Nonprofit Leadership, Innovation, and Change

Pray, Prepare, and Produce!

Pray like it all depends on God!
Prepare like it all depends on you!
Produce like it all depends on today!

Growth and Goals

There is a lot of talk about goals this time of year.  Everyone feels like they get a fresh start in January and begin to talk about their new year resolutions, goals, and outcomes for the year.  As I began to reflect on my goals for 2008 I realized that I can’t achieve them by remaining the person that I am.  John C. Maxwell once said, “Personal growth precedes professional growth.”  One of my goals is to have 250 RSS readers of this blog by January 1, 2009.  To accomplish this my writing skills, creativity, grammar (this is a big one) and frequency of posts must improve and reach an entire new level. 

I believe the key is to set goals that are just a little bit bigger than what you are capable of.  To make goals that will make you improve just a little bit so you can achieve them is important, because a little progress every day, every week, every month, and every year ends up making a big difference in the end. 

The faster you grow, the faster you’re going to reach your goals. 

What I'm Working on

I took a step back in December to take a look at everything I’m committed to doing and accomplishing.  Below is a list of the commitments I’ve made for myself:

• Create one lens a week on squidoo based on an article from helium.com
  
• Keep A Day of Hope in the top 100 on squidoo
• Lead the team for our Maximum Impact event held at Enclave Community Church
  
• Write 5-10 new blog posts a week
  
• Write a couple of small grants for A Day of Hope
  
• Write one new article a week for helium.com
  
• Write one article every three months for The Minute Magazine (published in Texas, Louisiana, & Arkansas)
  
• Write a couple of small grants for the Enclave Community Church food pantry

Tony Compolo once said, “What you commit yourself to will change what you are and make you into a completely different person.”

How do I sum up all of this?  It’s very simple, “I love what I do!”

Risky Goals for 2008

With so much talk around this time of year about goals for 2008, I realized that goals are risky.  It’s risky to set large goals and tell them to friend, post them on your website, or share them with co-workers.

So much can happen when you set goals.  You can work hard, achieve your goals and be seen as a successful hero by many people; or you can work hard and fail miserably which I’ve done many times.  In 2005 it was risky when I set our goal for A Day of Hope to deliver 30 baskets of food and turkeys to 30 families for Thanksgiving.  I had never done a similar project before and had no clue how to do it, but we exceeded our goal and delivered 48 baskets. 

The second year we got a little riskier and set our goal to deliver 150 baskets of food and turkeys to 150 families.  I remember making presentations to groups and having people raise their hand and ask, “Your goal is to deliver 150 baskets and you only delivered 48 last year.  That’s a pretty big increase isn’t it?”  What they were saying is that they didn’t think we could do it.  We took a big risk by setting a goal so high.  After it was all said and done we had delivered 211 baskets of food and turkeys to 211 families for Thanksgiving, exceeding our goal by 61 baskets. 

This year for 2007 we continued to be risky with setting our goals.  We set our goal to deliver 750 baskets of food and turkeys to 750 families.  We spent more time in meetings, asked more people for money, gave more presentations, had more fundraisers, and used more thought and effort than we had the two previous years combined.  As you probably know this year we didn’t reach our goal and delivered 146 baskets of food and turkeys to 146 families for Thanksgiving. 

It’s risky to set goals for a leader because he is the one who has to answer the tough questions, carry the load, burden the responsibility, and is blamed when goals aren't met. 

These are the risks you have to take for the people you want to serve.  I have always been willing to take the risk of setting high goals in an effort to give more families a Thanksgiving feast. 

I would rather set a goal too high, not reach it and serve one more family a Thanksgiving dinner, than set a goal too low, reach it and not serve that extra family a Thanksgiving dinner.