I’m fond of reminding people that God’s will has three components: a what, a when, and a how. Each is equally important. Two out of three won’t cut it. Miss out on any of the three and you’ll end up in deep weeds.
The same holds true for change and innovation. If the what is a great idea, then the when is right timing and the how is proper execution.
Introduce an innovation too early and it can’t take hold, no matter how brilliant the idea may be. Think of Leonardo da Vinci’s concepts of manned flight. Without a reliable and adequate source of power to propel his theoretical concepts, there was no way to get his drawings off the ground. His ideas for a helicopter and a hang glider were ingenious. But they were also four centuries ahead of schedule.
It’s also possible for a change or innovation to be too late to the party. Imagine coming up with a faster, longer-range, and cheaper dirigible. That idea would have made you lots of money in the early years of the twentieth century. Today, one hundred years later, you’d go broke. No one wants a faster and better blimp anymore.
It’s not just timing that determines the fate of a new idea. It’s also the implementation process. If we bungle it, even the best of ideas can be dead on arrival. Consider once more the work of Thomas Edison. He made the lion’s share of his profits from the incandescent lightbulb. Yet most of the patents for his lightbulb belonged to other people. They had great ideas and impeccable timing. But they couldn’t find a way to bring their lightbulbs to market. They failed the implementation test. So Edison got all the fame and made all the money.
The same thing still happens today. It’s not always the best idea that succeeds. It’s the combination of a great idea, proper timing, and excellent execution that brings success.
This explains why a strong organizational bias for action is so important. It speeds up the innovation process by quickly moving ideas from the realm of theory into the bright light of reality, where it’s easy to see what actually works and what doesn’t.
FINDING A WAY TO SAY YES
A bias for action begins by conquering the fear of failure. Leaders and organizations with an inordinate fear of failure have an insatiable appetite for more data and proof. They always want more evidence, more justification for their actions. They won’t try anything until all the risk has been wrung out of the equation (or until someone else brings it to market and proves that the idea does, after all, have merit).
A bias for action doesn’t imply taking stupid risks that are potentially catastrophic or fatal to the organization. Only a fool does that. It doesn’t mean going off half-cocked, betting the farm, or hotly pursuing every new idea that comes our way. It simply means that when presented with a new idea or proposal, we seek to find a way to try it out rather than write it off. We look as hard as we can for a way to say yes.
The only way to determine if an idea has merit is to put it to a test. That’s why leaders and organizations with a bias for action are always experimenting at the fringe.
For example, consider Fred DeLuca, the cofounder of Subway. He built a local option into his franchising system. This allowed local owners to experiment with different menu items and marketing ideas. When the owners of two small shops in Miami decided to increase their dismal weekend sales by offering Subway’s Footlong sandwiches for only five dollars, weekend sales weren’t so dismal anymore. There suddenly were long lines waiting out the door.
It didn’t take long for corporate headquarters to figure out that whatever was creating the long lines in Miami could easily translate into increased sales in New Jersey. So they rolled out the Footlong campaign nationwide. Subway sales increased dramatically.
This never could have happened in many other franchising systems. They control everything to the point that no one can experiment at the fringe. But freedom to experiment at the fringe was built into the structure of Mr. DeLuca’s franchises, and he and his franchisees have profited handsomely from it.
SOME FAILURES ARE VICTORIES
A bias for action also allows you to discover more quickly what to pursue and what to abandon. This is important, because what brings success to one organization can bring chaos to another.
For instance, I think of two churches that were struggling to retain young families while reaching out to new people in the community. Both of these churches had seen better days, but they were far from finished. They also shared a bias for action rather than a tendency toward paralyzing further study.
When their youth pastors asked for permission to try out an alternative worship service aimed at a younger demographic, both of these churches found a way to say yes. They each offered their gyms and spent money to fix the acoustics and provide decent sound systems.
At one church, the alternative service grew quickly. Five years later, it was much larger than the traditional service (which most people now considered to be the “alternative” service). At the other church, the new service never took off. Today, it still languishes as a small “alternative” worship experience for the “young folks.”
Yet — don’t miss this — both churches benefited greatly from their bias for action.
The first church discovered that they were more ready for change than anyone thought, and they were able to reach far more people because of it. The second church discovered they weren’t ready. But thanks to their bias for action and willingness to experiment at the fringe, they learned this the easy way. Their experiment spared them the heartache that would have come with a failed attempt at a churchwide transition to a more cutting-edge and youthful worship experience.
As we’ve already seen, there is never enough evidence ahead of time to know with certainty which ideas will succeed and which ones will fail. Before an idea has been tested, the best we have is an educated guess. That’s why an exit strategy is always so important, and why the endless pursuit for more data and absolute proof is always futile.
It’s always far better to simply try things and then respond to what happens. If it works, look closer and try it again. If it doesn’t, move on to something else.
SURPRISED BY SUCCESS: THE BEAUTY OF A FREE LOOK
Another benefit of having a bias for action (and one of the main reasons it accelerates innovation) is that it can provide you with a free look at ideas that otherwise might not get a shot. Without the constraints of endless research, mounds of data, and the need for irrefutable proof, you can quickly try things you think might work — but even better, you can try things you’re pretty sure won’t work, just in case you are wrong.
Here are two examples (one a rather small risk and the other quite large).
Drums in the Sanctuary
Believe it or not, there was a time when bringing drums into a church sanctuary was a risky endeavor. I remember as a young pastor thinking that we needed to push the envelope, musically, if we wanted to reach my own generation. But I was also afraid that I might be martyred in the process.
Though it seems a rather obvious thing to do today, at that time, few churches were willing to make changes to their music style. Those that did were considered liberal.
To get us where we needed to go, I tasked another staff member with aligning our worship services so that the music style matched the current decade. I told him that I had no interest in becoming a historical preservation society.
I knew it would take us a few years to change. But I also knew that we’d inevitably get there once we started down the path. My biggest concern was moving too fast. I didn’t want to create a congregational backlash that would send us back to square one. And frankly, I was right to have that concern, because a few years later, worship wars began to spread across the church landscape like wildfire.
One Sunday, long before I thought we were ready, I walked into the church and saw a drum set on the platform. I turned to our worship leader and said, “So you think we’re ready for this?”
He said, “Yes.”
I thought, You’re crazy. There’s no way we’re ready.
But I said, “That’s what I hired you for.” Then I went into my office and started praying like mad.
Why did I let him go ahead when I was so sure he was wrong?
Because I had a strong bias to say yes. And I also had an exit strategy that had instantly popped into my mind. I figured that if we weren’t ready, I’d apologize and the drums would be gone the next week. I knew I already had enough chips in the relational bank that a humble apology and quick action might actually gain me more chips. So why not give it a try?
To my surprise, I was wrong. Our congregation was more than ready for the change. One old codger got up and stormed out of the service. But everyone else was positive or neutral. As for the old guy, he’d been a chronic complainer for a long time. I’d been praying that Jesus would move him out. I didn’t realize that Jesus was just waiting for me to let the drums show up.
The upside of that small decision was huge. It opened the door to many other changes and solidified our commitment to think like missionaries, never changing our message but always adapting our methods, style, and cultural language in ways that allowed us to stay relevant in the hyperchanging world of Southern California.
The Church Has Left the Building
We took a much bigger risk on the weekend we decided to close down all of our worship services. We wanted to cancel church for the weekend and send our entire congregation out to serve in a massive community-service project. We called it the Weekend of Service.
We had no idea whether it would work.
Our goal was to mobilize thousands of our congregation to fix up and repair schools, community centers, and dilapidated buildings in the community. We’re not talking small projects here; these were extreme makeovers, all to be completed within forty-eight hours.
We knew it would take a ton of people, money, and energy. We knew that if it worked, it would have a major impact on our community and congregation. We also knew that if it didn’t work, we’d have some major egg on our faces, both in the community and in our congregation.
We knew of several smaller churches that had pulled off large-scale service projects on a Saturday. We even knew of a few that had closed down for the entire weekend. But we knew of no other mega-church that had shut down all of its weekend services in this way.
Large regional churches like ours are a different breed. Some people travel great distances to attend. Outside of the people you know in your small group, there’s lots of anonymity. We wondered whether people would actually show up. After all, the conventional criticism of megachurches is that they’re filled with “consumer Christians” who come for what they can get, not what they can give.
And what about the offerings? Like most churches and nonprofits, we weren’t sitting on a ton of cash. The materials and supplies alone would cost a fortune. They’d have to be paid for up front. We’d lose an entire weekend’s worth of offerings if we did this.
Despite these questions and concerns, we decided to go forward. We pulled the trigger.
On the one hand, the risk of failure was real. But it wasn’t catastrophic. Yes, we could lose face with the congregation and the organizations we planned to help. Yes, we could lose money and have to make some significant programing cuts to make up for it. But there was no threat of a mass exodus. If things went south, we could simply relegate the Weekend of Service to another in a long list of one-time events and move on.
On the other hand, the potential upside was enormous. We were looking for a way to elevate community service to the level of a core value in our church, something that was not true at the time. We dreamed of a church culture in which community service events took place daily.
We even talked about pulling off massive Weekend of Service projects every twelve to eighteen months. But we kept all that to ourselves. Instead of marketing it as the watershed event we hoped it would be, we marketed it as a onetime event, using the language of experimentation, just in case our dream turned out to be a nightmare.
When the weekend finally came, nothing went as expected. Everything far exceeded even our wildest dreams. More than 5,400 of our members showed up. They were amped and ready to serve. They completed ninety-two projects in fifty-six locations. At the end of the forty-eight hours, they had provided our surrounding communities with more than a million dollars in biddable goods and services (and that didn’t include any monetary value for the man hours provided).
Now, years later, our Weekends of Service have become signature events with over 10,000 of our members participating. Each time, the number of workers and projects has increased significantly. Better yet, we’ve been able to create a culture of service and generosity that now averages more than two community service projects per day in addition to our massive Weekends of Service.
Whether it’s drums in the sanctuary or a Weekend of Service, a bias for action will accelerate the process of change and innovation within your organization. It will allow you to try things before all the facts are in. It will free you to take measured risks, set you up to survive failure, and occasionally surprise you with successes you never expected.
THE ONE TIME WHEN MORE DATA AND PROOF ARE ALWAYS WARRANTED
There is, however, a time when further study and certainty are warranted. Whenever failure could be fatal to the organization or to the credibility of your leadership team, it’s wise to have as many facts as possible before acting.
Consider NASA’s manned space flight program. NASA had a long history of incredible innovation with amazing feats of engineering and technological advance. Yet NASA also had an entrenched culture of further study. Everything had to be backed up by a study or a test. In fact, mission control once had a sign that read, “In God we trust. All others bring data.”
NASA’s mission — and the cargo it carried (human lives) — left it with no other choice. It had to insist on further study and irrefutable proof. When it comes to space exploration, a failure costs lives. There can be absolutely no tolerance for it. And while only a few tragedies ever occurred in NASA’s history, each of them is deeply etched into our national consciousness.
NASA never had the luxury of trying lots of things to see what worked. Yes, they experimented. And they did so a lot. But it was always far outside the mission, in a way that didn’t put human lives at risk. The cost of failure at the core of the mission was too great to risk.
But let’s be real. Most of us aren’t risking lives when we fail. We’re merely risking time, money, and a measure of our leadership credibility. And at that point, a bias for action will always beat a bias for further study and irrefutable proof that something will succeed.
The fact is, great teams ship. They get to market when others are still figuring out if there’s a market or where the market is. They know that innovation needs action. And they know that inaction because of an excessive aversion to risk eventually becomes an unintended aversion to success and innovation.