Change Please

From my demented perch, change and leadership go hand in hand. If you are not leading positive change, then there is another word for what is going on . . . management.

Now, there is nothing wrong with good management, but I am not sure that is what we aspire to in mission. We usually enter a city or campus setting with the desire to render things different that what they currently are. This we understand - we role up our sleeves and tackle what needs to be done. But the rub is that often times we look behind us, or simply put new window dressing on current practices, and we end up with the same things we have gotten in similar locations (again, not bad at all, but not real change). This is ok if you are going from UCLA to UC-Davis, but may prove painful if you are going to Istanbul or Moscow.

Again, nothing wrong with doing what we know works well, but it simply will never get us anything different than what we are currently aware of. And I believe we are desperately in need of something radically different. The books of Acts was not a revamp of the existing synagogue system, but a whole new format for connecting with God. (new wine skins!)

A few weeks ago I was sitting with Alan Hirsch and a few others over dinner. Alan made a side comment (which are always awesome) about the need for some people in the west to simply go uncorked in experimentation. Not with a better band, or more stories in their speaking . . . but some stuff simply not heard of. What should they do? I don't know . . . . that is where the wild experimentation could really take root. This is where I believe the young and the restless of this generation will make their mark (so us old dudes best get out the way).

What are some ideas?

Great Plains and "The Way Forward?"

I am in Estes Park at the Stanley Hotel with the killer GPI region of Campus Crusade for Christ - they are having a discussion on 'The Way Forward' - the new directional direction from the National Team of the campus ministry.

You can look at the PowerPoint here - but here are some questions being asked by these leaders?

• What systems are in place for coaching these new teams - how does that look?
• What thought is given to getting more people on the ground?
• Tension between organizational control and expansion?
• What is a missional team anyway?
• Are we going to have the same success criteria?
• Does this mean that the local level with have more authority?
• How doest this look in partnerships on campus? Internationally?
• The strategic priorities - what exactly are these?
• Is this initiated at the local level / regional level?
• Is this an expansion of scope / or just a serious allocation to scope?
• Is there a bigger change coming? or is this it?

There seems to be a lot of confusion on missional teams. I love the GPI leadership is because they are honest about the confusion - and not trying to answer questions that they are not sure of the answers to. Good job.

Galbraith on Change in Thinking

Faced with the choice between changing our mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof. - John Kenneth Galbraith

I can raise my hand on this one - quite often over the last few years. Below is a brief list of radical thinking changes that I resisted, but later came to see as quite obvious.

• Disseminated Leadership - upon joining the National Team of Campus Crusade a few years ago, I believed the best way to move ahead was to align every little niche group and tackle the direction together. Upon watching KCCC, and now Impact, it is obvious (to me anyway) that our best approach is to free leadership up to make primary decisions for their particular target. Duh! Good leaders with freedom usually generate great results.
• Apostolic Functioning - Dave Patchin once told me that I 'prayed to receive catalytic' back in 1997. True. Before that, I had been fairly resistant to the chaos. Now, after looking at afresh at how the kingdom expands, I tend to lean more toward efforts of church planting movements . . . . which are highly catalytic in nature.
• Volume over Precision - this relates to both things above, but, in a nutshell the best way to reach the world and have great churches / movements . . . . is to concentrate on having MORE churches / movements. If everyone is free to start one, inevitably you will end up with really good ones. (yes, this is the essence of capitalism and why the you never see Russian cars on the road).

btw - Gailbraith, who passed away in 2006, was an influential Canadian - American economist. His books on economic topics were bestsellers in the 1950s and 1960s. Now you know. (this was the only picture I found of him smiling - I am not sure if that is because he is an economist or a Canadian).

Machiavelli on Lasting Change

"Nothing is more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than achieving a new order of things."

Niccolò Machiavelli (from The Prince).

----
This is the daunting aspect of change. Making it stick.

I feel that human nature tries to minimize the risk of making it stick by lessening the degree of change that is actually needed. In other words, in order to make a change, we try to change less than we ought, and therefore do not achieve the full change we desire. We feel it is easier to make small change work, but in the end, small change does not get us the necessary change needed to accomplish our goals. (Kotter has made a living explaining this).

In the end, we often dream to small and therefore limit our ability to reach desired goals.

Churchill on Change

"Change is the price of survival." - Winston Churchill

Succinct and true. I often say change is synonymous with leadership - truly leading means that things must be changing. If not, we are simply managing what is. If that is our goal - fine, if not, it is time to step up and lead (lead change that is).

Tic Toc

We can thank Jean Calvin for the Swiss watch. In 1541, he restricted the wearing of jewelry—a worldly vanity. This forced the goldsmiths and other jewellers to turn into a new, independent craft : watchmaking. By the end of the century, Genevan watches were reputed for their high quality.

For centuries the Swiss have been the world’s leading watchmakers. They invented the minute hand and the second hand. They continually improved the design and functioning of self-winding watches. In 1968, they had a 65 percent share of the world watch market.

Yet by 1980 their market share had collapsed to less than 10 percent. Between 1979 and 1981, 50,000 of Switzerland’s 62,000 watchmakers lost their jobs. Japan, which had less than one percent of the world watch market in 1968, was in the midst of developing world-class electronic technology. By the early 1980s the Japanese had 33 percent of the world’s watch market.

The Swiss were the world’s best at making self-winding watches with their gears, bearings and mainsprings. Those skills were now irrelevant. Mechanical watches were being replaced by electronic ones. The Swiss watch makers’ success and expertise had blinded them to a fundamental shift in the world around them.

Ironically, it was the Swiss who invented the electronic quartz watch! When Swiss researchers presented this revolutionary new idea to Swiss manufacturers in 1967, they rejected it. They saw no future for the concept. Confident it would fail, they allowed their researchers to display it as a novelty at the World Watch Congress that year. Seiko took one look and the rest is history.

See: “Future Edge: Discovering the New Paradigms of Success” (Joel A. Barker), 15-17.

Movement insight: Those with the greatest investment in the way things are have the most to lose when it comes to the need for change. Expect the breakthroughs to come from people who don’t have an investment in the way things are.

Three Changes

I think if we made these three changes in the US Campus Ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, it would greatly increase our effectiveness. Ready . . . hang on.

1. Allow local leaders to hire their whomever they want.
2. Allow a team to go anywhere in the context of the mission (in other words, anywhere there are students).
3. Allow a team leader to be anyone who can get two others to follow them (recognized vs. assigned leadership).

I have a few more additions, but I will hold off. A few things will happen with these changes. We will reduce our dependency on HR systems, we will free young leaders to move to open space and we be freed from any bureaucratic formations that hold us back.

Now, many will say we don't have the problem of people not being able to go where they want. To a degree this is true - in fact, if a young leader asked for a new role it would be considered (I asked to go to Duke, but that blasted Rick Hove scooped me). However, the system does not encourage this activity, but makes it a bit of an anomoly and somewhat presumptious. So then our systems and structures limit the types of leaders who desire freedom to succeed or fail on grand terms. If you want to be assigned something, then we are a great place to be. If you want to go crazy and take some insane turf, you had better get in line somewhere (is that to harsh?). Why did East Asia gather so many good leaders? Successful turf and wide open spaces. Leaders gravitate to the vacuum baby!

The above rules (and many others) are what the church at large operates off of. If you, me and someone's dog want to plant a church . . . . who is stopping us? We can do it in the back of some grocery store, a cigar shop or a brothel. The rules are gone and we gather who we need to gather to get er done. This is why you can drive from Orlando to LA on the back roads and never go through a town that does not have a church. It may not be a great church, but the open system allows them to form anywhere anyway and anyhow with anywho.

Wouldn't it be fun to capitalize on this power!?

For more thinking on this open system thinking read The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman & Rod Beckstrom