The 5 P’s of the helicopter view
3. Process.
The man who invented the electric light bulb, Thomas Edison, once said “genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration”. This sounds to me like someone who valued ‘process’ and did not have the ‘get it quick’ mentality of this age. There’s a lot of work required to get to your destination once you’ve determined the direction in which you are headed. Every vision and purpose goes through a process for it to be actualized. While getting a helicopter view, you need to evaluate the path you are taking with a view to ascertaining if it is leading you to the place of purpose.
A pastor in Lagos once narrated his experience in his attempt to grow his church numbers. The church executives decided that one approach to increase their numbers would be to treat their first-timers superbly. So they purchased some expensive mugs and distributed them to all first-timers every Sunday. They later observed a pattern: they were having so many first-timers to the point that the first-timers on some Sundays outnumbered the existing church members. But the first-timers never returned. When the church executives reconvened to evaluate this issue, they realized that the artificial growth was because the church was situated close to a university and the “first-timers” were telling their friends where and how to get an expensive mug for free. The next Sunday after they stopped giving the mugs to first-timers, you could bet that there was no first-timer in church that day.
Their goal – to increase the number of people they influenced for Christ was right, but the process they employed in achieving the goal was not effective in itself. Getting the helicopter view entails examining how you have been going around trying to achieve your God-given goals. You should also be asking yourself this question– “would I be moving closer to my goal if I keep doing things the way I am currently doing them?”