To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change. – Peter Drucker

I’ve been a teacher for 17 years and I’ve never seen a good teacher that didn’t get this “joint-ness” of performance. Bad teachers typically either don’t like their subject or their students. (Some dislike both, but that’s another kettle of fish.) If you’re a leader – of a business, a school, a hospital, an NPO or a church, you’re a manager. In the words of Drucker you’re a manager – that is you’re responsible for making it (your organization and the people in it) capable of joint performance.
To Drucker this joint performance is accomplished through 4 things:

1. common goals
2. common values
3. the right structure

and

4. training and development of the people in the organization.

Take almost any organization and ask questions pertinent to these four. For example, think about your own organization and pretend that clip-board in hand, you ask something like the following:

1. What are the goals of this organization?
2. What values do you hold that enhance or refine your work here at this organization?
3. How is the current structure helping you in your work for this organization? What would you change structurally – if you had the power?
4. What sort of training and development is this organization providing for you? Is it making you a better employee? A better person? A better human? Do you like who this organization is training you to be?

My guess is that – as a leader imagining those questions and answers – your stomach started to hurt. Don’t stop yet, consider that data. Like the person feeling the lump in a place that it’s not supposed to be – stop. Think about how you can ask those questions of those in your organization. Because if you don’t – a la Drucker – your people will not have what “they need to perform and respond to change.”

Tags: church, common goals, commonality, joint performance, leadership, non-profit