ILI: History Makers Leadership Podcast

Ep. 63 | From Vision to Action: Mastering Strategic Planning

• International Leadership Institute

Share episode

Strategic planning isn't merely an annual exercise marked on the calendar—it's a spiritual discipline requiring discernment, collaboration, and intentionality. This illuminating conversation with leadership expert Dan Slagle unpacks how effective organizations balance daily operations with future-focused vision casting.

In this powerful episode of the History Makers Leadership Podcast, we sit down with seasoned church leader Dan Slagle to explore the heart and discipline of strategic leadership. Whether you’re leading a church, a nonprofit, or a team in the marketplace, this conversation offers practical frameworks and spiritual wisdom you won’t want to miss.

Dan shares candid lessons from over two decades of leadership at FaithBridge Church, including how clear communication, prayerful discernment, and intentional systems created a culture of mission-alignment and strategic focus.

You’ll discover:

  • When and how to initiate strategic planning in your leadership context
  • The difference between tactical vs. strategic meetings
  • How to discern and respond to Kairos moments — those divine windows of opportunity
  • Real-life stories of navigating major gifts, leadership transitions, and organizational pivots
  •  How to empower your team and prepare the next generation of leaders


What does it really take to lead with clarity, purpose, and Kingdom impact? If you're ready to lead more intentionally, make better decisions, and serve your team faithfully — this conversation is for you.

Ready to transform your approach to strategic planning? Subscribe now and explore additional leadership resources at iliteam.org, including our guide to the eight core values of the most effective Christian leaders

Explore more resources and leadership tools at: https://iliteam.org.

When you begin ILI training, you will discover how the Eight Core Values will lead to the Seven Outcomes in your life and the lives of those you lead. Join a community of leaders who are ready to change history and make an impact in this world. Discover more at ILITeam.org/connect.


Speaker 1:

You know how it can be really hard to think about or plan for the future in the midst of all that you're doing on a daily basis. Listen, I'm incredibly excited because today's conversation with Dan Slagle is one where we're going to talk about strategic planning, but also kind of how it fits together with some tactical meetings and some other conversations. I think it's going to be a great service to you as you come along this leadership journey with us. Thanks so much for joining the HistoryMakers Leadership Podcast. Well, dan, I'm real thankful to be able to sit here with you again, brother, to think through some things.

Speaker 1:

You know, there's a season in every leader's life and in every organization's life where they have to start this process of strategic planning, strategic thinking, trying to look at where they are, where they want to go and the rest. I'd love to just kind of spend some time breaking that down together, thinking through that, and I guess first I'd just ask at the high level when should we be doing that? What are some of the markers in the life cycle of an organization or in the life cycle of a leader's leadership that you go hey, these are some markers that this is maybe a good point or a good season for starting and initiating some of that strategic thinking and planning. And what does that look like, maybe in your own life and in your own leadership context.

Speaker 2:

Well, the simple answer is to some degree all the time. You know. Part of the job of the leader is being aware of what is happening in the organization, with your followers, how well you are achieving objectives. You know all of those kinds of things.

Speaker 2:

But, then, of course, there are those times when it's really devoted special time to just honing in on that, focusing on that, on that. Uh, I think certainly something like it should happen at least on an annual basis, yeah, uh. But then I think, for the spirit-led leader, uh, we need to be uh sensitive to kairos moments. Kairos, the Greek term that references time, but not watch ticking time, but rather a particular season, a time when God is moving and the Spirit is at work. God is moving and the Spirit is at work, and I think if a leader is in touch with the Holy Spirit and purposeful in their prayer life, paying attention, to what's happening in the organization.

Speaker 2:

There will be an intuition. You know this is probably a time we need to pull off to the side of the road.

Speaker 1:

Look under the hood see what's going on.

Speaker 1:

I mean, that's such a good reminder because I think, even as I think about strategic planning, my first intuition actually is to say, hey, what am I seeing going on that we need to be prepared to respond to? What changes am I seeing in the market? For lack of a better phrase, how can we uniquely adapt? But then also, you know, where are we in the arc of history, right, where are we in these larger kind of narratives and how do we prepare and respond? I am very much, I guess, thinking from that perspective of okay, I'm constantly trying to take in information, constantly trying to learn the context that I'm leading in or the context that our organization, and to really live in that space, to remember, hey, this is a spiritual endeavor, where it begins in a heart of submission, saying okay, lord, what are you—I'm seeing these signs, I'm seeing these notes, what are you trying to? To kind of download or kind of speak into the midst of that speak into um, into the midst of that.

Speaker 2:

I think, too, there are also some very practical indicators that it's time to do that. In your case, you know, assuming the mantle of leadership, you know, definitely you want to begin with, uh, an awareness of the lay of the land, where the organization is, where it needs to go, where you want it to go, all of those kinds of things. But things happen in the life of an organization.

Speaker 2:

An unexpected opportunity comes along that no one had anticipated, but it's right, in line with our mission and our vision. We just can't pass it up. But it's right, in line with our mission and our vision. We just can't pass it up. But it's going to mean we've got to pull off to the side of the road and think about it. A large, unexpected gift comes along. What are we going to do with these resources, things like that that just come along, that are worthy of extended attention on the part of the leadership?

Speaker 1:

It reminds me I was with a group of Christian business leaders in Central Asia and we're working. Each day we spend this time in devotion and it was a particular day focused on, you know, spiritual disciplines and prayer and silence and solitude. And he just came up to me after we'd kind of gone through the devotion. He was going to have some time for that. He said hey, this is what I've got coming. I've got one contract that's sitting in front of me. It was completely unexpected, but this is the opportunity, for lack of a better phrase. It's a half a million dollars. That's me putting. That's all the cattle in the pen, right, that's me going all the way. He said that may be a small contract for businesses, you know, but for us this is everything. I just need to seek the Lord to know if this is the right strategic shift.

Speaker 1:

He was in manufacturing. So basically he's going to look all of my lines are going to be just making this one thing for the next X amount of time, and that's a strategic shift, and so it's a good thing to note that. Yeah, sometimes those strategic thinking conversations happen as a response to opportunity in a positive direction or crisis in a negative.

Speaker 2:

About 20 years ago I became the missions pastor at Faith Bridge Church and we had a decent operating budget but plenty of room for growth. And then, lo and behold, one Sunday a gentleman walks up to me and tells me he wants to give a million dollars to missions at Faith Bridge. Well, my first thought was hallelujah, and let's take that and run with it. I made the quote unquote mistake of sharing this great news with my senior pastor, who immediately took the ball and began to run with it. He had the larger vision of the needs of the whole church and what a million dollars could mean for the organization as a whole and reminded me you know, faith Bridge is missional and so any gift coming our way is a gift to missions. Well, you know, for 10 minutes I pouted.

Speaker 2:

I could see these dollars slipping through my hands. But there's an example of a time when we pulled aside like, wow, this has come our way. What is going to be the wisest, most productive way to use this for the organization as a whole?

Speaker 1:

As a whole? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that kind of exercise is just so valuable and having the kind of relationship that can sustain that kind of opportunity to say, hey, look, you and your senior pastor had enough relational capital to navigate that, to go hey, let me help you see what all of this looks like and the blessing that that is. And that's where, again, as a leader in an organization, we want to be men and women who are faithful, to build and establish relationships so that when that strategic thinking and planning process comes, we can really wrestle right, we can really, uh, kind of navigate those things.

Speaker 1:

Everybody's got their their kind of lane within an organization that they're passionate about driving at, and that's good, um, and we want to help everyone to, to help everyone to recognize that responsibility, role and connect into the larger piece and vision. So, practically then, all right, so I'm, I'm walking faithfully to the Lord, intimate relationship with God so that I can hear those Kairos moments, those moments where he's saying, hey, look, let me download, let me walk with you. I'm constantly kind of learning and taking in data, right Observation, insight from my external realities, right the market, and my internal realities, our operations and our staff and the rest operations and our staff and the rest. Practically, again, you mentioned this idea of you know, at the very least, probably annually, sitting down and really, really going through this. What is? How do you, how do you differentiate that from just kind of a typical meeting we talked about?

Speaker 1:

In some of your experience you've seen these I think you use the phrase tactical meetings and strategic meetings. What does some of that look like? How did you guys, in some of your experience, balance having those meetings, making it so it doesn't just become kind of a messy plate worth of just stuff all slopped out there and actually kind of, hey, we're able to talk strategically and make some kind of meaningful progress down that Sure, and the conversation itself is meaningful in progress, but yeah.

Speaker 2:

So one of the things that I appreciated about our staff meetings at FaithBridge was the staff set the agenda. There was no preconceived agenda brought to the table. This is what we're going to talk about. Rather, the first thing we did when we gathered was okay, let's start writing on the whiteboard, what do we need to talk about today? And everybody's throwing out this, this and this well early on. Uh, of course, everything is is out there and we're we're talking about everything, but some issues on a given day would predominate.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it just take over yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I don't know exactly who came up with the idea, uh, but one day, uh, ken, our senior pastor, said okay, we're going to change the way we do this. Our regular weekly meetings are going to be our tactical meetings, where we deal with the matters that are taking place on an ongoing basis. This coming Sunday what do we need to be ready for? What are some fires we need to put out today? Those kinds of things that need to be addressed just regularly in the course of church work we are going to have what we call strategic meetings, where we take one issue, one big issue that either regularly demands attention, like Christmas or Easter, or something that pops up, a grand opportunity that we've really got to put our heads together and think about. Is this a direction we want to go?

Speaker 1:

Million dollar influx, yeah, something like that.

Speaker 2:

And that will be the sole item of the agenda the whole day. You knew you were going to be in there looking at this thing from every single direction, up and down, backwards and forwards, until you had arrived at some sort of conclusion about the issue, when we would enter into our regular tactical meetings, tactical meetings. The senior pastor, ken, was sort of the arbiter as to okay, yes, that's definitely a tactical issue, let's put that on the.

Speaker 1:

I think that's worthy of a strategic and we would write it down so that we didn't forget.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, you know that way, nobody was blown off, you know.

Speaker 1:

You was getting added in one spot or the other. That's right, okay.

Speaker 2:

And it was saved until the next strategic that came along but that improved the efficiency of our staff. Meetings tremendously, meetings tremendously. Just knowing that, okay, we're not going to be going down these rabbit trails, which needed to be traveled, yeah, but then never got around to talking about what needed to happen this sunday, or right, you know what have you?

Speaker 1:

so yeah so I'm hearing. I'm hearing a couple of different elements here that I think are really great. The first is you talk about a staff meeting and the phrase that came to mind was it was the staff's meeting, right. Right, it was given direction and form and function. I think sometimes it can be easy to look at a staff meeting and it's really just an information transfer. It's just trying, yet again, to make sure everybody's on the same page and knows things.

Speaker 1:

But again, you want to be strategically solving problems, you want to be navigating that, and that kind of problem solving sits in a regular place. And there's those tactical problem solving conversations where, hey, these are regular issues, regular things coming up, and then basically it sounds like in this case, you've got an operations leader saying, hey, that's strategic. Like that, I can foresee that this is going to have more. That needs and deserves that dedicated time and attention. We're going to set this over here. Now, those strategic conversations I mean, who all were you including in that conversation? I mean, was surely it wasn't like hey, everybody on staff you come here, or was it? Hey, we recognize in our staff that there are ideators and discerners and we're going to mobilize them. There are process and systems people. How did that element of the process come into play?

Speaker 2:

So I should have differentiated at the beginning when I say our staff, our staff had levels. Okay, big church. Okay 4,000 in attendance, and so departments and the department heads made up what we call the lead team.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and that is the staff that I'm referring to that lead team is the one having got you.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and that would typically be around 12 of us, uh, depending on the season, uh, occasionally, uh, if the strategic warranted the addition of someone else, they, they would be invited. You know, either because of their experience or how it is going to impact them specifically. But typically it was the lead team who would do that, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Okay Helpful. Did you guys ever okay as you function in that space? You guys ever okay as you function in that space? In what ways? Maybe you did, or maybe you thought would be ideal. Were you engaging next generation leaders in that right? I mean, heaven forbid, the first time you're doing some real heavy strategic thinking like that is when you get one of those seats right. You want to be invited into that. How do you help? Or how did you guys navigate some of that, trying to say you haven't historically had a seat in this part of the conversation, but I want to invite you in. I want you to begin practicing this because I see potential in you. What did that look like for you guys?

Speaker 2:

Well, at FaithBridge we were blessed to have very low turnover. People would typically come and stay on the staff along. I mean I was on staff there for over 20 years.

Speaker 1:

Wow yeah.

Speaker 2:

And particularly as a Methodist pastor subject to the appointment system that was really.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's really special.

Speaker 2:

Rare, Thankful for it, but in our situation we threw people in the deep end of the pool. You know we're here. You're invited to be a part of this because we believe you have something to contribute.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

We don't need necessarily to hold your hand. You jump in here with us and learn by observing, by listening, and it didn't take long for new staff members, new lead team members, to size up who is who. Who has this, uh, the ability to think analytically? Yeah who is thinking more pastorally, who's thinking about the money that's involved? Those things become apparent pretty quickly.

Speaker 1:

That's kind of any team dynamic. You're starting to kind of navigate those pieces together. Okay, so you talk about these strategic meetings, these strategic plannings. Was this the same context where you guys or let me phrase it this way when you sit there and you go, hey, we're going to engage in a new three-year capital campaign, right, we, gosh man, 4,000 people Praise God. That's a huge congregation. At some point it wasn't that large and at some point it was, you know 500 that needed a sanctuary that could fit, right, you know 2,000. What did those particular meetings look like? Was there any differentiation there? Or was it just, hey, every year we're kind of looking out and saying we're not going to try and project out 10 years because Lord knows there's too many changes there. But also, if you only project out one year, then it's hard to do those kind of you know, medium arc length projects.

Speaker 1:

How did you guys navigate some of that?

Speaker 2:

So our movement toward the strategic and tactical model was more evolutionary than revolutionary. We just realized along the way the way we had been doing things wasn't working, or at least it wasn't the most productive. And when you look around the table and people's eyes are getting glazed and they're looking at their watches, you read the body language and you say okay here's where we are, yeah. We need to to find something different there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, at Faith Bridge we were fortunate to have a senior pastor whose greatest gift was visionary leadership, always thinking about what is coming down the pike. Therefore, the expectation was that each member of the lead team would be doing the same in their individual departments. Yeah, and so when we had these strategics, they were never a surprise to anyone. I can't recall a time when somebody thought, oh wow, I didn't know we'd be talking about this.

Speaker 2:

You know all the time when somebody thought, oh wow, I didn't know we'd be talking about this. We were very much in touch with one another and Ken, our senior pastor, was good about communicating with us about where he felt like things needed to go and where he saw things going. He would regularly pull aside for private retreats to accomplish one of two things either.

Speaker 2:

Sermon planning for six months ahead and who the given preacher would be on a given Sunday or a season. To just think about Faith Bridge. And okay, what's happening in faith bridge and how is this community changing, or whatever factors?

Speaker 2:

yeah are involved in church, church life okay and uh, he would, unlike the tacticals where the staff set the. He would be the agenda setter for the strategics Because, as the leader, he took on the responsibility of thinking about the larger picture of the church. And going back to the million dollars I'm only thinking about a million bucks for what I want to do in missions as the senior pastor, he was thinking about the whole thing and that was the strength that he brought to the table there.

Speaker 1:

And that's so good. I think of a counterexample to that, where that was done poorly. I served with a school for a number of years and that school had been attached to a small church and really, when you go back to the formation of everything, it was a couple of homeschooling parents at that church who said hey, you're good at science, I'm good at English, let's just swap kids here for that and we'll be able to help our kids better than if we tried to do it alone. And that turned into hey, let's actually do this, let's just have it as a school, and we'll. You know? Well, you know, fast forward, that was in the late 80s. Fast forward to the early 2000s and the early 2010s. And what do you have? Well, you've actually got a church that has now dwindled in size right from a relatively large and influential church to, you know, 40, 50 members right, and now a school that has 350 students. Right, they're wagging the dog.

Speaker 1:

Exactly right. What had been the church building and church budget became the school building and school budget and now the school wasn't paying the church for the use, it was the church paying the school for the use. And it became this big, very complicated mess. It was, but I say that only to say yeah, if suddenly there had been that kind of influx in this branch and it begins to be a tree, it will uproot the whole tree and tip it over. You need that balance of the whole entity and that's where, again, strategic thinking, planning from the leader in the midst of that, can be so important. So I'm going to summarize some of the notes I'm taking away here.

Speaker 1:

Dan, as I'm thinking about this for myself, as I'm thinking about on behalf of the leaders, listening in, I'm going to initiate the process of strategic thinking and planning in my regular life, bringing in information, observing, listening, making sure that I have the space and bandwidth to have a lay of the land right, because if I'm not doing that well, then no one is right as the leader in. That's. That's my responsibility to serve for the team. So I'm going to, I'm going to do that. I'm also going to be spiritually walking in such a way that I can see those Kairos moments. I can hear the Lord saying, uh, hey, hey, this is a moment let's pull over, let's, let's check under the hood. Hey, let's navigate individual issues in those kinds of decisions and identify either in myself or someone in the executive leadership of the organization to say you help us find this is worthy of a deeper conversation. It requires more strategic thinking together because it's organizationally impactful, not departmentally a thing, and so that's going to help differentiate there. And then we're going to have an expectation of that senior leadership team to say, look, you're doing these within your disciplines, right, right.

Speaker 1:

To say, look, you're doing these within your disciplines, right, I think about it as from even a business perspective. You go hey, I might be keeping an eye on the market, but you have to as a marketing. You got to keep best practices of marketing. I can't keep eye on that all the way. I got to keep an eye on the marketplace. You keep that Over here. If you're my chief, if we're a tech company and you're my chief technical officer, hey, you've got to step and lead that. In a church, it may be. Hey, you're my discipleship pastor, so you've got to keep an eye on what are the best practices we're seeing in helping believers become effective workers in the harvest field. What are some of the methods that people are trying, that they're initiating and not only have that expectation but make sure that they have set boundaries and pathways in time to constantly be growing and investing in that?

Speaker 2:

Any other tips for the leaders listening in that you say hey, as you. In the 20-plus years I was at Faithbridge, there were two or three occasions where there was a shift in the overall focus of our church. I'll give you a for instance. One day Ken came in to our regular meeting and said I have a concern. Our attendance is great, our giving is great. How do we know we're making disciples? Our stated mission statement is Faith Bridge exists to make more and stronger disciples. Who make more and stronger disciples. That's right, he said. I'm not comfortable with how we measure that. And so he said for the next year we're going to take a deep dive into discipleship and figuring out best practices, how to gauge it, leadership that should be involved. So that was on an even higher level than a quarterly strategic.

Speaker 2:

You know, this had to do with the whole organization, the emphases of that whole organization where we were going to be putting big sums of money were going to be putting big sums of money lots of staff energy, those sorts of things, those should be rare.

Speaker 2:

Sure you know, if you're clear about who you are and what you're doing, you don't need to be having these seismic shifts on a regular basis. That's why I say, in the whole time I was there, maybe two, three at the most. The one that comes to mind is that discipleship, emphasis there and such a good reminder.

Speaker 1:

if that isn't clear of where you are, what your mission and vision is, man, you got to make sure that that is clear For sure, Like if that's got to be the starting point, and make sure that the whole team knows hey, this is who we are and this is what we're doing. Okay, just making sure that's clear. Now let's step forward. So that's good, that's really good, dan. Well, man, I love having conversations with you. I love your pastoral heart, your thinking, your clarity on this, dan, it's always an encouragement and a conviction for me, so thank you very much for that. You always an encouragement and a conviction for me, so thank you very much for that. You bet Fun for me. Yeah, brother, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Hey, listen, leaders, thank you so much for being a part of this At the International Leadership Institute. We exist because we want to see the whole world reached with the gospel, and that means that leaders have to be equipped so that all of the believers in the world can become effective workers in the harvest field. Listen, if this is helpful for you, I want to ask would you do us a kindness, maybe like, subscribe, share, tell us what's been useful to you, help us to serve you better. You can find some other incredible resources at iliteamorg, and there you'll also see a little bit about the eight core values of the most effective Christian leaders A wonderful resource. That's why we're here. Thank you so much for being a part of today's conversation and, dan, thanks for joining us.