Green Sky Innovation

Green Sky

The Culture Maker's Perspective

CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE INNOVATION FLOURISHES.

Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne

An Excerpt

The Culture Maker's Perspective

"Culture is like the background music that plays behind everything we do."

- Tina Seelig, American educator

One of the first things I noticed when I started at OneHope was that it sounded like people were speaking an entirely different language. There were many terms I had never heard before. Some were program names or acronyms unique to our ministry. Others were simply phrases I had never used. I had to learn what it meant to “contextualize” a resource and what “pushing back” on an idea looked like. But over time, I have adopted the vocabulary and ways of speaking that seemed strange to me at first. It feels natural after years of being part of this culture. Now I am the person who probably sounds confusing to a new team member.

Every ministry and team has a distinctive character. Collectively as a group, you have your own way of speaking, thinking, and acting. You have habits and expectations that define what is normal. This is critical to understand because organizational culture can either accelerate or cripple innovation.

Culture, broadly defined, is the customs of a particular nation, people, or social group. It is everywhere we go even if we are unaware of it. You were born into a national culture that has shaped what feels right to you. If you have traveled, you have experienced how different the customs can be in another country. You might have felt culture shock, which describes the confusion of being in totally different surroundings. Families also have their own culture. Each of us has a distinct way of communicating with our family members as well as shared traditions and experiences that make your little tribe unique.

Within an organization, culture refers to the shared attitudes, values, and practices that characterize you and your co-workers. Workplace culture forms naturally and almost invisibly. You can probably remember jobs where you felt like a great fit with your co-workers and perhaps other positions that were not so great. Culture fit significantly affects whether people enjoy and decide to stay at an organization.

People form culture, but culture also shapes people. Without even realizing it, we will perform to the expectations of our culture and adjust our behavior to ensure we are staying within the norms. People often ask how they can create a culture of innovation within their ministry. The truth is—wherever you are, you already have a culture of innovation. It may just not be a very good one.

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We can be like Winnie the Pooh dragged backwards and bumping his head with each step. We know there must be a better way, but we are often unable to take the time to figure out how to change our methods. We are carried along by our organizational culture just like Winnie the Pooh was swept along behind Christopher Robin.

Here’s the thing about culture: if we don’t intentionally make it, culture creates itself. Rather than letting attitudes towards innovation evolve undirected, we can help purposefully shape a ministry culture where innovation can thrive. Creating culture is powerful. Through it, we influence those around us. Culture can be something we constantly fight against or something that gives us an advantage.

Good cultures of innovation are characterized by diversity, humility, and empowerment. Your ministry culture should enable everyone to contribute in meaningful ways, as well as innovate within their areas of responsibility. We need cultures that are open and supportive of new things. It can’t just be you being the innovative one. I have operated alone in the innovation space before, and it is both lonely and ineffective. We need others around us contributing their ideas and supporting the work with their strengths.

Innovation will happen naturally if you have a culture that encourages collaboration and gives people the freedom to change things for the better. To fulfill the Great Commission, we need purposeful ministry cultures that unlock creativity and spark good ideas. From there, we can turn ideas into well-run projects that result in kingdom impact. Are you ready to learn how?

Leading From Behind

Culture begins with you. If this sounds like a motivational speech, it is! At times, you might not feel like your individual choices and actions matter. But they do. You are part of a much larger whole, whether that is in your family, organization, church, city, or country. Regardless of your position, you have influence, and you are already contributing to and creating culture around you. Your story is joining with that of others to write history.

The word culture refers to the way a society lives—the language, customs, and social habits of a group of people. It includes art, music, fashion, religious beliefs, and more. It is what we say and do as well as the unspoken rules that govern how we behave. Because I happened to be born in the United States, anything I do is automatically “American” and reflects American culture. Because of when I happened to be born, I am part of the Millennial Generation. We have membership into our culture first and that culture shapes us. But our collective actions also shape how our culture evolves.

The world watched and studied the Millennial Generation wondering who we would grow up to be and what we would care about. Today, Millennials are adults and parents with children of their own. We are employees and business owners, entrepreneurs, and political leaders. There is another generation that has grown up after us—Generation Z—and another generation coming after them. Each will slowly take over more and more cultural spaces, bringing their distinct perspectives and characteristics with them. What they think and how they behave will create new societal realities. This is culture on a broad scale.

Here is a much simpler definition of culture from author and speaker Seth Godin: “People like us do things like this.” For example, I am mindful of the fact that Americans tend to have a negative reputation internationally. People like me (Americans) are seen to do things that are rude, loud, and arrogant. Because I am aware of that cultural perception, I am careful to be kind, quiet, and humble when I travel to other countries. I have been thrilled when people abroad mistake me for someone from France or Spain because it means I have been successful in not living up to their expectations of Americans. My actions don’t just change the perception of Americans in their eyes, it represents a change in American culture starting with me. If I can influence other Americans to be polite when they travel, then we will eventually no longer have our bad reputation.

Culture is always changing and evolving depending on our behaviors. However, culture has a very strong pull. It is difficult to act contrary to the norm. I noticed this when my wife and I traveled to Japan. We were only there for ten days, but it was long enough to change some of our behaviors and attitudes. People are extremely polite in Japan and conscious of not inconveniencing others. You are not allowed to talk on the phone on public transportation because that would be rude to those around you. We talked more quietly and waited patiently in lines. We found ourselves becoming more aware of how we moved and being careful not to bump into anyone. Even though Tokyo is one of the largest cities in the world, no one ever brushed past us in a crowd. Japanese culture is also very tidy. The streets are kept clean, and no one would think of littering or leaving trash around. Everyone takes off their shoes inside because it would be rude to get someone’s floors dirty.

We found ourselves living up to these cultural expectations even when no one was watching or enforcing those rules. But when we returned home, we adapted back to our American culture almost as quickly. Plenty of people talked loudly on their phones as we rode home on the train, so we did too. We dropped some trash underneath the seat and did not bother to pick it up because the floor was very dirty and others had left trash there too. We quickly became less nice and less clean and less respectful in line with the daily behaviors of those around us. It was a clear experience of the power of culture to affect the actions of an individual. It also showed how those individual choices collectively create culture.

Culture is present in our ministries. Your team has ways of behaving that set the standard for anyone who joins you. It won’t take long for a new staff member to adopt the habits, expectations, and beliefs that have naturally come to form your ministry culture. For example, if someone is treated harshly for making a mistake, what is communicated is “mistakes are not tolerated here.” The next time someone does something wrong, that harshness will likely be repeated. Over time, everyone will become less gracious because they learn that “people like us don’t make mistakes.”

Fortunately, the opposite can also be true. By being kind to our team members when they make mistakes, we can model the idea that “people who work here have grace for one another.” That develops a culture with different values and behaviors. Team culture often comes from the top and is set—intentionally or unintentionally—by those in charge. We naturally look to our leaders to know how we should behave. But it is not just their responsibility. Everyone has the opportunity to contribute to culture.

One question I am often asked is how to lead innovation when you’re not the one in charge. Many people feel discouraged because they lack formal authority. They are not the ultimate decision-maker at their organization who can change the way things are done. Leaders do create culture through the actions they reward as well as the people they hire and promote. But if you really think about it, few of us will ever be the one person at the top: the president, CEO, or senior pastor. Even if you do become the number one leader eventually, you may find your individual actions and choices are not enough to change the entire culture under you.

Culture has momentum and takes tremendous effort to change. Being the boss does not give you absolute control. We don’t want a culture of people blindly following where we lead anyway. This doesn’t produce innovation. You need everyone’s diverse perspectives and contributions. We should not wait until we’re in charge to innovate better. Rather, our goal should be to foster the right culture where innovation can thrive naturally within our ministry. Fortunately, we can do that from wherever we are once we become aware of one powerful thing we all have: influence.

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“Leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less,” says leadership expert and author John Maxwell. He goes on to say, “True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It comes only from influence and that cannot be mandated. It must be earned.” Influence is earned through investing in people and giving them your time, attention, and care. This is great news because it means you and I can lead our ministries in innovative directions by exercising our influence.

If your ministry culture is not innovative, there are some things you can do to help. Author Clay Scroggins offers practical leadership advice in his book How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge. Scroggins shares many principles, but here are two that are helpful for culture making.

First, think like an owner. We work in ministry, so there isn’t really an owner like there would be in a business. But what Scroggins means is to have the mindset of an owner rather than just an employee. This is a biblical principle. The Bible teaches us that we are not just workers in a vineyard but co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). There is such a difference between the mindset of a worker versus an owner. Workers earn wages, but the land they tend, the fruit they harvest, and all the profits ultimately go to the owner. An owner may work in the fields too, but he invests differently than his workers. An owner cares more deeply about every part of the process. The health of the fields and the way the fruit is picked matters because the vines belong to him and he wants them to grow and prosper for years to come.

As members of God’s kingdom and co-heirs with Christ, we share in the joy and responsibility of ministry. We should have the mindset of an owner who cares about excellence in every detail. It is not just our name that is reflected in our work but the name of Christ. It is not just our reputation we work for, but the reputation of the Gospel. This is a critical shift you can make as a ministry innovator that will positively influence those around you as well. A better culture will develop as we all start to take greater ownership of our work and its results.

The second principle is to practice critical thinking instead of being critical . It is easy to start blaming others when things don’t go well. It is especially easy to blame our leaders. Perhaps they said no to your great idea or yes to a plan you advised against. When things don’t go our way, we can quickly become bitter and resentful. We may even secretly wait for failure to happen to prove we were correct. But this is not the right attitude. Our leaders are not our enemies. They also care deeply and want to do what is best.

Avoid the temptation to blame your leaders when innovation is lacking. Grumbling and complaining produce disunity. If we are constantly undermining our leaders by speaking negatively about their decisions, we create a destructive and harmful culture. We also damage our own credibility. Nothing good can get done in this kind of environment. Even if you grow into a leadership position at your ministry, you will be crippled by the toxic culture you fed with your own complaining.

“Choosing to trust your leaders builds trust with your leaders,” writes Scroggins. Instead of fighting against their decisions and making your disagreement louder, work with your leaders and believe that God is speaking to them. This doesn’t mean you have to stay silent. If you see a better way, don’t be afraid to challenge their thinking. But the way you challenge matters. Approach your leader in a spirit of love and humility. Seek permission to give feedback and ask how you can productively provide it. Be clear that your intention is to improve the team and further the mission.

Faith refocuses our perspective on the bigger picture. Ultimately, God has appointed our leaders, and He is at work through them. We should strive to make our organizations successful even if the ideas we are carrying out are not your own. Whether we understand every decision or not, we can still choose to follow our leaders instead of complaining. We can trust God to bring good results as we serve His kingdom faithfully.

Pilots, Doctors, and Ministers

Matthew Syed begins his book Black Box Thinking with a story of a man who drops his wife off at the doctor’s office for a minor operation. He takes his kids to run errands and returns in a few hours to pick her up. But he finds out from the doctors that his wife had died due to complications during the surgery. She had not responded well to the anesthesia and the doctors were unable to intubate her, so she went without breathing for too long. The man was understandably shocked and wanted more details, but the doctors were not helpful and said an investigation would not be conducted without a lawsuit. “These things happen,” he was told. “A one in a million chance.” But the man who lost his wife was a pilot.

Pilots are similar to doctors because they are also responsible for the lives of hundreds of people every day. But when something goes wrong, their approach is very different. Every airplane has a “black box” designed to survive any kind of incident. Black boxes record everything about the flight: pilot communications, navigation data, altitude, airspeed, flight control inputs, and more. Every time there is a plane crash, that black box is recovered and analyzed by the Federal Aviation Association (FAA). No detail is overlooked because it is a lesson to learn from that has been paid for in human life. The FAA regularly releases new safety regulations based on their discoveries from plane accidents.

Consider the difference between the medical industry and the aviation industry based on these two examples. The medical industry generally assumes that doctors are right and does not typically have procedures to check on medical situations that go wrong. An accidental death may go unexamined and leave families without answers as to why they lost their loved one. This is also a loss to the medical field because they miss the opportunity to gain insight and alter future procedures.

In contrast, the aviation industry has set up its system with practices in place to investigate failures and learn from them when they happen. These two approaches create different cultures for pilots versus doctors. There is more transparency and openness about errors in the aviation industry because pilots have a learning culture. Doctors tend to operate within a performance culture. When you compare the results of the performance culture of doctors with the learning culture of pilots, the numbers speak for themselves. Syed references studies that show that after cancer and heart disease, preventable medical errors are the third largest killer of people every year in the U.S. The estimated number of deaths caused by medical error “is the equivalent of two jumbo jets falling out of the sky every twenty-four hours,” Syed writes. In contrast, actual data shows an average of one plane crash per 2.4 million flights.

We are not pilots or doctors, but the work we do in ministry is also life-and-death. We have the serious responsibility of sharing the Good News so people can turn to God and escape eternal judgment. When you think about your ministry, do you have a performance culture or a learning culture? You may not have considered your work in these terms before, but they are critical. A performance culture tends to cover up mistakes or dismiss them, while a learning culture looks for lessons in mistakes and how to improve for the future. This matters deeply because we are ministers of the words of life. We are representatives of the Gospel and play a significant role in shaping people’s perceptions of God. Our mistakes matter! If we are accidentally turning people away from God through some aspect of what we are doing, that is an issue we cannot ignore.

Let me pause here and affirm that God is still sovereign. The work of saving people is not up to us, but up to Him. Ultimately, it is only the Holy Spirit who can bring someone to faith. Yet, mysteriously, God has called us to partner in this work. He has entrusted us to steward the Gospel, so let’s be the best stewards we can be. We must be alert for anything we can learn or change to create the best opportunity for someone to encounter the Gospel. It is God’s desire that no one should perish, and that should be our driving motivation also.

Innovation tends to thrive and lead the way in a learning culture rather than a performance culture. The priority in a performance culture is to succeed on an individual level. People want to look good and worry about making mistakes and being punished for them. Because of this, they tend to limit their thinking and their work. They will avoid risky or untested approaches for fear of failure and may hold back their opinions and ideas for fear of criticism.

Remember the man’s wife who died in the opening story? There was someone else in the operating room besides the doctors that day. There was a nurse who was alert to the patient’s status. As the woman began to go into respiratory failure, the nurse readied a tracheotomy kit that could have saved her life. But the doctors never asked for it. They continued to try to intubate the patient until they ran out of time and her heart stopped beating. This is a tragic illustration of the results of a performance culture. Perhaps because of her junior status, the nurse didn’t feel comfortable or wasn’t allowed to speak up even though she had the solution.

This story is painfully sad, but the flatlining of the patient’s heart was not the end. The death of his wife prompted Martin Bromiley to become a champion for patient safety and establish the Clinical Factors Group, which is helping make healthcare safer today. The story of his wife’s death has gone around the world, challenging and educating doctors, nurses, anesthetists and more. To this day, Martin maintains that it wasn’t the clinicians who failed. “It was the system and training that failed them by making it hard to do the right things.”

One thing you can do to see if you have a performance culture is to pay attention to the questions being asked. If you don’t hear a lot of questions, that is a bad sign. Somewhere along the way, people got the message that questions are unwelcome. They need to look like experts who have all the answers. Eventually, everyone assumes they do have the answers and are already doing things in the best way. Performance cultures lack grace and cultivate self-preservation. Ultimately, everyone suffers for it.

Culture does not necessarily follow your mission. You might have the most innovative mission in the world and a team culture that stifles innovation in practice. In his book Think Again, Adam Grant describes how this happened within America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA is in the business of innovating space exploration. The very nature of what they do is to try new things and go where humans have never been before.

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But NASA has experienced several critical failures that resulted in loss of life and a loss of confidence in their methods. In 1986, the Challenger space shuttle exploded shortly after takeoff, and in 2003 the space shuttle Columbia broke apart on its way back to Earth killing everyone aboard. The investigation into the Columbia incident concluded that NASA had not demonstrated the characteristics of a learning organization. NASA’s vision is to expand humanity’s knowledge of space. They are all about learning! But internally they lacked a learning culture of their own. The failures of those space shuttles were the sensational and tragic result of NASA’s performance-driven culture.

Fortunately, that is not the end of the story. Grant describes how one woman helped NASA start to dismantle their fatal performance culture and transition to a learning culture. Ellen Ochoa, a former astronaut herself, was the deputy director of flight operations at NASA who implemented significant safety improvements. One thing Ellen did was ask questions. She wrote them on a card and kept them in her pocket everywhere she went. Here are the types of questions she would ask:

• What leads you to that assumption? What might happen if it is wrong?
• What are you unsure about?
• I understand the advantages of your suggestion, but what are the disadvantages?

The simple practice of asking “How do you know?” played a big role in changing NASA’s culture. Questions opened the door for doubt and discovery. They created an environment where assumptions could be uncovered and critically examined. Inquiry helped people disagree in healthy ways and work towards better results. As more people asked questions and teams built trust with each other, NASA became a safer place for everyone.

Learning cultures tend to make fewer mistakes and are more innovative overall. Failures will happen. Our ministries are collections of imperfect humans. Even with the best of intentions and planning, things will not always go the way we expect. But when mistakes happen, how do people respond? It is not shameful to make mistakes. It is only shameful to make mistakes and not learn from them. In a learning culture, leaders don’t dwell on what happened or who was at fault, but instead they use failures to inform future actions. People feel comfortable and safe, not worried about their reputation or job security. As a result, they are more open to feedback and correction. It becomes easier to have a posture of humility. People can freely ask questions, suggest new ideas, and work together to find the best solutions.

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Your ministry culture may have a mix of learning and performance-driven practices. You might notice variation across teams and projects. Leaders create different environments even within the same organization. Every person’s expectations and responses contribute to creating the bigger picture. It is not necessarily easy to identify culture issues and change them. However, this is critical both for ministry innovation and also for our mission as a whole. NASA realized it needed to change its culture for the sake of the astronauts who were entrusting their lives to them. As ministers of the Gospel, we should be willing to change for the sake of those whose lives need to be saved for eternity. If there is anything we could possibly do to help someone better experience Christ, we should be eagerly looking for it.

Changing the Culture

Have you ever stopped to think about how weird it is to type? I’m writing right now on an English keyboard, which is in a layout called QWERTY (named because those are the first six letters across the top row). This standard keyboard design was innovative when it was invented back in 1874. It was created to space out the most commonly used letters because the typewriter mechanisms inside (called hammers) tended to get stuck as people typed rapidly. The keyboard design intentionally slowed people down to help the typewriter function properly.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never needed to use a typewriter. Technology has advanced significantly since 1874! Computers function very differently from typewriters. When I hit the alphabet letters on my keyboard, they no longer activate mechanical hammers to strike paper with an embossed letter loaded with ink. The problem that the QWERTY keyboard was created to solve no longer exists.

The QWERTY keyboard isn’t our only option. There’s another layout called the Dvorak keyboard that is designed for maximum efficiency of movement. Vowels are primarily on the left, most used consonants on the right, and the most rarely used characters are least accessible. Makes sense, right? Yet no one knows about it. I’ve never seen a Dvorak keyboard on a computer, but there are websites where you can try it out. I make this an assignment for my innovation students. I get all sorts of responses ranging from, “This was the weirdest thing I’ve ever tried; I couldn’t stand it,” to “This is amazing; I will never see typing the same way again!”

Trying to type in a new layout is challenging because we’ve all learned QWERTY and have become fast with years of practice. However, just because we can make it work doesn’t make it the best solution. I give you this example as a warning that innovative ideas are not always embraced and implemented. It was easier for hardware producers to sell keyboards people already knew how to type on than to change to a better one that would take time for people to learn. Nearly 150 years later, we’re stuck with an irrelevant design that makes typing harder when we could have something better.

People tend to prefer what is familiar rather than what is new. Learning something can feel slow and difficult. The work it would take to change how we do things (like type) often doesn’t seem worth it in the short-term. This same attitude can undermine our ministry work. We all have things we are doing in ministry that are outdated and don’t match new realities. But we may be unwilling to change our methods because we’ve gotten good at those things. Even if what we are doing doesn’t work that well, at least we know what to expect. With practice, we get faster and we do see results. Don’t be surprised as a ministry innovator if people don’t want what you have to offer. You will encounter resistance to innovation because it is human nature to not want to change.

How ideas spread through society is something that has been extensively studied. It turns out that having a popular idea is less about the idea itself and more about who you share that idea with. The theory of the diffusion of innovation was published as early as 1962 and is helpful in understanding how to make our ideas succeed. The innovation diffusion curve (shown below) predicts how people will respond to new ideas.

If you are the person who is always looking for new ways to do things, you are an innovator and fall in the extreme minority of the population. If you are willing to try new things before others, you are an early adopter. The early majority represents a large chunk of people who are not the first to get on board, but they’re not the last. The late majority crowd are the ones who wait for almost everyone else to go first before they eventually join in. The laggards are the very last of the last to adopt an idea.

Business author Simon Sinek has studied this curve and suggests that you will need to persuade 15–18 percent of people in your target audience to adopt your solution in order to reach a tipping point that ensures that idea will spread more widely. Even so, you are not guaranteed to reach everyone. Not every idea will make it through the curve.

This curve helps us understand how we can expect people to respond to innovation within our ministries. You should not be discouraged when people resist your innovations. If they are a laggard, you can expect them to reject anything new. They are not the person you need to convince first. They may never get on board, and that is okay. You need to focus your efforts on communicating with the right people each step of the way. Look for those who will advance your idea and spread it to others. Each person has a different appetite for change and tolerance for risk. How people respond may also differ depending on the topic. Someone who is a laggard in one area may be an innovator in another. You will need to think about the needs you are trying to meet and who feels those needs most keenly.

Be very careful if you find yourself thinking you don’t need others and could do things better on your own. It can be easy to think we know more than others. Innovation is always on the leading edge, so you will naturally be going ahead of others at your ministry. You may see realities they do not yet see. You will steadily grow more proficient at identifying problems and offering solutions. But others at your ministry may not see those same problems or want your great solutions. This can be frustrating. It can also lead us into pride and isolation.

We must be careful not to let knowledge make us arrogant but to instead work lovingly to build up others (1 Corinthians 8:1). Pour out what you know into the lives of those around you and work together to build a ministry culture that supports innovation. Humbly invite others to share your vision and work towards it with you. If they do not understand the need, be patient and bring them on a journey of change with you.

It is helpful to think about innovation from the perspective of making change. That is what we are fundamentally asking people to do—change the way they think or behave. “Stop that; do this instead.” There are steps we can take to introduce people to a change and help it last. This is a field of study called change management. Harvard professor and author John Kotter offers a framework that we can apply to the work of ministry innovation:

1. Explain why it matters. You’re going to need to help people understand the why behind the change you are proposing. What do we stand to gain if we do this? What do we risk if we don’t act? Create a sense of urgency around your idea. Be prepared to tell people why it matters and share your vision as well as the reasons you are asking them to take action. Everything might have seemed just fine to everyone yesterday, so you need to explain why today you are asking for change.

2. Gather wise counselors. We cannot and should not innovate alone. We need people wiser than we are to speak into our ideas and help us overcome blind spots. There are people both inside and outside your ministry with valuable experience to offer. Invite them to give feedback on the change you are proposing and the best way to go about it. Wise counselors are crucial, and people are often more than willing to help. By bringing people into the journey early on, you give them the chance to help shape the idea and share in your vision. They can become key advocates and champions for the innovation in the future.

3. Plan your journey. If you don’t know where you’re going, you will probably never get there. This is a wise principle for many things in life, but particularly for ministry innovation. You may have a general idea of what you want to accomplish, but you need to be clear on what it looks like to reach the goal. What is success? What are the steps you need to take? Without a plan, you just have wishful thinking. Define your objectives and the work that needs to happen, as well the barriers you will have to overcome to make the desired change a reality.

4. Invite people to join you. Once you are equipped with a clear vision and plan, you can invite others to join you. People need concrete ways to take action. They may be willing to help, but they need direction. Refer to your plan for the tasks to be accomplished and look for the right people. Share with them why they are uniquely suited for the job you have in mind. People respond to real needs. Continue sharing the vision, especially if the change you are enacting is optional.

5. Empower people to act. Once people are in motion, they will need support. A leader who gives ownership and trust creates motivation. Ensure you are available to answer questions and provide resources. Remove barriers that are slowing down the work. Do everything you can to make it easy for people to help you.

6. Take small steps. People need to see results and feel that their efforts are succeeding. This is particularly important when the change is new and not guaranteed to work. It is critical to celebrate things that show the project is moving in the right direction. Don’t leave this to chance. Actively plan for ways to create and highlight victories. Identify smaller milestones you can work towards on the longer journey. Then celebrate when your team has accomplished them. Take time to affirm the hard work everyone is putting in to encourage the group forward.

7. Inspire hope for the future. Accomplishing a major change requires help and intentionality. You will need to sustain forward momentum for your innovation and add energy as you go. One of the best ways you can do this is to share your progress not only with the people who have been involved in bringing about the change, but also with your leaders. Leaders have the authority to either shut down your project or support it. Celebrate what is happening and show them that their trust is producing results. Inspire hope for the future by showing where you have come from and casting vision for where you are going. The more you can make your idea and its impact visible, the more likely it is that the change will last and become permanent.

Follow these steps to introduce people to new ideas and pursue the change you want to see within your ministry. Innovating requires us to be thoughtful and strategic about the journey. Remember that transformation does not happen overnight, nor does it happen alone. We have to bring others on the journey with us. It may feel like a slow process, but anything worth doing is worth the effort. “If you’re creating something great, your time will come,” writes author Clay Scroggins. “And if it hasn’t come yet, keep working to create something great.”

Even when innovation feels hard, I encourage you to remain where you are and stay faithful to what God has called you to. This has been the story of my own journey in ministry innovation. There have been times when I felt frustrated and wanted to quit. I wondered if people at a different organization would value my ideas more or if a business would give me a higher salary for my skills. I wanted people to follow where I led. But God reminded me that the most important thing to do is to follow Him. He is the good shepherd and I am the sheep. Sheep make terrible shepherds. Their hooves can’t hold a rod and staff. They can’t see where to go or defend the flock against predators. I am far better off trusting the Lord to lead me than trying to lead myself. Innovation is not about me or people listening to me, but about what God can do through me.

We should be culture makers who pursue change for the right reasons. “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward” (Colossians 3:23–24). Changing our ministry cultures is a challenge that is worth doing because we are serving Christ in bringing the Gospel to a hurting world. No calling could be greater.

Destructive Peace vs. Constructive Conlflict

How we disagree is built into the culture of our ministries. Each person has their own way of approaching hard conversations that reflects their personality and the way disagreement has been modeled for them in the past. Conflict is something you will naturally encounter as you pursue new ideas and invite people to change how they do things. Experiencing disagreement is not necessarily a bad sign. Some conflicts are important for our work and should not be avoided. Opposing opinions can clarify our thinking and refine our ideas.

Conflict is something we should expect, especially if we have built a diverse team. Diversity brings differences. A wide range of perspectives represents a wide potential for disagreement. What is important is creating an environment where people can safely express their opinions even if they conflict with someone else’s. Loving everyone doesn’t mean you always agree with everyone. A learning culture is full of healthy conflict. When disagreement is invited and handled well, it can be a strength that shows our ministry is healthy.

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Almost everyone wants to know the secret behind high-performing teams. Google once studied their many teams to try to understand why some were more effective than others. They set out to investigate every possible factor that might play a role. They looked at team size, location, and skills. They measured experience and education level. They considered dynamics including ethnic diversity, gender, leadership style, and project management processes. In the end, they concluded that none of those things made a significant difference in team effectiveness. Rather, one key thing stood out as the most important trait their best teams shared. The researchers termed it “psychological safety,” or more simply put—trust.

Trust is the variable that matters more than anything else. Teams who trust one another will be more successful regardless of any other characteristic. A team of experienced software engineers with advanced degrees might be outperformed by a group of interns depending on the trust levels within the two groups. Trust is something you might not notice until it is missing. It is often invisible in our relationships, but it is what makes everything work. Trust is the result of feeling known, understood, and accepted. If you trust the people around you, you feel safe with them. You feel valued and know your contributions matter. You will work harder to support your teammates, and they will do the same for you.

Trust is foundational to a culture of innovation. A feeling of safety is what enables people to speak up and voice both their ideas and their disagreement for the sake of better results. This is the kind of conflict that is healthy. We shouldn’t be afraid to disagree over things that truly matter. However, there is a difference between debating about our work versus fighting with people. As a team, we should challenge each other’s thinking because we collectively value the results. If we have built trusting relationships, disagreement will not cause harm. But without a sense of safety, people might misinterpret questions as a personal attack.

Keep watch for when safety has been lost in the group and work to restore it. If people are going quiet and disengaging or comments are starting to seem hurtful, those are clear indicators that safety has been lost. In order to move forward, you will need to reestablish safety. The book Crucial Conversations teaches a simple way to do this.

1. Step Out: Pause the conversation about the topic and invite a discussion about the conversation itself. Help people take a step back to examine themselves, the tension, and how you got there. Conflict can be consuming. It may be that disagreement is centering around the wrong thing entirely. The best way forward is to pause and talk honestly with each other.

2. Contrast: Contrasting is a method to help people refocus. Start by stating what you don’t want and then what you do want. Others may feel you don’t respect them and question your intentions. So first, intentionally address any concerns that may be creating a misunderstanding. Then clarify your position so people can understand your purpose. For example:

“In this section of the book, I don’t want you to feel like I am undermining any of the incredible work your ministry has accomplished or say you have been doing a poor job of building culture.

However, I do want to share the tools and ideas I have come across openly and offer them to you in case they can help your ministry work go even further and be more successful.”

3. Mutual Purpose: Finally, you need to establish a mutual purpose everyone can agree to before stepping back into the tense conversation. Commit to the group that your intention is to find a way to serve everyone. Try to explore each person’s goals, fears, and constraints. There are often underlying motivations people might not be voicing that are leading to the disagreement. Don’t assume you know what everyone is thinking. Create space for people to express their deeper concerns, which will reveal opportunities for mutual purpose.

If you can identify the source of the conflict and get everyone working towards the same goal, you will find trust and safety return. Conflict resolution is not an assigned role, but it is a key practice on healthy teams and something we can all take responsibility to do. It requires courage to disrupt the conversation and resolve tension, but someone must step up or progress will halt. More importantly, relationships may be endangered that are critical to the team.

A culture of innovation makes space for everyone to participate and does not bury disagreement for the sake of preserving peace. Silence sometimes comes from apathy. Disagreeing can feel like too much effort with not enough reward. Discouragement can be another reason for silence. Perhaps opinions shared in the past were ignored. Fear can also cause people to withdraw. Unknown consequences can make it difficult to go against a group decision or disagree with a popular idea. If you have ever stayed quiet for one of these reasons, you can be certain others on your team have also.

Consensus may feel good at the time, but it is deceptive. If your organizational culture is one where people rarely speak up to add input, it’s a dangerous place to be. It means your ministry could be strengthened, but your environment is inhibiting improvement. False peace that covers up disunity endangers your impact.

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One year, I invited everyone who worked with me to complete a performance review of my leadership. I wanted to learn what I was doing well and what I needed to work on. The feedback was submitted anonymously, and I was surprised that every single person on my team identified the same weakness. They complimented me on being an encouraging leader but pointed out my dislike of conflict. They expressed (in a nice way) that sometimes the work suffered because I was unwilling to tell someone they could do better. I needed to hear this. It helped me realize that harmony should not always be the ultimate goal.

Disagreement can be a way we lovingly work towards better results. By being unwilling to disagree, I was letting my team down without even knowing it. One thing that has helped me in this area is to see there is a difference between challenging a person’s idea and disapproving of that person. We should be able to disagree with ideas and provide feedback without anyone feeling personally attacked. In fact, we must learn to do this and invite others to sharpen our innovations through their critiques.

Our ministry work is too important to allow false harmony to weaken our impact. We all have blind spots and don’t know everything. That is why we must surround ourselves with people who see what we don’t and invite them to speak into our work. Share the truth with one another in love and humility. It isn’t easy to disagree, but we must strive to create a culture where this can happen. Affirm arguments not for their own sake, but for quality’s sake and for the sake of the non-believers we are reaching with the Gospel. If we have planted and watered the seeds of trust, we can reap the fruit of healthy conflict in our work.

Your Ministry is Your People

Before I joined OneHope, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with my life, and it involved never staying in one place for long. My wife and I discussed a plan to move to a new city every two to three years. We would sell all our furniture and start over—find new jobs, make new friends, and explore new places. We thought this would keep our lives interesting. In our life plan, it never mattered much where we would work. I thought a job was just what someone did to pay their bills and that fun happened outside of work. I was unfamiliar with the idea of vocational work—a purposeful career that I could truly enjoy.

Then God led us both to OneHope, and after two years we discussed whether it was time to move on. It wasn’t. After three years, then five, we were still there and still growing. Each year that passed we evaluated and still felt called to what we were doing. The mission of the ministry is part of what has kept us in place, but just as important are the people we get to work with. The community we have joined at OneHope is precious and not easily replaced. People are the reason we have stayed far longer than I imagined.

Your ministry is your people. Everything you are able to accomplish depends on your team. Attracting the right people to join you and keeping those people for years to come is vital to your ministry’s effectiveness. Organizations must be intentional to care for their people and build a healthy culture where they will want to stay. The management book Love ’Em or Lose ’Em teaches twenty-six principles for how to care for people well that results in an engaged team culture. Here are seven of the most helpful principles reframed for ministry application. These practices are designed for people in leadership positions. But if you are not currently in charge of anyone, that is okay. You should still learn these ideas and look for ways to apply them as you grow in influence.

Who You Say Yes To

How your ministry hires and promotes people communicates your values more strongly than words. Team engagement and retention actually starts with the hiring process. We should be careful to consider culture fit as an essential aspect of who we say yes to. Inviting someone to join your team or move up in leadership is an important decision. It signals to your entire team who you consider worthy of your confidence. One of the leaders I have learned much from at OneHope evaluates people based on two things: skill and will.

Skill includes the specialized knowledge and experience a person brings to the job. We often think first about a person’s qualifications, but it is not the only thing we should consider. Skills are external and visible, while a person’s will is internal. Will represents motivation and commitment. You should ensure the people you add to your team align with your mission.

Aim for people who score highly in both skill and will. If you cannot have both, prioritize will over skill. Skills can be taught and experience gained with time, but a person’s attitude is not easy to change. Character is an area where we cannot afford to compromise.

If we fill our organizations with people who are highly competent but lack integrity, our ministry culture will begin to suffer. The absence of character is not worth even the best of skills. Instead, look for people who live out God’s kingdom values. Seek team members who show evidence of the fruits of the Spirit. Even if they have things they need to learn, with your help they can grow their skills.

Invite People to Stay

When someone leaves an organization, they may have an exit interview. This is usually an opportunity to express why they are leaving so leadership can learn from the situation and improve in the future. This is a beneficial practice. But why do we wait until someone is quitting to have these kinds of honest conversations? By the time someone is asked, “What would make you stay?” it is often far too late to repair the damage. Love ’Em or Lose ’Em suggests that organizations implement regular “stay interviews.” These are like an exit interview but conducted even when someone is not thinking of leaving.

Being intentional to deepen relationships with our team members strengthens individual motivation and organizational culture. Research shows that the top reasons people stay at their job have little to do with pay or benefits. People value meaningful work, a supportive leader, and being recognized, valued, and respected.

Leaders can talk with their people one-on-one and ask a few simple questions. For example: What do you love about your job? Are we using your skills in the best way we can? What would keep you here? What might make you want to leave?

Courage and humility are needed to ask questions like this, but you will be richly rewarded for doing so. Not only will you learn more about each individual on your team, but simply having this conversation communicates that you care deeply. Take time to listen well. Invite people to be honest and respond to them openly and honestly as well. People want to be understood and valued by their leaders. It doesn’t cost anything to listen, it only requires making space to do so.

The Cost of Losing People

If expensive technology equipment went missing from your offices, how would you respond? Perhaps you would conduct an investigation to find out what happened and implement new security practices. In ministry we carefully count the cost of each activity to be wise financial stewards. But we can sometimes overlook our greatest asset: our people. When they decide to leave, how do we respond?

A talented employee is worth far more than technology equipment. We typically do little to investigate why team members choose to leave, nor think about how we can prevent it in the future. Our people represent our most significant investment, and replacing them is costly.

When you lose a team member, people must spend time to search for and hire the right replacement. Projects might have to be delayed until someone can be found. Your team may experience lost productivity from the dissatisfied person and lose team morale after they exit. Training a new employee also takes time. When I started at OneHope, someone told me it would be over a year before I would really be useful to the organization. I didn’t believe them then, but I do now.

Since being hired, I have seen dozens of people come and go from our ministry. I have helped with interviews and training and have seen how steep the learning curve can be. It takes a long time for people to settle in and apply their skills effectively to projects. When someone leaves with all their knowledge and skills, we should be very alert to why that is and work to avoid turnover in the future. Replacing someone represents a real expense that is far more costly than you might expect.

Cultivating Connections

How can we create a ministry environment where people want to stay? One key is in having a culture of true connection where people are linked together. People are naturally social and want to connect with each other and be known. Working alongside one another should give us a chance to learn about each other’s lives, passions, and families. Much of this will happen naturally, but our ministry culture should also encourage deepening connections.

At OneHope, we call ourselves a ministry family. It is an important value for us that every team member feels like they are part of that family and genuinely cared for. I feel so fortunate in this environment. There is no one I don’t consider a friend—I care about each person and want to get to know them better. It is very hard to think about leaving your friends who have come to feel like family. On the other hand, it is very easy to leave a workplace where everyone is a stranger.

Have you considered how you can encourage connections within your organization? This is especially important if you are a large ministry. It can be difficult for people to get to know others outside their team, especially if they are working remotely. How can you connect people to others and create opportunities for them to build relationships? Meals are some of the best ways for people to connect. Could you sponsor a lunch once a month? What about an event where people can bring their families?

Consider non-work activities that are lighthearted and help teams bond. Sometimes we focus only on the work and not on the relationships that ensure the work gets done. But building team culture is essential. Time spent cultivating connections is never wasted. It will pay you back many times over in creating a deeply engaged culture that people will not want to leave.

Reconsidering Rules

When a new team member joins, you will experience a valuable window of time when they are unfamiliar with your processes and rules. They have fresh eyes to see what might not make sense. They will ask questions about things you may never have thought about. Your team may have adapted to methods that have grown inefficient or complicated with time. You tend to think “this is just the way things are” without considering that they could be different. But a new team member doesn’t have the same assumptions, and this can be a great strength.

Rather than shutting down a new person’s questions and observations, welcome them. Leverage their perspective. We should have a willingness to change things that don’t work well, but sometimes we are truly blind to problems. Invite not just your newest team members but all of your team to speak into how things could be improved. This sparks creativity and leads to a culture of high ownership and engagement.

This can only happen if people see that rules can be reconsidered. If our default attitude is that everything is fine and nothing can be changed, then people have little motivation to make suggestions. People want to help, but they will quickly lose heart if they speak up and are not listened to. If someone raises a concern, don’t just dismiss it. Hear them out, explore the issue further, and be willing to collaborate on solutions that make your ministry better.

A culture of innovation empowers everyone to contribute, and it can free your ministry from being held hostage to rules that might no longer serve you well. Of course there is a difference between changing your methods and changing your mission. Think about the kind of rule that is being questioned and what the consequences would be of revising it. Few rules are unchangeable. Many can be adjusted or even removed.

Find out the reason someone is challenging the rule and seek to understand the heart of their concern. Even if you are not able to take action, you can listen well and share why a process is in place. Open conversations help your team members better understand your ministry and how they fit in. Whether the rule changes or not, your people will feel valued and trust will begin to flow in both directions.

The Value of Affirmation

Compensation is what people earn. Pay is what they deserve in exchange for their work. But recognition and encouragement are a gift. You don’t have to be someone’s boss to tell them how much you appreciate their contribution. Affirming someone doesn’t cost anything. So why don’t we do it more often?

Affirmation is something we need to take time for and build into our culture. Our ministries should be characterized by a spirit of encouragement and positivity. We should be quicker to praise one another than we are to criticize. This does not mean we hand out empty compliments or withhold honest feedback. In fact, situations where constructive criticism is needed are opportunities for encouragement. Consider opening with, “I’m really impressed by how you . . .” or “You’ve really grown in the way you. . .” before you give the rest of your comments.

We can all take time to tell people why we enjoy serving with them and affirm the skills or character qualities they bring to the team. It often only takes one person who is intentional about building others up for this attitude to spread. Positivity and praise are contagious. There are so many ways we can encourage people. We can praise someone privately one-on-one or publicly in front of their peers. It might happen spontaneously or we might need to purposefully plan for it, such as taking time to write a note of encouragement.

People have specific ways they like to be affirmed. It may be verbal compliments, spending quality time, acts of service, or gifts. See what works for different people or even ask them to tell you how they like to be encouraged. You won’t know if you don’t ask! Beyond individual interactions, think about ways to build celebration into the rhythm of your ministry. Take time to highlight victories and work done well. Celebrate people on your team and the milestones in their lives. Create special moments to commemorate accomplishments and give God the praise for what He is doing through your team.

Mentoring Future Leaders

Mentorship is all about helping people be the best they can be. Think about who has had a powerful influence on your life. Perhaps one person set an example you admired or helped you walk through a difficult time. Maybe a leader at work helped you build skills or believed in you at a critical moment. Hopefully you have had the chance to do the same for someone else.

Mentorship has a powerful impact on people and culture. It strategically deepens relationships and gives people a reason to stay and grow at your ministry. Mentoring others is a selfless act, but it does pay off in producing your ministry’s future leaders. The book, Love ’Em or Lose ’Em uses the word mentor as an acronym to help us remember what we should do.

• Model—Show others how you hope they will work. Be alert to what your own example is communicating and invite people to come behind the scenes with you. Show them your thought process. Invite them to join you in real situations and see the interactions for themselves.
• Encourage—Watch for what the person is doing right and ensure they know you notice and appreciate their efforts. Take time to get to know them so you can celebrate their successes, both in work and in life.
• Nurture—Help others develop their strengths and grow in their areas of interest. Regularly ask them what they enjoy doing and how they want to continue to be inspired. Find ways to align their passions with the mission and look for others who can guide them in areas where you are not an expert.
• Teach about the Organization—A key way you can help someone you are mentoring is to offer the wisdom you have about the organization itself. You know many things others do not. Why does your ministry function the way it does? How can you best present your ideas to those in power? Who are the key people you need to convince, and how do you approach them? Your hard-earned insights can make the journey easier for others. Be generous with your knowledge and help them avoid mistakes you may have made in the past.
• Release—Mentorship prepares others to exercise authority on their own. We need to yield power and empower others to lead. We sometimes don’t get to this critical step. Releasing authority downwards creates ownership and responsibility. People rise to meet a challenge and prove that they are worthy of trust. Step back to make space for others to solve problems. Ultimately, our goal should be to put ourselves out of a job by empowering others to stand on their own.

As you work to build a culture of innovation within your ministry, consider how to invest in your people and engage them so they can build culture alongside you. Which of these seven points is already a strength for you? Which ones might you need to work on? Your team is your path to fulfilling your mission. Your people are your greatest gift. Be intentional to ensure everyone in your ministry feels supported and cared for. Connect them to your ministry’s purpose, to each other, and to mentors. Listen to your people and help them know they are in the right place to give their best for the sake of the Gospel.

Doing Our Best Work Together

Remember our definition of culture: “people like us do things like this.” Our ministry cultures have two essential elements: the people you have on your team and the way those people work together. We must consider both as we seek to create a culture of innovation. You can have the best people in the world, but without defining helpful ways to work together, you will fail to leverage your team’s strengths.

Every team has rhythms and rituals. Rhythms are the patterns and habits you establish for your work. Rituals are events or actions that have special meaning to the team. When I led OneHope’s Innovation Team, I wanted clear rhythms and rituals. We worked in five-week cycles where each member of the team focused on one project at a time. We met weekly to review progress and share updates. At the end of each project, we prepared a final report and shared it with the team and our leaders. We were an unusual team in that we never extended our timelines beyond the five weeks. We delivered the results and moved on to the next project. These were our work rhythms.

One of our team’s rituals was that after completing a project we would leave the office and meet at a coffee shop to debrief. Before we started that meeting, we would all learn a new board game and play it together. This was a ritual to remind us of the importance of learning new things and staying open to change. It was also a ritual that built community—which is one of the five types of rituals that form workplace culture.

5 Rituals for Workplace Culture:

1. Creativity rituals help your team generate ideas or understand the vision for change with a new project.

2. Community rituals bond people together and make them feel known and connected.

3. Transitions are wonderful opportunities for rituals. You can celebrate the completion of a project, a team member changing roles, or other milestone accomplishments.

4. Conflict rituals are designed to help people with communication when there are disagreements or tension to navigate.

5. Performance rituals help a team stay focused and get work done.

Rituals can be carefully designed or may emerge naturally on your team, but either way they should reflect your group’s unique personality.

There is no one right way to build culture. My own experience with the Innovation Team is just an example, and it is not ideal for everyone. In fact, the team operated this way for just over a year before adapting our rhythms and rituals to meet new needs within the organization. As I reflect back on that specific model as well as the way our team operates today, I see that there are five areas to thoughtfully design around. You will always need some sort of process for prioritizing projects, communicating, executing work, evaluating success, and collaborating with others. You should explore what methods work best for your ministry in each of these areas.

Prioritization

What is the most important work to do? You need a process to define project priorities because you should not say yes to everything. Your team’s capacity will always be limited. Establish rhythms to help you evaluate requests and focus your attention on the most important tasks first. Keep your team’s long-term goals in mind because it is easy to get distracted by what appears urgent. Just because something has a quick deadline doesn’t mean it is the most important.

Seek input if needed. On the Innovation Team, we regularly met with leaders from different departments to examine requests and prioritize them together. If needed, we would suggest breaking larger projects into smaller ones that could be accomplished within our five-week cycle. Other teams have intake forms to fairly assess every request and help them decide what to take on. Choose what works for you, but be sure to have something in place to help you make decisions and identify the right work to carry forward.

Communication

Good communication is the glue that holds a team together. All teams need to connect regularly. But there are many ways to communicate. You can gather a group for a meeting or send a quick message. The medium matters. No one wants to waste time in a meeting that could have been an email, but many emails would have been better as face-to-face conversations.

Think also about your group. Who needs to be included? What is the best format for sharing information and gathering responses? For some conversations to go well, everyone needs to come prepared, while other meetings can be informal. You should establish communication frequencies that help your team stay connected but don’t tire everyone out.

The chart above can help guide you in crafting your communication rhythms. Select one option from each column or come up with your own options to fit your team. For example, I sometimes need to share important updates with leaders in our organization, but their schedules are difficult to coordinate. It might take two months to find a meeting time that works for everyone. So instead, I’ve discovered I can send an audio or video message. They can watch or listen on their own time and it still feels personal like a one-on-one informational meeting. I don’t do this very often, only as needed.

But for a team that is working closely on a project, I would choose very different options from the table below. Meetings would certainly be needed, and it might be best to coordinate in-person if possible, rather than online. Daily collaborative meetings help everyone pass on the latest information and problem solve as a group.

Once you’ve defined the meeting type, location, group size, format, and frequency—create an agenda. You should always have a plan for how you will facilitate your team’s time together. Know your communication purpose and work with your team to experiment until you find what works. Meeting rhythms help set expectations and build a culture of connection. People prefer consistency, so you don’t have to re-create your agenda every time. Once you establish good patterns, keep following them as long as they serve your team well, and be open to changing them when they don’t. Good communication takes planning, but it pays off in team alignment.

Execution

How do you practically accomplish work? Every team will have a different way for projects to move through their process. Your choices may have evolved over time, but it is always beneficial to consider your underlying approach and ensure it helps you achieve your best results.

The first thing to consider is how you utilize your people. Some teams take an individual approach with each project assigned to one person who carries it out from start to finish. In other teams, projects are passed through many hands with each person completing a portion of the work and handing it off to the next person to move forward. Other teams may break up a project and assign team members to work collaboratively on different portions simultaneously. The approach you choose depends on the type of work you do and the people available.

Consider how work moves through your team and anticipate key moments in this process. Think about the life cycle of a project including how things get started, finished, or handed off in the middle. Transition points like this are areas where work can tend to get stuck or sidetracked. Do your best to define ahead of time how approvals, feedback, and key decisions will be made. You cannot plan for every possible situation, but working without a plan wastes time and energy. Processes help people move forward confidently.

Focus is how we divide our attention between tasks. When I led the Innovation Team, we had a single-focus approach and intentionally took on only one project at a time for each team member. But most teams tend to multi-task, carrying responsibility for many projects each with its own tasks and deadlines. Some people thrive on variety and love having a lot going on all the time. But for others, a clear and simple focus is key.

Productivity is lost when you are constantly changing between tasks. This is called a switching cost—the natural delay that results when switching your thoughts from one project to another. We’ve all experienced this. You are in the middle of answering an email when someone stops by to ask you a question. Or you’re on a Zoom meeting when a chat message comes in. It is impossible to focus on more than one thing at a time.

The more you switch, the more time you lose. It’s not just the time you spend in conversation or typing out the answer to a quick question. Distractions break your focus. You have to get oriented to the new subject, respond to the need, then reorient to what you were doing before. Getting back on track can take longer than you expect. This isn’t only a problem when dealing with distractions. It applies whenever you are switching between projects or types of tasks.

In a busy season, it might not be possible to only carry a single project, but how you divide your days and weeks can help you avoid the costs of frequently changing their focus. Each person can schedule their work and protect time to focus on important tasks.

The kind of work you do often dictates the timelines you have to accomplish it. For example, an events team is highly deadline-driven. Everything has to get done by a specific date, so timelines are constrained and there is little flexibility. Other teams have the freedom to set their own deadlines and move them if needed.

It can seem like projects always take longer than we think. Generally speaking, the time required corresponds to our familiarity with the task. If you have an assignment with the same type of requirements as a project you or others on your team have done before, the approach will be clear. You roughly know what needs to get done and approximately how long it will take. You can set a constrained timeline and reasonably expect to meet it so long as nothing major goes wrong.

If you have new work, however, it can be difficult to set a timeline. You don’t know what kind of challenges you may encounter or how long it will take. It is better to have a more flexible timeline that allows you to figure things out, problem solve, and re-do work as needed. Flexible timelines are especially important if you are learning a new skill or trying a new platform or method.

There are exceptions to every rule of course. It can be valuable to set deadlines on new work. Constraints add urgency, which helps drive results and limit time spent going in an unfruitful direction. If something is new and not guaranteed to work, deadlines can create healthy checkpoints to decide whether to continue, or cut losses and try something else. Work can tend to drag on, so we need to be aware of how that displaces other projects. Time is a limited resource, so we should be strategic in how we spend it.

How much freedom does each person have to pursue their work in the way they think is best? A self-guided approach encourages people to take action on their own. They have the freedom to explore, and there is no right or wrong way to accomplish the work so long as it gets done. A directed approach steers people towards a proven method to follow for best results and may discourage experimentation.

People have different ways they prefer to work and leaders do too. Every team has to figure out their balance. A high level of empowerment can be motivating to some and discouraging to others. Some people prefer being told exactly what to do, but others will see too much direction as micro-management. The project may also dictate the approach. When a task is well-defined or has a quick deadline, there might not be room to experiment. In these cases, a self-guided approach might not be possible or useful.

Your cultural context may also dictate the approach that works best. Every culture views authority and decision-making differently. Leaders need to be aware of the cultural expectations of their team in addition to individual preferences. It should always be our desire to support people in the best way so they can do their best work. Communicate expectations and constraints so people know what is needed and how they can succeed. Remember not to leave anyone unsupported or under-resourced, even if they are working on their own.

In general, innovative work requires some level of empowerment. To do new things or do old things in new ways, people need freedom. Encourage your team to exercise creativity and independent thinking as much as possible, while guiding and supporting them towards excellence.

Evaluation

We can often be so busy working, we don’t take time to step back and evaluate how we are doing. Are we succeeding? Does the team feel motivated? Sometimes we fail to ask these questions until we receive negative feedback or are experiencing problems. But evaluation is a key rhythm to build into a healthy team culture. It is important to create regular opportunities to examine both the big picture and the smaller details.

On the Innovation Team, we reviewed our work every month using an activity called Four Helpful Lists. We made a list of what went right, what went wrong, what was missing, and what confused us about our projects. The conversation helped us identify specific things to change the following month, and taking time to talk openly as a team was a healthy practice. Sharing honestly with each other improved how we worked together and helped team members feel heard and supported.

Creating space to evaluate reinforces a learning culture. Make time to hear from your team internally as well as from those you serve externally. Make it easy for comments—both positive and negative—to reach the right people on the team. Ultimately, we are all on a learning journey. It takes humility to ask others what we could be doing better, but we should want to know and invite people to tell us the truth in love. It is impossible not to improve if we have set up pathways for evaluation and are open to hearing what people have to say.

Collaboration

We get more done working together than we could ever accomplish alone. But collaboration is something that needs definition to happen well. People don’t just accidentally collaborate—it takes planning and organization.

Partnerships are formed when we share similar priorities. You may find your mission and activities align with that of another ministry’s and want to work together to solve a problem. Or collaboration may be internal—your team working with another team on a joint project. Priorities and passions may bring us together, but partnerships need to be strengthened with actions that build trust.

One of the first things you need to do in any collaboration is set clear expectations. Define the purpose that is driving the partnership and ensure priorities are aligned. This is important not just at the start, but along the journey as well. Keep realigning and reminding each other of your shared goals to keep the collaboration on track.

Consider the other areas we have discussed in the specific context of the partnership and create rhythms that help you work together. How will you communicate? Make sure you have a shared vocabulary to help you avoid miscommunications. Information and resource sharing is also critical to effective collaboration. Define how this will happen and how your teams will continue to stay in touch and problem solve together. Take time to connect and get to know one another so you come to care about the people on both sides of the partnership. Don’t underestimate the power of relational connections to getting work done.

Execution is the area where collaboration can fall apart if there are not clear expectations. Ensure both sides know how the responsibilities are being divided. Be honest with each other about how it is going and any difficulties that are slowing the work. Transparency is the best way to build trust—plus it opens the door for each side to help the other if needed. If we hold back from our partner, they will hold back from us too. But modeling humility and integrity will multiply grace.

Finally, be sure to evaluate throughout the process. Check in with your team on how the collaboration is going and dialogue about ways it can be improved. Have the courage to bring that feedback to the partner and ask them to do the same. It can be difficult to have honest conversations when working across organizations or teams. But we can anticipate this and build evaluation into the collaboration process from the beginning. Making space for these conversations before problems occur may even prevent them from happening.

Partnerships can be a real testing ground and force us to clearly define how we will work together. But by being aware of the principles we have discussed, you are well prepared to collaborate gracefully.

A culture of innovation takes careful investment. You cannot have the fruit without putting in the effort. Without careful examination and pruning, trees grow in unintended directions. It is the same in our ministry work. We all figure out how to navigate these areas, even if we are not being intentional about them. But it is worth taking the time to consider where we are and design rhythms and rituals that will move us forward.

Building culture might feel like slow or even nonessential work compared to the urgent ministry to be done. But it is your culture that carries your ministry forward. We can work hard to accomplish our goals, but what have we gained if we burn out our people in the process? It is not good to struggle with poor communication and frustrating processes. It is even worse when people feel hopeless because they cannot have honest conversations about the problems they see. Our work suffers when we don’t have healthy organizational cultures. But when we pour energy into caring for our people, they will far exceed our expectations.

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Like trees, the fruit we produce from our ministries will only be as good as the health of our ministry. Innovators are culture-makers who help cultivate healthy ministries that can produce good fruit for God’s kingdom.

Culture making is spiritual work. Your ministry culture should be life-giving, because our mission is to bring life to the world. We must be careful to ensure that the Gospel has penetrated our lives and work so we can minister to others with integrity. The inside of our ministries should reflect the same beauty and freedom of the Gospel we preach to others. Ultimately, this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Ask God to give you insight and creativity and He will answer you. He is the master innovator who will work through you and your ministry culture to spread His message of redemption.

The Host