Innovate Your Way to a New Future

WHAT

The Big Idea

I led from a posture of innovation even before I really understood what it meant.  

This was driven by the requirement to do so in the campus ministry start-up that I led in the nineties.  When you are given the keys to your office (aka a former broom closet) and well wishes from the university chaplain and … well that was it … you figure it out … you innovate.  Did I mention that one of the things that I was not given as I started was any students?  Church planters at least typically start with a few couples in their living room,  So what is one to do?  You get scrappy.  You figure out where the students hang out.  You invite yourself into the university’s freshman orientation process.  You become friends with the folks who make the decisions about meeting spaces so that you can identify and secure a better place for “home base.  In short  – you innovate.

I received my more formal orientation to innovation when I joined the team at Leadership Network eight years later.  Our founder, Bob Buford, heavily influenced by his mentor, Peter Drucker, lived and breathed and organized the organization around innovation.  At the beginning the innovation was the large church.  As the years passed, we had the privilege of a front row seat at many innovations that were in many ways born out of the first innovation identified and supported.  We saw the development of the role of Executive Pastor.  We saw the birth of the “externally focused church.”  I personally had the honor of walking alongside the pioneers of the multisite movement that has had a significant impact on the church the last twenty years, an impact that continues as innovation continues to happen in that space.

I led from a posture of innovation even before I really understood what it meant.  And I am guessing that most you did too.

So now we stand in the midst of navigating what’s next for the church.  What does emerging from the Covid season mean for the Church … for your church?  Hard to know right?  But you do have some sense of what you have (broom closet office, questions about what people are with you), so it’s time to get scrappy.  It’s time to innovate.

Another hallmark of my education from Mr. Buford was his commitment to guide churches to learn from other sectors of our society, most notably the business world.  He exposed us to Drucker and Collins and Senge.  I have also been impacted by the work of Seth Godin and Patrick Lencioni and organizations like the McKinsey and Company consulting firm.  I was recently drawn to a McKinsey article that I believe speaks volumes to the situation in which we all find ourselves.  You can read the full article entitled “Innovation: Your launchpad out of the COVID-19 crisis” here and I have captured some of the highlights in what follows.

The “big idea” of the article is that to innovate into a new season, you have to change behaviors and mindsets.

SO WHAT

The Implications

So what does that mean for me?  

To innovate your way out of your current season, you must change behaviors and mindsets – starting at the top.  

New Behaviors

“Being a bold innovator is a choice that must be backed up by a commitment.  To put the organization on a new growth trajectory requires three actions:

  1. Reallocating toward the future – place bets, backed by sufficient funds and people, on emerging profit pools while reassessing legacy decisions.
  2. Embedding flexibility – reorganize around new, crisis-inspired ways of working.
  3. Hacking processes – focus on outcomes rather than activity to increase speed.

Driving change of this magnitude has to be deliberate. To spearhead transformation-related initiatives and impost accountability that ensures that changes stick, organizations should create “reimagination teams” staffed with top emerging talent”

How are you reallocating toward the future?  Are you “placing bets” on a new way to engage … a hybrid form of being the church?  

What pandemic forced flexibilities are you hanging on to?  Perhaps new working arrangements that embrace both in office and work from home strengths?

What systems have you hacked?  Where are you sharpening your focus on outcomes over activity?  Perhaps that new member process needs a revamp?

New Mindsets

Significant disruption also requires the following shifts in mindset.

  1. “Prioritizing speed over precision. In 1918, the Dixie cup became a ‘life-saving innovation’ when it was embraced as a cheap and sanitary way of dispensing water in public buildings, thus helping to stop the spread of the Spanish flu. Similarly, the COVID-19 crisis catalyzed an almost overnight reinvention of the restaurant industry as digital menus accessed via QR codes redefined the table ordering process …
  2. Embracing and managing risk.  Small scale experimentation can enable organizations investing in audacious new ventures to learn what can work at scale.  One car-sharing business, for example, has experimented with shifting its focus from short trips (as a competitor to ride hailing) to longer term “touchless” rentals, recognizing the value of a distributed fleet in close proximity to customers wishing to avoid human interaction and travel to rental hubs.
  3. Prune tasks and sharpen focus.  Leaders should empower their staff to ask, “Are my day-to-day activities benefiting customers and our business?”  If the answer is no, employees should be encouraged to reorient their activities toward those initiatives that matter”

Where are you speeding things up for greater impact?  What risks are you embracing?  Where are you pruning and sharpening your focus?

NOW WHAT

The Resources

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but building on the new.“ Socrates

“Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.” Henry Ford

I love these two quotes because I believe that they typify the place a church and its leaders often find themselves.  Too often there is a focus on maintaining or “trying to get back to what it was before.”  This posture keeps us from identifying the problem.  But even when in some form or fashion name the problem, we avoid it as opposed to moving toward solving it.  This is natural and normal and by the way, doesn’t just happen in churches.  It happens in organizations and networks and families.

Churches that excel in discerning what’s next do so by adopting new behaviors and new mindset like those indicated in the McKinsey article.  But I’ve also discovered through the years that they don’t do it alone.

Perhaps as you begin to navigate next, you could use the help of an experienced guide.  Through the years I have developed what I call the 5D Consulting Process that helps you craft the next chapter of your church’s story.

  • Diagnose – Gain clarity on what is
  • Dream – Explore what might be.
  • Decide – Agree on what will be
  • Develop – Build the action plan
  • Drive – Execute the plan through coaching

Sign up here for a free consultation on discovering what’s next for your church.

WHO KNEW?

Factoids and Other Random Thoughts  About Innovation and Change

If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got. Albert Einstein

“You can’t ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” Steve Jobs

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain

 “Statistically speaking, 100% of the shots you don’t take, don’t go in.” Wayne Gretzky

“I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.“ Jeff Bezos

“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.“ Woody Allen

“About 95 percent of new products fail.“ Clayton Christensen 

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Written by Greg Ligon

Greg Ligon has served churches and leaders for over 30 years including both founding roles and executive roles in multiple organizations.