Parishes: Decide Slow, then Implement Fast - Ep. 189

On this eipside, I go over how speed is crucial to a thriving Catholic parish. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

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What's going on, everyone? In this episode, I want to talk about a character trait that is so vital to the success of parishes that I wanted to devote an entire episode to it. And that character trait is speed, the ability to take an idea and put it into action. The reason I want to talk about this is because I was recently helping a parish redesign their bulletin. Because, as you guys probably know, hopefully you know, Microsoft Publisher is going out of date in about 20 weeks. And so if you built your bulletin in Microsoft Publisher, you're going to lose your bulletin um soon. So everyone's moving over to things like Canva. Anyway, um, I was helping this parish redesign their bulletin in a meeting with uh the pastor, and I'm like, yeah, I can meet with the uh bulletin designer, get her trained up on Canva, and then help her, you know, do all the stuff that modern bulletins have, like QR codes and stuff like that. So I email the bulletin designer, and I'm like, hey, this is the timeline we're dealing with. We got you know 24 weeks. And I'm like, well, don't we meet, do this, blah, blah, blah, get it done, let's set this as a deadline. And she replies with basically like, yeah, I'm a little overwhelmed right now, and I haven't really learned Canva. So let's meet in a couple weeks when I have time to go over things, and then let's kind of push the deadline out a little bit. And so we basically set the deadline like three months down the road. Now, this is the volunteer, so I don't really have much authority over them. But you can bust out a bulletin design in a weekend. I have. I've built one in one day with a Celsius and a packaging, so uh it can be done. But here's the thing there is clearly not a culture at this parish of speed to implementation, which is so important. It's everything. And it's something I've found in a lot of parishes, which is this idea of, well, we can take time on this. I've had clients sign up and they pay me and get the paperwork done a month later. A month. Okay, there's this kind of constant, um, I don't know, this prevalent ambiance of taking things slow. Now, so I want to dissect that for a sec, and then I want to touch on why speed is so important. So, on one hand, I can understand taking time to discern a decision because that's where prudence comes in. And big decisions should take time to be thought about. Um and that I actually respect. I respect the priests, they'll usually take time to think about the decision and then come to a clear decision and stuff. So that's not really the issue. I like that. What the issue is in the speed to implementation once the decision has been made. The reason you want to be quick on that is because then the quicker that gets done, the more time you now have to do the next thing, to keep growing, and to keep doing whatever it is you need to reach people. And typically, people post give themselves deadlines or or a lack thereof. They don't even post a deadline for themselves because they don't they don't want to deal with the what's called like the messy action of implementing something. Because anytime you do a new thing, it's always kind of messy in the beginning. Getting your fingers in there and just figuring it all out, and just it's messy and usually uncomfortable because you're developing a new skill. And so people don't like to do that. It's uncomfortable, and so they'll tend to push the thing away, right? Procrastinate, deflect, push it away, push away. But of course, that's terrible for compounding our growth, right? We want to learn more skills that create new things for the parish, build, do more evangelization quicker and quicker. Prudence with the decision making and time on that, once a decision is made, quick implementation. So a good rule of thumb I like to use is I used to do this with employees. Pastors can do it with their employees. You just say, How long do you think it will take you to get this done? And then they give you a thing, uh a deadline. And then you say, Great, what would it take for you to get it done by one half their deadline? So if they said, Hey, how long would it take you to redesign the bulletin? Oh, it'd take me about three months. Great. What would it take for you to have it done within one and a half months? You didn't say, can you have it done within one and a half months? You just said, well, what does it take? It's gonna take something, and he'll tell you what it is. It might just take nothing. He might just have to buckle down and work. But he probably set that deadline as a defense mechanism because it's a new thing. People don't like doing new things. So all of this, I hate to say it, but everything rises and falls with the pastor, the leader of an organization. It really does all land on the leader, whether we like it or not, because the leader sets the culture. And culture is just a um, it's a collection of behaviors that have either been approved or disapproved. That's all really a culture is. It's either behaviors that are rewarded or behaviors that are punished. And it's a collection of rewarded behaviors and punished behaviors that have come into what we would call the culture of this particular organization. So, what the pastor has to do is create a culture of speed to implement. Take time to discern a decision once a decision is made, quick implementation. And the way you do that is with that questioning that I said, Oh, great, what would it take you to have it done by this day? And hey, if you want to go one more round, say, great, what would it take for you to have it done within six weeks? And you might say, Oh, well, I'd have to start studying Canva right now, and I'd have to watch some YouTube videos, and gosh, I'd probably have to meet with Joe this week to get like a crash force on Canva so I can design it. And then I'd probably have to send you a draft within like three weeks just to get some type of review back so I can finish the final draft within six weeks. And then you go, Great, that all sounds wonderful. I love that for us. Go do that. And now you've moved up your deadline by like four months. Three months. I don't even remember what the original one was. The point is, is you are quick with implementation. You want the people on your team to be very comfortable being uncomfortable, very comfortable doing messy action, very comfortable trying new things and developing new skills, which is a huge problem in parishes because they're filled with boomers. Boomers are not the type of people who like to learn new things and develop themselves. You have to fight that. And hey, as the leader, you are totally allowed to fight that. Because at the end of the day, you have the perfect ultimatum, do what I tell you, or you're fired. And we don't always come out and say that as owners, or I'm sorry, as um leaders, but it's true. She has to do, she has to learn Canva. It's non-negotiable, or you can go get a job somewhere else. So it usually doesn't come to that, but everyone knows that deep down. So they know they have to get the things done. You're just gonna have them get their things done quicker. I mean, just think. Just think of how quickly you could make progress in your business. I'm sorry, not business, your parish, if you were quick with everything. Hey, Sally, office manager, we don't really have a tracking system for our outreach and how we're reaching young people. Um, how long would it take you to get like a tracking system put together? Probably a couple months. I don't even know what that means. What do you mean, track? Like I'd have to figure out what you even mean by that and put together some type of tracking software, probably. Even get my hands around what our outreach system is. Um yeah, I'd probably need like months to figure that out. Okay, gotcha. What would it take for you to need to figure it out within one month, within 30 days? Oh my gosh, I'd have to like devote like several hours to it a week and probably have to talk with Joe, um, figure out what he's thinking, um, do some research with the internet, like Chat GBT, maybe, um, maybe talk with you a couple times. But yeah, that would be that's probably what I need to do. Great, love that. Go do that. Do you guys get it? Like quick, quick, quick. Because if you don't set a deadline, it just gets pushed into that's not a goal then. And people love not having goals. Because if there's not a goal, there's no stakes. S-T-A-K-E-S, stakes. There's no, damn, I did it or I didn't. That's why people don't like to set weight loss goals. I will be 200 pounds by July 4th, 2026. Because now there's stakes. You could fail. You could succeed, but you could fail. And people don't like that. But our brains are like a homing beacon. We love goals in the sense of like we will obsess over them. And if we fixate on them and think about them all the time, we will find ways to get there. So setting goals is the key to success. So you have to tell your people to set the goal and then move that goal closer and force them to be quick, quick to implementation. They don't need all the time in the world. Most things, almost all things, all skills you can become proficient at within 20 hours of focus, effort, and practice. 20 hours, 20 serious hours. You want to get good at Canva? Three days, eight hours each day, you will be proficient. Isn't that interesting? But no one does that. No one sits and puts 20 hours into something. Um, anyway, speed. Speed to implement is very important. So I wanted to share that with you guys. And um yeah, as I as I develop the resources for chapel launch, I do want to include either a book called Operations for Catholic Churches, as in like business operations, or um maybe like a playbook or a video series. I think what I'm gonna do, just kind of split balling here, but this is something I want to do, is on chapelaunch.com, I want to have a tab that says courses, and there's a course on social media, on advertising, on fundraising, on um bulletin design, and then maybe on operations. And they're just free. You don't even have to put your email in. So I want to do that. Um yeah, there's so much I can give, and there's so much I want to build for you guys. And so I'm gonna keep doing this. And um, hey, it's all because you guys are listening and supporting. So thank you very much. If you got value, drop a like and I will see you all in the next episode. Thank you. God bless.