Whether you are sighting in for target shooting, calibrating an analytical instrument, aligning the wheels of a car or organization, or spiritually centering a ministry or personal life, one fact holds true—if you don’t have influence over the forces controlling accuracy, you have no mechanism to assure you will hit anywhere close to your intended target or goal. Optimal functioning requires alignment.
Fundamentals of Alignment
Intentional progress for any ministry is a stewardship issue. Ministries have been given destiny, resources, and the time frame to accomplish a divine appointment. Unfortunately, many are the ministries that have crashed and become unable to relevantly serve the community in which they exist. Why? Because every ministry is on a journey and the ministry is like a vehicle. Some ministries fail to negotiate the metaphorical curve resulting from a changing culture or failed leadership; as a result, upend, crash or go through rough terrain trying to get back on the road. some survive the crash only to get stuck in mud up to the engine and slowly sink in a quagmire of muck weighted down with excess program baggage and useless ministry accessories than even a rescue tow truck can't pull them out.
In a sense, these ministries were driving through their rear view mirror and navigating based on historical success (trailing indicators) rather than seeing the curves of the future (leading indicators). A continual process of alignment keeps a ministry on the road with eyes focused on forward progress, not recent history. However, alignment is not solely right and left and between the lines. Continuing with the driving metaphor, especially with traffic, alignment is also being aware how close or far other drivers are in front and behind you. If this is true in driving and ministry, then recent history is as helpful as current data for alignment.
Successful businesses undergo a rigorous alignment process because profitability demands it. Ministries must undergo a continuous alignment process, not because of any business survival issue, but because of a stewardship responsibility to be salt and light—instruments of righteousness and love within the community. The day is coming when spiritual leadership will be asked what it has done with what has been given.
Understanding Alignment
Relaxed Static Stability
To balance the contradiction, the redundant onboard computer system takes thousands of pieces of data per second to make the micro adjustments necessary for the jet to fly. This is known as relaxed static stability. Without continuous monitoring and adjustments, the newest generation of fighter jets would break up and crash to the earth. They simply cannot fly without a continuous process of alignment.
Organizations, contrary to what seems to be apparent, cannot function effectively without relaxed static stability in relational processes as well as in technical programs. Crime laboratories, for example, cannot produce reliable results unless their testing instruments have been calibrated using a known reference standard to maintain accuracy or get re-centered again. The instrument cannot assure accuracy by performing tests on itself. Error simply compounds error. In fact, there is not an analytical instrument built capable of perpetual accuracy. And when that piece of mechanical and electrical gadgetry won’t calibrate, it means something is functionally wrong with the instrument; it needs repair. Most instruments can make minor “fine tuning” adjustments, but no instrument can fix itself once broken.
Likewise, in a ministry, if alignment can not or is not being achieved with day-to-day adjustments, then something is functionally wrong with how the ministry is organized or operated. Dysfunction necessitates intervention.
Organizational alignment involves a process of continual monitoring against a known standard, a periodic refocusing of the lens and an identification of external reference standards to make sure the adjustments are truly centered rather than simply mirroring what has already been done. A ministry in a process of continuous alignment assures that actions yield results in line with intentions.
Most ministries today have invested time and effort into creating vision, mission, values and guiding principle statements. The only means of preventing this good work from becoming cliché, or worse, a cynical reminder of who they aren’t, is to regularly engage leadership in an alignment/realignment process.
Perceptions Are Not Alignment
Many organizations including ministries make a fatal error in thinking self-perception or ministry-perception—what we think to be true without the discipline of rigorous self-examination—is reality. The cliché that perception is reality is only partially true. A more accurate statement is that perception is apparent reality. Foundational to having a successful working system of alignment is procuring accurate data contributing to sound decision making, and then going beyond perceptions, hopes or group think.
We like to think we are analytical and systematic in how we gather information and evaluate the environment around us. But listen to Steve and Jill Morris from the book, Leadership Simple:
Biologists Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela have observed that at least 80% of what we perceive to be information from our outside world actually comes from what we already know, from the experiences we hold inside our memories. We sense some events or things and then we draw from our knowledge additional data to fill in what we missed in the original communication or information. Or, we select out what is not consistent with what we know and replace it with knowledge we already have.1
In applying their research, we know what we do many times a day is evaluate and compare current experiences and information against past history; we then make choices based on conclusions. That’s using deductive reasoning, understanding and wisdom. However, what Maturana and Varela found is that we often don’t know when we are substituting external data that we may not be comfortable with for already acquired, familiar, potentially flawed assumptions and perceptions. This can make our perception of reality highly unreliable unless we check it it against outside points of reference such as biblical standards, wise people, and feedback data.
If spiritual leadership does not engage in a rigorous and systematic process of alignment, then it will remain in a state of self- and ministry-deception about the source of problems and solutions. The authors of Leadership and Self-Deception – Getting Out of the Box make a clear case:
Self-deception is like this. It blinds us to the true cause of problems, and once blind, all the ‘solutions’ we can think of will actually make matters worse. That’s why self-deception is so central to leadership—because leadership is about making matters better.
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