Charting the Course Ahead [Captain's Log]

An inside look at how we plan our work.

“Captain’s Log” is a series where I share a snapshot of how things are progressing across the ministry. Subscribe for the latest with Lightworks!

Photo by kevser on Unsplash

Part of the job of any ship’s captain is to lay a course to traverse turbulent, nebulous waters and bring a cargo & its manifest safely to port. When the captain takes the ship out to sea, no matter how good of a course they set, the wind and tide always changes and the course has to adjust with them.

Our task, too, is to lay a course to accomplish the vision God has entrusted to us. But as we go, we have to keep an eye on the horizon & the Holy Spirit’s direction in our sails to evaluate if we’re on course or need to adjust, and plan for the course that lays before us.

This week we took some time to look back at the past few months behind us and prayerfully chart a course for the path in front of us. We do this on a quarterly basis, and we do it for both our personal lives and our ministry. Yes, I know, we’re both weird type-A’s like that 😛

On a personal front, we use the Full Focus Planner system to manage our quarterly goal setting and day-to-day task management. We love being able to take notes and capture the most important tasks of each day in a physical journal format. Plus, the structure for reviewing how each quarter went and planning for the quarter ahead has been a transformational rhythm for our family to help us accomplish and enjoy life more. We’re big believers in the system.

For the last few quarters, we had used the same system for ministry work. But, after looking back at January-March ‘22 and seeing the work ahead of us for the second quarter of this year, we knew we needed to think differently for Q2. We need to set goals that are adaptable enough to meet the demands of a startup where each week can look dramatically different than the last, just as a ship’s captain has to be able to adjust course as they go. So this quarter, we’re trying out a different framework that we learned from our time at Cru called Objectives & Key Results (OKRs).

We saw some of the best and worst parts about OKRs in our prior ministry lives. When we left Cru, we wanted to do what we could to avoid OKRs altogether. But we recognized this week that OKRs are actually more likely to be helpful in highly adaptable environments like ours (as a startup). OKRs focus on achieving a critical outcome instead of focusing on specific tasks, enabling us to stay flexible and adapt & evaluate the tactics we try over the quarter.

We highly value being intentional with our time and energy, especially when these resources come in such short supply for a small founding team. I’m excited to see if the OKR process provides the clarity we need to ensure we’re focused on doing the right work, while enabling the flexibility needed to adapt when we gain new insights that change our course.

Tell us in the comments below - what’s your favorite goal planning process? We’d love to keep improving our methods over time, and we would love to learn from you!

In the spirit of radical transparency for a missions org, here’s the OKRs we set for Lightworks in Second Quarter ‘22:

Objective 1: Lightworks is trusted as a credible and capable ministry.

• Key Result 1: 501c3 application filed

• KR 2: Lightworks website launched publicly

• KR 3: Product exists (i.e. OKR 3, 5)

Objective 2: Gain clarity of the spiritual journey and existing digital railroad (with its cities, stops, and tracks).

• KR 1: Release a v1.0 spiritual journey map.

Objective 3: Christians with questions about their faith are now able to find answers that they’re hoping for.

• KR 1: 200 Christians submitting questions about their faith

• KR 2: 70% of Christians indicate they got an answer they hoped for

• KR 3: Measure return user rate

Objective 4: Partners feel proud to share with others about the ministry (Lightworks) they are supporting.

• KR 1: Hear from 2+ ministry partners that they understand & feel good about supporting our ministry

• KR 2: No lost partners due to lack of clarity, lack of interest, or distrust

Objective 5: Disciples are walking in the way of Jesus via this “Grand Central Station” platform.

• KR 1: 25% show interest in a broader discipleship experience

• KR 2: 1 person walking in a Way of Jesus

*Digital Railroad is an internal metaphor that describes the infrastructure to support people’s faith journeys via digital tools. More to come on this in the near future.

**Grand Central Station is an internal descriptor for our digital discipleship platform based on the same internal metaphor.

Highs:

• Accounted for Big Wins from Q1 ‘22 - there were A LOT of things to celebrate, praise God!

• Charted a course for Q2 both personally and in ministry. Both excited about, and intimidated by, the work that’s in front of us. These are some faith-stretching goals, y’all.

• God provided a helpful metaphor for our vision that’s been HUGELY unlocking for strategic conversations this week.

• Randomly (God thing) connected with my old boss while he was in town from Singapore. He now leads a ministry we’re evaluating partnering with called Indigitous.

• Sent a newsletter to our ministry partners describing the last few months of our work. If you’re a partner and new here, thanks for subscribing!

Lows:

• We’re using OKRs again? Really?? [Guess Leah now has to eat her words when she complained about OKRs in our prior work.]

Looking Ahead:

• Getting to work on these OKRs!

• Building v1.0 of our digital discipleship platform MVP.

Prayer Requests:

• Pray that we’re able to start taking ground on these goals quickly, and pray for wisdom in how to prioritize first steps.

• Pray for stamina - there’s a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time.

• Pray for conversations with potential additional team members.