Drip, drip, drip. It's constant and you can't not think about it. I know, I know, it's a double negative. But haven't you experienced that when you hear a drip somewhere in your house? You become obsessed with finding the source of the drip. Usually I don't like using illustrations that have a negative connotation, but the final step to taking vision public is to drip it daily, and this constant dripping is a great way to think about it.Near the end of Church Unique, I describe your leaders as the engine of your vision. Without leaders that are aligned with (actions) and attuned to (emotions) the vision, you're destined for failure. How do you keep your key leaders aligned and attuned over time? You've got to drip vision daily in your conversations and interactions.
Here are a few simple questions to see how well you drip the vision.
- Have you drawn your strategy on the back of a napkin in a restaurant to explain it to someone in the last month?
- Can all of your key staff and volunteer leaders recite your mission and talk about why it matters?
- Have you spent time in the last month during a staff or leadership meeting to revisit your Vision Frame?
If you answered "no" to any of those questions, you need to do a better job of dripping vision daily. This is where your Vision Frame language, tagline, and key messages can help. Start using this language all the time—in every meeting, during every conversation. This language should infiltrate and permeate your conversations, becoming a part of your normal vocabulary. By talking vision daily like this, your vision will start to become ingrained as a part of your culture rather than just some language you developed once to be framed and put on the wall.
Here are three practical suggestions for ways you can drip vision daily.
- In the next conversation you have with a key staff member or volunteer leader, work in at least 3 phrases from your Vision frame, tagline, or key messages.
- Add "Vision Frame Review" to your leadership meeting agenda for sometime in the next month and take 30 minutes to reflect together on one or two parts of the Vision Frame (I'd suggest reviewing your mission and your strategy).
- Consider using the Vision Deck as a tool in your regular meetings. It's a tool we developed with 52 suggestions for ways you can better integrate your vision into your culture during normal meeting rhythms.
The main thing you need to do is start dripping vision daily right now...if you're not already doing it. You've got to be intentional about doing this at the beginning, until you develop it as a habit. Soon, talking vision should become a natural part of your daily, weekly, and monthly rhythms.
If you keep these six steps in mind: fill the pool (by articulating your vision), boil it down (by developing your tagline), describe the water (by crafting key messages), tap into the thirst (by communicating the Big Why), break out the hose (by leveraging every medium), and drip, drip, drip (by talking vision daily), you'll have vision-soaked communication that will move your church or organization toward being more effective for your mission. And that's the goal, isn't it?