Bryan Blackford
I help business owners create and execute winning strategic plans that result in growth. Strategic Planning - Coaching - Financial Coaching - Heart for Non-Profits and Ministries.
Conversations Courageous Leaders Have | When Someone Isn't Doing Their Job
Every ministry has people who are easy to love and difficult to lead. They're friendly. They're committed. They genuinely care about the mission. People like working with them. There's just one problem. They're not doing their job. Maybe it's the staff member who consistently misses deadlines. The ministry director whose programs are disorganized. The employee who needs constant reminders to accomplish things that should already be happening. You know there's a problem. Your team knows...
The “Decide by Friday” Rule
The decision you refuse to make does not disappear. It just starts leaking. It leaks into the next staff meeting. It leaks into side conversations. It leaks into confusion, frustration, anxiety, and into your head at 2:47 a.m. That is why some ministry stress does not come from having too many problems. It comes from having too many undecided problems. The volunteer issue that keeps resurfacing. The event plan that keeps changing. The staff concern that keeps getting discussed. The ministry...
You promoted them. Then you left them.
You had someone who was really good at their work. Reliable, gifted, never dropped a ball. So you did the obvious thing: you promoted them. Gave them a team, a title, a little oversight. And somewhere in the months since, you've watched the person who used to shine start to struggle. Second-guessing. Pulling back. Exhausted in a way they never were before. You've been wondering what happened to them. Here is a truth behind what is going on: being excellent at a task and being excellent at...
The policy you're already ignoring
Somewhere in your ministry there's a document nobody has opened in years. A binder on a shelf, or a folder on a shared drive, full of policies written by someone with good intentions and never looked at since. You are currently breaking some of those policies. Not on purpose. You've just forgotten they exist. Most leaders assume an unused policy is harmless — it's just sitting there, doing nothing. But an unfollowed policy isn't neutral. It's a liability. It creates the illusion of protection...
The budget line that disappears first (and shouldn't)
When the budget gets tight, there's always a list of things that get cut first. Travel. Supplies. And then, quietly, almost without discussion — staff development. No big announcement. No hard conversation. Just a line item that shrinks, then disappears, with a vague promise that it'll come back when things stabilize. It rarely comes back. I understand the logic. Staff development feels optional in a way that payroll doesn't. You can't cut salaries, but you can cut the conference nobody...
Write this Email Today
There's a decision you've been avoiding. You know the one. It's been sitting in the back of your mind for weeks — maybe months. It comes up in the shower, on the drive home, at 11pm when you should be asleep. You've thought about it from every angle. You probably even know what you're going to decide. You just haven't said it out loud yet. Maybe it's a hire who isn't working out, but they're a good person and you keep hoping things will turn around. Maybe it's a program that's been limping...
The “No Owner, No Progress” Rule
You have been there. Someone brings up a good idea in a meeting, everyone nods, a few people say, “That would be great,” and someone else adds, “We really should do that.” Then the meeting ends with no one assigned, no deadline set, and no next step named. Somehow, six months later, the idea comes back again as if it is still alive. But it is not alive. It is just floating. One of the simplest leadership rules I know is this: no owner, no progress. If no one owns it, it is not a plan. It...
The Stress Behind the Stress
Too many meetings. Too many decisions. Too many needs you can't get to. If you lead in ministry, this isn't a season — it's just Tuesday. But there is another kind of stress that is harder to name. It is the stress of living with a gap between what you believe and what you are actually doing. That gap has a name: cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance happens when our actions are out of alignment with our convictions. We say something matters, but our calendar, budget, decisions, or...
Are you working in it or on it?
There's a trap most ministry leaders fall into — and almost nobody talks about it. You're so busy doing ministry that you never work on your ministry. You're counseling, preaching, managing staff, putting out fires, and showing up for people. And all of that is good and necessary. But somewhere along the way, the urgent crowded out the important. The week runs you instead of you running the week. The business world borrowed this idea from Peter Drucker — the difference between working in your...
Your 2019 Compensation Philosophy Is a 2026 Retention Problem
There's a conversation that happens in ministry leadership more often than anyone likes to admit. We are losing talented people — and we are going to keep losing them — because we haven't been honest about what it actually costs to live in 2026. This isn't a new problem. But the gap between ministry compensation and market compensation has widened significantly over the past five years, and most churches and nonprofits are still setting salaries based on numbers that made sense in a different...
I help business owners create and execute winning strategic plans that result in growth. Strategic Planning - Coaching - Financial Coaching - Heart for Non-Profits and Ministries.