Ever been in the middle of a conversation and hear something that sort’ve stops time?  Almost like an E.F. Hutton moment?

I had a moment like that last week in Atlanta at a gathering of some of grouplife’s sharpest leaders*.  Couldn’t tell you with certainty what the exact topic was, but all of a sudden someone said, “We’re asking ‘what are the things we’re doing that contradict our intentions?’”

Did you hear that?  Here it is again:

What are the things we’re doing that contradict our intentions?

Now, admittedly, you have to understand what your intentions actually are.  But think about the power of this question!  Once you know what your intentions are (what business are you in, who is your customer, and what are you going to call success), asking this powerful question will help identify what ought to be on your stop doing list.

Example:

One of the major initiatives we’re working on right now is to identify programs that have taken on the characteristics of a destination and primarily serve alumni.  Once identified, we want to do one of two things:

• redesign them so that they function as steps that lead to grouplife
• replace them with steps that lead to grouplife

Problem-free?  Nope.  Constant clarification of intention.  Lots of conversation.  Relentless vision casting.  Challenging decisions.

Is it worth it?  Absolutely.

What do you think?  Have a question?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

*Trust me…I’m pretty sure I was invited as a blogger/witness!

Ever wonder what’s at the heart of true innovation?  When you trip across something that’s really good, do you ever wonder how they came up with that?  What processes are they using to think up such an elegant solution?  Ever think those thoughts and just find yourself stumped when it comes to your own situation?  

I wonder if our inability to see the innovative path has to do with our inability to successfully abandon things that worked in the past?  In Managing for Results Peter Drucker wrote that “planned, purposeful abandonment of the old and of the unrewarding is a prerequisite to successful pursuit of the new and highly promising.  Above all, abandonment is the key to innovation—both because it frees the necessary resources and because it stimulates the search for the new that will replace the old (p. 143).”

When you think about your own organization, can you remember the last time you laid to rest a program that was still working “good enough”?  Maybe an idea that at one time was really a good one but whose day had come and gone?  Think about it.  In fact, this would be worth a full-day off-site.  Take your key people and wrestle through it.  Drucker’s idea is dead-on correct.  Not without pain.  Not without issues.  But it is in the planned, purposeful abandonment of yesterday’s winners that tomorrow’s can emerge.

What do you think?  Have a question?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

I had a jaw drop moment while reading an HBR blog post by Bill Taylor, Brand Is Culture, Culture Is Brand.  Although the article is about brands and organizational culture, the story he told about the way USAA employees learn to meet the needs of their customers was very compelling and I realized right away that you’d want to hear about this.

His article highlights USAA (the insurance and financial-services firm that only does business with active or retired members of the U.S. military and their families) and their intense drive to meet the needs of their customer.  They do that by building a culture that seeks to understand the life that our military and their families live.

This is where the article brought me to a jaw-drop moment.  USAA employees are known for their empathy.  They develop that empathy through a series of immersion activities.  For example, when they’re about to start training USAA team members:

• “Get a ‘deployment letter’ like the ones real soldiers get: ‘Report to the personnel processing-facility’ tomorrow, the letter reads, and get your affairs in order beforehand.’”
• “Eat MREs (meals ready to eat) on many occasions during their training, to get a ‘taste’ for the life of a soldier”
• “Walk around in 65-pound backpacks.”
• “Read actual letters from soldiers in the field to their families back home.”

All of this is part of a strategy that “USAA calls it ‘Surround Sound’ — immerse employees in the real life and emotional needs of customers.”  One consultant said, “There is nobody on this earth who understands their customer better than USAA.”

Wow!  Isn’t what we all do worth that kind of immersion?  Wouldn’t we all like to be known as the organization that understands their customers better than anyone else!

What would it have to look like for all of us to really understand our customers in this way?

What do you think?  Have a question?  Have an idea?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

How does your strategy work in an increasingly post-Christian culture?  How much thinking are you doing to truly understand the implications of ministry leadership in the 21st century?  Are you sensing the connection between a rising degree of ministry difficulty and changes in the spiritual barometer itself?

Barna’s most recent report highlights again the shift happening in America as 37% of Americans are highly or moderately post-Christian. Are you having the conversations that lead to strategic shifts in ministry design?  See Gabe Lyon’s The Next Christians for more.

James Emery White’s blog has been helpful in spotlighting a seismic shift in outreach strategy.  Have you begun wrestling with how ministry must adapt and change to be effective in the second decade of the 21st century?  See his book, The Church in an Age of Crisis for more.

I’ve been harping on this for several years.  It’s front of mind every day.  Are you there?  See also, Different, Not Better, Will Connect the Widening 60%.

What do you think?  Have a question?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

What’s the most recent experiment you’ve run?  What new wrinkle have you tested lately?

I’ve written in the past about the innovations that have changed what is possible for small group ministry.  Believe me, I love the way the new ideas expand the design limits of what’s possible.  I’m just suggesting that if you’re not experimenting, if you’re not testing new ideas…you’re likely on a path to more of what you’re currently experiencing.  See also, The Unexpected Twist in Saddleback’s Exponential Growth Formula.

I love this quote from Gary Hamel’s The Future of Management:

“It is natural that human beings want to be ‘in control.’ Each of us hopes the future will unfold according to play.  Yet in a world where the present is an increasingly unreliable guide to the future, competitive success depends less on planning for what will come next and more on continuously experimenting with what could come next.  The only thing you can bank on is that the future is going to be surprising.”  p. 156, The Future of Management

So what are you testing?  Have a question?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

What’s your implementation speed?  Are you the “Ready. Aim. Fire.” type?  Or are you more of the “Ready. Fire. Aim.” type?

We were having a great conversation yesterday*…the really good kind that leads either to a great idea or a brawl (figurative for us).  Suddenly I found myself allied with the proponent of “Fire. Fire. Fire.”  Believe me.  It makes sense to think about what you’re doing.  I do believe that.  But the part about the massive time to study the concept and get it perfect IS the problem for many organizations.  I have no doubt about that.

So the question is, “What to do about it?”  Can you move from Ready. Aim. Fire. to Ready. Fire. Aim?  That’s the question, isn’t it?  If you’re like many organizations you’re stuck in the land of too careful studies that are really only about delay.

One of the great learnings from The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters by Peter Block is that the motivations of the questions and need for study often come from a desire to delay.  My own conviction is that the pursuit of problem-free delays more ministry than anything else.

What if you could make the move to Ready. Fire. Aim?  What could you try that you’re prevented from trying right now?  What could you get permission to test if you were just free to give it a shot?  I love today’s post from Seth Godin.  The idea of Make Something Happen is SO GOOD.  Believe me…it becomes a poster on my wall along with the great Mario Andretti poster, “If everything seems under control…you’re just not going fast enough.”  I’ll put up a picture of it on Monday.  In the meantime, be sure and take a look at Seth’s post.

*This article was originally posted in 2006 on StrategyCentral.

One of the most important voices in innovation is Harvard professor, Clayton Christensen.  His book The Innovator’s Dilemma has long been on my recommended list.  In a recent conversation with 37signals founder Jason Fried, Christensen had this to say when asked why someone has to be ready to be taught before they can learn:

“Questions are places in your mind where answers fit.  If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go.  It hits your mind and bounces right off.  You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.” Jason Fried paraphrasing Clayton Christensen

What do you believe about the upside of having options?  I am loving Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, a new book by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin.  Here’s a great line from A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Proctor and Gamble:

“In my now forty-plus years in business, I have found that most leaders do not like to make choices.  They’d rather keep their options open.  Choices force their hands, pin them down, and generate an uncomfortable degree of personal risk.

“In effect, by thinking about options instead of choices and failing to define winning robustly, these leaders choose to play but not to win.”  A.G. Lafley, (p. 48, Playing to Win)

This has everything to do with a plated meal as opposed to a buffet.  It’s all about thinking steps, not programs.  And it’s about designing next steps that are easy, obvious and strategic.

I listened to a fascinating webinar yesterday that featured Roger Martin (Dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business) and A.G. Lafley (former CEO of Proctor and Gamble).  Their talk focused on a way of thinking about possible strategies.  After the webinar I downloaded a paper from HBR that detailed some of their ideas.

A possibilities-based approach requires at least three fundamental shifts in mind-set:

“First, in the early steps, they must avoid asking “What should we do?” and instead ask “What might we do?”  This is an intriguing start, don’t you think?  What if when thinking about ministry strategy we shifted our thinking from “should” to “might?”  For example, instead of asking, “What should be offer to connect people?” we’d begin asking, “What might we offer to connect people?”  Sounds simple, but the shift from should to might is a very significant beginning.

Second, in the middle steps, managers must shift from asking “What do I believe?” to asking “What would I have to believe?”  Once you’ve collected a handful of interesting possibilities (what might we do?), you begin to ask the question, “What would I have to believe (about each of the possibilities)?”  I’ve referenced Roger Martin’s great question previously: “What would have to be true in order for this idea to be a fantastic choice?”  This is a version of that question and the thinking behind it.  Possibilities-based approach relies on assembling a set of conditions that would have to be true about each of the strategies posed.

Third, the possibilities-based approach forces managers to move away from asking “What is the right answer?” and concentrate instead on “What are the right questions? What specifically must we know in order to make a good decision?”  It has long been my understanding that great questions, the right questions, are much more important than the right answers.  It is possible to have the right answers to the wrong questions and not realize it until too late.

What do you think?  Have a question? Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

—————-

Want to dive into the topic?  You can learn a lot more from their paper, Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy.  Also, Roger Martin’s book, The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage is one of my favorite books and very helpful for strategic thinkers.  His newest, along with A.G. Lafley is Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works.  My copy is in the mail…I can’t wait to dive into it!

There are times when I come across something and it literally takes my breath away.  I know that probably sounds weird…but it is the truth.  When it happens, I almost always want to share the idea with you.  This is one of those times.

Last Friday I tripped across this article that referenced an Amazon shareholder meeting with CEO Jeff Bezos (HT @ScottDAnthony)

I loved this line from Jeff Bezos on innovation and the culture of Amazon:

“A big piece of the story we tell ourselves about who we are, is that we are willing to invent. We are willing to think long-term. We start with the customer and work backwards. And, very importantly, we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”

Just take a moment and digest what Bezos is saying about Amazon’s corporate culture:

• They are willing to invent
• They think long-term
• They start with the customer and work backwards
• They are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time

That, friends, is a commitment to innovation.  There is a ton there about why so many of us are stuck.  But if you’re tempted to shrug your shoulders, read on:

“I believe if you don’t have that set of things in your corporate culture, then you can’t do large-scale invention. You can do incremental invention, which is critically important for any company. But it is very difficult — if you are not willing to be misunderstood. People will misunderstand you.”

Why is this so big?  Why did it take my breath away?  Easy.  If you want to connect people no one else is connecting, you’ve got to do things no one else is doing.  Incremental invention will not get that done.

Incremental invention…tightening up the process, designing a more effective way to do a small group connection or a more efficient way to design the semester catalog…will never connect beyond the usual suspects.  If we want to do that, we need a willingness to invent, we need to think long-term, we need to start with the customer and work backward, and we need to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.

What do you think?  Have a question? Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.