A Crossroads of Crisis and Opportunity

As ministries, we have come to a crossroads of crisis and opportunity. The economy and the culture have changed the rules and we have the great privilege of asking God how He would have us respond. What we do at this crossroad will dictate our future and our very survival in many cases. Our instinct as conservative, low-risk organizations will be to pull back, cut our losses and hunker down.

I believe that it would be a mistake to fall into that frame of mind. I believe that the only ones that will survive this troubled time will be those that:
1. Know what they are best at
2. Are engaging their advocates/recipients in transformational ways
3. Have a vision for what the world will look like when we rebound from the crisis

If we can engage our advocates and recipients with what we are best at with a vision for our place in a world recovering from crisis, then we can use that momentum to create action plans.

As I have been processing this, I went to Fast Company’s “Fast 50”. This is an interactive list of the 50 most innovative companies. I studied the top 20 of these companies, here is what I learned:

• The most innovative organizations are, at their highest levels, defined by innovation in technology – whether they sell shoes (Zappos), megawatts of electricity (NextEra Energy) or computers (HP).
  
• The reality that products and services require mobility oriented around the consumer drive these companies. (i.e. Pure Digital Technologies’ Flip Camera)
  
• Social responsibility is evident throughout these organizations and it manifests itself in authentic ways based on what these organizations care about. (i.e. Gilead Sciences’ Access program to provide key drugs to poor countries)
  
• These companies have perfected the art of knowing the needs of their customer/audience and meeting it in creative, practical, stylish ways. (i.e. Ideo’s pursuit of a “human centered methodology”)
  
• At their core, the most innovative organizations have a “participatory DNA”. This means that they have created their organizations so that innovation will bubble up. Staff and customers will be a part of their process/products, and decisions are made dynamically and in a distributed way. (i.e. Team Obama, Google, Facebook, Cisco Systems and Hulu)

Challenging Implications for Ministries:

• Technology: In the early days missions were extremely technology driven as they used every tool to overcome huge obstacles. But we have given this distinctive up and now most of our core processes/services/products are not driven by innovative technology.
  
• Mobility: We have fared better with mobility. Because our work and the geopolitical situations are always changing we have become effective at making our solutions mobile. With more technology we could be even more mobile.
  
• Green (Social Responsibility): Because we have a Kingdom focus that has traditionally centered on Eternal things rather than bettering life in this world, we are very weak here. That in itself is not bad because we have set our sites on bringing people into God's Kingdom. However, in order to speak to the coming “green” generation we must put our Kingdom work into language understood by a generation of people that will be redefined by social/environmental responsibility.
  
• Consumer Focus: This item is the greatest single threat to the survival of many ministries. At the core of our Christian beliefs is that we should be God-centered and focused on a life of service and sacrifice. In an increasingly post-Christian / self-centered world, we will find ourselves increasingly at odds with what the marketing, fundraising, promotions experts tell us to do. We will be forced to make very difficult choices between transactional success and transformational focus. What I mean by this is that the realities of an overcrowded nonprofit marketplace will force us to either try and compete for consumers by appealing to their needs (whether we agree with them or not) or we will try to engage consumers and help to raise their sites beyond themselves and to the needs of others based on our beliefs and convictions.
  
• Participatory DNA: Currently many ministries do not have a participatory DNA as organizations. Because of hierarchical structures, low tolerance for ambiguity, and a “limited good” mentality internally, we are not able to give our staff, donors, partners or ministry recipients the ability to participate significantly in who we are and what we will become.

These are very quick commentaries on issues that have many facets, reasons and potential solutions. The purpose of this blog posting is not to lay them out in the greatest detail or to provide extensive ideas on how to fix them. My main purpose is to show some of the key factors that are helping secular organizations lead the way in innovation and then contrast them with the realities we face in Christian nonprofits. Our survival depends on us looking at reality and then asking God how He might allow us to make a difference.

What makes a place innovative?

Innovation isn't spread through pixy dust or mojo - oh how we wish it was. Wouldn't it be great if you could buy a can of innovation powder and spread it around your study or your office? Alas, innovation is a more complex brew that takes some dissecting.

Steve Knight is a member of our facebook innovation group and an amazing kingdom journalist/innovator. He shared with me a map that McKinsey created to show hot spots of innovation (more on that further down). And as I thought about this issue, I began to ask myself about the characteristics that make a place innovative.

Fast Company Magazine (one of my favorites) has what they call the Fast 50. These are the 50 most innovative companies. They just released the 2009 results and you will be fascinated. The five most innovative were: 1) Team Obama 2) Google 3) Hulu 4) Apple 5) Cisco Systems. They have identified those companies that are changing the rules and leading the pack. As I have watched this list, it seems to be based upon which companies are taking new ideas and turning them into strategic advantages within specific arenas. Google in search, Apple in music, Obama in fundraising/mobilization, etc.

McKinsey has created a map of the most innovative cities around the globe. They used two key criteria on their graph:

• momentum: average growth of US patents
• diversity: number of separate companies

This criteria for innovation focuses on the number of new ideas are created by companies. In essence they are saying that if you or your organization is creating new ideas and taking the time to own them, you are in a position to innovate.

They go on to break up the cities into these categories:

• hot springs: small fast growing hubs (Brisbane)
• dynamic oceans: large vibrant ecosystems (Taipei)
• silent lakes: older slower-growing hubs (Tel Aviv)
• shrinking pools: unable, so far, to expand beyond their start-up core (Indianapolis)

In another article, I found another interesting twist on innovation. Forbes shared that 7 of the top 10 innovative countries are in Europe. The article talked about how many times we view Europe as old and slow - the opposite of innovative. However, it talks about the key things that make Europe innovative. Many companies in these countries have long-standing innovation task forces. They have a high level of research and a value for quality. The article also talked about the number of patents in these countries that give their companies an innovative edge.

It really helps to see the companies, cities and countries that are innovative. It gives us ideas on how we as ministries and how we personally can create cultures of innovation. I encourage you to read some of the articles in this posting and study these examples. Look for things that you can incorporate.

But I also want to share some of the characteristics that they have not mentioned which I believe create an environment of innovation in ministry:

1. Trust: When trust is high, then organizations can move quickly, adopt new ideas and think strategically. When trust is low, the atmosphere is full of confusion, in-fighting and second guessing. A great book on this is "Speed of Trust"

2. Risk Tolerance: Every person and every organization has a tolerance for risk. Those organizations that know their risk tolerance and then allow ideas to develop with that level of risk as a guide can be innovative. If level of risk is an unknown, then organizations always find themselves with various opinions about whether an idea is worth pursuing but have no language to describe it.

3. Defined Standards: When a person or organization has defined standards for quality, missiology, strategy and so on, then innovation has a place to grow. When no standards exist, then ideas tend to fly out uncontrolled and can't get a foothold. But when there are parameters that help define direction and success then innovation has a place to develop.

4. Interdependence: When people find themselves in a place that fosters learning and collaboration, innovation will not be far behind. When it is ok to take time and learn new things and share them with others, then those ideas have a chance of finding practical purposes.

We could go on and on, but I will leave it with this question: Based on some of the input above, is your ministry environment innovative? If so . . . what have you created? If not . . . what are you going to do to begin creating a place where new ideas can thrive?