Bill Walsh, the former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, was thought eccentric because of how extensively he planned his plays in advance of each game. Most coaches would wait to see how the game unfolded, then respond with plays that seemed appropriate. Not Bill Walsh. Walsh would pace the sidelines with a big sheet of plays that his team was going to run, no matter what. He wanted the game to respond to him.
Walsh won a lot of Super Bowls with his “eccentric” proactive approach. But all he did was to act on the crucial difference between creating and responding. He was a coach that looked into the future.
Effective leadership not only requires thinking about where the organization needs to go, but also looking at how it will get there. We look ahead so we won’t get behind. Only by seeing the invisible can we attempt the impossible.
The wisest person of all instructed, “The wise man looks ahead” (Prov. 14:8 LB).
The critical need of looking ahead is the process of creating your organizational future before it happens. Like Bill Walsh, it is creating your own actions in advance so that your life will respond to you. It is attempting to write history in advance.
Looking ahead gives direction.
It’s like using a highlighter on a roadmap that indicates where you are, where you are going, and how you are going to get there. It indicates present location, proposed destination, and a planned route for reaching the desired outcome.
This roadmap not only provides information for where you are going; it also suggests where you are not going. Planned abandonment—what you must not do—is just as important as planned adventure—what you will do. Churches, organizations, and ministries do not have the time, resources, and personnel to do everything. (God does not expect individuals or organizations, including churches, to be all things to all people.) So looking ahead helps one determine the few things that are worth doing, and worth doing well.
One of the best benefits of creatively looking ahead is that it allows you to simplify. It allows you to repack your bags, lighten your load, take only what is needed for your journey.
Looking ahead helps us to create rather than react.
Looking ahead allows us the opportunity to create our own actions in advance so that life will respond to us. At all times in our lives we are either creating or reacting.
“Creation” and “reaction” have the same letters in them, exactly. They are anagrams. Each step along our journey we are faced with a choice either to create or to react. Many people spend their entire days reacting. Like goalies in a hockey game, with pucks flying at us all day, we react. We react to news, cars in traffic, people, events, challenges and obstacles. But there’s a better way to live. It involves making choices and following plans. It involves choosing to create. We create by planning, forecasting and looking ahead.
Looking ahead saves time.
I have written in my day planner: “One hour of planning saves three hours of execution.” I am a proponent of looking ahead for its time savings return. It provides me with a marvelous return on my investment. I only have 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. If I don’t use them wisely by looking ahead I will forever forfeit those gifts.
Looking ahead allows us to build on their strengths.
Effective leaders determine what the organization can do best and then do it. When the organization is expanded, it is expanded building on strengths, not on weaknesses. The best resources—time, money, and personnel—are assigned to the opportunities that build on the strengths.
Looking ahead reduces crisis.
As we live our daily lives, the two controlling influences will be either our plans or our pressures. When we look ahead and choose to plan we take charge and control of our days. If we fail to look ahead we will spend our days in crisis mode. We will fall into a trap of “panic planning.” And contrary to public opinion, no one works well under pressure for long.
Looking ahead gives energy.
Failing to plan is like diffused light—no energy, no power. Whereas planning is like light focused—great power, great energy. Unfocused sunlight will warm your body. But focus that same sunlight through a magnifying glass and it will set a leaf on fire. Take that same light and intensify its focus, and it becomes a laser beam that can cut through steel.
Failing to focus, we dissipate our energy on less important matters, improper agendas, and lost crusades. We become dabblers. Wasting our power on the trivial many. Much activity exists, but little productivity. On the other hand, when our look is focused, concentrated on the vital few, we are renewed, revitalized and remade.
Looking ahead is a spiritual experience.
Looking ahead cannot be done without the power of prayer. As your eyes engage the plan, allow your heart to engage the Heavenly Father. Looking ahead means praying together and planning together. It reminds me of the promise of God, “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst” (Matt. 18:20 NASB). Without Christ we can do nothing. Without Him we begin at no beginning and we work to no end.
Rick Ezell, D. Min., is senior pastor of Naperville Baptist Church, Naperville, Ill. Ezell has written numerous articles and four books, including Cutting to the Core and Defining Moments.
