This session is probably my favorite session from any Leadership Summit ever. Strap on your seatbelt and your safety helmet. I wish I had a word for word transcription on this one.
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Session Two B: Managing Differently Now Gary Hamel
Are you changing as fast as the world around? Are you in the vanguard or the old guard?
Data:
Since 1990, the number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation is going up, number of atheists has tripled, only 17% attend church on the weekend, the Xian brand has taken a big beating especially among young people, most are neutral, but those who have an opinion, the ratio to negative to positive is 2 to 1, if you ask them about evangelicals it goes up to 16 to 1
Barna Study on 100 lifestyle variables, Xians were only different on a few variables, most of them religious like how many bibles we own.
Healthy Conversion Ratio: 20 to 1
what conclusions do we draw from the data?
We can blame the world...but we must look deeper.
9 out of 10 say they believe in God. Only 9% of Americans are not religious or spiritual. Almost 1/3 of people say they are spiritual, but are not religious. How do we interpret this.
Is the gospel failing us? Or is it the institutions? Is it the message? Or the methods?
Should we be ringing our hands about the secularization of society or thank God for our good fortune?
Less and less people who are going through the motions as a part of the culture of religion. Isn't that a good thing?
Young people have been taught to resist dogma of all kinds which will force us to win them by the fruit of the spirit rather than apologetics.
Organizations lose relevance when internal change lags behind external change.
think of AOL, Yahoo, Sears, Starbucks, GM and the list goes on...how are they doing? Not so good. They got stuck in the mud. They become prisoners of precedent. It's into just the church, many organizations in our country are stuck.
Our problem is inertia. We just happen to be alive when the pace of change has gone hyper-critical. think of how many things are changing at an exponential pace. 100 years ago, nothing was changing that past, not it's normal. Either you are moving forwards at a quick pace or you are moving backwards.
Paradigm Shifts are Happening In Almost Every Industry. This is happening in church as well. Most organizations end up shackled ton one model, when that model atrophies, so does the organization.
Around 40 years of age, most churches plateau.
Vision become strategies, strategies become policy, policy becomes practices, practices become habits.
The ability to change and morph as circumstances warrant is the most important skill any organization can learn. EVOLUTION. To change, root and branch, who you are in strategy on out.
Usually method is to just fire the past leadership and bring in a new one....like a totalitarian take over in a third world country. Can't we do better?
1. You have to overcome the temptation to take refuge in denial.
Every organization is successful until it is not. Then it comes as a surprise. Why? We were convinced things were better than they were.
Denial follows a familiar pattern:
Dismiss to Rationalization to Mitigate to Confront..
The problem is not that the future was unknown, it was unpalatable.
We didn't want to see it because of the change it would mean for us.
How to break out of denial:
1. Face the Facts:
2. Question Every Belief:
Treat Every Belief You Have About church like it is a hypothesis.
Most of what we will do today will be rendered irrelevant by the future. Humility is a survival strategy.
3. Listen to the Renegades and the Dissidents:
The restless are the ones who are running out to find the paths into the future. Do we welcome dissent? Or do we stifle it? Learn from the positive deviants. You have to be willing to listen to the outsiders and listen to them. The future has already happened. It is unequally distributed.
4. Generate More Strategic Options:
Most organizations only see the bird they have in their hand. this is my bird! I will hang onto it. We get paralyzed. We clutch at the familiar because we can't see the alternatives. WE have to make change more exciting than standing pat. You have to create new alternatives. Wherever you see innovation at work, you will find momentum. You have to experiment with 1000 things, to find the ten that works. Trees drop thousands of acorns. The oak tree doesn't know where the fertile ground is. The acorns are a search strategic to find the right combination of soil and light to grow. Where are our acorns? We are so anxious to find that one giant acorn, that we don't generate enough crazies ideas to get that. We experiment with incremental change. But it's never enough to beat the bell curve.
You have to be able to deconstruct the way you do church, before you can see what the next model who you will be.
we are obsessed with our orthodoxies (not our creeds, but our methodology). we need to deconstruct so we can see the radical new future.
We have to deconstruct our orthodoxies before we die.
Look at all you do: What hasn't change for three or four or five years? has it not change because we explored other options and they are inferior? Or is it stagnation?
What are we all doing that are pretty much identical? Are we doing it this way because we all read same books, listen to the same people, etc. So, we don't really get fresh ideas and content.
The best thing is to reproduce clones rather than experiment with new ways of church.
we confuse the edge of our rock for the horizon!
Everything is changing, that means we need to learn to be contrarian. What Jesus did was so far outside the box of expectations, we're still trying to figure it out.
Key Question: Are you more committed to redemption and renewal and reconciliation or are you more committed to the programs and policies and practices of your church?
What is the true test of that commitment? Are you willing to sacrifice what Abraham sacrificed...one of the cherished orthodoxies.
This isn't possible in a top down organizational power structure
It happens when the mental models of the leadership team diminish faster than their authority. They are veterans are running things, but their understanding of the world is falling behind.
We are holding the institution back due to our lack of willingness to change. Unlike democracy, change can't compound from the bottom. the entrenched leaders don't create space for that change to come on up from the bottom.
What are the alternatives to the top down structures? Structures we have at church are roman military rule and more recently corporate structure.
Gortex Story: Bill Gore, I want to create a culture where people create all the time and fit bureaucracy none of the time. There is no hierarchy there. No supervisors. No directors. You get to be a leader when your team ask you to lead them. How do you know if you are leadership material? You call a meeting and people show up. Everyone can say no to any request. Commitment is always voluntary. At the end of the year, you are peer reviewed by 20 others who answer this question: Did you add value?
Mobilize, connect and support. Not command and control.
Are organizations were never built to be adaptable. We are not semi-programmable robots. We have to moldable and experimental.
Power must come from below, not above. Every idea has a chance to compete on equal fitting. Youtube. Flickr. Blogging. The work of strategy is open and highly participatory. That new leadership reality exists on the web. It's a post hierarchy structure. It is an affront to the management model we've been using since we built the pyramid.
Facebook is clear: People don't want to work for a corporation anyone and they don't want to go to a church that feels like one.
We need disorganized religion. We need to go backwards to go forward...early church was not ritualistic. It was organic, flexible, spiritual powerful and institutional weak.
we will not get better at changing lives until we get fundamentally different at how we do church, leaving behind the old corporate, hierarchical management strategy.
The church is God's plan A, he doesn't have a plan B. Our churches need to be the most adaptable institutions in the world. God will make them so, if we ask.
Hey Rob,
Hope your still thinking about this.
Isn't what is happening in India following this model? 1000s of hard working individuals getting service from the leadership to help make them more effective.
How can you have this open form of rapid change and still maintain a laser light focus on a consistent goal?
Ryan
Posted by: Ryan | August 15, 2009 at 09:50 AM