Strategic Christian

Resources on Strategic Planning
With an Emphasis on Vision

Downloads

• Notes from a talk (PowerPoint, about 3.6 MB)
• Summary: The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning by Henry Mintzberg (5 page Word document, about 36 KB)
  

Links:

Operational Advisory Services (Requires GCX Login)

Recommended Reading (links from Amazon.com)

• Visioneering, by Andy Stanley
• Strategic Renaissance, by Evan Dudek
• 
  On Creative Thinking, by Roger Van Oech
  • A Kick in the Seat of the Pants
  • A Whack on the Side of the Head

• Howard Hendricks on Creativity: Color Outside the Lines

Some motivating quotes from Andy Stanley, Visioneering

• Everybody ends up somewhere in life. A few people end up somewhere on purpose. Those are the ones with vision (p. 8.)
• A clear, focused vision allows us to experience ahead of time the emotions associated with our anticipated future. (p. 9)
• Vision will prioritize your values. A clear vision has the power to bring what’s most important to the surface of your schedule and lifestyle. A clear vision makes it easy to weed out of your life those things that stand in the way of achieving what matters most. (p. 12)
• Vision often begins with the inability to accept the way things are. Over time that dissatisfaction matures into a clear picture of what could be. (p. 17)
• A vision rarely requires immediate action. It always requires patience. . . . Not every good idea is vision material (p. 20)
• Ultimately, we are taking part in a massive assault that began one dark afternoon on a hill just outside Jerusalem. God’s vision for your life is much bigger than you. (p. 24)
• Goals can be energizing–when you win. But a vision is more powerful than a goal. A vision is enlivening, it’s spirit-giving, it’s the guiding force behind all great human endeavors. Vision is about share energy, a sense of awe, a sense of possibility. (Stanley p. 41, quoting Benjamin Zander, Conductor, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra[?])
• Painting a verbal picture is the essence of visioncasting (p. 85)
• Visioncasting will always include an element of waking people out of their apathy. (p. 87)
• The horsepower behind a well-cast vision is a thoroughly developed verbal picture of what could be, a picture that can be accurately reproduced in the minds of the listeners. For it is only when the listeners’ imaginations have been engaged that true visioncasting takes place. (p. 90)
• A carefully crafted vision has the capacity to capture people’s imaginations as well as their commitment. People will prioritize their lives and lifestyles in order to be a part of a vision they feel called to. (p. 106)
• You won’t find an example of anyone God used in even a small way who did not make some kind of sacrifice in order to pursue the vision. (p. 135)
• Whenever you attempt to bring about change, it plays upon the insecurities of those who have grown accustomed to the way things are and have always been (p. 141)

And Finally

The Gettysburg PowerPoint I alluded to in Chicago