Monday, July 20, 2009

Organizing for Control vs. Growth

The Senior Leader at my church said this a few months ago, "You can organize for control or you can organize for growth. You can't organize for both!"

How true and difficult that statement is. I find that organizing for control is much easier than organizing for growth. In fact, that statement "organize for growth" is a little bit vague.

Control is easy. You run it, you call the shots, you are responsible for failures and successes, you do everything. It requires no leadership because you are DOING everything.

Growth is difficult. What does it look like to organize for growth? Is it a lack of control? Is it the opposite of organizing for control? Does it mean things are OUT of control? To be honest with you, I still don't really know. I believe that one of the elements of organizing for growth is trust. To release control, I must trust others to control. I must trust that other people will have the ability to carry out whatever I would normally do on my own. Organizing for growth requires an infinite amount of leadership. I will never be a good enough leader for my "organization" to cease growing and improving. If I stop growing as a leader, I believe whatever I am leading will also stop growing.

These are merely random thoughts that I am dealing with today. Anyone else have thoughts on how to organize for growth vs. control?