delineation and specification of those causes. Any good leader should be able to verbalize these problems and verbalize the proposed solutions. It’s not some big thing that you’re just thinking about. Sometimes a specific problem will never appear if the group works its way through steps three and four of the decision-making process. And if so, we can generalize on past successes, we apply a little inductive reasoning, and reach consensus. No problem. But sometimes it is important for us to really dig out the problem and to be able, as I said a moment ago, articulate it and articulate the probable causes and really get at this kind of thing.

If you’ve read my book Feeding and Leading, which I suggest is a pre-listening assignment for this course, you’ll have checked chapter 12 for the actual procedures of effective team decision making.

5) Step five is listing of probable solutions. The listing of probable solutions step consists of engaging in creative brainstorming. You know the rules of that and how it works. In brainstorming quantity breeds quality. The more ideas we come up with, the more possible ideas, the more possible solutions to the problem, the more likely we are to come up with a good one. In brainstorming we solicit as many ideas from others as possible—not trying to merely identify the facts. That’s in a past step, but now seeking solutions from people who may have something solid to offer. What we’re doing is asking this leadership team: What would you do in this situation? What should we do in this situation? Brainstorming does not allow for evaluation at this point. When a member of a leadership team offers an idea during discussion, someone reacts and says, “That wouldn’t work in this situation,” that’s really rendering insignificant information at this phase. Feasibility is important, but feasibility comes next, and that is the next step.

6) Testing, selecting, and applying the best solution. In the testing of possible solutions, we ask such questions as: Will it work? Will people accept it? Will it cost too much? Is the solution permanent or stop gap? So on the basis of this testing feasibility process, decision-making groups select solutions which best seem to fit the case. As I’ve already said, we make the choice in the context of prayer and understanding biblical principles of leadership led by the Holy Spirit all the way through.

When we’re testing and selecting solutions, we have to avoid vacillation or obvious apprehension about the decision. It affects parties, different people, and they need to be informed immediately when the decision is made.

Another thing we want to do is evaluate the decision. If we make a decision to solve a problem, and we implement it, the first obvious question is: Did the problem go away? And if it did not, was the failure in the decision or in some fault of implementing the decision? In other words, it’s one thing to decide, I’m going to go talk to Smith and find out why he wants to leave the college. That’s a decision. It’s a quite another thing, in that discussion with Smith, to say the wrong things and give bad body language and then throw Smith on his guard so you come away with no more information than you had when you went it. That’s an implementation problem.

After we evaluate the decision, one of the major questions we have to ask is how do we know when a decision which has been publicly announced should be changed? Well, let me tell you first of all when it should not be changed. It should not be changed if obstacles are blocking progress, but it’s likely that in time we can pull this off, and the problem will be solved. It should not be changed if some people reacted negatively. We assume that some people would. We already thought about those people. There’s no reason to believe necessarily that their behavior represents error in the decision itself.

So when implementation is difficult but possible, experienced leaders know that there’s no reason to turn back. But let’s ask: When should the decisions be changed, and there are people who will tell you, “Never change a decision. It gives people the idea that you’re a weak leader.” I disagree. I think you’re a strong leader when you make the decision to change a decision for good reasons. What are those reasons? First of all, when new facts are available which alter the identification of causes or solutions—in other words, we know more now than we did when we made the decision, so if we were making the decision today, we’d make it differently. Second, the situation has changed, and the context in which we made it has been sufficiently altered to render it inadequate, and it’s not going to work now. Things are different. But the most important reason to change, and the most difficult, is that when we discover faulty reasoning in the decision-making process, because now we’re coming back and saying to the group: “Sorry, we were wrong. We messed up on this one, and we’re not going to do this after all.”

7) Now how do you evaluate yourself as the decision maker? Let’s spend a few minutes on this, and then we’re finished with this lecture. Like leaders, decision makers are made. They’re not born. The process of leadership evolvement, if we can put it that way, which I’ve described various times through the lectures, indicates that there are traits and gifts which may be an aid to some persons and enable them to function effectively as leaders in certain situations.
But most of leadership behavior results from adequate training. So here’s a checklist. I’m going to run through some questions which indicate whether or not you are an effective decision maker and whether others who serve with you can be effective in a decision-making process.

1. Are the objectives of the organization clear to me?
2. Are the objective of the organization clear to my leadership team?
3. Do we carefully consider the mission of our ministry when making decisions?
4. Are we able to specify individual goals for ourselves, as well as general objectives for the organization?
5. Do we tend to shrink from decision making, or do we face each decision with the courage and conviction necessary to handle it competently?
6. Do we analyze our own problems clearly?
7. Do we generally have difficulty in analyzing the problems of others for whom we are responsible?
8. Can we usually distinguish causes properly?
9. Can we verbalize understandable statements about organizational and individual problems?
10. Do we have sufficient rapport with colleagues and subordinates to work effectively together in the decision-making process?

All of this and many more questions could be asked, but that’s a start. Veteran leaders realize that decision making lacks permanency. That is, the decisions we make today, which may be entirely correct and profitable for the improvement and progress of the ministry organizations we lead, may need to be rethought and revised within the next five years—maybe within the next six months. So we build into the decision-making process a feedback mechanism which provides a long-run, continuous testing with options for revision, as the events brought about by the decisions fall into place. Willingness to change when necessary, flexibility, but most of all involving all the members of the leadership team in the decision-making consensus.