Abandon All Hope? - Bishop Kirk Smith
Abandon All Hope?
By Bishop Kirk Smith
http://arizonabishop.blogspot.com/2012/06/abandon-all-hope.html
June 21, 2012
"The first step in a growth policy is not to decide where and how to grow. It is to decide what to abandon. In order to grow, a business must have a systematic policy to get rid of the outgrown, the obsolete, the unproductive."
So stated the world's leading business guru Peter Drucker over forty years ago. His "principle of abandonment" was central to his teaching, and has been incorporated by virtually every American corporation and business writer since then. According to Mr. Drucker, institutions must constantly examine their structures and methods to determine what is productive and what is not. If it is not working, get rid of it. Growth will never take place as long as time and energy are spent supporting people, programs, and products that do not produce. Before management can decide what needs to be done differently, they must first "clear the decks" of anything from the past that may restrict innovation. We can honor the past without letting it set the agenda. For an institution to move forward, it can never look back. In Drucker's words, "Abandon all but tomorrow."
Drucker's words are wise council for us in the church as we face our task of "restructuring," which will begin in just two weeks at our General Convention. My fear is that rather than follow Drucker's tried-and-true strategy of purposeful abandonment of structures that do little or nothing to further our goal of spreading the Good News (aptly defined in the "Five Marks of Mission" that we adopted and then largely ignored), we will instead settle for an ongoing tinkering process, referring our problems to various committees, which in many cases helped create the mess we are in. If we are to truly restructure, then we must first be prepared to jettison everything, and I mean everything, that holds us back. To that end, I offer my own "abandonment list." I admit that this is not a good word for us Episcopalians. We think of abandonment as a negative word, as in child abandonment, abandonment by God, abandonment of communion, the opposite of the concepts of covenant and commitment we are more comfortable with.
Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org
By Bishop Kirk Smith
http://arizonabishop.blogspot.com/2012/06/abandon-all-hope.html
June 21, 2012
"The first step in a growth policy is not to decide where and how to grow. It is to decide what to abandon. In order to grow, a business must have a systematic policy to get rid of the outgrown, the obsolete, the unproductive."So stated the world's leading business guru Peter Drucker over forty years ago. His "principle of abandonment" was central to his teaching, and has been incorporated by virtually every American corporation and business writer since then. According to Mr. Drucker, institutions must constantly examine their structures and methods to determine what is productive and what is not. If it is not working, get rid of it. Growth will never take place as long as time and energy are spent supporting people, programs, and products that do not produce. Before management can decide what needs to be done differently, they must first "clear the decks" of anything from the past that may restrict innovation. We can honor the past without letting it set the agenda. For an institution to move forward, it can never look back. In Drucker's words, "Abandon all but tomorrow."
Drucker's words are wise council for us in the church as we face our task of "restructuring," which will begin in just two weeks at our General Convention. My fear is that rather than follow Drucker's tried-and-true strategy of purposeful abandonment of structures that do little or nothing to further our goal of spreading the Good News (aptly defined in the "Five Marks of Mission" that we adopted and then largely ignored), we will instead settle for an ongoing tinkering process, referring our problems to various committees, which in many cases helped create the mess we are in. If we are to truly restructure, then we must first be prepared to jettison everything, and I mean everything, that holds us back. To that end, I offer my own "abandonment list." I admit that this is not a good word for us Episcopalians. We think of abandonment as a negative word, as in child abandonment, abandonment by God, abandonment of communion, the opposite of the concepts of covenant and commitment we are more comfortable with.
Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org
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