Strategic Initiative #3

Launch an adaptive management strategy to implement our Joyfully Devoted vision

Key Teams (Who)

  • Executive sponsor: John Murchison
  • Project owner:
  • Project manager: Judith Thomas
  • Project team members:
    • Equipped Ambassadors Development Team
    • Val Hamilton and Tyler David (Welcoming Witness pilot initiative team)
  • Teams needed for implementation:
    • Senior Pastoral Team for vision stewardship and language alignment
    • Executive Team for resource allocation and metric development collaboration
    • Department Leaders for strategy collaboration and tool implementation
    • Ministry Intelligence Team for measurement and evaluation of ministry activity

Background (why)

The Austin Stone elders have worked to ensure that all elders see the same vision of the church we desire to be in 2030. This initiative will work to ensure that elders and staff see the same roadmap to get there in the next seven years. 


From the Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Heifetz:

“You need a plan, but you also need freedom to deviate from the plan as new discoveries emerge, as conditions change, and as new forms of resistance arise. Once you help unleash the energy to deal with an adaptive issue, you cannot control the outcome. That is why there are several possible outcomes at the end of the adaptive challenge line. Doing this work requires flexibility and openness even in defining success. The pathway is not a straight line, and because working through an adaptive challenge will always involve distributing some losses, albeit in the service of an important purpose, the systemic dynamics that ensue, the politics of change, will have many unpredictable elements.”


Goals and Outcomes (what)

Adaptive management is an iterative process involving three key activities: 

(a) observing events and patterns around you; 

(b) interpreting what you are observing (developing multiple hypotheses about what is going on); and 

(c) designing interventions based on the observations and interpretations to address the adaptive challenge you have identified.


In this initiative, we desire to set the foundation for our ability to implement the elements of Vision 2030 over the next seven years. Specifically, in FY24, we aim to:


  1. Create a Strategy Roadmap for Subsequent Years around the Primary Elements of the 2030 Vision Narrative

    In the spring of 2023, we communicated the basic timeline below to our partners:

    • 2024: Building the Foundation
    • 2025-2027: Reshaping Existing and Launching New Ministry
    • 2028-2030: Evaluating and Adjusting
    • 2030: Celebrating and Dreaming
    • Our first aim will be to refine the time frame above into a draft of a strategy roadmap that includes two essential elements - communication of vision components to the body through preaching series and the development of ministries aligned with Healthy Congregations, Welcoming Witnesses, Equipped Ambassadors, and Multi-generational Investors. This outcome will be driven by the second and third outcomes outlined below.

  1. Develop Tools for Each Department to Plan for Joyfully Devoted Vision

    Tools are simply ways to help people accomplish work. The essential strategy tools are awareness of current reality, clarity on the future destination, and pathways to move forward from the present to the future. In FY24, we will focus on Department Leaders understanding how their playbooks for ministries and activities intersect the annual planning process. This will largely be done by teaching leaders to ask different questions than previously asked. Additionally, we will develop a tool and help Department Leaders translate their current ministry to the future vision, focusing on what ministry activity might need to stop and what new activity might need to start to orient toward the vision.


  1. Identify and Collaborate with Development Teams for Each Area of Focus to Develop New Strategies and Artifacts

    In addition to each department working to pursue steps toward our vision, each area of focus will have a development team to work with SPT to prototype new churchwide strategies to pursue these areas of focus. This team will work with these development teams to incorporate their plans into the overall strategy roadmap and to communicate the new strategies to the various departments.


  1. Start Implementation and Adaptively Manage Vision 2030 Strategy

    Adaptive management of a strategy involves closely monitoring change effects and then adapting future actions based on the observed results. As we develop new strategies to become Joyfully Devoted through Healthy Congregations, Welcoming Witnesses, Equipped Ambassadors, and Multi-generational Investors, we will also need to consistently evaluate the current ministry's impact through the evaluation of KPIs. In FY24, in collaboration with the team focused on Ministry Intelligence, we will seek to establish key rhythms for respective ministry owners to evaluate the effects of ministry changes in FY24 in light of their strategy proposals.


Strategic Initiative Key Resources