Don’t make future plans without a tactical leader

Bob Whitesel Nov. 5, 2019

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Tactical leaders are often overlooked in a sea of strategic visionaries and hard-working relational workers.

My observation from client case studies is that roughly 20 percent of a congregation are tactical leaders, another 20 percent are strategic (e.g., visionary) leaders, while the remaining 80 percent are relational leaders.

Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto is famed for saying that 80 percent of the value lies in 20 percent of the ingredients. And thus, his statement has been interpreted to infer that 20 percent of the people, do 80 percent of the work. Again, my experience with client case studies would tend to confirm percentages close to Pareto’s principle.

Thus, of that 20 percent that is doing the work I have observed that 8 percent are visionaries and 8 percent are workers, with 4 percent tactical leaders.

Now if my field observations are correct, then we are not getting 72 percent of our relational leaders involved. My hunch is that this is because we do not have enough tactical leaders to create suitable tactics and equip relational leaders for the task. Thus, congregational relational leaders will often lament that a church is too unorganized, when in reality they mean that the church is missing key tactical leaders to organize the strategic leaders’ visions.[xxxv]

Here then is a primary reason why change is hard for churches to undertake and congregants lament, “Our leaders are not good at bringing about change.” It is because we often do not have tactical leaders in place to successfully bring about change. It is tactical leaders who can orchestrate and oversee a step-by-step plan for change.

Church change is usually handled just by strategic leaders who make a case for seeing the bigger-picture, without giving clear insight about how to get there. The result is that church relational leaders sense a gap between what the strategic leader pictures, and how to get it done. The result is that the relational leader resists change, because a clear route to get there has not been articulated.

How to involve tactical leaders

1. Tactical leaders must be recruited and involved in the change process. Look for people who have the following characteristic

• They are planners.
• They analyze needs and appropriate funds.
• They create budgets.
• They help obtain goal ownership from relational leaders.
• They are hesitant about new ideas because they can see the barriers and roadblocks that must be surmounted.
• They are frustrated when strategic leaders try to micro-mange the tactical process, by offering too many ideas, corrections, adjustments, etc.

2. Tactical leaders must be allowed to drop their current responsibilities to tackle change.

Because there is so much precision in the tactical leader’s work, they cannot juggle as many projects as the strategic leader can envision. Remember, the strategic leader sees the bigger-picture but the actual mechanics are not as clear and require more effort to create.

Thus, the detail needed in tactical planning prevents the tactical leader from being able to do a good job if he or she is juggling too many responsibilities.

Therefore the tactical leader must be allowed to drop some of their current responsibilities if these tasks are not aligned with the tactical leader’s tactical gifts, or if their duties are not as crucial to the future of the church as are the new changes.

3. Tactical leaders need a rough plan. They need a general plan they can follow, indigenize and improve upon.

This is the sixth article in a series of articles on 3-STRand Leadership. Check out the fifth,“Comparing 3 different leaders” by Bob Whitesel. Click here for footnotes.

Excerpted from Preparing for Change Reaction: How to Introduce Change in Your Church by Bob Whitesel (Indianapolis: Wesleyan Publishing House, 2007).

Photo source: istock 

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Bob Whitesel (D.Min., Ph.D.) is a foresight coach, professor, and award-winning author of 14 books. For over 30 years, he has guided leaders and churches to pivot and engage what’s next. He holds two earned doctorates from Fuller Theological Seminary and teaches on leadership foresight, church health, and organizational change. His website is www.ChurchForesight.com. Learn More »

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