Identity Crisis II

I was totally sucked into this show on the golf channel. The show takes a great teaching golf professional and pairs him with a terrible golfer. The show tracks the week to week interaction on how the golf pro helps the golfer get better. The bad golfer is former NBA great, Charles Barkley. He apparently was a decent golfer at some point but somehow developed a mental ‘hitch’ in his swing. He will swing the club back and then he starts down and stops the swing (like a check swing in baseball). At times he stops and starts two or three times before trying to hit the ball. Predictably, he doesn’t hit the ball too well.

On the last show Charles was getting warmed up for his round with Doctor J (another NBA great). He was hitting practice shots on a simulator (hitting into a screen) before the round and blasting it. The coach was glowing with pride and filled with confidence as his pupil was about to hit the course. Charles gets the course and the demons come back to roost with vengeance. The hitch, which the two spent weeks trying to kill and bury, appears on the first swing and never goes away.

What is my point in bringing this up? I think there is a lot to be learned from the situation. I think we are all Charles Barkley in some facet of our life. I watch him and can’t believe how a professional athlete doesn’t have the kinesthetic wherewithal to keep his head in the same spot while trying to hit a golf ball. Just keep your head still and swing without stopping at the top – how tough is that?

However as I thought about it, I realize I am doing the same thing in different facets of my life. If someone were filming me playing my game of life, I have no doubt that they would say – how tough is it, just be more positive or be more supportive or more loving or more open or more joyful or smiling or whatever. Fortunately for me, there is not a camera following through my life and sifting through my faults or I would probably be like Charles and have millions of people saying, “How tough is it to…”

From a moral perspective, I guess I’d have to believe that God is looking down on us and thinking that it shouldn’t be so difficult to be good people. “I sent my Son to help you figure out what to do to be joyful all you have to do is believe and respond. You make it so tough – just keep your head in the same place and swing the club around your body.” Is really that simple or is being good that hard?

 

Identity crisis

How does an institution get a better sense for who it is? Our parish went through a process to develop a strategic plan over the last year and we have revised documents that define us but I am not so sure we have a true understanding of who we are and who we want to be. Maybe I lack the wherewithal to fully grasp the written content that defines who we are and where we are going.

How would you be able to tell an institution that has a clear sense of identity from one that doesn’t? It seems to me that if you approached a staff member or active parishioner and asked them to describe the institution, there should be a lot of overlap if the institution has a good sense of identity. If you ask these stakeholders and get some confusion and inconsistency in the answers, then I would say there is not a clear sense of identity.

You could easily argue that my hypothetical test is not the best measure of knowledge of institutional identity, but I think if you look at successful organizations, you will find stakeholders have a common sense of purpose and direction.

I think another test to see if an organization knows itself is how difficult or easy decisions are and how easy or difficult it is to plan. For certain, there are difficult decisions for all organizations but the greater ease which an organization can make smaller decisions and create plans efficiently, the greater sense of self it has.

So back to my original question, how does an organization get a better sense of who it is? A related question might be, “Is trying to be nearly all things to most people?” an identity? My fear is that an organization can pile on activities and staff until its resources run out but not until then. Rather than meaningfully asking who we are the only question is what more can we do.

The necessity to cut back expenses/activity can be an opportunity to say – this is what is most important to us and this isn’t quite as important. Or you can cut things across the board.

One risk, particularly for churches, is to conclude that we need to take care of ourselves first and curtail the financial outreach. I think this is a very dangerous strategy. What sort of message are you sending the people of the parish? If you are short on money, cut back what you give to others?

Well if you’ve made it to this point and were expecting some profound answers to the questions raised, you are going to be disappointed (and you haven’t learned your lesson from nearly everything else I have ever posted). With a clear motivation to headaches generated from banging my head against the wall, I think it’s best I worry about the identity of my sphere of the institution and let the big picture get sorted out by the larger forces.