Champions Fax Archive

Thomas Stewart is one of the best writers in Fortune Magazine. His monthly column, "The Leading Edge" is a profitable source of great ideas. In one of his columns last year he writes, "Why Dumb Things Happen to Smart Companies". While they list nine warning signs, they have been edited here with comments for Church Champions.

1. "You repeat mistakes." Companies and Champions organizations frequently repeat mistakes. Reason: Failure to learn by doing a post mortem on the failure. Too often, organizations work very hard at not talking about what went wrong in a process, event or consultation. Failure needs to be studied, analyzed and processed just as success is studied, analyzed and processed.
2. "You duplicate work." "People fail to copy success for the same reasons that they succeed in copying mistakes: They’re afraid or embarrassed to ask." Too many times church organizations feel they have to always "re-create the wheel" when in reality someone may have already helped develop a best practice for the field. The best practice can then be adapted for the particular situation. One of the reasons Leadership Network holds its forums is for practitioners to share best practices. "Who is already doing this effectively and what can we learn from them?" should be one of the first questions we ask in a new venture.

3. "You have poor customer relations." Communications problems are usually due to the fact that you didn’t hear what the customer was really trying to tell you. Because of the nature of Champion’s customized services, care must be taken to carefully explain what is being offered.

4. "Good ideas don’t transfer between departments, units, or countries." This is mainly occurring in large Champions organizations like denominations. Departments and divisions get silted into their own work without having access to the work of others. One answer is inter-organizational forums. This goes beyond the regular staff-reporting meeting. (see the upcoming Champions announcement on training on this idea) Another answer is to give incentives for sharing the best ideas.

In most Champions organizations, leaders fail to ask their customers for good ideas. There are good chances that some churches have already dealt with the particular problem and have good insights. How do you regularly ask your customers about good things they are seeing? Do you give them incentives to share innovations?

5. "You’re dependent on key individuals". Are too many decisions appearing on your desk? The problem could be lack of training, lack of trust, or lack of knowledge at the other levels that should be making those decisions. Release the decision making to the person closest to that customer.

6. "You’re slow to launch new products or enter new markets." Is your organization one that thinks everything has to be perfect before the product or process is released? Learn from the computer industry that it is O.K. to have a beta code version released to key innovative customers that actually help you in learning how to make the "official" version 1.0 even better. Then don’t be afraid to add and bring out the upgrades. This creates a continuous relationship with a customer as well as a constantly improving product.

"Why Dumb Things Happen to Smart Companies" by Thomas A. Stewart. From Fortune Magazine, June 23,1997. Find it online at www.pathfinder.com