I have job security because, in part, there is a lack of organizational health.

That is a loud statement.

It is not an exaggeration that the majority, by a wide margin, of hurts I interface with at a personal level come at the hands of some level of organizational ill-health. You possibly experience the same.

How about your organization?

You Shape Organizational Health. Yes, You!
I am a big fan of Patrick Lencioni (you my know him from his best known title The Five Dysfunctions of a Team). His more recent book The Advantage is a culmination of many of his works. It is a brilliantly simple and essential book. Essential! 

You may feel tempted to check out because you are not an organizational leader. But wait! You are part of an organization. You can do what you can do to make your little corner of the organization healthy.

Lencioni argues that if you do that, the results will show and people will pay attention. Besides, with some simple know-how you can shepherd others through the mishmash of organizational illness.

Resources!
Lencioni’s group has just developed a new website loaded with practical tools. It is called The Hub.

If you only do one thing, listen to the 60 minute webinar he gave earlier this week (April 25). Here is the link.

As you listen, take notes. Lencioni is a believer and is deep into both the business and non-profit sector of the U.S. He is expounding simple wisdom, much of it very biblical.

He has some key words for non-profits – i.e. for sending and member care organizations like yours and mine. Those words come within the first 20 or 30 minutes of this webinar. They are gold. When not headed, the results are painful – at the organizational and personal level.

He also addresses what you can do if you are not the CEO or department head in bringing change. There are many good questions addressed that listeners sent in ahead of time that are very relevant to our world.

Member Care Providers Must Offer More than Problem Identification
We must be able to do more than point out the problems. Member care providers lose credibility amongst executive leadership when all we do is talk about what is wrong and do not do some of the heavy lifting of facilitating health for the organization, not just members of the organization.

Lencioni provides straight forward ways to facilitate health, IF, we lean into them with “courage and disciple” (his words). We can help foster not only personal health, but organizational health as well.

This is a monsterous issue for the cross-cultural ministry world. I’d love to hear your thoughts on organizational health and what member care folks can do to promote it.