Green Sky Innovation

Green Sky

The Philosopher’s Perspective

UNCOVER THE UNSEEN REALITIES THAT AFFECT INNOVATION.

The Seed and the Shell

A Parable

The Philosopher's Perspective

"Juddge a man by his questions rather than his answers."

- Voltaire, French philosopher

I took a career assessment in high school to understand what potential jobs would be a good fit for my personality and aptitudes. One of the top recommendations was “philosopher.” I was mystified. Who hires philosophers? What do they do? How do they get paid? To this day, I have still never seen a job listing for “Philosopher” or “recommended experience: five years in philosophy or a related field.” Turns out, any one of us can be a philosopher wherever we are and whatever we are doing. A philosopher is someone who studies the world and asks questions in pursuit of knowledge.

The word philosophy comes from the Greek words philo (love) and sophos (wisdom). The definition is simple: someone who loves wisdom. Because of this, philosophers look at the world differently. They don’t just accept something because it has always been that way. They want to make sense of the world, find truth, and discover connections and patterns. They want to think rightly and understand how things really work underneath the surface. They want to be wise.

Sometimes philosophers are seen as lofty and maybe a little useless. But I believe having a philosopher’s perspective is really about being curious and humble. As we work to be ministry innovators, we need to be curious. We need to run after truth and be willing to ask questions even if we don’t like the answers. What worked for us yesterday might not work the same way tomorrow. We need to humbly explore the new and be willing to discard the old if it is not working well. Our innovation work should always stay faithful to the mission of our organizations, but there is a constant need to update our methods. Asking the right questions is key to this process.

When I first started on the Innovation Team at OneHope, I had a desire to solve all of the organization’s problems. I wanted to make everything I touched better. So I tackled every project I was given and even sought to understand problems I was not assigned to think about. I worked hard to improve things, and that was useful in its own way. But over the years, I’ve come to understand that one person working alone towards solutions does not change an entire organization. Many of the things I was problem-solving were results of problems I could not see.

Sometimes I was frustrated when solutions I proposed were not adopted. I often did not understand how they might affect other teams or other parts of the ministry. I didn’t realize I was operating within a system with its own design and constraints. I was one small piece of a much larger organization, and my efforts did not always touch or change the whole. Now my goal is to make the organization itself better at solving problems. I don’t want to be the only one thinking about innovation; I hope everyone becomes more innovative within their area of responsibility.

There is always more to a problem than the problem itself. Many factors shape our organizations. There is a whole structure and history behind our ministries that make them function the way they do. That history and those structures affect what we will be able to do today and into the future. Systems thinking is the discipline that helps us understand those structures. It unlocks a new set of tools for us as ministry innovators, helping us see beyond the immediate problems we face to solutions that will solve those types of problems before they happen.

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Remember the definition of philosophy: the love of wisdom. Wisdom is typically associated with the old and innovation with the new. The truth is that we need both. We need to be wise innovators who learn from the old and respond to the new. We need to throw ourselves into doing the work that is in front of us today as well as step back to consider and improve how we work. Why are we focused on these problems and solving them in these ways? How did we get here and where are we going? Seeing in both directions is difficult and can create tension in our work. But the philosopher embraces these challenges.

I want to encourage you that even as the world changes, the Gospel’s truths are timeless. We have the hope the world needs to hear, and the most important thing we can do is love God and one another with all our hearts and love the wisdom of His Word. He will provide what we need, and He will water the seeds of innovation that we plant in His perfect timing.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”

James 1:5

Unseen Problems

Questions are powerful. They spark curiosity and discovery. They are the foundation of conversations that deepen our understanding and relationships. Children ask questions constantly. I saw this one day between my friend and his six-year-old son Cason. Cason is at the age where he loves anything mechanical. That Saturday we were at a local park near an airport. Cason pointed excitedly towards the runway and said:

“Look dad! That plane is going to take off!”
“Yeah, that looks like a military plane, doesn’t it?” his dad replied.
“What’s a military plane?” Cason asked.
“A plane that has guns on it,” his dad said automatically.
“Why does it have guns on it?” Cason inquired.
“Sometimes planes need to shoot down other planes,” his dad said.
“Why would a plane need to shoot down another plane?” asked Cason.
“Like if we were at war,” said his dad patiently. “What’s war?”

I had to try hard not to laugh. The conversation that started out so innocently had devolved so quickly. How do you explain war to a six-year-old? With just a few questions, Cason had taken us from airplanes to the heart of human conflict.

“We’ll talk about it later,” his dad said helplessly in an effort to end the conversation. With any luck, Cason would forget about the unanswered question, distracted by all the other things he would want to know later.

Asking questions is an effective way to learn. Children do this naturally. They’re curious and have fewer boundaries than we do as adults. They’ll ask as many questions as we’ll answer! But as we get older, we tend to question less. There are still many things we don’t know about the world, but we lose the practice of questioning as freely as when we were children. This has been studied and documented. At thirteen years of age, we ask half the number of questions we asked at age four. By the age of eighteen, we are down to a quarter of the number. There are many reasons for this.

Educational systems tend to focus on teaching facts and formulas in preparation for taking standardized tests. Children are asked to memorize, not ask questions. Asking their teacher “Why?” or “How do you know?” can be seen as disrespectful behavior. We quickly start to self-regulate and hold back our questions. We stop asking because we don’t want to be seen as stupid or uninformed. I’m sure you can think of a time when you didn’t know something but pretended that you did. It’s easier to nod along than to admit you have no idea what someone is talking about. It takes humility to ask questions.

It also takes effort and awareness to question. We tend to accept things the way they are without examining how they came to be that way. We work within systems every day and we even create them for ourselves and others. But rarely, if ever, do we stop to evaluate the systems we are in and whether or not they are well designed to suit the problems we face. Even more rarely do we examine how those systems came about in the first place, how they have evolved and changed, or remained static despite the changes in the world around us.

Inventor Albert Einstein wisely said: “The significant problems we face cannot be solved with the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” In other words, if we are to improve the world, we first need to improve the way we think.

So how do we typically think? We ask ourselves and our teams, “What is important to do today?” In response, we make lists, we schedule meetings, and we do all the countless activities that help us move our work forward. We imagine that to make things better we need to work as fast and as hard as we can every day in our predetermined directions. This is how we naturally operate, and it is not necessarily wrong. It is just incomplete. This way of thinking helps us solve immediate problems in the short-term, but it does not point us towards the complex problems that need long-term solutions. In other words, we can be constantly putting out fires without realizing we keep handing out matches.

In order to truly solve a problem, we need to identify all the related aspects that are contributing to it. We need to examine the causes and effects at work in the systems around it. Systems thinking is a way of understanding the world as deeply interconnected and taking time to analyze the relationships, rules, and processes in play that we might otherwise not see. Systems thinking helps us see past the urgent, everyday problems to the issues that lie at the heart of our work.

This way of thinking is uniquely suited to addressing chronic, complex social problems. It is always more effective to cure the disease rather than keep treating the symptoms. This is the different level of thinking Einstein was referring to. Understanding systems can be transformational in the way we view the world and our ministry.

Let’s look at a few examples. Consider homelessness, which is one of the case studies in the book Systems Thinking for Social Change. There are many homeless people in cities all across the globe, and there are many organizations and government programs dedicated to helping homeless people. But the problem seems to persist. Homeless shelters provide a safe, warm place for people to sleep at night, and city governments help fund these shelters. However, the funds are often sent in response to the number of beds filled. This is intuitive on one level. Expenses increase along with the number of people who need shelter.

However, there is an unintended consequence to this system’s design. It rewards shelters for filling beds, rather than focusing on helping people break the cycle of homelessness. These shelters meet the urgent need for a night’s sleep, but they do not address the root causes of homelessness. The underlying issues are complex and difficult: lack of available employment; affordable education or job training; assistance for mental health issues; and more. The needs go far beyond housing. Being homeless is often the symptom of some other problem. Despite everyone’s best intentions and efforts, the cycle continues. City governments fund homeless shelters run by men and women who work tirelessly, yet people remain on the streets because the conditions creating homelessness remain untouched.

Ending homelessness requires a different kind of thinking and a different kind of work. Many of those who are involved may already be too overwhelmed by their existing work. Complex problems, such as the homeless crisis, require many organizations working together to transform the larger system.

It is the same in ministry. We can get so focused on the problem in front of us that we fail to see how other issues are impacting the situation. If we don’t understand the systems at work, it’s possible we are doing things ultimately counterproductive to our goals.

Since you will likely never experience homelessness, let’s look at an example we probably all face—traffic. As with homelessness, slow traffic is both a problem itself and a symptom of the system designed around transportation. There are too many people on the road at the same time and not enough space to move them from one place to another as fast as we would like. Traffic wouldn’t exist if so many people didn’t have cars and motorbikes. Yet being able to produce vehicles affordably enough that so many people can have one was a huge innovation.

Henry Ford was the American inventor of the first mass-produced car. The Model-T was entirely new, taking people from the most common mode of transportation—a horse—to something totally foreign—a personal driving machine. Cars don’t need to be fed and cared for in the same way as horses, and they are better suited to big cities where there is not enough space for pastures and stables. It took significant resources to engineer a way to mass-produce cars. But Ford showed that if you are willing to invest in long-term solutions, you might come up with the next big thing. It would have been far easier to start with the current solution of the day—horses—and try to improve those in the short-term. Perhaps Ford could have made more comfortable saddles, expanded ranches to breed more horses, or built bigger stables in cities. Instead he invented something that made horses no longer necessary for transportation.

Ford saw the challenge of transportation as an opportunity, and we are still benefiting from his innovation today. But now we are facing new challenges created by cars such as traffic delays, pollution, and accidents. Ford could never have anticipated the systemic problems that would arise because his solution became so popular. Traffic became a problem as a result of cars being a solution. The problems we faced yesterday will not be the problems we will face tomorrow. Systems that worked in the past will not work in the same way in the future.

The philosopher’s perspective teaches us to ask the right questions. We must question the systems we are a part of. Don’t assume it is someone else’s job to ask these questions. As ministry innovators, it is our responsibility to understand the world around us and how our solutions fit into that world. The systems we work within or design for others may turn out to be deeply flawed or have unintended consequences. We should be willing to change those systems if needed. We need to look past the immediate problems and do the harder work of discerning how those problems arose in the first place. Fixing root causes is more difficult than treating symptoms, but ultimately it is much more effective.

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Managing short-term priorities and long-term goals creates tension for most ministries. There are many pressures to perform and show results. There is work to do and goals to meet. But if we only think about getting today’s work done, we may miss out on accomplishing our mission in the long-term. This is why systems thinking is so important. Remember, systems thinking helps us address long-term, complex, social problems. That is the work of every ministry everywhere. We’re addressing complex situations involving people faced with the chronic problem of sin. The ultimate answer lies in the Gospel and what Christ has accomplished for us on the cross. God’s system for redemption is the greatest truth we can ever communicate, and we need to ensure we are communicating it in the best possible way.

So next time you don’t understand something, be willing to ask a question. How did we come to this decision? Why are we doing this? What are the consequences if we’re wrong? Practice being a philosopher and you might be surprised by how much you will discover to help you innovate.

The Systems we Inhabit

I remember my mom giving me advice about how to succeed in school when I was young. She told me to give my teachers the answers they wanted to hear, rather than what I thought was the right answer. She was essentially telling me I had to play along with the system. This turned out to be good advice that helped me navigate many years in school systems. Systems thinking might be a new concept to you, but systems themselves certainly are not. We operate within them every day and have since we were children.

Systems tend to fade into the background of our lives. We often don’t stop to examine them closely unless there is a problem that makes them visible, like an economic system collapsing, or a revolution overthrowing a government. But it is a good idea to understand the systems we live and work within because they directly impact what we are able to do. Some businesses and ministries lead incredible innovation while others struggle to even implement small changes. What makes the difference? Many aspects contribute to innovation’s success or failure. One element we often overlook is the system we are in. Every new idea enters an existing system with factors that either help it thrive, or slow and even kill its growth.

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I am not a mechanic, but for some reason every time I have a problem with my car, I open the hood and look at the engine as if I might be able to figure out what’s wrong. My wife then tells me just to take the car to the repair shop because I am a ministry innovator, not a mechanic. Engines are a great metaphor for our organizations. Like with engines, ministries are intricate and complex. We have many interconnected people, projects, and activities that must all work together smoothly. A slowdown or breakdown in one area may significantly affect the rest of the machine.

Engines are built with a specific purpose. Car engines provide torque to turn the wheels, keeping the vehicle moving forward. To lift the car in the air would require a different kind of engine. “Systems are perfectly designed to achieve the results they are currently achieving,” writes David Peter Stroh, author of Systems Thinking for Social Change . If you are unhappy with the results you are achieving as a ministry, it’s time to look under the hood and see what the problem might be. You need to carefully examine your system and how the people, projects, and activities in it all fit together. We are going to examine four elements of your organizational system to consider and adjust if needed.

Size: Can you fit everyone at the table?

Think back to the early days of your ministry. How many people were on your team? Was it just you and a few others? Maybe it was just you for a long time until God brought someone else to share your vision. Any organization or business typically starts small. No real structure is possible when there are not enough people to form teams, departments, etc. The founder and their team do everything.

I experienced this when I helped plant a church one summer during college. I was one of two interns and, together with the head pastor, we were the construction crew, A/V team, social media specialists, web developers, greeters, kitchen staff, janitors, and every other position. As we prepared for opening weekend, the pastor’s wife scrubbed the bathrooms and restocked the toilet paper. No one was too important for even the smallest of tasks. We all worked hard to get the job done. In a startup environment like this roles are more general, rather than highly specialized. Everyone is involved in everything.

Being small can have advantages. For example, when I started teaching an online course on innovation, I personally led every cohort for the first two years. I was the content designer, teacher, web developer, and champion. Any problems that came up, I heard about directly and fixed quickly. If the course had been run by a larger team, this reality would have looked very different. We would have needed time meeting to discuss the problem, the right people with the appropriate skills to help, and approvals to spend time and money to make changes. The larger the team, the more friction—things that slow our ability to take action.

With fewer people, you can move faster. Decisions can be made and acted on quickly. Communication is easier because everyone knows everyone. In a small team, like my team of one, everyone is usually highly engaged because they are close to the work, directly interacting with the audience. Innovation tends to thrive in these sorts of environments because there are few constraints. If you want to try a new idea, no one is standing in your way. If there is a problem, you can fix it in whatever way you choose. This energy and momentum are part of what make startups exciting. There is freedom to experiment.

However, being small also has disadvantages. You don’t have many people to share the work, so capacity is limited. You might lack time or funding to carry out your vision. Startups are uncertain. You don’t have a guarantee your ministry will be around tomorrow. Established organizations offer real benefits. They have money, people, and processes to carry out the work. They have a history of success, along with the connections and reputation that come with success. They have economies of scale, where things become less expensive as they grow.

Large organizations can do more, but they also move slower. They are not able to adapt to change as quickly as a smaller team. Because large organizations have more departments, regional divisions, team leaders, etc., decision-making is complex and takes more time. Rather than everyone being on the front lines, some are further from direct ministry work. It is similar to a restaurant where the cook in the back doesn’t get to see the smile on the customer’s face when they eat. As a result of distance like this, people may have difficulty seeing the significance of their personal contributions.

This is not to say large organizations are bad and small ones are good. They are just very different. It is important to be aware of your ministry’s size and the impact that has on your culture and work. There is a shift within an organization as soon as your team gets so large that you can no longer fit around one table. Sitting at one table means everyone is involved in the same conversation. You can talk, share opinions, and figure out what needs to happen together as one group. Everyone at the table is empowered to go out and do the work because there is no one else to do it.

When you can no longer fit your team at one table, the dynamics of your system change. There are now insiders and outsiders—those who are at the table (decision-makers) and those who carry out the work once decisions have been made. More meetings are needed because information has to be repeated and relayed throughout the team. It can take a while to get everyone headed in the same direction. But once you do, you benefit from the tremendous weight of the organization. It is difficult to stop a heavy object once it gets moving. The momentum becomes nearly unstoppable as large organizations direct their resources and people to accomplish their goals.

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Growth in an organization typically happens slowly over time, so we don’t always notice its effects right away. But if you really look and listen, you can see and hear the changes that have occurred. Business consultants James Allen and Chris Zook studied the way businesses start and grow, along with what is gained and lost on the way. Their book, The Founder’s Mentality, calls small organizations “insurgent” because they have high ownership and engagement. The founder of the organization is usually directly involved in the work and leading the team personally. In contrast, the book calls large organizations “incumbent”—a term usually referring to an established leader. Incumbent organizations have grown to the point where people must work through complex processes, rules, and bureaucracy. While those things slow them down, they also allow the organization to specialize and be efficient at what they do. Your organization is probably incumbent if it feels like a victory simply to get alignment about what needs to be done.

Both insurgent and incumbent organizations have strengths and weaknesses. But there is a trend that happens as organizations grow: they tend to lose a way of thinking they had in the beginning. A founder’s mentality carries with it the original inspiration and passion from the organization’s start. It drives the creativity and initiative of being close to the work. The good news is that organizations can learn to reclaim their founder’s mentality through intentional system design and culture building. Organizations that can maintain this mindset while still achieving benefits of scale are set up well for success.

Pace:How fast do you want to go?

Growth sometimes happens slowly and silently. Other times, it is something you deliberately pursue. Pace is another variable to consider within your system. Pace does not mean how fast everyone works, but rather it describes the kind of growth you seek. How quickly do you want your organization to expand?

You might hear the word “scale” being used to describe ministry: “We want to scale that program,” or, “Our church has really scaled up our children’s ministry.” People tend to use the word scale in the same way they use the word grow. But it is important to define these terms separately and use them thoughtfully because they are not the same.

Let’s look at the example of a bakery to illustrate how the growth and scale are different. You might open a bakery because you love baking. You want to try new recipes and share them with the world. The bakery makes enough money to support you and the small team that helps run the business. You focus on doing a good job and things continue to grow naturally. Growth is the more general term that describes organically and gradually improving the reach of your organization. It is usually the natural result of ethical people working hard. You can expect a well-run business, church, or ministry to grow as it serves people well.

On the other hand, scale would be aiming to create the next Starbucks, but for bread. Your goal is to be the number one bread provider in every city globally. You need to optimize your bakeries, secure supply lines, train large teams, and ensure quality control. Scale is a specific kind of growth where the primary goal is to reach the maximum number of people as quickly as possible.

As ministries, it is obvious why we would want to scale: we desire to reach as many people with the Gospel as we can! Scale is a pace you can adopt that is aggressive and strategic. But scaling also has tradeoffs. It requires different ways of thinking. “There is only one valid strategy for a startup: stop being one,” writes author Les McKeown in his book Do/Scale. In other words, A startup’s goal is to stop being a startup as quickly as possible. Being small and nimble is great, but startups are usually dependent on outside resources and haven’t found a profitable business model yet. They have promising ideas but are still unproven and can go out of business very quickly. We tend to glorify startups because of companies like Google and Facebook with humble origin stories of starting in someone’s garage. But in reality, 90 percent of startups fail.

Businesses aiming to scale often look for a new CEO to replace their original founder. The person who started the business is usually not the right kind of person to pursue scale. Founders tend to be creative, big-picture visionaries who love new endeavors and are willing to take big risks. In contrast, CEOs who scale businesses are the kinds of leaders who create great structures and processes. They are excellent at finding and fixing inefficiencies to produce faster, better results. Founders will quickly become bored at an organization that is pursuing scale, while scaling leaders will struggle in a business that is always changing directions and trying new things.

Pace both affects leadership and places constraints on innovation. A growth-minded organization is typically strong in the area of creativity. It harnesses new ideas and ways of doing things as it seeks new people to reach. Innovation in this context is usually called “blue sky” because it describes brainstorming with no limitations. Blue sky innovation focuses on possibilities rather than constraints. Teams might try new products or strategies simply to find out if they work. The organization might experiment without a clear goal or return on investment before finding a successful idea. This is often the kind of work we associate with innovation. We picture boundless creativity and inventing things the world has not yet seen. However, that is not the only type of innovation.

Scaling organizations also embrace innovation, but for a different purpose. Innovation at these organizations is focused on solving the problems that slow down work. This is sometimes called “process innovation.” Scaling organizations look for solutions that make them more efficient. Anything that helps them go faster or save time and money is welcomed. “Blue sky” innovation—ideas without a clear purpose—don’t tend to thrive in this environment. Instead, this kind of thinking is seen as a distraction. To scale successfully, organizations must maintain a single-minded focus on reaching their goals and avoid straying off the path they have set. Innovation in this environment must be action-oriented and produce visible results.

Considering your system’s pace clarifies what innovation can and cannot do for your ministry. We often want to have it all. We want to try creative new things and we want to scale them to reach millions of people. We want the energy and freedom of a startup, but we also want the people and resources of a larger organization. These goals pull us in different directions and can bring real tension to our work. It is difficult to do both because they are fundamentally different.

As a ministry innovator you may find you are more comfortable in one environment over the other. If you find yourself feeling frustrated in your work, consider your organization’s pace and how that affects your ability to innovate. It is possible that your organization might not have clarity and unity about its pace. This can result in growing pains and frustration as teams pursue different strategies for accomplishing their goals. Pace is a helpful term to introduce to organizational conversations. Size and pace are critical aspects of our system’s design that we can be aware of and change. They are conscious choices for our ministries that both open opportunities and place limitations on what we can do.

Span of Control: Do you want to be flat or tall?

When I first started working at OneHope, I had much to learn. One thing people kept telling me was that we were a “flat” organization. For a long time I had no idea what that meant. “Flatness” is an aspect of an organization’s design. It is a way of describing span of control—another term I had to learn. Now I know it refers to how many levels are between me and the president of our ministry. Because we are flat, there are only a few people in the hierarchy between the president and anyone in our ministry. We call this being flat, but others refer to it as being wide. In contrast, an organization with lots of hierarchy might be called “tall.” Tall organizations have lots of middle managers. Everyone has a boss, and that boss has a boss, who has a boss, and there are many steps between the top and the bottom. Both are valid ways of structuring your ministry, they are just very different and offer different benefits and drawbacks.

To see how flat or tall your organization is, think about the average number of team members who report to the same leader. Wide organizations have a lot of workers who report to just a few leaders. Tall organizations have more leaders and managers with fewer direct reports for each. Your organization’s span of control is another aspect you can fine-tune about your system. It impacts many things including communication, team member engagement, efficiency, and of course, innovation.

In a flat organization, ideas and requests can reach the top quickly. Communication is more direct, rather than being passed through many messengers. Because more people are equals, they tend to feel more comfortable talking to one another and seeking help or ideas. This has a significant effect on encouraging creative innovation. Anyone can have an idea and rally people around it. Team members have the freedom to try things more quickly without needing to go through a lengthy approval process. Innovations can hatch informally and be nurtured to see if there is value before taking them further. People are closer to the work and to the audiences they are trying to serve, which can help them take a high level of ownership over their tasks.

A flat organization in essence is like a sports team. Imagine your favorite sports team coming together on the field. The coach is the leader of the team, and there might be a team captain, but all of the players on the field are equal with one another. Some may have been on the team longer, but for the most part, everyone is on the same level. The team works together to score points, nobody pauses to ask what to do because everyone knows the rules and is empowered to take action when they get the ball.

It might seem like wide organizations have everything going for them. But the truth is that it can become increasingly complex and confusing to be flat as your organization grows. Structure is beneficial for organizing large numbers of people and their work. Tall organizations have a high level of control, particularly when it comes to decision making. People are empowered to make decisions over their area of responsibility at each level of management. This helps clarify communication and avoids contradicting messages. There is a clear path up and down the hierarchy, not only for information but for people. Many people find they thrive working within clearly defined boundaries. In addition, tall organizations offer the possibility for promotion, increased leadership, and responsibility. This can be a very motivating incentive for people and help them want to stay and grow within your organization over many years.

Tall organizations are more like a factory than a sports team—people are specialized and do specific tasks efficiently. Imagine an assembly line that puts together cars. There are teams of designers and engineers who design the vehicles, fabricators who produce specialized parts, welders who join large components, and mechanics who assemble the engine. The focus on efficiency and specialization allows the factory to produce hundreds of vehicles a day. An unstructured sports team would find this task impossible.

New ideas move differently through a flat sports team versus a tall factory. If a welder wanted to make a design change to the car, it would probably be a long process to get the engineers and designers to consider his suggestion. But if it were approved, the change could be incorporated into thousands of cars to improve each one. In a sports team, when someone has an idea for a creative play, they just mention it to their teammates and try it the next time they have an opportunity. But too much freedom can easily lead to confusion and miscommunication on the field.

Span of control is an aspect of system design with powerful effects. Consider the right fit for the mission and culture of your organization. Fine-tune the balance to give people the right blend of autonomy, empowerment, and incentives.

Structure: Are you the right shape for your goals?

It is possible you have never really thought about your organization’s structure, but it has significant effects on the work you are able to do. Remember our example about engines. Engines come in many different configurations. They are designed differently depending on whether they are powering a rocket ship or a scooter and everything in between. It is the same way with our ministries. You have some kind of organizing structure for your people and projects and your method may look very different from another ministry’s.

Organizational structure is often something we take for granted because it’s just there in the background. We don’t think about how it came to be or how it may need to change. I didn’t consider it at all until OneHope went through a significant restructure two years after I started working there. Our leadership team thoughtfully redesigned the way work would flow through our teams and shuffled people and leaders into new positions that were a better fit. This was necessary because of how our ministry and work had grown over the years. We needed different structures to move us forward in new ways to tackle new problems.

An easy way to figure out your structure is to pull out your ministry’s organizational chart. Or if you don’t have one—make one! That simple diagram will help you see how people and processes are organized. It is the blueprint of your engine that reveals how you are spending your collective time and energy to reach your goals. If your system isn’t achieving the results you want, it might be time to change your structure.

In many practical ways, organizations simply become less innovative as they grow. There is less space for creativity in larger, taller organizations pursuing scale. When something is working well, it makes the organization successful—which makes an organization focus on that thing even more. This creates a reinforcing loop that can deprioritize innovation. Why look for something new when you have something winning? However, it is possible to reclaim some of that creative space and recover the founder’s mentality of startups even within large ministries.

The book Reinventing the Organization takes a detailed look at some of the world’s most innovative companies such as Google, Amazon, and Tencent. Authors Arthur Yeung and Dave Ulrich found that these businesses have similar underlying structures that preserve many of the critical strengths of startups, even though the companies themselves are now quite large. The organizations they analyzed are intentional about their system design. They pursue a structure that leverages the strengths of being small and minimizes the weaknesses of large organizations. The book calls this new approach a market-oriented ecosystem.

In a market-oriented ecosystem, teams form who resemble independent organizations. Project leaders function more like founders. The organization provides administrative support in the form of human resources, finances, etc., but the teams themselves are free to experiment and collaborate. If projects end up failing, people are reassigned to other teams, allowing them to learn from the failure and try again.

Reinventing the Organization describes how Amazon at one point adopted a system of self-management called Holacracy—a radical structure without constraints. Employees were free to choose the work they thought most important to the company. They could be part of multiple departments and projects simultaneously. People moved around frequently depending on project needs and their own personal interests. There was an internal hiring board where teams posted their own job listings to internally recruit more people to join them.

I found this example inspiring because it shows the possibility of nurturing innovation while avoiding the non-innovative tendencies of larger organizations. Thoughtful system design can accomplish this. However, there is no one best structure. Every organization is unique and should be structured in the way that best suits its mission and culture. Structures evolve in response to growth and opportunities. Just know that over time they can become reactionary and outdated. They may no longer match current needs and future demands. We can and should design our structure as carefully as we design anything else in our ministry and be open to changing it if it is no longer serving us well.

But I'm not the CEO...

At this point, you might be thinking, “This all sounds really great, but I’m not the one in charge. I can’t really make decisions to change our organization’s system. So why are we talking about this?” The work of thinking about your system and improving it is not just for the leader of your ministry. Systems affect all of us and the work we are able to do. Quite simply, we are all in it together. Everyone in your ministry is bound by the system and structure of your organization. Everyone needs to understand its opportunities and limitations. We as ministry innovators especially need to be aware of the system and navigate it well as we propose changes. We need to understand the causes and effects that will be triggered.

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Systems thinking is transformational because it helps you see factors that impact innovation and yet were previously invisible. It has often been a mystery to me why obviously great ideas would fail to catch the attention of others and be advanced. I imagined that by climbing higher in authority and responsibility, I would be able to more easily make changes and champion good ideas. However, I have come to realize that even leaders at the highest levels cannot snap their fingers and make everything more innovative overnight. Everyone has someone they report to. Even my ministry president is accountable to the board of directors, and the board is in turn accountable to our ministry partners who fund the work. Every individual, team, and department is responsible for something and accountable to someone for those results.

Picture a chain of interconnected links. The chain bears the weight of your ministry’s mission, and it is strong enough to carry that load. However, it is difficult to rearrange individual links without disrupting the whole. This is why our structures sometimes resist innovation. Change threatens the stability of the chain. Even though it is possible to find a stronger configuration, it takes time and the results are uncertain. A chain is extremely strong but inflexible.

Remember, innovation enters into existing structures. We are not like artists who start with a blank canvas. We already have a picture we are adding to. For some of us, there are many years of history behind the ministry structures we have, and those will not change quickly. Our engines are already built, and there isn’t time to stop the work we’re doing to reconfigure and rebuild. What a gift it would be to pause everything our teams are doing for a short season to have time and energy to look at the big picture together. How might we operate differently if we had the chance to start over knowing what we know today?

Of course, stopping everything is impractical. I suggested it once in a meeting with some of our leaders and was literally laughed at. I knew they were right, but I was still saddened. Tinkering with our systems is like trying to rebuild our engine while still driving the car—sometimes at high speeds. It is not an ideal situation. But you can make some adjustments as you go. In addition, you can ask good questions that help others understand the system too and think about what changes might strengthen their areas of responsibility.

Authority is not what primarily shapes our systems. We shape it by asking good questions and looking below the surface to the causes and effects at work around us. We shape the systems we work within by understanding the goals we are working towards and how our activities are advancing or distancing us from those goals. We all have a responsibility to be thoughtful about the system we are in and open to change things when they are not working.

The Systems We Create

It’s late and I’m sitting in the dark in my bed, but my face is lit by the glow of my cell phone screen. I’m watching YouTube and my wife is asleep, so I keep the volume muted. Thanks to captioning, I can still easily watch hours of soundless video content. I just have to be careful not to laugh out loud at the funny ones. I’m amazed by how my YouTube feed is customized to reflect my interests and preferences. It knows which videos I linger on and which I scroll quickly past. The content mix is always updating, and it is seamless to go from video to video. I could spend a lifetime and never see all that is available on the platform. This is just one of the systems I interact with daily that in turn shapes me as well.

Before YouTube was available, I didn’t have any way to watch funny videos when I was bored or get step-by-step visual instructions on how to do something I had never done before. YouTube offers access to a global community of content creators, experts, scammers, and entertainers alike. I have even uploaded videos to the platform, feeding my own ideas and thoughts into this vast machine.

We interact with systems every day, especially through the digital technologies that have become so central to our lives. Our phones and computers can connect us to almost any piece of information and give us countless options for how to spend our time. Our seemingly endless appetite for content and digital experiences has created huge industries aimed at putting things in our hands for us to use and enjoy. The Internet, and everything it makes possible, has profoundly shaped the world in just the few decades since it was introduced.

In many ways, digital technologies have shaped and forever changed us as individuals and as societies. Yet behind every app, website, video game, or virtual reality experience are just people creating things. Coders, software engineers, tech company CEO’s, and most importantly, designers. Everything that is created has some kind of design. That design might be well thought-out, resulting in an excellent product, or it might be hasty, resulting in a poor experience. You can see this reflected in the countless number of new apps that fail to become popular and the handful that rise to the top.

The fields of UI and UX design are specific to technology development, but it can be helpful for anyone to understand them at a basic level. UI stands for User Interface and focuses on how easy an app or website is to use. Are users able to find their way around? Do they know the purpose of the app and how to get the intended benefits from it? The Google Maps app on my phone apparently has a camera feature that can identify the buildings around me and help me navigate by foot if I get lost in an unfamiliar place. It sounds like a helpful feature, but I’ve never actually used it. I don’t even know where to go in the app to find it. That’s an issue of user interface design. UI designers are focused on overcoming that kind of problem to create seamless experiences for users.

UX stands for User Experience. This field of design focuses on what it feels like to use an app or website. What makes it enjoyable for someone? This often involves good graphic design, but it also takes other things into account. I was at a conference where the lead UX Designer for the online shoe company Zappos talked about their shopping app. The process of shopping for shoes can be boring, and lots of apps and websites look the same. His team wanted to create a memorable and unique experience. They tried to think of what people enjoy. They came up with cats! “The Internet loves cats,” he said. There are countless cat videos and cat memes. Cats can become Internet celebrities with huge social media followings. The Zappos team decided to fill their app with cats. When a user added something to their cart, it rained down celebrating cats. When they started to input their credit card information, a cat popped up to scan the card with laser eyes. Most buttons in the app were designed to make some sort of cat noise.

The Zappos app is no longer filled with cats, but this version helped me see UX in a new light. Cats have nothing to do with shoes, but they created an experience. They made the app fun, comical, and surprising. They helped achieve the goal of making users smile, leaving them with positive memories of shopping there. Hopefully, people will remember the app’s fun cats and want to come back to buy more shoes. UI and UX design are extremely important because they are the key to creating excellent digital products and experiences. If something is easy and enjoyable to use, you are more likely to return to it and recommend it to others. When something is not intuitive or beautiful, you will probably quickly uninstall it.

Apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube have excellent UI and UX and are used daily by millions of people. These are hugely influential platforms. But some of the big tech companies behind these apps have been criticized for the design choices they have made. They are so good at making people come back to their content that they can create addictive tendencies. For example, most apps use a feature called “bottomless scrolling” where there is no limit to how far you can scroll. Content keeps being shown even if you keep scrolling for hours. YouTube has an algorithm that suggests videos for you to watch next and even queues and plays those videos automatically, keeping users engaged long past when they might have otherwise stopped. Instagram’s design encourages people to get as many likes on their photos as possible. So users put a lot of effort into getting the perfect picture, pairing it with the right filter, and using as many hashtags as possible to get it in front of people.

Many people obsess over their social media feeds and the life they are portraying to the world through their careful choices of content and images. It’s not just social media that has become addictive, it’s our devices themselves. Research has shown that people swipe, tap, and click on their phones between 2,500 and 5,400 times a day and that hearing the notification sounds our phones make causes our body to release dopamine—the pleasure chemical—like some drugs do. These systems that other people have designed for us are having real, physical consequences in our daily lives.

We cannot always predict the cause-and-effect relationships of the things we create. We cannot always account for human behavior and what will be beneficial or problematic. It seems innocent enough to include a “like” button so people can acknowledge each other’s pictures. But it can become harmful when we get caught up in comparing how many likes we get versus someone else and then feeling depressed when we are not as popular. I know some people quickly delete photos that don’t get enough likes right away because under-performing content doesn’t look good on their feed.

Sometimes the tools we use end up using us, even though this was not the intention. Social media apps and the companies who create them are profit-focused, and this motivation can lead them to make design decisions that ultimately end up having negative effects. They will do whatever they can to maximize their profits by increasing the number of users and the time people spend on their apps—they think of it as just good business.

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One of the great things about digital technologies is that they can be changed. In response to the critiques of their platform, Instagram tested an option to hide “likes” on photos. I immediately enabled this feature as soon as it was available. I appreciate that it helps me focus on the content and not become distracted by likes that can turn browsing into a popularity contest. Instagram also inserted a “stopping cue” so that once I had scrolled through my entire feed, it said, “You’re all caught up for today!” That was a signal to close the app and move on to other things rather than keep endlessly scrolling through content. Design changes like this can be simple solutions with impactful long-term effects. Only time will tell if they succeed in helping people have healthier social media habits, but they are positive indicators that some tech companies are listening and adjusting for the good of their users.

As ministry innovators, it’s important that we assess the systems we design and their effects on people. We have a responsibility to create systems that shape people for Gospel purposes. Kingdom-focused motivations should guide our decisions and lead to positive results in the lives of our audience. In anything we create, we are giving someone an experience and driving them towards action. Our ultimate goal is to point them towards the greatest action of accepting Christ into their lives. I am not saying what we make has to be boring and plain. Quite the opposite! We should use the tools of UI and UX well and learn from the very best apps and websites. We should do anything and everything we can to create excellent digital products because we have a greater goal than selling shoes or helping people share photos. We have the Gospel to share—an eternal purpose that changes everything.

Introduction to Gamification

One of the fields I have found really helpful in informing the design of digital experiences is gamification. This is often thought of as simply the use of games. But gamification is really the study of human motivation. What causes people to take action? It has the word gameat the beginning because games are something we do voluntarily. We don’t have to be paid to play. We do it because it’s fun. I love games of all kinds: board games, video games, phone games, games I have made up. I can get lost in them for hours working really hard to achieve the goal set out for me. What makes games inherently fun? There are mechanics at work within them that cause us to want to participate. Gamification is a part of many of the systems you use every day. The principles behind how games work and how they motivate us can be studied and leveraged in our own projects.

A friend of mine and fellow believer, Yu-Kai Chou, is a pioneer in this field. His book Actionable Gamification presents the framework he created, called Octalysis, which helps people understand and apply gamification principles. When I read the book, I was filled with new ideas for how to design ministry products. I was also able to see why innovations I had worked on in the past had fallen short or were even problematic because of their design choices. I want to introduce you to the eight core drivers of human motivation that the Octalysis framework describes, and then we will look at how these apply to ministry work and products.

1. Epic Meaning: Meaning is powerful. A sense of epic meaning is created in situations where people believe they are doing something bigger than themselves. People want to leave a legacy and be remembered. An example of meaning used well is the website Wikipedia. It is the world’s largest encyclopedia, and it is created and maintained by ordinary people all over the world. Millions of people have contributed information to this website, and there are over 1,000 administrators who check every edit to ensure accuracy. None of these people get paid. Everyone volunteers their time and effort to build this repository. There are many reasons they do this, but the biggest one is that they feel a strong sense of meaning in helping contribute to this cause and protect knowledge for the world. Wikipedia has done an excellent job of using epic meaning to motivate people to action.

2. Accomplishment: We need both goals to aim for and challenges to overcome on the way. It’s not fun to be too good at something. If a game is easy to win, you’re not likely to keep coming back to play it. You need a sense of accomplishment to keep moving forward. The tasks you complete and the trials you overcome are success markers on your journey. Success isn’t possible without the chance for failure. The more challenging the task, the more meaningful and significant victory is. Milestone moments become vivid memories. Graduations are a tradition for celebrating academic accomplishment when completing high school or university. Promotions at work, completing a difficult project, or helping someone accept Christ—these are accomplishments that are motivating to achieve and drive us to action.

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3. Empowerment: Making opportunities to do something in your own way is a powerful motivator. Experiences with infinite possibilities create spaces to flourish and represent our individuality. People are creative, so games that give you opportunities to exercise creativity are fun. Just think about children. They love playing with the simplest things like a big cardboard box, playing in the dirt, painting, or drawing. These things are inherently rewarding because there is no right or wrong way to play with them. You can do anything as long as you have imagination. Digital experiences that do this well are games like Minecraft, which is popular because it’s a “sandbox” environment where people can explore, build, and share their creations. Anything where people can play and experiment freely will create motivation. Empowerment helps people come alive and want to participate to create their own unique journey.

4. Ownership: Collecting activates the core drive of ownership. People feel attached to things that belong to them and naturally want to gather more. The harder you have to work to obtain an item, the more valuable it will probably be to you. Many people have a goal of owning their own home, and this motivates them to save money and look for the perfect house to buy. Once you have a house, you may spend even more time and money making it look just the way you want. When my wife and I got married, I knew she had a habit of collecting things. If she had two of any similar items, it was the start of a collection. For years, I refused to put up any shelves in our house because I knew she would fill those shelves with knick-knacks. But I’ve also realized that I have a tendency to collect things too. People are often motivated to collect items in a category that matters to them, like stamps, seashells, or marbles. Similarly, we tend to like to complete sets of things. Ownership is a powerful motivator that causes us to take action.

White Hat vs. Black Hat: In his book, Yu-Kai uses these two terms: white hat and black hat. These are categories that describe how something motivates you. White hat motivators have intrinsic appeal. They are more internally-focused and positive motivators. They play to the four you’ve read about so far—epic meaning, accomplishment, empowerment, and ownership. These are all white hat motivators. White is a color that represents purity. You want to take the action for its own sake.

In contrast, black hat motivators tend to be extrinsic—they come from outside yourself. They may add urgency to a situation to motivate you to take action. There may be consequences for not acting or not taking the right action. Black hat motivators are extremely effective at getting us to act. But they should not be used alone. Extrinsic motivators can create obsessive behavior and ultimately an experience that is empty or meaningless. They drive you towards action but may leave you without that essential sense of purpose or accomplishment.

White hat motivators are not naturally good, just as black hat motivators are not naturally evil. They are just different from each other in the way they activate us to take action and are suited to different situations. Let’s learn about the black hat motivators and then we will discuss why both are valuable and needed in our ministry work.

5. Social Influence: Human beings are naturally social creatures. We want to know what others are doing and how our actions fit or don’t fit in with the crowd. This is largely why social media has become so wildly successful. Humans have always been curious about each other’s lives, and these digital platforms give us access to each other and as much of our daily experiences as we want to share. These platforms have also enabled people to become influencers—users whose choices and tastes others want to imitate. Social connections, whether in-person or online, motivate us to take action.

However, social influence can also be used in black hat ways. For example, social media challenges drive people to take action simply because everyone is doing it and we long to be connected. Sometimes those actions are foolish or even dangerous, but people do them because they don’t want to be left out. Social influence may also be black hat if people feel they cannot leave a group because of social pressure. They may feel they must stay to preserve status or relationships. As with any of the core drivers, the application of the motivator to the situation makes the difference in whether it is beneficial or potentially harmful.

My wife was invited by a few friends to participate in a women’s Bible study. She agreed with no idea what the commitment level would be. When she went to the first meeting, she was shocked to find the study was not going to last a few weeks but was actually nine months long. She was intimidated, but returned the next week because her friends were also attending. The friends dropped out of the study after a few months, but three years later my wife is not only still attending but now leading one of the groups. The social connections she made with her group leader and new friends at the Bible study kept her going back and even moving up in responsibility and influence. Mentorship, leadership, and acceptance into a group are meaningful to us. Social influence can be a powerful positive motivator.

6. Scarcity: Scarce means to be in short supply. People often want things just because they are rare or prestigious. Think about the Olympics and how hard athletes work to compete for the gold medal. The medal itself isn’t that valuable (it’s not even solid gold!), but what it represents is nearly priceless. There is only one first place, and it can only be achieved once every four years. Restaurants use scarcity when they have special menu items you can only get for a limited time. Collectible cards come at differing levels of rarity, and the ones that have the fewest copies can be sold for a high price. The same is true of almost any item. People value things that are hard to get because it’s human nature to want to distinguish yourself from others. Some social media networks operate on an invitation-only basis, which only seems to make them more popular. Holidays are also an example of scarcity. People who never go to church show up a couple days out of the year—Christmas and Easter—because it is that one special opportunity. If they miss it, they will not get another chance for a year. Scarcity drives us to action.

7. Unpredictability: One day I was late and stuck in heavy traffic. Cars were stopped and we only moved forward in inches. It took a long time to get up to the source of the problem. I was surprised to find that the car accident wasn’t even on my side of the freeway. It had happened on the other side, but drivers all around had slowed down to look at what had happened. Natural human curiosity is a powerful motivator. When we don’t know what’s going to happen, our brain engages to try to predict and figure it out. Our brains love puzzles and surprises. It’s stimulating on a biological level.

Yu-Kai shares an example in his book about a researcher studying rats. The researcher set up a lever that released a pellet of food every time the rat pulled on it. The rat quickly learned that the lever dispensed snacks. But it wasn’t long until the rat got bored because pulling the lever always resulted in the same snack. From then on, he only activated the lever when he wanted food to eat. So the researcher changed the conditions of the experiment. The lever was set up to dispense a variety of snacks and sometimes wouldn’t give the rat anything at all. After that change, the rat would sit in front of the lever constantly and obsessively pull it just to see what would come out next. The researcher discovered that the element of unpredictability was highly motivating.

It’s easy to see parallels to human behavior. Just think about gambling. People sit in front of slot machines and pull levers to try to get matching pictures, not knowing what will happen with every spin. Sometimes they spend hours and lots of money doing this. This is a sad example of how unpredictability has been used to encourage addictive behaviors. But remember, black hat motivators are not bad in and of themselves. It is only in their application that they can become problematic.

8. Avoidance: Avoiding pain or loss is a powerful motivator. I relate to this one because I am a peacekeeper by nature. I avoid conflict at all costs. I will say whatever I think my wife wants to hear if it will get me out of an argument. We avoid what we dislike and work hard to protect what we have. You see this in games or sports when people play defensively. In chess, for example, you might play carefully to avoid losing pieces but fail to attack aggressively enough to win the game. In soccer (football), playing defensively helps you keep the other team from scoring points on your goal, but it doesn’t advance you towards their goal. People don’t like to risk losing what they have and will take action to avoid that outcome. We see this at work in advertising as well. A store or website might offer an opportunity to save money if you buy now! You want to avoid losing your chance at the better price and the deal is quickly running out of time. Only one item left and the clock is counting down! Avoiding the loss of that deal motivates buyers to go ahead and make the purchase decision.

Applying Gamification to Ministry

When I teach gamification to people in ministry, there is always at least one person who has a real problem with these concepts. “Isn’t this manipulative?” they ask. “As Christians, there’s no way we should use gamification to force people to take action.” I’m always glad for the person who is brave enough to raise this challenge because it’s a good question. Is gamification manipulative? Would God want us to use these principles in our ministry programs and products? You might ask, “Why should we do this?” In response I would ask, “Why not?” The eight core human drivers is not something Yu-Kai created, it is something he discovered about human nature. God created us with these aspects of motivation. Why wouldn’t we use this knowledge to make outreach and evangelism as effective as possible?

Gamification is not the ultimate solution. It is simply another tool we can use to innovate ministry. The world is already using this knowledge to sell their products and apps and motivate people to take action. As Christians, we should not overlook any tool that might be helpful to advance the Gospel and fulfill the Great Commission.

The Church is uniquely positioned to offer eternal value in response to the eight core drivers. We have the ultimate meaning to offer humanity in the epic story of Christ’s redemption of sinful humanity. The Bible says that the accomplishment of leading someone to Christ causes the angels in heaven to rejoice (Luke 15:10). God empowers us to take His Gospel to the ends of the earth. The call is clear, but He does not tell us exactly how to do this and leaves room for infinite creativity. We are called to ownership, not of rare things in this life, but to take actions that will store up for us treasure in heaven. Churches are full of opportunities for leveraging social influence in how we build relationships with one another and welcome others. The scarcity of hope in the world makes the Gospel truly Good News. Everyone can enter God’s kingdom if they have faith. What an incredible message! God’s plan to send His Son to earth to die for our sins was unbelievably unpredictable. We do nothing to accomplish salvation. We are instead the recipients of unexpected and undeserved grace that enables us to show grace and love to others. We can offer people the chance to avoid the consequences of sin that result in death and put their hope in Christ for eternal life. Every single motivator is accounted for. If we are presenting the Gospel clearly, choosing faith should be the easiest decision a person ever has to make.

Interestingly, the person who initially opposed gamification as manipulative and forceful ended up changing his mind after discussing these concepts with the rest of our group. By the end of our conversation, he was enthusiastic about using these principles well to make the Gospel as accessible and compelling as possible. He ultimately agreed that we should do whatever we can to help people encounter God and experience the life transformation that inevitably follows.

What you are doing in ministry matters so much! Think about how you can design in response to these natural human motivators. Don’t stop with gamification. Take the best thinking from every industry you can find and apply it to what you are doing because nothing could be more important than God’s mission. We have a much bigger weight of responsibility than the creators of even the world’s most popular apps. We are ambassadors for Christ in this world, entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation. God’s mission is our ultimate white hat motivator as Christians, and the limited time we have on earth before Jesus returns again is our ultimate black hat motivator.

Asking the Rigth Questions

I once spoke with a leader at a ministry whose goal is to reach college students with the Gospel. They were founded on a model of in-person evangelism and that continues to be their primary focus today. I asked a hypothetical question, “What if you could prove by every measurement that engaging people online was more effective at leading people to Jesus than your traditional method? Would your ministry ever abandon the in-person model and commit your resources and people to focus on digital?” He replied that they never would. Although they were actively working to grow digital teams and programs, their primary evangelism approach would likely never change. I was not that surprised. Change is hard, and we all like to continue doing what is familiar and seems to work. But it was an important question we should at least be willing to ask.

Consider the question for yourself and your own ministry. Is there anything you would be unwilling to change even if it could be proven that by changing it, more people could be reached for Christ? We must be alert to anything that may have grown more important to us than the Great Commission. If our ministry models become more precious to us than the Gospel, it is time for some serious evaluation of our priorities. I don’t know if that leader ever thought about my question again or if anything will happen because of it. But as a ministry innovator with a philosopher’s perspective, it was a good question to ask. The answer revealed that digital innovations would only go so far at that organization because of their mindset.

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The practical work of applying systems thinking is truly the work of being a philosopher. As you are invited into conversations, do not be too quick to offer your opinion. Seek to understand first. Take time to ask questions that help you uncover the context. Come alongside people and think with them. Hear what they are trying to accomplish and empathize with the problems they are experiencing. Sometimes all people really need is someone to talk to. You may discover people already have good ideas but just need some help clarifying them. Be a caring conversation partner.

It is much more effective to work with people to help them shape their ideas than offer them an outside solution. Author Adam Grant describes this principle in action when he writes about motivational interviews in his book Think Again. Motivational interviews focus on how to help someone make progress through asking open-ended questions and simply letting them talk. You can help by being a reflective listener and repeating back the main ideas they are sharing. Grant says there is usually a point in the conversation where people move into “change talk.” This is when people start discussing ways they wish to make progress. This is the thread to pick up and build upon. Affirm the person’s desire and ability to change and help them continue to clarify and add detail to their view of the future. By summarizing the new understanding they are gaining, you can help them solidify their plans and conviction to move forward. This sounds a lot like what a counselor does, but Grant successfully applies this method to business and other areas. He describes several powerful stories in his book from how a CEO changed his company to a politician who negotiated peace talks with an African warlord.

Motivational interviews are a powerful tool to help people embrace change because the desire comes from within. People are much more likely to act on something that is their own idea. You must resist the temptation to simply tell them what to do, even if the solution seems clear to you. This robs people of being able to own the change for themselves. It puts them in the position of depending on you to help them. Change is not won by telling people what they need to do but by asking people what they want to accomplish. Help them state their goals and barriers clearly and then ask them what they think needs to happen. Do this in a spirit of humility and sincerity, not as one who already knows the answer and is withholding it. You are on a journey together. They should be able to feel that you care about them and want to see the best happen.

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One of the most valuable things you can learn to do as a ministry innovator is to guide conversations so that people can discover solutions for themselves. This principle has helped me no matter what setting I find myself in or what level of authority I have in the conversation. On Monday, I might be facilitating a group of people to work on ministry problems together. On Tuesday, I am meeting with my boss and receiving his directions and feedback on my projects. On Thursday, I am teaching a course on innovation, and I am the leader giving directions and feedback to my students. Authority can vary widely from day to day, but I have found that my approach can remain the same as I diffuse innovation to those around me. I have seen better results as I focus more on asking questions and less on providing answers. I can ask questions of the people I lead as well as the people who lead me, but the questions are often very similar.

One place to start is with a question that brings everyone back to the core mission: “Why are we doing this?” or, “How does this align with our ultimate goals?” You might need to phrase it a few different ways and ask it a few times until you get to the true answer. Don’t assume everyone has thought deeply about the why. Challenge people to answer the question “Why must we do this?” because that purpose will guide every decision you make going forward. Document that answer so anyone can come back and refer to it later. It is most natural to answer this question at the start of the process, but you can come back and have a conversation around the why at any time. It can be clarifying to frequently revisit your purpose. I have often asked my leaders “why?” and the question has never been poorly received when asked sincerely. Allowing my leadership to explain the why to me ensures I have a similar understanding of our shared goals so I can better focus my work in those directions.

Once we know our why, we can dig into the specifics—the what and the how. In his book The Goal, business consultant Eliyahu Goldratt teaches three key questions to ask as we seek to bring about any change:

1. What must we change?

2. What must we change to?

How do we bring about the change?

These questions seem basic, but you would be surprised how often we fail to answer them clearly. Correctly identifying the problem is the first step because the right solution applied to the wrong problem does not move you forward. The second question reveals the desired end goal. What are we aiming for? How will we know if we have succeeded? “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably never get there,” a wise old saying reminds us. Finally, we look at the how. What do we need to do? Consider the people who will be involved, their roles, and how you will communicate with them about the change that needs to happen. You might not be the person directly responsible for the work, but you can set them up for success.

These questions provide needed perspective and refocus you and your team on what is important before you jump straight into accomplishing work. You can use these questions for any change you might be involved in. Project managers can ask them as they seek to improve a specific process to better accomplish work. Ministry presidents can ask them as they examine their organization and think big-picture about whether their team is headed in the right direction.

We should have question askers at every level of our ministries and involved in every project. Strategic questions help us step back from what we are doing and think bigger. How did we get here? Where are we going? Why are these the problems we are trying to solve today? How should we solve them in light of the future where we are headed? It is worth slowing down to check your course and ensure you are going in the right direction.

I once consulted with a ministry who had an app that was not accomplishing its purpose very well. The app was hard to navigate and find what you were looking for. But it did a good job of showing off how many languages the app had available. This was something the team wanted to celebrate with their ministry donors to show they had been successful in meeting their translation goals. But as more and more languages were added, the app’s design ended up being too complicated for the end user. Changes were proposed to simplify the user experience, but the development team encountered unexpected resistance from others within the organization. For example, the training team had already developed and translated training for how to use the app with its current design. It was inefficient and expensive for them to redo all that work, and they had already moved on to other needed projects.

The organization had to make a tough decision. If they improved the app, they would lose time and money they had already spent and sacrifice progress currently being made on other projects. But if they made the change, the app could be more useful to people and help them do better ministry. Perhaps in the long-term, the training they had created would no longer be needed because the app could be so intuitive no one would need additional explanations.

You can see the benefits and drawbacks on both sides. The decision that seemed right for one team seemed wrong for another. Ultimately, the ministry decided to move forward with the change so they could better fulfill their mission to spread the Gospel. The app’s design was becoming a barrier to that, so it needed to be changed even though it was inefficient and expensive to do so. Knowing their end goal helped them make this practical decision to prioritize their mission over operating their teams and work efficiently.

Asking the right questions helps us identify places where we have accidentally drifted from caring about mission success to team success. It seems to make sense that if every team improves the way it operates, the organization will be more successful as a whole. However, that is not always true. Our goal is not for every team to operate at 100 percent efficiency to produce the most work possible. The goal is that the efforts of those teams would reach people with the Gospel and produce life transformation in the lost.

Overall organizational effectiveness is not the sum of all teams working efficiently in isolation. Rather, it is about working together towards our mission. Getting all the parts of an organization working best together is different from getting all the parts working best on their own. In fact, you may need to slow down a team by redistributing their people or budget to more critical areas to increase the effectiveness of the whole.

This might seem counter intuitive, so let’s consider a simplified example. Suppose a marketing team is advertising to thousands of people on social media and connecting them to a team of online missionaries for spiritual conversations. However, the marketing campaigns are so successful that the online missionaries can’t keep up. People are waiting a long time, and many conversation requests go unanswered. Although the marketing team is exceeding its goals, the organization’s goals are suffering because their audience is not being well served and are forming a bad impression of the ministry.

It will be necessary to strengthen the online missionary team and even divert funds or staff from the marketing team to decrease the incoming flow. In the short-term, this will make the marketing team less effective. They didn’t do anything wrong. The opposite in fact—their work was too excellent! There may be other solutions of course, but this is just an example. It is not always wise to keep strengthening teams who are succeeding if they are accidentally creating problems in other places of the organization.

In order to recognize that this is happening, we must step back and take a philosopher’s larger view of ministry success. Internal efficiencies or goals should never become more important than the mission, and meeting them does not necessarily mean we are being successful to spread the Gospel.

Jesus showed us the power of asking questions many times during His earthly ministry. He used questions to show the Pharisees the flaws in their religious practices. He asked questions of those who came to Him for healing to allow them to express the depth of their faith. He asked His disciples questions to teach and challenge them. Jesus Himself is a question that demands an answer. In Mark chapter 8, Jesus asks His disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They gave Him a variety of answers, and then He asked them again, “‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Christ’” (8:27, 29). Jesus’s question allowed Peter to confess and confirm his faith. This is the central question we are also bringing to the world through our ministries.

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We are reaching people with the Gospel so that they will come to believe in Christ as their Savior. Who we believe Christ to be is the only thing that matters. As we carry out our ministry, let’s do everything we can to ensure people will be able to answer that question the way Peter did.

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