How to Make Sure Your Organization Fails

There is no shortage of tips, tricks, and opinions out there claiming to lead you to success. And it is true that there are a lot of different elements that can lead an organization to success. You can get pretty lost in that world if you want to. While there are a plethora of ideas on how to be successful there are a few tried and true ways to ensure that you and the church, non-profit, or general organization fails. And with a little effort it just might fail spectacularly! So, by all means, read on if you sincerely desire to fail. And, well, read on if you want to learn what not to do on the road to success.

Make it all about you

The first and easiest way to fail is to simply make everything about yourself. Be self-absorbed and arrogant. Throw a fit if you don’t get your way. Self-centered behavior is a sure fire method of bringing about failure. Refuse to listen to other people’s ideas and thoughts. Ignore warning signs. Forget that whole humility thing and make sure everyone knows it is your way or the highway. Take nothing from nobody! You are the reason the organization exists, right? You’re just giving the people what they want.

Do everything yourself

This option is really a dual impact. Doing everything yourself will not only see your organization suffer, but it will also burn you out personally so that you will lose your family. Listen, nobody can do anything as well and perfectly as you can. You are the only one who really knows how to get things done so make sure everything is either done by you personally or has to be passed through your approval so that it will be done your way. Because the next best thing to you doing it yourself is to make sure the other staff do it your way with your permission. With a little extra effort you could also hang over their shoulder while they try to accomplish the task and tell all the ways they are doing it wrong. 

Refuse to hear negative things

It is certainly an unlikely scenario with your leadership at the helm, but there might be some things that don’t work, go bad, or problems in the organization. It’s truly a silly thought but not everyone is you. The goal is simple here. Refuse to listen to any disagreement, negativity, turn your head to any derivative of the word “No.” Avoiding negative things will surely help keep the organization from dealing with problems and moving forward in a healthy fashion. 

Blame everyone else

Hey, you’re the leader and they are lucky to have you. Nothing is your fault. For the long term disaster of your church make sure you never admit fault, or take blame, in anything that goes wrong. Naturally, if those people had done it your way then things would have gone correctly. Just remember, it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of everyone else who did not do it your way, or make sure they had your permission. When it is everybody else’s fault then you are just about there to failure. Of course, the flip of this is also true, make sure you take all the credit for the good things that happen. After all, everything is about you.

Change the vision regularly

The best targets are moving targets. Make sure the goal, vision, and focus changes on a very regular basis. While you are changing the vision for the fourth time this quarter go ahead and make sure you ignore the current state and condition of the organization. When changing the vision make sure you pull from successful places for your inspiration. Go ahead and copy what they are doing. It is sure to work in yours just the same way. Don’t ever let the previous vision settle too long. Make sure you change it before anyone gets too comfortable with it.

Each of these will help you with a slow slide into utter failure in your organization. To fail faster make sure you combine multiple of these attitudes together to get a complete package. Now, no one really sets out to fail but practicing these things are wonderful ways to find yourself where you didn’t want to be. The point here is not to promote failure, that would be silly. However, it is likely that one or more of these practices is a regular part of your leadership pattern and that is simply not sustainable. That isn’t healthy and unhealthy leadership produces unhealthy followers who then become unhealthy leaders. When you read this and certain traits strike a chord you may need to take stock of your practices and patterns. Some things can’t change. There are things that only the senior leader can and should be doing. However, you can learn to take healthy steps that will let the organization go farther and reach more heights than you ever thought possible. There are all sorts of ways to get help in learning healthy functions of leadership. If you feel that you are on a downward slide don’t do nothing. Take a step towards health today.