Can't You Read The Sign?

   

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

5 Man Electrical Band 1970

Essential to the El Camino are its signs.

My choice to walk the Camino del Norte only using the signs set out along various places like roads, curbs, walls, buildings, bridges, and trees meant I had to be vigilant.  No map. No GPS.  I wanted to walk like a pilgrim of old, sans tech. There was actually an excitement to intuiting the path 'au naturel' and if necessary, facing the challenge of getting lost!

After 281 KM of this I concluded that when you are consciously watching for signs rather than having a GPS (read: cultural) voice tell you where to go, your skills of 'noticing' become heightened.

We live in a world where others set out signs for us to follow.  Their aim is to prescribe the way you should go.  Political, media, religious, vocational institutions and a host other forces in our lives regularly set out their signs, beckoning us to walk in their stated direction.

People are reading a lot of signs and reacting to them, but I contend we don't 'notice' them very well. Just watch your Facebook feed and the comments section.

To notice is to discern.  Discernment is the process of making careful distinctions in our thinking about the truth of those signs for us.  Discernment asks questions like:

• Is this sign pointing in the general direction of where I want to go?
• Does this sign make any sense being here, now?
• Based on the signs that have brought me to this place, can I trust this sign?
• Do I actually want to go where this sign will direct me?
• Where will I end up if I actually followed this sign?

Unfortunately it's now a rampant habit in our culture to latch on to a position and lock into ways of thinking and looking at the world.  Any signs pointing to potential new ideas, new routes and new ways of thinking/being can't be 'noticed' because our eyes have become unaccustomed to looking at a sign and discerning it's meaning.  Signs are given attention only as far as they fit our existing biases.

How can you 'see' a sign for its own merit and make a decision? Some of my thoughts from following Camino signs:

1. Define the signs you are looking for. Not all signs have to do with you or your journey.  On the Camino it's a yellow arrow.  The arrow exists in a few different formats, but there's a distinctiveness about it you recognize as a pilgrim.  Those arrows (among many other arrows on the route) were the ones that had a reference to my ultimate goal of reaching Santiago de Compostela.   Life is full of signs, but which ones matter to you?  Much depends on your reference points. If your life & goals are ill-defined, any sign will get you somewhere. Reminds me of a quote by Lily Tomlin - "I always wanted to be a somebody.  I just should have been more specific."
2. You can't see if you are not looking! That's a Captain Obvious declaration, but...  Early one morning as I left Lezama, Spain I walked behind a fellow pilgrim who was very agitated. He was on his phone with someone, frustrated he could not see the signs. Somehow he hoped a remote person on the other end of the line could help him see! The comical irony was while on the phone, he was regularly walking past the very signs pointing out his way! The need for speed kills insight, so slow down in order to really see.  My best advice - if you can't find the signs it's time to stop, retreat, and reorient yourself. It may be you have forgotten what signs to look for. In the rush of life, you can only see well when you have silenced your mind and calmed your spirit.
3. Beware the Crowd.  Once while walking through a city I saw a crowd of pilgrims a few blocks in front of me.  So, believing they were on the path I wanted to be on, I lowered my personal sign-seeking vigilance and followed them.  After all, safety in numbers!  In one instance however, that crowd took a collective wrong turn.  If it wasn't for a personal check in at that moment on my commitment to look for the signs for myself, I would have blissfully been wrong with them.  I stopped, saw the sign they missed, and turned. BEWARE. The crowd can be safe and helpful but it can also cause you to pay less attention to the signs laid out for your unique pilgrimage. Crowd-sourcing your direction in life will cause you to lose the awareness and discipline of looking for your signs.  An example from my vocational context is the production and use of commonly themed, large-scale training programs for Christians, and the one-way communicative patterns of most church's' public gatherings.  It can produce a version of 'group-think'.  As a result of the need and desire for orthodoxy (and orthopraxis), the Church inadvertently produces pilgrims who can only walk with the crowd. I see this revealed in the rhetoric of many who can spout off clichés, platitudes and simplistic responses to life issues they commonly learned in these contexts. They have not always learned the discipline of discerning the signs for themselves. Frankly this applies to our politics too. ATTENTION: We each must walk our own journey and make up our own minds. This is not a declaration of independence from human community or absolute truth. However there also exists a walk that is unique to you and Jesus. He will set out the signs for YOU.  Are you building capacity to see His signs for your unique journey?
4. Train your eyes.  You can fall out of the practice of noticing and might even become lazy at looking.  After I had taken a day-long break from walking, on my return to the Camino the next day I struggled for a while to re-adjust my eyes to searching for the signs.  When you stop seeking the signs that point you toward purpose and meaning (and that affirm you are on the right path) your eyes will cloud over and perhaps even become desensitized. A host of avoidable and unavoidable life circumstances will affect our vision.  We all deal at times with  stress, transition, resignation, exhaustion and even just struggling to survive. But if not careful we can become used to not looking for the signs that guide our ultimate journey of life. If you are in a break-time for whatever reason, your vision may be cloudy.  Make the choice to keep looking.  The signs are there.  You just have to see.

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs,

Blocking out the scenery of your own beautiful life journey,

Breaking your God-given, unique mind!

Don't settle for other's voices of 'do this' or 'don't do that'

Can't you read the signs for your life?  

Harv Matchullis

Why Planning Fails

Planning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

That doesn’t mean don’t plan. 

But let’s be clear - a strategic plan itself will not guarantee success. When I think of the 'nomadic leader' living in a context that regularly presents new landscapes of challenge and opportunity, it's not his/her "travel plan" that will equip them for the next step.  It's their ability to know what is needed to establish and adjust their plans.

It’s far too easy to go through the motions of strategic planning and neglect critical INPUTS needed to actually achieve IMPACT.  Think of it this way: just because you eat, good health is not guaranteed.  Choose your foods wisely.  

‘Garbage in-garbage out’ as they say!  

What are you “feeding” your plan?

Of the 6 INPUTS described here, only one relates to the written plan itself.  The rest determine it’s quality and potential success.   I am indebted to Nell Edgington of Social Velocity for this blog.  I am basically revising her blog post on this topic (http://www.socialvelocity.net/2011/04/the-problem-with-strategic-planning/) .  I have added my own thoughts plus a key ‘coaching question’ you can ask yourself about your planning processes.

What I am writing here relates to my context of the non-profit organization.  However it’s not really a leap to see how this also applies to the business context. 

Here is the ‘menu’ of inputs that make for a healthy, impactful and dynamic, strategic plan...

# 1          Discern the environment

Discern, or Discernment are not common words in our daily vocabulary, but are very descriptive.  The global (read: Wikipedia) understanding of the term is: “a term used to describe the activity of determining the value and quality of a certain subject or event. Typically, it is used to describe the activity of going past the mere perception of something, to making detailed judgments about that thing. As a virtue, a discerning individual is considered to possess wisdom, and be of good judgement; especially so with regard to subject matter often overlooked by others.”

• Pray, think, look around.  Get out and SEE who you want to impact, where they live etc.

• A good plan starts from an in-depth understanding of the outside community in which the non-profit operates. Whereas a bad plan is created in a vacuum among only board and/or staff who sit in a retreat and determine the future.  By the way, just because someone is articulate about an issue is no guarantee they really understand it or are convicted to act!  WHO HAS HAD THEIR BOOTS ON THE GROUND LATELY?

 The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:     

“How do we know this is the right idea”?  

#2           Value Proposition 

• A good plan forces the organization to articulate its value proposition, i.e. how the organization will uniquely use its resources and those it generates to create significant social value.  You must clearly lay out how you plan to address the social issue your mission defines.
• Articulate values as behaviour statements.  Behaviour shows what you value, so rather than mushy, feel-good, mother and apple-pie “we value...” statements, describe values by how they will be demonstrated, i.e. “We will...”
• A poor plan fails to articulate value propositions and assumes that everyone outside the organization loves what you want to do and understands its value just as much as everyone inside the organization.

The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:     

“How will this entity be of service”?

#3           Truth First 

• A good plan puts everything on the table and allows no sacred cows or pet interests. It’s all about the mission, not your place in it.
• A poor planning process only deals with the easy or non-controversial issues and leaves the difficult questions aside.

The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:  

   

“What have we not yet said?"

 #4          Disciplined Alignment

• A good plan makes sure that the strategy for programs is aligned with the organization’s operational and financial model so that the resulting strategic plan includes programs, financing and operations in an integrated way.
• A poor plan focuses only on programs and assumes that the money will somehow follow.

The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:     

“How have we connected all the dots?"

 #5          A Written Plan

• A proper strategy includes a tactical plan so that the broad goals are broken down into individual steps to get there. This allows the organization to monitor and revise the plan on an on-going basis.  It drives the day-to-day activity of the organization.
• A poor strategic plan has no tactical plan or monitoring system attached to it.  The most foolish and wasteful thing you can do is make a plan and not ‘check-in’ on your progress and adjust to any changing circumstances/opportunities on a regular basis.

The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:  

    

“What and where are our goals and action steps”? 

#6           Inspirational

•  A good plan is inspiring and compelling to staff and potential funders.  It sets forth a bold vision for the future and a specific road map for getting there.  It’s the vision-story AND the plan in tandem which inspires confidence and investment.
• A poor plan is boring, maintains the status quo, and will elicit only nominal external support.

The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:

  

“When people hear this plan, how will it lift their spirit and feed  their commitment?”

It’s not enough to go through the “strategy” motions. A real strategic plan is bold, compelling, tactical, well-financed, integrated and inspiring. It gets everyone (staff, board, funders, volunteers, clients) moving forward in a common direction from which real change happens.

Press on;

Harv

...and if you need some help 'getting there', contact me at Visiontracks:

info@visiontracks.ca  and also see my work on my website at:  www.visiontracks.ca