Most pastors will invest more time on preaching preparation for the next month than they will on vision communication for the next five years. How about you?

That quick experiment is a great way to introduce a special two-part SUMS Remix devoted to the visionary planning problems you must solve.

Will Mancini, founder of Auxano and author of God Dreams, has never had a pastor disagree with him about the simple time analysis above. Most quickly nod with agreement, and understand that something is not quite right about it.

Of the many reasons (let’s be honest… excuses) given, one of the most important is that no one has shown the pastor how to spend time on vision planning. That’s what God Dreams is designed to do. Central to the book’s process is the Horizon Storyline, a tool leaders can use to connect short-term action steps with the long-range dream, while leveraging the power of storytelling to make the plan stick.

Vision Planning Problem #4: People who like to dream and people who like to execute are rarely on the same page. 

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Sprint, by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz

From three partners at Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for solving tough problems, proven at more than a hundred companies.

Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution?

Now there’s a surefire way to answer these important questions: the sprint. Designer Jake Knapp created the five-day process at Google, where sprints were used on everything from Google Search to Google X. He joined Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky at Google Ventures, and together they have completed more than a hundred sprints with companies in mobile, e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and more.

A practical guide to answering critical business questions, Sprint is a book for teams of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to nonprofits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.

Solution #4: The Horizon Storyline will bring your dreamers and doers together around one vision.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION 

The fact that most primary leaders in the church communicate for a living amplifies this problem. Sermon development is intuitive, creative, and idea-oriented. It’s often hard to get conceptual thinkers like that sitting down with the operational leaders who manage, budget, and make decision after decision, day after day. These two staff functions usually pass like ships in the night hardly recognizing the other is present.

Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution?

Good ideas are hard to find. And even the best ideas face an uncertain path to real-world success. That’s true whether you’re running a startup, teaching a class, or working inside a large organization.

The sprint is Google Venture’s unique five-day process for answering crucial questions through prototyping and testing ideas with customers. It’s a “greatest hits” of business strategy, innovation, behavioral science, design, and more – packaged into a step-by-step process.

Sprint is a DIY guide for running your own sprint to answer your pressing business questions. On Monday, you’ll map out the problem and pick an important place to focus. On Tuesday, you’ll sketch competing solutions on paper. On Wednesday, you’ll make difficult decisions and turn your ideas into a testable hypothesis. On Thursday, you’ll hammer out a realistic prototype. And on Friday, you’ll test it with real live humans.

Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz, Sprint 

A NEXT STEP

The sprint, as outlined in the book of the same name, is a five-day process for answering tough questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas. First developed at Google Ventures, it’s now been used by hundreds of organizations around the world.

The sprint process is a literal “greatest hits” of strategy, innovation, behavior science, design thinking – packaged into a one-week process.

When your team takes on the process of a sprint, you can shortcut the endless debate cycle and compress months of time into a single week. It’s almost like having a team superpower: you will be able to fast-forward into the future to see the finished “product” – without having to make expensive commitments of resources.

Gather your team together and watch this video to help set the stage for the process.

It will be helpful for you to review this DIY page prior to this session.

Set the stage for the Sprint Process by downloading the kickoff PDF. Review it and be comfortable enough to lead the session as noted.

Download the Sprint Checklists and review the first three pages, “Setting the Stage” and “Supplies.”

Choose a big picture vision and use the Sprint Process with your team.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 47-4, August 2016.

Part of a weekly series on 27gen, entitled Wednesday Weekly Reader

Regular daily reading of books is an important part of my life. It even extends to my vocation, where as Vision Room Curator for Auxano I am responsible for publishing SUMS Remix, a biweekly book “summary” for church leaders. Each Wednesday I will be taking a look back at previous issues of SUMS Remix and publishing an excerpt here.