On Apple and the Church

One thing I love to do is find where good leadership happens and resolve the transferable principles/ideas in the church world. Why? Because I work in the church world, and anything that enables good leadership is pretty great. Another thing I am constantly reconciling is the balance of good leadership and communication when it comes to a predominantly volunteer staff. I have been reading a lot over the past few months with this kind of thinking in mind. I have come across two incredibly helpful perspectives: an article from Fast Company magazine, and a behavioral change specific book by a group of authors.

These resources are valuable to me mainly because they address things I have been wrestling with over my tenure of vocational ministry: leadership and meaningful behavioral change. My intentions here are NOT to just regurgitate something cool (that's what Twitter is for) or to interact with others about something cool (that's what facebook is for), but to write out how I am reconciling leadership ideas with my context and, particularly, in the world I lead (the church).

So, let's begin. My musings here may get lengthy, so I understand if you clock out on me. The resource I am interacting with in this post is an article from Fast Company magazine entitled "Apple Nation." Here's some things you must know: (1) I am an Apple junkie nerd, (2) Steve Jobs was not interviewed for this article, (3) Steve Jobs and Apple were observed and written about, (4) This article does not replace the great truths I have observed from biblical leadership, but rather reinforces and affirms the journey.

The whole article has ten observations from a mythical playbook used by Apple. It is my attempt (this is now beyond reinforcement and has moved into repetition) to marry the ideas and critically value the playbook when it comes to the setting of the church. I am only going to do five out of ten. Ok, here we go:

1. Go Into Your Cave
   Big Points from the Article:
   
   • People are interested about what happens behind the locked door.
   • Steve Jobs has never cared much about what the tech industry has had to say.
   • Apple knows their audience so well, what the competition (or the trend setters) have to say is largely irrelevant.
   My Takeaways for a church setting:
   
   • For us leaders, the locked door should symbolize more than strategy; it should be reflective of the contagious drive of the one to whom we listen. Our area of obsession is not one that provokes mysterious questions, but rather makes it clear what our mission is. This is driven by God; lived out by our listening; and made contagious by our action. Everyone should wonder if they can have this.
     
   • We should care about the competition enough to know what is going on, and to be able to celebrate it. However, we should not let outside strategies drive our mission.
   • Our mission should be so clear and focused that nothing penetrates its progress. What if the mission of our church was so "bought into" that an economic recession heightened creativity instead of provided an excuse?
   
   
2. It's Okay to be King
   Big Points from the article:
   
   • Few people have the authority in Apple.
   • Because of the restriction of authority, Apple can only put out 1-2 new products a year.
   • Jobs and his team know exactly what they want.
   • "Everybody knows what the plan is..."
   • "There's very little infighting..."
   My Takeaways for a church setting:
   
   • This is a tough one, but I really believe few people should have the authority in the church: the lead pastor and the dream team (board, deacons, management team).
     
   • We need clear mission for directives...we can't say "No" to anything if we have no shared direction (I mean, we can, but that's lazy).
     
   • Fighting dies down when mission is shared...period.
3. Transcend Orthodoxy
   Big Points from the article:
   
   • Apple happily accepts the music industry's copy protection requirements because they helped it successfully launch the iTunes store. When the restrictions became moot, they were dropped, but iTunes philosophy lives on (talk about leverage).
     
   • The ideas of closed and free aren't in conflict (regarding technology).
   • To quote Steve Jobs: "(Our products) offer you freedom from programs that steal your information [viruses and phishing software], freedom from things that trash your battery, freedom from porn. Yep, that's right, freedom."
   • Developers have griped loudly that the APP store is closed b/c it dictates how things get built. That's misleading. The problem isn't that it's closed, but that it's rules are arbitrarily hidden, and frequently changing. If Apple embraced transparency, it could avoid most of this debate.
   My Takeaways for a church setting:
   
   • There are things in our culture that we can leverage instead of gripe about. For instance: music, television, movies, networking and outreach opps...
   • The church, the faith, offers freedom from things that destroy our lives. It's time we leverage this freedom and abstain from lethargic legalism.
   • Unlike Apple, I believe a culture of transparency is crucial for the church. No one likes mystery behind the "why" of what's done. This is faith, not a product.
     
4. Just Say No
   Big Points from the article:
   
   • Jobs' primary role at Apple is to turn things down: "I'm as proud of the products that we have not done as the ones we have done."
   • Apple's consistent aversion to complexity has resulted in higher profit margins.
   • Apple's products never have a silver bullet approach: they create margin and place to go with their next release. Omitting features creates more buzz.
   My Takeaways for a church setting:
   
   • We should value simplicity. We should say NO to stupid things that makes our mission complex. Kem Meyer is a great voice about this within the church. Shared communication and shared values equals more buy in and greater unity.
     
   • With our events and initiatives, we should answer a question, and allow it to evolve. Too many times we try to give a "one size fits all" approach. This is dangerous.
   • We shouldn't answer all the questions at one time.
     
5. Serve Your Customer. No, Really.
   Big Points from the article:
   
   • Apple's customer service goal: to launch stores unlike anything else in the computer industry. They created the hotel concierge experience. Apple "geniuses" will look at anything Apple, no matter where you purchased it from. They will even show you the cheapest way to fix it (My current hard drive is living proof).
   • Customer service is a "loss leader." It filters and creates the experience of keeping the customer.
     
   My Takeaways for a church setting:
   
   • When it comes to hospitality, the church employees are really moot. The church as a whole (the people) are either genuinely friendly, or truly apathetic.
     
   • We should create easy ways for people to connect to who we are: be it hospitality teams that serve guests, care about people, and can see further down the road than the immediate scenario (i.e. what if the person walking through the door is the next leader for a global mission team that empowers doctors to heal diseases in a third world country, just sayin').
   • What if we helped guests find their place, even if that means another church. This idea and thinking is not unique with me; I saw a church that had a church consulting station (helped you find the right place for you in the community).
     

As you can tell, there are a lot of thoughts I have on this, and I am not entirely sold on all of them (esp. the ones I didn't share). But, one thing is clear: Apple has a lot of stuff going on and it is going in the right direction (right now).