The Strategy Meeting Where Nothing Gets Decided

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the common issue in strategic planning meetings where much is discussed but little is decided. Referred to as 'discussion theater,' these meetings often fail due to confusion between brainstorming and decision-making. Todd offers practical advice to transform these sessions into productive meetings with clear outcomes, emphasizing setting specific decision goals and deadlines. • Strategic planning meetings often result in 'discussion theater' with no concrete decisions. • Confusion between brainstorming and decision-making hinders progress in meetings. • The necessity of setting a clear decision or goal for each meeting to avoid paralysis. • Importance of having a single decision-maker to ensure progress. • Time pressure and deadlines can help create clarity and lead to decisions. • Concluding meetings with clear decisions, responsibilities, and follow-up plans is crucial.

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Transcript

The Meeting That Goes Nowhere

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Matt, have you ever been a part of this company? I know. You're sitting in the meeting two hours in. It it's a strategic planning section, okay? Everybody's talked, everybody's shared their thoughts, you've covered, seems like everything. Vision, mission, three different whiteboard exercises. But when somebody asks, so what are we actually doing? There's an awkward silence. And ends up the meeting ends, you adjourn, and the leader of the meeting says, Let's think about this, let's reconvene next week. And you and your team, you walk out more confused than what you walked in. That's what we're going to talk about today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. So if this sounds like a similar scenario than what you felt been in an hours-long meeting that just didn't accomplish much. The discussion was great. You just couldn't land the plane. We're going to talk about that today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi there, my name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders, along with Mastine, over at Chemistry Staffing. Let's talk about what's actually happening in the room. And I've I'm going to coin a little bit of a term here. Discussion theater. Most strategy meetings aren't strategy meetings, in my opinion. They end up being discussion theater. And here's what I mean by that. Everybody performs having thoughts, but nobody makes decisions. You mistake motion for progress, and a lot of times the loudest voice wins or nobody wins. So why in the world does this keep happening? I think uh there's maybe three that I've counted up that come to my mind anyway, three killers of strategy in these kind of strategy session meetings. First of all, I think you confuse brainstorming with decision making. You confuse brainstorming with decision making making. Brainstorming generates options. Okay? You can have 20 different options on the table when you brainstorm. Decision making starts to eliminate all of those options. And most teams get stuck in permanent brainstorm mode. They keep coming up with options, keep coming up with options, keep coming up with options. But when it comes time to make a decision and taking certain of those options off the table so that they can get down to making a solid decision, that's where it breaks down. Because a lot of times we're just afraid to hurt feelings. I don't want to take that off the table. That was John's idea. I don't hurt his feelings. So you keep the conversation going for over forever, it seems like you keep circling back around. What if we did this? And you keep and an hour later, you're still talking about something you talked about two hours ago. Open conversations never close gaps. You don't have a decision maker in the room, and that can be a problem. Or you have too many decision makers in the room. Committees can discuss, but only leaders can decide. And before you're like, Todd, you're making this sound like it's just really easy. I get it. I get it. You want everybody to be heard and to feel heard and feel like they're contributing. You want consensus, but endless discussion is not inclusion. It's actually paralysis. So, how do you reset these strategy meetings so that you actually get something out of it so that everybody, after three hours, doesn't leave the room and wonder what in the world happened? Because we didn't make any decisions. We had some really good conversations, we had some really good alternatives, but we just never landed the plane. Reset your strategy meeting. Start every planning session with one question. One question. What decision are we going to make today? Not what 20 decisions, what 20 things are we going to talk about? What's one thing? What's one decision that we can make today? And if you can't answer that, then probably you just need to cancel the meeting and reschedule it. Because until you come up with that just that question, the answer to that question, what decision, singular decision can we make today? You probably shouldn't even have the meeting because it's you're going to have a problem. Set a decision deadline before you stop talking. Hey, we're going to decide this by 3 p.m. today. That time pressure creates clarity. Now, do you always get there by 3 p.m.? No, and that's okay. If you miss a deadline, that's okay. But that time pressure is going to create clarity. You're going to start the conversation, not just gathering ideas and talking about ideas for an endless period of time. You're going to collect ideas and then you're going to move toward, hey, the clock's ticking. You're going to move toward being able to make that decision. And time pressure does help create clarity. You can also assign one person to be the final decision maker. Maybe that's already set up in your meeting. Maybe that's your senior pastor. Maybe that's your executive pastor. But one decision maker, but everybody else advises, one person decides. And that's how Jesus did it with the 12. And you can ever end every session with three things written down. Three things. What we've decided, who's doing what, by when, and then when we're circling back, when we're checking back. If those three things aren't crystal clear, then you didn't really have a really great strategy meeting. You just had a chat. Your staff is watching how you handle these meetings, and if you can't come to decisions in the room, they wonder if you can lead the church. And if you can't prioritize in planning, they'll assume that you can't prioritize their time either. Clarity in your meetings creates confidence in your leadership. So here's the bottom line for today Strategy without decisions is just really expensive conversation. So this week, I want you to look at your next planning meeting, your next strategy session, your next meeting where you need to decide something and say, ask one thing. What specific decision, what specific thing are we going to decide today? And if you can't answer that in one sentence, postpone the meeting until you can. And when you do meet, don't leave the room until somebody can clearly state what you've decided, who's responsible, and when they're checking back. Your team is craving clarity, not more conversation. So give them decisions that they can act on. That's today's episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. If you'd like to push back on me, say, Todd, you're smoking coconut or something, I don't know what your what's your problem today, feel free to email me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. If there's any way that I can help you and your team work through a strategy session, maybe facilitate a strategy strategy session for you and your team is our now site consultant. You can reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. And if there's any way that we could ever help you uh with any kind of healthy staffing initiative, maybe it's a compensation analysis, maybe it's hiring a new staff member, maybe it's uh consultation on whether you should move someone and transition someone off your team. Uh man, that's what we're passionate about. That's what we do, and we would love to have a conversation with you. I would love to have a conversation with you. You can reach out to me, uh, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. We're here to serve you and your church. All right, that's it for today. We're here every weekday, and I hope you'll join me right back here again. Same bad time, same bad channel. Um, my son says nobody gets that. That uh same bad time, say that channel. But we'll be right back here, the same place tomorrow.