Do you have a short and long-term plan? (70-4)

Effective leadership involves planning. Planning is generally cherished by the more naturally introverted leaders who find their energy from times of solitude and generally not-so-cherished by the naturally extroverted leaders who find their energy with people. But for leaders to become all that God intended them to be, no matter their personality, they will have to find a method of planning that allows them to live within their personality and still create carefully thought out short and long-term plans. Read Numbers 10.

Estimates say there were approximately 3 million Hebrews that left Egypt under Moses’ leadership. We know that God determined the times and directions of the Israelites’ movement. They had no way of knowing in advance whether they would camp in a particular location for a few days or for a year. Each time they set up camp, they had to do so as if they might be there for a lengthy duration, but they also had to be flexible enough to break camp at any time. If there was not a carefully thought out plan in place to add order to pack up, march out and set up all 3 million Hebrews would have lost motivation for being part of this team. To put some personal understanding to the scope of this task, just think for a moment what it takes to get your family fed, dressed and into the car to get to church on time.

Similar to what happened for Moses in today’s scripture, godly leaders will get some portions of the plan as direct revelation from God. God’s direct revelation generally gives us the structural bearing beams of the plan. God told Moses that he needed to assign specific tasks to individual tribes and that he needed a system of signaling the entire Israelite camp when change was needed. Moses and his leadership team needed to figure out the details of how this would be implemented.

A few elements of planning that Moses used that are basic to effective leadership:

• Moses gave momentum to the plan by starting with the big picture. God had a plan for the Hebrews to travel to a land He had selected for a permanent home and moving was just a means to this much bigger vision.
• Moses developed a communication system; sometimes communication to just the leaders and at other times for the entire community so he could fulfill the necessary communication concerning the plan.
• Moses applied the lesson he had learned from Jethro as an ongoing management principle instead of one time advice.
  • Moses broke down the 3 million Hebrews into manageable groups and developed manageable goals for each unit.
  • Moses established structure, organization and a chain of command as part of the plan so the plan functioned with a minimum of frustration.
  • Moses understood the importance of key individuals in critical roles to insure the plan had its greatest chance for success.

Effective leaders understand that even a very complex plan is made up of simple elements; they start with the big picture, determine the elements and organize the project with logic and common sense.

On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being near perfect, evaluate how often you communicate the big picture when motivating your team for the everyday tasks.