Our Process improves efficiency and overall effectiveness.

Over the past 43 years, I have worked with several thousand constituents and many clients. Along the way, I have been faced with multiple life-threatening crises (or so it seemed at the moment). Learnings came from each problem, and along with them came tools to better cope and adapt to the demands of business and organized life (it’s what happens when a creative tackles business issues). As time passed, I realized that non-profits needed the same tools and were not immune to similar problems as for-profit enterprises. Churches and corporate support teams far and wide have benefited from the toolkit I teach at Go Away Farm’s “Go Think” conference center. We typically use multiple tools to inform the process and find the best solution based on the circumstance. I find no two situations alike, nor do we use the same tools from project to project. We start with the end in mind and are diligent to stay with the process until we accomplish the task at hand. Tenacity is not in short supply at Go Think!

GoThink Organizational Leadership Dynamics framework (GOLD)

It seems we all are reacting full-time now in this exponential world. This is our consulting model that offers guidance and a framework for enhancing your leadership skills with your complex organization. There is rarely enough time to plan and track goals or execute success. But in the throes of chaos, we need a framework to operate within and to help us bring order to our busy lives and organizations. We need to be able to “stay on track.” The GoThink Operational Leadership Dynamics (GOLD) framework is precisely that. It is the four quadrants of our organized lives. And each quadrant represents a priority area we need to focus on intently. If we plan well, we will react less. The process begins with Purpose, our “WHY,” and helps us think about and frame our story, vision, and strategy.

The other three quadrants serve the “WHY” quadrant. Ask, “Does this serve my purpose?”. If so, then go. If not, then stop and reset. Then, we can move to “WHAT” we should be working on. This WHAT is the second most critical area. The assessing and planning area is where we ultimately set our priorities and shed the non-essentials that keep us busy. (The Organizational Wellness Assessment on this site is one tool to use in your assessment. The other is the DiSC Assessments we use to assess the team members.) Then we move to the “HOW,” where the delegates, mentoring, and our team shine. And lastly, we Celebrate with the “WOW”… This process changes lives.

The OWA is best utilized at the executive level or senior management team (but I use it personally as well). It empowers leaders to navigate and thrive within complex organizational ecosystems through intentional, forward-thinking leadership and planning. It has four key features and outcomes. The first is strategic insights, which help leaders define their “why” and shape the big picture within a repeatable and trackable framework—adaptive learning through delegation to those capable of adding to the story, which cultivates agility and resilience in response to ever-changing environments. People-centered cultures wherw we work to build trust by encouraging and leading planning processes and assessments to put a stake in the ground on “where we are at the moment” so we know where to go and how far we have come. Lastly, decision-making dynamics equips leaders with tools to make informed and strategic decisions, and not just a series of reactions that destroy strategy.

DISC Assessment

The DiSC is a personality assessment that has been around since the 1940’s and millions of people have used it to assess their personality type. However, I like to use it to evaluate a team’s personality and then help adjust the group to accept all four types of personalities so the balance essential to operational excellence can exist.

The DiSC Assessment can also be utilized to do comparative assessments between husband and wife, a “to be married” couple, or between two co-workers, to enable a better understanding of the differences and where they may help compensate, assist or strengthen the other party.

4P Goal Setting

“I hate goal setting, but I love accomplished goals!” Galen

The 4P goal system is a trademarked process for establishing goals in four segments of our organized life. 4P’s: People / Process / Partners / Performance. These four quadrants of any organization encompass its day-to-day wellbeing. If we get these areas defined correctly (different for each organization), then making progress becomes manageable. We have utilized this process since we discovered it through ten years of trial and error in goal setting. Since the mid-1990s, it has become a tried and true friend of our businesses, churches, and other organizations far and wide.

4P Assessment

Assessments are vital to determine what you should do next and to create good planning that can be executed seamlessly, owned by the team, and adhered to through the process. It is part of the “WHAT” of our Operational Excellence Toolkit. Again, it uses the team perception to guide you into the area perceived to be the weakest so you know what to work on first to right the ship when things seem off course or just out of kilter.

Prioritization

Prioritization is a vital element today to help us rid our lives and organizations of the noise and busyness that seems to attach itself to us. The urgent often overwhelms our day, and we have to make sure that we can differentiate between the urgent and vital.

This tool isn’t a proprietary tool, but one I found in the book Thinker Toys (by Milchako) in the mid 90’s when I was running one of the larger printing firms in the USA. We just had too many balls in the air, too many urgent issues, and had to find a way to identify what was vital and what could delegated or delayed. This tool became a fast favorite and is an excellent group activity to get everyone on the same page for goal setting or just a life reset. Knowing what a priority is and what is a nice-to-have can make all the difference in your life focus when you have so much to accomplish.

Organizational Wellness Assessment (OWA)

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” Max De Pree

What to fix, where to begin, and the perception of your team is usually a task extraordinaire. A leader owes his team a benchmark of “where we are now” before they should ever begin making changes or moving things around trying to bring organizational improvement based on their own perception alone. It is a group subjective perception tool that we developed to enable a team to assess where they are now and then visualize where we can go. Navigating change is difficult when everything is in order, but undertaking major change when something is wrong in an organization can be a frustrating, futile, and even fatal mistake for the leader. The OWA adds a layer of transparency and gives assurance that the team is all feeling the same need to change prior to setting off on the journey. The tool becomes instructive to the goal-setting process and gives us a benchmark from which to measure progress.

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