While pastor Craig Groeschel started Life.Church modestly in 1996 in a two-car garage in Oklahoma City, that small congregation has grown into one of the largest multi-campus churches in America and serves hundreds of millions through it’s digital outreach.

The church’s website says that Life.Church’s mission is “to lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ,” and that their mission is “the driving force behind everything we do.” Over the past 25 years, probably no church has more extensively leveraged digital technology to increase the reach and richness of its ministries, all driven by that mission.

Bobby Gruenewald, a two-time web entrepreneur joined the Life.Church staff in 2001. He began exploring ways to leverage technology to help people build online relationships with Christ at the center. Five years ago I interviewed Gruenewald when Life.Church’s YouVersion Bible App downloads had reached 200 million, which was amazing — that number represented 60% of the U.S. population. 

This past week, YouVersion marked the download and install of its Bible App on the 500 millionth unique device.

Now, we can no longer use our national population as the measuring stick. Life.Church is clearly thinking and acting on a global scale. I look forward to seeing how God will use Life.Church’s digital ministry over the next five years and beyond!

Click here to read the full article.

Ever since learning about Lean Startup, I’ve greatly appreciated the concept of the Minimal Viable Product (MVP). Before the Lean methodology was introduced, startups traditionally invested lots of time and money to bring their concept to market. Too often, after making that big investment, founders then realized that people didn’t really want their product, at least not the way they had envisioned it. The MVP approach says that, instead of working long and hard to launch the perfect product, you instead quickly launch the least costly version of the concept that can prove out the assumptions behind the value proposition. Get it into customers’ hands and learn from them what they like and what they don’t. Make adjustments and try again. Continue to iterate until your product meets the needs of a specific market.

But, over the years, I’ve encountered startups where taking the MVP approach is really hard. In his book “The Digital Transformation Playbook”, David L. Rogers provides a simple framework, “Four Paths to Scaling Up”, which not only brings clarity to why an MVP approach works well sometimes and not others, but can also help in making decisions as you are innovating to maximize your opportunity to learn and iterate.

At the core of the framework is a 2×2 matrix defined by two key questions. In the article linked below, I explain these two questions, each of the four paths, and how innovators can effectively use the two questions to reverse engineer an approach to innovation where an MVP approach is most likely to succeed.

Click here to read the full article.  

Local churches come in all shapes and sizes. Most have been touched, in some way, by the digital revolution. Each church has chosen its own path through these potentially disruptive changes to match its own focus and realities. The underlying technologies may be neutral, but churches must be intentional in their reasons for adopting technology and must be diligent in evaluating the dangers in each technology’s use. As Christ told his disciples “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16)

In the article linked below, I walk through the four waves of the digital revolution, examining how churches have sought to capture the power and manage the danger of each.

I conclude the article with this: I’m confident that the Digital Revolution isn’t over. We haven’t seen the last technological innovation that will impact the church. We haven’t fully discovered the power that is available, nor do we fully understand the dangers inherent in adopting these technologies. As church leaders venture forward into this technological unknown, they can rest in God’s sovereignty and use the most powerful tools that He has provided to them: His Word, prayer, and fellowship with other believers. Most importantly, they can keep their eyes focused on Christ, on God’s glory, and on the mission Christ has given to His church.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. (Matthew 28:19–20)

Please click here to read the full article.

Founded in 1949, Grand Canyon University, a private Christian school, flourished for five decades. The early years of this century were not kind to the university, with enrollment falling below 1,000 by 2008. The school brought in Brian Mueller as president. Mueller had helped establish the University of Phoenix as an online education powerhouse and brought some of his technical team and his love for Christian education to GCU. They invested $100 million to establish the technology infrastructure for online growth, which provided the financial momentum to invest over $1 billion in the campus. Today Grand Canyon University has 90,000 online students and nearly 24,000 students in-person on their Phoenix campus.

As a Christian university, Grand Canyon is intentionally committed to living out Christian faith within the context of a missional community, “strategically united in carrying out a mission that centers on following Jesus Christ in word and in deed, and in sharing the love of Christ generously to all who participate in the life of the community.” This works itself out in at least two important ways. One, is their “Integration of Faith, Learning and Work” initiative. The second is a five-point plan to deliver both help and hope to the neighborhoods around their campus. You can read more about each in the article linked below.

Technology has been at the core of the university’s growth and living out their mission. The university’s Christian mission not only shapes how the technology is used but also in how technology decisions are made. The technology exists to support people, made in the image of God and worthy of dignity and respect. The concepts of love and service are inherent in any technology decisions. 

Click here to read the full article.

Recently I’ve been reflecting on how the four major waves of the Digital Revolution have impacted Christian ministries. I often talk about the power and the danger of new technologies. Winning organizations will capture the power while managing the danger. To me, this seems like a much more important challenge for Christian ministries than for most for-profit corporations. 

While technology has tremendous potential to be used for good, too often it is used in ways that dishonor God and that harm people. As we’ve especially seen in recent weeks, sometimes the real damage isn’t even seen until years after the technology is introduced. Are there Christian ministries that have done a good job of capturing that power while managing the danger? If so, how have they managed to pull it off?

Throughout my career, I’ve looked for opportunities to capture the power while managing the danger specifically in leveraging digital technologies in loving God and loving my neighbor. Those experiences have given me a good perspective on the potential for technology in serving God and His Kingdom, and each has been a blessing that has touched people’s lives in important ways. While most of those efforts have been successful, I can’t claim that any of them demonstrated the kind of success at a large scale that I hope is out there.

So, over the next several weeks I hope to talk to leaders at some Christian organizations that seem to have had great success at scale in capturing the power and managing the danger of digital technologies to increase the richness and reach of their impact. Stay tuned as I share what I learn from those discussions.

Click here to read the full article.

Business strategy has been my focus for more than 20 years. The most popular area of business strategy is “competitive strategy.” In the business world, we often adopt the language of sports or warfare — “How do we win?” or “How do we beat our competitors?” We often approach the market with a zero-sum mindset — for our company to gain a customer, all of our competitors have to lose that customer.

But does this approach make sense for mission-driven non-profits?

For many non-profits, their survival depends on their ability to attract donors, volunteers, and clients. Realistically, non-profits are competing to win the commitment of these decision makers. That doesn’t mean that your mission will be best served by having a “winner take all” competitive mindset. Often we do better to find ways to “win together” to achieve our mission to its fullest.

Click here for the full article.

In The Digital Transformation Playbook, David L. Rogers describes how customer behavior has changed in the digital age. Customers are as likely to connect with and influence each other as they are to be influenced by the firm. Companies need to shift from a mass market/broadcast model to one that taps into five customer network behaviors: access, engage, customize, connect, and collaborate. He then introduces a tool to help companies make the adjustment.

The Customer Network Strategy Generator is like a pilot’s pre-flight checklist, walking a strategist through the steps necessary to develop winning customer-facing strategies in this new digital age. By following this process, you will have the best chance of identifying concepts that are worth pursuing because they can have a meaningful impact on the things that matter to your business.

One of the things that I particularly like about this tool is that it is both very specific to a certain type of strategy project (and therefore easy to understand in terms of specific tangible activities) but also generally applicable to almost any strategic decision. The specific details will change for different types of strategies, but the overall flow (objectives>a customer-centric perspective>a well-defined broad strategy>specific potential tactics>realistically evaluating those potential actions) provides a good model to consider whenever starting any strategy project.

Click here to read the full article.

Last week, Christine Heckart​ hosted a mini-reunion of some of the folks from TeleChoice. Twenty-years ago this boutique consulting firm pioneered a new category for strategic consulting. We called it “Strategic Catalysts”. We probably weren’t the first to practice this approach, but I think we were the first to name and define it.

I still believe the catalyst model is the best way to help companies that need assistance in developing a critical strategy. In fact, it probably makes more sense now than ever.

So what is it? Strategic catalysts accelerate the creation of strategies for high impact. They don’t replace the staff of their clients in developing strategies, but they bring the missing ingredients (experience, methodologies, tools, focus) to enable clients to rapidly and successfully create strategies that work. TeleChoice was the strategic catalyst for the telecom industry.

Click here to read more about this model, how it compares to traditional consulting, and my five reasons why I believe it is the best model, even today twenty years after we pioneered it

In Built to Innovate Ben Bensaou has provided a thorough and engaging introduction to the innovating engine and the importance of involving everyone in the company in both executing and innovating. The examples used throughout are fascinating stories that help us see what these concepts look like in real organizations. 

Most companies naturally focus on the execution engine, but unfortunately, overlook the need to constantly innovate. Through the book he teaches the what, who, and how of establishing a well functioning innovating engine. Specifically he identifies the three key processes involved in innovating, the three key roles, and a seven step process for creating innovative ideas.

The author emphasizes that many companies will seek to innovate in the midst of crisis. If your business is in a difficult place that will require new ideas for creating value for customers and/or the business, then certainly, Built to Innovate can provide a framework and process for changing how your company approaches innovation. But Bensaou emphasizes that the best time to build the innovating engine is before times get tough. Given the pace of change across all industries, every business should be exploring how to strengthen their innovation capabilities, and Built to Innovate is a great place to start.

Click here to read the full review.

Does your company suffer from any of these product diseases: Hero Syndrome, Strategic Swelling, Obsessive Sales Disorder, Hypermetricemia, Locked-In Syndrome, Pivotitis, Narcissus Complex? If so, the brand new book Radical Product Thinking offers a cure.

The author, Radhika Dutt, has provided a thoughtful new perspective on innovation and entrepreneurship that should help leaders take a vision-driven approach that can more effectively and consistently impact the world in the ways that they intend. She champions a vision-driven approach to product development and management, so she starts with how to articulate and document the vision you have for improving the world in a way that then impacts all other areas of innovation and operations. 

Anyone who has read, or wants to read about Lean and Agile for their work, should also read this book for a different perspective on how an iterative approach to innovation and development can be managed for maximum impact. Throughout the book Dutt provides helpful tools and relevant stories that can challenge all of us to create in a more thoughtful and impactful way.

Read my full review here.