Is Protecting the Past As Important As Creating the Future?
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Wed, February 25, 2009
- Viewed 37
- (2) comments so far
Larry continues:
Years ago, I watched the management team at Nordstrom’s almost commit organizational suicide by their failure to understand this difference. Concerned by slumping sales, they decided to overhaul their stores in an attempt to become more hip and reach a younger crowd. Following the lead of a couple of fast growing new clothiers who had recently burst onto the retail scene, they made significant changes to their ambiance, inventory and marketing in order to draw the kind of people who were flocking to these new retail outlets. (Does that sound like a lot of churches?)
But here’s what they missed. The customers they already had didn’t want the changes. They shopped at Nordstrom’s because they liked the very things that turned off the younger and hipper crowd. And unlike the new startup stores, Nordstrom’s had a huge infrastructure and overhead to support. Losing large numbers of current customers to chase potential customers put them in a near financial death spiral.
Instead of making such radical and wholesale changes within their existing stores, they should have targeted their unreached audience with new stores aimed directly at them while making consistent and subtle changes within their existing stores. This would have allowed them to preserve their past gains while still laying the foundation for a strong future.
...
The same applies to those of us who lead any ministry or business organization. When it comes to innovation and creating the future, there are three important things to keep in mind…
Click here to read Larry’s three important things at his blog, LarryOsborneLive.com...
What do you think?
Larry Osborne writes: "Have you noticed that an inordinate amount of the truly dazzling innovation in ministry and business comes from those who are in a startup mode? With nothing to lose and only a future to create, they can risk it all – and reap great rewards for the innovations that stick.
Yet most of us are in anything but a startup mode. We not only have a future to create, we also have past gains to protect. The difference between innovating in a startup mode and innovating within an existing ministry or business environment is immense. Those who fail to recognize this innovate at great risk..."
Comments
if you want a Globally Recognized Avatar (the images next to your profile) get them here. Once you sign up, they will displayed on any website that supports them.
Kevin M. on Wed, February 25, 2009
Awesome thoughts! This is so true! Thanks for sharing!
Andy Wood on Thu, February 26, 2009
Reminds me of what Oldsmobile tried to do.
Unfortunately, however, the church doesn’t have this luxury. We have to be completely focused only on the future because we’re so stinking irrelevant. I mean, I just discovered that “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” is STILL on CCLI’s top 25 list of most-used worship songs! Need I say more?
On top of that, at least in our town, instead of multiplying like rabbits, church folks just hop like them, from one cool new startup to the next.
And when did you ever see the big conferences invite Pastor Incremental Change to tell the story of the First Church of the Rooted and Grounded?
Actually, I do believe in creating a compelling future. But I have also seen many pastors betray the people who brought him there by unilaterally turning the church’s culture, heritage, and identity on its ear in the name of “vision.” But usually it works out, when the Holy Spirit splits up that church and Pastor Ice Cutter launches a new work across town with those who “share the vision.”
Page 1 of 1 pages
Post a Comment