Issue No. 159 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features the classic book on creating sustainable partnerships. But be prepared to assess your current partnerships against this book’s truth-telling principles on what constitutes a true partnership. Charles Handy once said that “the world may admire truth-tellers, but few will want to employ them.” Hopefully, that isn’t the case in your organization. And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
Expect Problems With Partnerships
“They’ll know we are Christians by our love.” (How’s that working out for all of us?)
What if the next verse to that song read, “They’ll know we are Christians by our partnerships?” (Oops. That’s not working out either.)
Here’s the deal. Many Christian organizations—even in their mission statements—proudly proclaim that they are partners with the local church. Others have a “Director of Strategic Partnerships & Alliances” on their teams. But gut-check time: how competent are we in building and sustaining God-honoring partnerships?
There’s help. Phill Butler’s classic book, Well Connected, is your Partnership 101, 201, 301 and 401 course and baptism into the hope of John 17: unity in the body of Christ.
You may want to just read the summary (Chapter 1) and then delegate your reading to a team member who will review the book at a future staff meeting. The appendix is worth the price of the book, especially the five-page “Partnership/Network Diagnostic/Evaluation Tool” for your current presumed partnerships. Or you can rate yourself with 10 questions: “Are We Good Partnership Material?” If you score 60 or less (100 is possible), Butler suggests you host a leadership meeting to look at your scores and discuss improvement options.
Finally, the “15 Critical Principles” of partnerships are excellent. For example:
• #2. Lasting partnerships need a committed facilitator.
• #4. Effective partnerships have limited, achievable objectives in the beginning.
• #5. Effective partnerships start by identifying key felt needs among the people being served. [The Customer Bucket]
• #8. Effective partnerships are even more challenging to maintain than to start.
• #15. Effective partnerships expect problems and pro-actively deal with them.
To order this book from Amazon, click on this title: Well Connected: Releasing Power, Restoring Hope Through Kingdom Partnerships, by Phill Butler.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) In groups of two, make a list of all of our organization’s partnerships.
2) Phill Butler says that effective partnerships have a “partnership champion” inside every church, ministry or organization in the partnership. Why might that be absolutely critical? How are we doing on this principle?
Tiger Woods Has a Coach - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Drucker Bucket, Chapter 4, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is that we don’t just give lip service to management—we actually are disciplined students of great leadership and management thinkers like Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard and others.
Peter Drucker preached that you must practice, practice and practice the art of management. He said it was like any other discipline. World-class musicians hone their gifts up to eight hours a day. Athletes practice, practice and practice. Professional golfers finish 18 holes and head to the driving range. Tiger Woods has a coach.
What do hassled leaders and managers do? After the nine-to-five battle (more often 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M.), they overeat, drink or distract their joyless days with mind-numbing entertainment. On the other hand, great managers stay at it—always digging for fresh insights and solutions. Drucker writes, “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.”
On the Buckets website, you can link to a website that will help you impress your colleagues with a few Druckerisms at appropriate times in boring business meetings. Here’s one of my favorite quotes: "Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done." Also on the website, you can order four of my top picks of the Drucker books.
MANAGEMENT BUCKETS WORKSHOP:
• October 20-21, 2009 – Mastering the Management Buckets Workshop Experience (Dana Point, California). Click here for more information.
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