7 Reasons Your Church, Business Or Team Is Not Reaching Its Potential

7 Reasons Your Church, Business Or Team Is Not Reaching Its Potential

Have you ever wondered why your church, business or team is not reaching its potential?  I mean, you have the talent, the facilities, the financial resources and, yes, even the leadership.  But your team is simply underachieving.  Why?
Recently, the Kansas City Royals defeated the Oakland A’s in extra innings in the American League wildcard playoff game.  ESPN.com’s David Schoenfield gave an in-depth analysis as to why the favored A’s came up short.  As I read Schoenfield’s thoughts (full article here), I realized they were applicable any to sports team, church, business, or non-profit organization hoping achieve maximum success.
The following are 7 Reasons Your Church, Business Or Team Is Not Reaching Its Potential:

1. You Are Not Reaching Your Potential If Hard Choices Are Not Being Made Regarding Staff And Personnel – A’s manager Bob Melvin stayed with pitcher Jon Lester too long in the 8th inning allowing the Royals to rally from a 7-3 deficit to tie the game.  Are you staying with certain personnel too long?
2. You Are Not Reaching Your Potential If You Have Poor Performance – Lester was removed with the score 7-4 but the normally reliable A’s bullpen gave up an additional three runs.
3. You Are Not Reaching Your Potential If People Are Not Placed In Positions To Succeed – While the A’s bullpen did underperform, Melvin’s delayed decision of bringing in closer Sean Doolittle with two runners already on base did not position his pitcher or team for success.
4. You Are Not Reaching Your Potential If You Are Making Unnecessary Mistakes – Doolittle’s wild pitch allowed Terrance Gore to cross home plate making the score 7-6.
5. You Are Not Reaching Your Potential If You Are Losing Top Talent – It is rare that churches or organizations can overcome the loss of top talent.  If everything does rise and fall on leadership, then there are times when the loss of leaders causes things to fall.  A’s catcher Geovany Soto left the game in the third inning with a thumb injury.
6. You Are Not Reaching Your Potential If There Is Selfishness Or Entitlement – Your team will not reach its potential if people no longer sacrifice for the organization.  The Royals set up a number of scores with four sacrifice bunts in the game.
7. You Are Not Reaching Your Potential If You Have Missed Opportunities – In the bottom of the 12th inning, the A’s correctly called a pitch out in an effort to throw out baserunner Christian Colon.  However, the catcher dropped the pitch out allowing Colon to safely advance.

Do you recognize anything from this list you need to change today?  If not, are there other reasons your team is not reaching its full potential?