Yesterday I had the chance to sit through a DVD session of listening to Andy Stanley speak about Systems.
Here are a few of my notes of what I drew from it:
- System is your organizations approach to getting things done.
- Systems create behaviors.
- Systems you inherit, adopt, create will effect what your volunteers, customers, people will do.
- Systems have greater impact more then mission, vision or tag line statements
How systems work – some extra notes to think about:
- Expectations – expectations whether stated, unstated and assumptions will always be made.
- Rewards (or lack of) – systems work off rewards whether they are given or not.
- Consequences (or lack of) – there are always consequences for every action taken.
- Communication (style & content) – what you are saying and how you say it. It has nothing to do with who, but what and how.
- Behavior (of those in charge) – how do you respond, create, interact.
At the end of watching Stanley speak, I thought of one thing right away: Whether you are intentional of creating systems or not, you are creating a system.
That talk caused me to look at the systems I have in place in several areas I am overseeing and trying to do. I feel overwhelmed with the work to do, but confident and encouraged about the work I have ahead of me. I’ll be posting what some of those changes are in the coming weeks – AFTER I complete them.
Part of those system changes is leaving my blog to be a post-production, not a pre-production, aspect to the work I’m doing.
What are the systems you have in place?
What are you doing to change or strengthen them?