Alban Weekly of Duke Divinity School from Durham, North Carolina, United States "PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: Silo Mentality: Breaking Through to Collaboration" for Monday, 18 July 2016
We have great staff leaders. They just don't work together collaboratively. What we accomplish together is sometimes less impactful than the sum of our individual parts, because we spend precious time and energy protecting individual or departmental turf. This is silo mentality.
Why are silos a problem on a staff team? They promote personal, departmental or sub-team agendas at the expense of alignment around mission. Silos diminish the capacity of the whole. When allowed to flourish, silos advance favoritism and scapegoating. They contribute to secrecy, resource hoarding and an absence of trust within the team.
There are five conditions that contribute to silo mentality. By addressing these five conditions you can reduce or eliminate the destructive power of silos on your staff team, and breakthrough to greater collaboration.
Read more from Susan Beaumont »
"Silo Mentality: Breaking Through to Collaboration" by Susan BeaumontWe have great leaders. They just don’t work together collaboratively. What we accomplish together is sometimes less impactful than the sum of our individual parts, because we spend precious time and energy protecting individual or departmental turf. This is silo mentality.
© 2009 Doc Searls, Flickr | CC-BY | via WylioSilos are artificial boundaries put up to accomplish personal goals and keep others (perceived outsiders) from interfering with progress. A silo mindset produces sub-units that fail to share information, resources, or decision making.
Why are silos a problem in congregations? They encourage local optimization (personal, department or committee agendas) at the expense of alignment around mission. Silos diminish the capacity of the whole. When allowed to flourish, silos advance favoritism and scapegoating. They contribute to secrecy, resource hoarding and an absence of trust.
Many congregations try to address silos through behavioral promises, “We will do a better job of sharing information, resources and decision making”. If silos could be minimized through simple behavioral intent, we would have figured out how to eliminate them by now.
Complex organizational dynamics give birth to silos. In the paragraphs that follow we will explore five contributing conditions. By addressing these five conditions you can reduce or eliminate the destructive power of silos in your congregation and breakthrough to greater collaboration.
1. Lack of Incentive
In a healthy congregation, leaders will collaborate so long as there is reason to do so. We often promote collaboration as a virtue without articulating what purpose collaboration will serve. It takes energy to sustain a collaborative culture. If we want staff and lay leaders to invest energy in collaboration, then we need to identify a clear and compelling case for doing so.
It begins with clarity about the overarching mission that unites us in ministry. This is no small task in and of itself. But then we also need each member of the team, committee, or board to link their personal passion to the overarching mission. We can ask them what they need from the rest of us to pursue their passion. We can identify our intersecting points of need and interest, the places where my ministry needs intersect with yours.
Collaboration will naturally emerge if the case for crossing barriers becomes personally and departmentally compelling and satisfying.
2. Focusing Primarily on Resources
Silos flourish when our primary focus is on the allocation of scarce resources. When the conversation is always about who gets what resource, people and departments become fearful. Individuals seek to preserve and promote their own needs and agendas.
First Church went through a rocky pastoral transition. During the interim time period the budget took a hard hit. Finding a new pastor took longer than anyone anticipated. Leaders hunkered down to get by with less. The allocation of resources became the default mission of the congregation for a period of two years. By the time the new senior minister arrived silos were firmly entrenched on the staff team and in the committee and board structure.
Once the new pastor arrived and found a way to turn the primary conversation towards mission, and away from resource allocation, the silos diminished.
3. Lack of Accountability
In some congregations favored leaders or departments get whatever resources they want without needing to demonstrate need or impact. In other instances, players who fail to perform as needed, or people who introduce dysfunction into the congregation are not held accountable for their behavior.
In such environments constituents learn to protect themselves from neglect, abuse or dysfunction by focusing only on what is in front of them. The result is an entire congregational system that hoards information, decision making and resources.
When silos exist due to lack of accountability, the solution is to establish clear performance expectations (essential functions, core competencies, performance goals) for each member of the team and every department. People must be held accountable for meeting those expectations, with natural and logical consequences for failure to perform.
Once it becomes apparent that health and good performance are rewarded, and that inappropriate behavior is addressed, shared communication and decision making will naturally reemerge.
4. Poor Organizational Design
Organizational design theory teaches us that hierarchical structures work against collaboration. We have learned that flatter, more decentralized structures invite collaboration. This is true in theory.
However, collaboration is possible in every structural design model. Similarly, silos can emerge within any organizational design. Flat structures produce silos when they become unwieldy and unmanageable. Hierarchical structures produce silos when we fail to create logical linkages between organizational sub-units.
If your congregation is struggling with silo mentality, take a look at your organizational design to make certain that it can handle the size and complexity of the congregation. Does your senior minister have too many direct reports to provide effective supervision? Are there too many committees reporting into your board structure?
Make certain that there are solid integrating mechanisms in your organizational design. Integrating mechanisms include things like effective meeting structures that delegate planning and decision making to appropriately sized decision making groups. Integrating mechanisms also include the shared supervision or oversight of ministry areas that need to logically coordinate work.
5. Absence of Trust
An absence of trust rarely develops from a single incident or violation. People have learned over time that others cannot be trusted, that being vulnerable gets you nowhere, and that sharing resources and information generally leads to loss or punishment.
A team or board that is mistrustful cannot simply declare a new day and become instantaneously collaborative. The team has to learn its way back to trustworthiness. New sprigs of trust emerge when we make small commitments to one another and then deliver on those promises.
A good way to restore trust is to establish a behavioral covenant. Clearly define acceptable healthy behaviors and teach people conversational techniques for holding one another accountable when unacceptable behaviors emerge. Collaboration will slowly build as team members learn their way back to health.
Breaking down silos is not easy because silos don’t have simple origins. They are the result of complex organizational dynamics that must be addressed simultaneously. However, silos do not have to become your organizational status quo. Begin where you are. The benefits are worth the investment of time and energy.[Susan Beaumont is a writer, coach, spiritual director, and consultant specializing in the unique dynamics of large churches and synagogues. She is the author of the Alban books Inside the Large Congregation and When Moses Meets Aaron: Staffing and Supervision in Large Congregations.]-------
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
Three Keys to Sustainable DesignFast Company's design blog offers tips that Christian leaders can use to cultivate good ideas.
Read more from Brendan Case »
Faith & Leadership
MANAGEMENT
Three keys to sustainable designFast Company’s design blog offers tips that Christian leaders can use to cultivate to execute good ideas.
The more audacious an institution’s animating purpose, the greater its danger of substituting grandiose posturing for the unglamorous grit of lasting change. That danger is acute indeed in institutions driven by the Gospel’s promise of cosmic redemption, which might explain why Christian leaders seem to struggle to put their transformative ideas into practice in the communities that so desperately need them.
A recent piece on Fast Company’s design blog brought together innovative business leaders to reflect on the structures that have allowed them to cultivate what author Matthew E. May has called the elegance of “effortless effectiveness” within their organizations.
Here are three practices springing from this conversation for leaders seeking to ease the friction of putting ideas into action.
1. Model the future
Karl Heiselman, the CEO of Wolff Olins, stressed the need for organizations to develop “prototypes,” models for future projects. Interestingly, Heiselman emphasized that prototypes are storytelling aids, tools that allow organizations to “build a narrative for themselves, a story that answers the question ‘where will we be in 3 to 5 years?’”
For a Christian leader seized with a vision for a new outreach or grand partnership, a pilot program or soft launch can offer the means for narrating -- for herself and for her community -- the uncertain passage from present reality to glorious future.
2. Burst your bubbles
The intensity and passion of creating something means that the designer experiences his work very differently from later participants. When designers become insulated from participant experience, ensconced in a “bubble” of self-congratulation, the result could be a horrible mismatch between expectations and results.
Joe Gebbia, CPO and co-founder of Airbnb, observed that when he had his engineers sit “next to the customer service reps who would have to deal with what they’d made,” the results were often hilarious: "Engineers are just like, ‘Oh my god, this thing I built that I thought was amazing is horrible for users!”’
The Christian leader’s best gauge of success is the lived experience of those who work with or live among their programs and services, so cultivating a steady stream of feedback “from the front” and learning on the go are key tools for shaping elegant design.
3. Plan to be surprised
Gebbia also “pointed out that the challenge of innovation often simply comes down to a physical challenge: That is, creating a culture where people feel ‘closely packed’ -- a living room type scale that fosters useful but serendipitous interactions.”
Likewise, Greg Jones commends an organizational shift from the rigid, hierarchical silos typical of large corporations to what Wired magazine founding editor Kevin Kelly calls the “loosely coupled, permeable, center-less” configurations of thriving cities. This highlights the need for an open organizational ecology, which can burst the bubble of an individual team’s insular thinking and offer fresh insight to re-vitalize stagnant or rutted ideas.
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The End of SilosThe nation's financial challenges have changed the way Christian institutions operate. This new reality presents an opportunity to reflect on the way we do our work and build partnerships within our institutions, writes David L. Odom.
Read more from Dave Odom »
Faith & Leadership
MONEY, FINANCIAL CRISIS, SUSTAINABILITY
The end of silos by: David L. Odom
The nation’s financial challenges have changed the way Christian institutions operate. This new reality presents an opportunity to reflect on the way we do our work and build partnerships within our institutions, writes David L. Odom.
Editor’s note: This is one article in an occasional series about thinking institutionally. To read more, please see “The long view,” also by David L. Odom, and “Why institutions matter” by L. Gregory Jones.
“If you want a job done right, do it yourself.”
I learned this individualistic mantra in school, and it has served me well. When handed the responsibility for building a new program inside an institution, I often have found it easier, quicker and more effective to do it myself. Organizationally that has meant building a “silo.”
The organizational silo has a bad rap, but it can be quite comfortable to live inside one. In a well-constructed silo within an institution, you can decide what to do and when to do it. You build a budget that only you understand. You know the constituent. You know the service. You come and go as you please. Your friends often are among the people who work in the silo with you. If anyone bothers to question this independent approach, you can point to your program’s innovative culture and growth as evidence that your way of doing business is wise.
But now the nation’s economic picture has changed.
The conditions that make for effective silos include a constant stream of new revenue and growing services. When money is plentiful, an institution’s leaders often are not so concerned about inefficiencies. There is plenty to go around and more work than anyone knows how to do.
During many of the economic downturns of the late 20th century, silo dwellers learned to keep their heads low and let the economic challenges blow over. If you could stay out of the way of the reorganization specialists and the cranky new board members for 18 to 24 months, the economy would turn around and the silo would be back in full operation.
The current economic challenges are deeper and longer lasting than any I have faced in 25 years of leading projects for and within Christian institutions. The revenue model for many of these institutions is collapsing, and staying low will not provide sufficient protection. This financial crisis, I believe, spells the end of silos. And that gives me hope -- because while it is true that working in silos can appear to those inside to be innovative and efficient, it is neither the most effective nor the Christian way to do business.
Our work as Christian leaders is to think institutionally. It’s not to try to work around our institutions. We must see ourselves within the larger mission of our institutions and the larger mission of the church. We must seek partnerships, not put up barriers to them.
The institutions navigating this new reality in a healthy way are examining the conditions that create silos. One challenge is addressing individual autonomy. No one in the organization has the power to start a service without talking to others, without building the service together. Determining how to move forward in an era of profound uncertainty requires the wisdom of many in the community. One person cannot gain sufficient experience or perspective to make wise decisions in isolation.
As Christians we believe in the significance of community. We believe God calls us to be with each other in worship and service. Spiritual growth is nurtured in community and often diminishes in isolation. Community provides accountability as well as support. Silos diminish a sense of community, creating conditions in which isolation and competition flourish. The shared work, the inherent value in joining together to establish God’s kingdom on this earth can be lost.
At times paying attention to the community dimensions of institutional work is criticized as being political -- a way of manipulating. But the picture of community I am painting is not about such behavior. It is acknowledging that worship is a community practice to which we are called. We are to be bound together. Confession is an act that we practice in relationship -- with God and with one another. In community we are held accountable and provided with support that can lead to growth. Sin has greater opportunity to flourish when we work in isolation.
What does a silo dweller need to do differently to adapt to this new world? The practice of thinking and acting institutionally begins with building relationships, learning the stories and traditions and imaginations of other people in your institution.
I have made it a practice to interview as many of my peers as possible within my institution. I go to their turf. I learn what is important to them. I think a transformational leader working on behalf of an institution can see the long view and how different parts of an institution must integrate, and that requires a strong network of peers. This step is foundational to identifying places of synergy.
To do this, leaders must develop projects that can be jointly owned and managed. Look for ideas that support and enhance the work of multiple projects. In my experience the payoff can last for years.
Listen to and respect the units that provide core support services, including financial management, human resources and facilities management. Make their jobs easier when possible. Involve them in decisions so they will understand the mission and see how their contributions make a tangible difference. The benefits are significant for everyone.
Try out ideas with colleagues in other departments. Proofread each other’s reports. Talk with the dedicated and creative people you discover at cross-project meetings. Develop peer relationships outside your own institution. Every time you have a big question, consider the resources you might tap outside your particular area of expertise.
I experienced my first taste of institutional leadership as a member of the budget committee for a regional judicatory. For one long day, the committee heard department after department ask for money for their good ideas. The next morning, we were expected to dole out several hundred thousand dollars to the projects we believed would have the most impact.
Back at the hotel, the lawyer, the banker and one of the ministers on the committee started talking about the challenge before us. (This is not the set-up for a joke. I was the minister.) We decided we really needed to encourage the people, not the ideas.
The lowest-paid employees had been the most creative, so we crafted a plan to honor their work. Our plan was to invest the available funds in the people across the organization and set up a system to monitor their progress. We chose to work across the silos rather than reinforce them.
The executive director and the committee loved the idea. People felt affirmed. New coalitions developed. The sense of the mission of the whole was honored in the process above the good work of the parts. The system we set up that day lasted for years.
If a handful of committee members of a 5,000-congregation regional denominational body can break down silos through shifting money and careful attention to the big picture, I have hope that any institution can make similar progress. It is our call -- one we can live into through clarity of mission, willingness to be open with each other, and trust in experience and judgment of those doing effective service.
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Everything Looks Different from HereMisunderstandings about organizational priorities may be rooted in the differing perspectives of top and mid-level leaders, according to a study by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Bringing those differences to the surface can help all leaders get on the same page.
Read more from James Emery »
Faith & Leadership
MANAGEMENT, TEAM MANAGEMENT
Everything looks different from here by: James D. Emery
Illustration by Jessamyn RubioMisunderstandings about organizational priorities may be rooted in the differing perspectives of top and mid-level leaders, according to a new study by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Bringing those differences to the surface can help all leaders get on the same page.
In challenging times, top organizational leaders are under intense scrutiny, their beliefs, skills and actions watched closely by all. Yet little attention is generally paid to mid-level leaders -- even though their beliefs about strategic priorities and challenges can have a tremendous impact on an organization’s success or failure.
At Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, we have found that while senior and mid-level leaders generally agree about key challenges and important leadership skills, they also disagree in important ways that reflect their different organizational vantage points. Identifying and understanding those disagreements -- and the differing perspectives that underlie them -- can be a powerful tool to help clarify priorities and make sure organizational initiatives are understood and agreed upon by leaders at all levels.
In the Duke Executive Leadership Survey, conducted in fall 2008 by the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics(link is external), we asked 205 executives -- both senior and mid-level leaders -- about various leadership issues. Among other things, we asked them to identify the top leadership challenges facing their organizations and to rate the importance of 29 leadership skills for senior executives in their organizations.
That first question, we hoped, would uncover potentially divergent views among senior and mid-level leaders about strategic priorities. The second question was intended to help us understand how differing attitudes about the importance of various leadership skills affect which skills are emphasized in the development of organizational leaders.
Here’s what we found.
What are the top leadership challenges facing the organization?
Senior and mid-level leaders named many of the same issues as the biggest challenges facing their organizations. But they ranked those issues differently, and, in many instances, differed substantially in the percentage of respondents who considered an issue important.
Senior leaders identified increasing innovation, leading internal organizational growth and access to capital as the biggest challenges. By contrast, mid-level leaders named improving overall quality of their organization’s leadership, developing the next generation of leaders and increasing employee commitment/retention as top concerns.
Top leadership challenges
Senior leaders
Why the difference? The concern of senior leaders with innovation, growth and access to capital appears to reflect an external, or market-driven, view of organizational success. The top concerns identified by mid-level leaders, on the other hand -- quality of the organization’s leadership, developing the next generation of leaders, and increasing employee commitment -- are all inwardly focused, likely reflecting a more internal perspective on success.
Given the typical roles of senior and mid-level leaders, these alternate perspectives are not surprising. Even so, organizational leaders should make sure that these differing perspectives and the unspoken assumptions that underlie them are brought to the surface and discussed. In that way, they can help reduce the risk that leaders unknowingly disagree about organizational priorities -- one of the most common ways organizations undermine their own success.
Which leadership skills are most important for senior leaders?
Both senior and mid-level leaders were generally consistent in their ratings of the most important leadership skills needed by senior leaders, with at least one significant difference.
Acting with authenticity, promoting an ethical environment, understanding the competitive environment, developing trust in relationships, and demonstrating dedication and effort were named by both groups as crucial skills for senior executives. These findings suggest that leaders at both levels value skills that are associated with credibility, which rests upon competence and trust.
Most important leadership skills for senior leaders
As ranked by senior leaders
As ranked by mid-level leaders
The two groups of leaders differed significantly, however, regarding the importance of creating cohesive teams. Mid-level leaders ranked it the most important skill for senior leadership. But senior leaders rated it 15th out of 29, making it their median-rated skill.
Again, these divergent responses likely reflect the different perspectives of the two leadership groups. Focused on an organization’s internal workings, mid-level leaders value cohesive teams. Day to day, they are more likely to encounter the functional silos that some senior leaders create to protect their turf and thus see a greater need for teamwork. Senior leaders, focused externally, may not value the creation of cohesive teams as highly.
While the two groups’ responses can be explained largely by their different perspectives, it is possible that other factors are also at play. Specifically, the results may indicate that mid-level leaders believe senior leaders aren’t building cohesive teams well. Additional research can help clarify why this gap is occurring, which in turn can help leaders determine if they need to pay more attention to teambuilding.
In the meantime, leaders at all levels need to remember that what they see depends in large part on where they stand. By talking about and understanding each others’ perspectives, leaders at all levels can make sure they’re on the same page.
Questions to consider
Illustration by Jessamyn RubioMisunderstandings about organizational priorities may be rooted in the differing perspectives of top and mid-level leaders, according to a new study by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Bringing those differences to the surface can help all leaders get on the same page.
In challenging times, top organizational leaders are under intense scrutiny, their beliefs, skills and actions watched closely by all. Yet little attention is generally paid to mid-level leaders -- even though their beliefs about strategic priorities and challenges can have a tremendous impact on an organization’s success or failure.
At Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, we have found that while senior and mid-level leaders generally agree about key challenges and important leadership skills, they also disagree in important ways that reflect their different organizational vantage points. Identifying and understanding those disagreements -- and the differing perspectives that underlie them -- can be a powerful tool to help clarify priorities and make sure organizational initiatives are understood and agreed upon by leaders at all levels.
In the Duke Executive Leadership Survey, conducted in fall 2008 by the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics(link is external), we asked 205 executives -- both senior and mid-level leaders -- about various leadership issues. Among other things, we asked them to identify the top leadership challenges facing their organizations and to rate the importance of 29 leadership skills for senior executives in their organizations.
That first question, we hoped, would uncover potentially divergent views among senior and mid-level leaders about strategic priorities. The second question was intended to help us understand how differing attitudes about the importance of various leadership skills affect which skills are emphasized in the development of organizational leaders.
Here’s what we found.
What are the top leadership challenges facing the organization?
Senior and mid-level leaders named many of the same issues as the biggest challenges facing their organizations. But they ranked those issues differently, and, in many instances, differed substantially in the percentage of respondents who considered an issue important.
Senior leaders identified increasing innovation, leading internal organizational growth and access to capital as the biggest challenges. By contrast, mid-level leaders named improving overall quality of their organization’s leadership, developing the next generation of leaders and increasing employee commitment/retention as top concerns.
Top leadership challenges
Senior leaders
- Increasing innovation (53%)
- Leading internal organizational growth (48%)
- Availability of capital (35%)
- Developing the next generation of leaders (33%)
- (tie) Brand creation (33%)
- Improving overall quality of our organization’s leadership (30%)
- Improving overall quality of our organization’s leadership (58%)
- Developing the next generation of leaders (49%)
- Increasing employee commitment/retention (46%)
- Increasing innovation (43%)
- Leading internal organizational growth (42%)
- Reorganizing/restructuring (39%)
Why the difference? The concern of senior leaders with innovation, growth and access to capital appears to reflect an external, or market-driven, view of organizational success. The top concerns identified by mid-level leaders, on the other hand -- quality of the organization’s leadership, developing the next generation of leaders, and increasing employee commitment -- are all inwardly focused, likely reflecting a more internal perspective on success.
Given the typical roles of senior and mid-level leaders, these alternate perspectives are not surprising. Even so, organizational leaders should make sure that these differing perspectives and the unspoken assumptions that underlie them are brought to the surface and discussed. In that way, they can help reduce the risk that leaders unknowingly disagree about organizational priorities -- one of the most common ways organizations undermine their own success.
Which leadership skills are most important for senior leaders?
Both senior and mid-level leaders were generally consistent in their ratings of the most important leadership skills needed by senior leaders, with at least one significant difference.
Acting with authenticity, promoting an ethical environment, understanding the competitive environment, developing trust in relationships, and demonstrating dedication and effort were named by both groups as crucial skills for senior executives. These findings suggest that leaders at both levels value skills that are associated with credibility, which rests upon competence and trust.
Most important leadership skills for senior leaders
As ranked by senior leaders
- Acting with authenticity (others know your values & position on issues)
- Promoting an ethical environment
- Developing trust in relationships with other employees
- Demonstrating optimism and enthusiasm for organizational objectives
- Understanding and interpreting the competitive environment
- Demonstrating dedication and effort
As ranked by mid-level leaders
- Creating cohesive teams within my business unit.
- Understanding and interpreting the competitive environment
- Developing trust in relationships with other employees
- Promoting an ethical environment
- Acting with authenticity (others know your values & position on issues)
- Demonstrating dedication and effort
The two groups of leaders differed significantly, however, regarding the importance of creating cohesive teams. Mid-level leaders ranked it the most important skill for senior leadership. But senior leaders rated it 15th out of 29, making it their median-rated skill.
Again, these divergent responses likely reflect the different perspectives of the two leadership groups. Focused on an organization’s internal workings, mid-level leaders value cohesive teams. Day to day, they are more likely to encounter the functional silos that some senior leaders create to protect their turf and thus see a greater need for teamwork. Senior leaders, focused externally, may not value the creation of cohesive teams as highly.
While the two groups’ responses can be explained largely by their different perspectives, it is possible that other factors are also at play. Specifically, the results may indicate that mid-level leaders believe senior leaders aren’t building cohesive teams well. Additional research can help clarify why this gap is occurring, which in turn can help leaders determine if they need to pay more attention to teambuilding.
In the meantime, leaders at all levels need to remember that what they see depends in large part on where they stand. By talking about and understanding each others’ perspectives, leaders at all levels can make sure they’re on the same page.
Questions to consider
- What are the biggest challenges facing the church as seen by a local pastor? A mid-level judicatory official? A bishop or other top-level leader?
- In what ways might senior and mid-level leaders in your organization unknowingly disagree about goals and priorities, based on their vantage points?
- What systems does your organization have in place to identify and address hidden disagreements that are rooted in the different perspectives of top and mid-level leaders?
- How can an organization’s senior leaders focus on external challenges while still being aware of the internal issues and challenges?
CONTINUE YOUR LEARNING WITH THE CHURCH NETWORK
Building a Healthy Staff Team Culture
A Church Network Teleweb featuring Susan Beaumont
July 21 | 2:30 p.m. EDT
The culture of a staff team is the shared set of assumptions, values and practices that govern how people behave as members of the team. Is the culture of your staff team contributing to or detracting from the team's effectiveness?
In this webinar we will use a staff team culture assessment tool to help you diagnose and improve the operating culture of your team. Participants will:
Receive a self-assessment tool that benchmarks 35 characteristics of staff team health
Understand six major components of healthy staff team culture
Plan to lead your staff team through an assessment of its own health
Learn specific ways to move towards a healthier staff team dynamic
Learn more and register »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
For years, Susan Beaumont has been giving voice to the organizational and leadership demands of large congregations. Through her work, she has identified five basic leadership systems that need to stay in alignment for the large church to function well for its size: clergy leadership roles, staff team design and function, governance and board function, acculturation and the role of laity, and forming and executing strategy.
She also has learned that these five systems operate with some important but subtle distinctions in what Beaumont calls the professional church (400-800 in worship attendance), the strategic church (800-1,200), and the matrix church (1,200-2,000). Often, she has discovered, problems in a large congregation are related to the fact that one or more of the five systems is inappropriately structured for the size of the congregation.
In other words, the church isn't acting its size.
Learn more and order the book »
Follow us on social media:
VISIT OUR WEBSITE
Alban at Duke Divinity School
Learn specific ways to move towards a healthier staff team dynamic
Learn more and register »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
She also has learned that these five systems operate with some important but subtle distinctions in what Beaumont calls the professional church (400-800 in worship attendance), the strategic church (800-1,200), and the matrix church (1,200-2,000). Often, she has discovered, problems in a large congregation are related to the fact that one or more of the five systems is inappropriately structured for the size of the congregation.
In other words, the church isn't acting its size.
Learn more and order the book »
Follow us on social media:
VISIT OUR WEBSITE
Alban at Duke Divinity School
1121 West Chapel Hill Street, Suite 101
Durham, North Carolina 27701, United States
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