Golf, Missions, and Increments

The word of the day is incrementally. If you have ever played golf, then you know you cannot fix every aspect of your game at the same time. You work on driving, short game, putting, etc in increments. You do not shoot 20 strokes better in one outing, rather you improve over time. While I knew this to be true and believe strongly in bringing about change to an organization incrementally, I never thought about how it pertained to one niche in particular: Missions work.

This past week I had the pleasure of listening to a husband and wife that are in the process of raising funds to go abroad for two years. I always thought that if you had a calling to do such good works that you would just do it. However, and thankfully, that is not the case. First, the husband of this couple went on a short mission as a worker. Then, he and his wife went back again as workers. Then, he organized and led a short missions trip. Now he is in the process of taking a year to raise funds so that he and his wife can go away for two years on a mission. He and his wife, incrementally prepared themselves for such a task.

Whatever your profession might be, the key to solid, positive change will be to do it incrementally. This assumes, just like in golf, that you have trained and understand the fundamentals and now you can work on improving the various aspects in an orderly fashion.

Now is a good time to get back to the fundamentals. Take the summer to get back to basics. Then, in the fall, work on incrementally improving your metrics. Getting back to basics has never been easier. Now that summer is here you can follow this blog once or twice a week with the Summer of Fundamentals Series. Follow on twitter or linkedin for updates. www.twitter.com/ucdws www.linkedin.com/in/drewstraub