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Who should be making the decisions in our ministries? Should it be the church advisor, student leaders or a group effort? I recently read The Decision Maker by Dennis Bakke and wanted to share what I learned about making decisions with you. As co-founder and CEO of AES, Dennis Bakke built his company into a Fortune 200 global power company with 27,000 people in 27 countries.
Afterwards he also used the principles shared in his books to create Imagine Schools, the largest non-profit charter-school network in the U.S, and established The Mustard Seed Foundation, which provides scholarships to Christians pursuing advanced educational degrees in preparation for leadership roles in society.
The book primarily focuses on how businesses and organizations make decisions, but I think most of the concepts can be applied to our BASIC groups. When planning for a BASIC meeting, event or outreach, there are a lot of decisions that need to be made.
The author suggests that the way decisions are made tells you more about an organization than anything else it does. I’m sure you can think back to decisions that were made in your ministry and see the effect they had on where you are today. But, can you remember how those decisions were made? We all go through a process when making decisions and some processes are better than others.
We tend to think that whoever is “in charge” should be making all the important decisions, but maybe the boss isn’t the best person to make the call. In The Decision Maker, Bakke describes bosses as coaches who often try to play the game too. He says, “You can’t tell a player what to do every single play. It’d ruin the game…People are happiest when they have the ball and are in a position to make the decisions that affect their world.”
Essentially, he encourages the reader to release ownership of decisions to others, which will in turn encourage them to be more engaged. Often, students have more knowledge about what decision would be best because they are closest to the situation. They know the student body and campus better than anyone else.
Does this mean we should just do away with advisors altogether? No, there will be times when you see potential problems or opportunities that they don’t. This is why seeing yourself as a coach is important. You can point out the things that they don’t see without making decisions for them.
Why wouldn’t you just make the decision? Well, Bakke has observed that distributing decisions more broadly and inviting more people to be part of the process will lead to more engaged people and better decisions. Better decisions lead to a healthier and stronger ministry.
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The person who’s in charge does have one big decision to make. They are the one that decides who makes the decisions in the same way a coach decides who plays. There are factors that go into deciding who should make a decision. The decision maker should be someone with expertise, a good listener with a history of making good decisions and someone who is close to the situation.
The decision maker is responsible for getting advice from others. Most of us do this anyway when we have a decision to make, but there are some guidelines for who is best to ask for advice. They should ask someone with experience with this problem, people in different positions (a leader, peer, someone below them and possibly someone outside the organization) and those who have a responsibility and ownership associated with the project.
It won’t always be easy to trust and empower others to make decisions, and there will be mistakes made along the way, but our job as campus ministers is to train up and empower the next generation. We can’t do that if we’re always the main decision maker.
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There’s no better way to empower others than by releasing some of the decision making to others in your group and it will most likely help you identify future leaders as well. Give it a try as you go throughout this semester. Look for opportunities to put the ball in student’s hands remembering the principles of who should make decisions and how to ask for advice. If you want to learn more about the decision making process you can purchase the book or check out this summary.
I bet in many ways you’ll find it freeing as you are able to pass on responsibilities to others and clear your plate a little. I can’t wait to hear how it goes!
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