To change means to choose to change. —John Maxwell
In the church I lead, for many years now we have evaluated what we do. Everything we do. Overall, we ask three questions about any event:
- What went right?
- What went wrong?
- How do we make it better?
We’ll drill down deep on certain areas, asking hard questions of ourselves and each other, but the core aspect is that we relentlessly evaluate what we do.
It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of humility. Seriously.
So why on earth would we spend so much energy around this?
As I learned from John Maxwell, because experience alone doesn’t make you better. Evaluated experience makes you better.
There are scores of people who are bringing the same energy, ideas, and effort to their jobs that they brought 10, 15, or 20 years ago. They don’t have 20 years experience – they have 1 years experience simply repeated 20 times!
Experience alone doesn’t make you better. Evaluation is key to getting better.
I want our team to get better at what we do. We believe our work matters and it’s worth every effort to get better! And I’ll wager that you believe your work matters too.
There are a lot of reasons not to evaluate. You might hurt someone’s feelings. You might bruise an ego. You might say something that someone doesn’t want to hear. You might make someone cry. You might make someone quit.
All of those are possible if you begin doing this for the first time. But I can promise you – the benefits of evaluating what you do FAR outweighs the negatives. Your team will grow stronger. You will exercise those humility muscles. (See Jim Collins’ work Good to Great for the power of humility in Level 5 leadership). And what your team produces will reflect the effort you put into evaluation.
You and your team will be the better for it.
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