It's good to fail... fast

A little under a month ago, some friends and I announced an offer to launch a free service - free to set up, free to use, free to leave, free of advertising. The service is a way of getting up and running with a modern, social web site - that's the technology - and a community of willing helpers collaborating to get better results for everyone.

It was for a specific niche - UK churches. It was to address a specific, known problem - that (according to a recent study) the vast majority of UK churches don't have a current, active website at all. And of those that do, a small proportion are interactive as well as active - that is, most church websites are brochures to read rather than communities meeting and welcoming others.

We had direct experience (independently of one another) of some of the underlying issues. Many churches struggle making decisions involving expenditure more complicated than buying another box of tea bags. People with relevant skills often feel put upon, expected to do for free what they are normally hired to do, and faced with unrealistic expectations ("you do websites, don't you?" = "I don't care if you're a back end developer, a front-end developer, a designer or an account manager, just make my problem go away, now!"). And the "norm of niceness" that infects so many churches means that everyone knows what they don't want, few will be willing to turn their vague thoughts into definite ideas, and a dominant voice will effectively dictate the outcome.

We didn't think we wanted to tackle those issues - there are plenty of companies selling outdated, proprietary CMS-driven websites to churches, driven by their ability to navigate the particular buying and implementation processes. Good luck to them! Most are well-intentioned, at least, and a few are quite good.

Instead, we saw an opportunity. We're people who know how the technology works and how costs build up, and so we were able to define a technical solution that would cost a few hundred pounds up-front to create, a few tens of pounds a month to run, plus time and goodwill. We decided to build on WordPress, because (a) it works, (b) it has a vast resource base, (c) the software is free to take, use and adapt. We identified multiple ways to create the service, and looked at take-on (making it easy to get people from nothing to something nice-looking and actually usable) and push-off (making it easy to get people off our platform and onto their own or someone else's). And we did technical validation - yes, it works in practice as well as in theory.

So we got to the 'ready enough' point. We knew we could create the service, and we knew our way around the detailed options we would be choosing between. So we knew we could build a real, live service to meet the promise with a few more hours of work up-front, and a reasonable enough workload in terms of hours per week post launch.

So we launched. Sort of.

Specifically, we said we'd launch the live service if 50 UK churches wanted a website for free. To signal this, they had to tweet a hashtag, like a facebook page or fill in an online form. All of these things required a small amount of effort, and we didn't work hard on promotion.

We got into double figures, but nowhere near the 50. So we won't launch. (I predicted we wouldn't!)

We failed. We failed fast. It's good to fail fast.

You can't fail unless you try. Most people talk a lot about things they want to do, very few try to do them.

Until you fail, it's hard to learn. Most projects exist in a kind of twilight world, where the expectations and effort have gone down, but there's still a dream. By saying "we've failed - and we're moving on," you get to look at things objectively.

And when you fail fast, there aren't so many loose ends to tie up. There's no long, painful running uphill, draining your practical and emotional resources to the dregs. So the learning you achieved, you can apply. Or you can choose another venture. Either way, you start with a positive attitude and a bit of momentum, released by being prepared to say, "That's it. We failed. Now, what shall we do?" Well, almost every meaningful success has come off the back of one, several, many failures. The trick is to welcome failure, and fail fast.

Or, as Samuel Beckett said, "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

Idea Transform - An Act of Co-Creation

Speaking as an "ordained entrepreneur," both halves of me have a strong interest in acts of co-creation. The best things you (singular) can possibly be involved in making will be made by you (plural). And Idea Transform is an example of that in at least two ways.

First, Mauro Ciaccio, Chris Measures and I have a strong and shared interest in events that help people with ideas become teams with running projects. We have very different backgrounds, personalities and styles, but we have lots in common as well. That led us to become local organisers of an event in Cambridge last year - which both proved that something everyone said Cambridge just wouldn't support could be massively successful, and that we could work together under pressure! And we found we had an ambition for more...

Idea Transform is all about making a big difference - and we all want that to become more than just an idea. Along the way, we found friends and supporters, and our ideas were improved by accommodating their insights. (In the case of Jo Vertigan, I think we've absorbed more than just insights, I think we've absorbed Jo along with them!) As I've found so often and in so many ways, a team willing to work hard and put their own reputations on the line will often find support from others giving what they can to support the vision - time, money, facilities, spreading the word. This is my own private blog post, so "official" team thanks come from elsewhere, but I have to say a huge personal thank you to the individuals: Peter Cowley, Chris Lamaison, Allan Maclean and Shai Vyakarnam of our Advisory Board, who magnified our vision; the Idea Transform Mentors (too numerous to name, but heroes of the weekend); the corporate sponsors and supporters who made it possible to run a long weekend event in the middle of Cambridge yet keep the ticket price well below £100.

But all we created together was a context. From 5:30pm on Friday, 20 April until 51 hours later, together we provided a place where it would be possible for other people to come together, bring ideas, experience, talents and aspirations and form teams working together to make a definite difference in the world. And that really was an act of co-creation.

Like anything creative, there was friction as well as harmony. I'm a veteran of quite a few similar events, and I'm always disappointed when people sign up, but don't find, join and stick with a team. I remember an event a couple of years ago when someone came with an exciting vision, but every detail was non-negotiable. Frustrated when people didn't flock to join a team and become a free workforce, contributing nothing but work, receiving nothing but instruction, that person went away with a face like thunder. They would have got so much by staying, and either allowing the idea to be improved by sharing it with others, or by joining a team working on something completely different and building new knowledge and relationships.

Can you, truly, change the world in a weekend spent working together? Maybe not. But I believe you can change lots of things. Your own perspective, for a start. So many of the people I met wanted to change lives, and wanted to learn how. Whether the idea their team was working on will progress in its present form, who can say? From the feedback I've had already, each team built up a much clearer picture of how to validate that the problem they are working on is genuine, that the possible solution they have identified is valuable, and that they can make a step, then another, then another along that road. That may be a few days of work, but it may also be months, years or even decades.

So not every idea, not every team will continue in its present form. But the relationships, the experiences, the feeling of what happens when beautifully simple ideas meet the mess of reality - all those will persist.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that we have, as we wanted, helped at least one world-changing idea to make a decisive step forward.

For a few hours, people came together and suspended disbelief about all the impossibilities of life. We met as equals, co-workers, co-creators. And maybe, just maybe, millions of lives may be changed for the better by ideas transformed by encounters, transformed into works in progress.

A smile for Remembrance Day, 11/11/11

I love the English language. What I want is a word that suggests humour and irony, and there it is: "Wry." Not just any word, this is a three letter word. And as any fule kno, the short words in a language tell you most about its speakers and writers.

So here's a wry offering for Remembrance Sunday, offered to you this Remembrance Day, in the hope that it will give you a smile at around the two minute silence millions upon millions will observe at 11a.m. It was inspired by Louis being asked to make this Sunday a day of young enterprise, making money selling junk at a car boot sale. Louis is a Scout, and he will (alongside  many others from the global scouting movement) be attending a Remembrance Sunday service. I am an "ordained entrepreneur," and I love enterprise, aspiration, wealth creation and the "big society," firmly believing that work is not merely toil, but a celebration of the very nature of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So on that day I will lead the Sunday service with an Act of Remembrance at St Thomas's Hall, Cambridge where I am privileged to minister.

We remember the war dead not as tragic figures defined by death alone, but as those who lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved - and, of course, laughed. So I offer you a wry poem, written on the small screen of my Android smartphone, somewhere between London Liverpool Street as I returned from collecting the IET Information Technology Award for the Cambridge Heathcare team.

On a Remembrance Sunday Car Boot Sale

In Flanders fields the poppies grew 

Between the hatching, straight and true 

That marks our pitch - until our eye 

Fell on an Astra parked nearby 

With garden shears of every hue.

We earn some bread. Some time ago 

We saw a boot sale near Heathrow, 

Paid, and got paid. So we branched out 

To Flanders fields.

Take up our offers so unique. 

Roll up, roll up and take a peek 

At all our wares. The value's clear: 

Cheap DVDs and Belgian beer. 

We've proved that it was time to clear 

Those Flanders fields.

Clear Your Desk!

Luke 16:1-12

“Clear your desk!”

Those are words to knot your stomach. We all want to feel irreplaceable, but in business it can’t be so. Do you think the manager in Jesus’ story saw it coming? Was he lazy or greedy, dishonest or incompetent? The boss isn’t happy and this time it’s the chop – he just has time for a handover of the paperwork.

And there, that time for a handover, there’s just that little bit of wriggle room. “I’m losing my job, my income, my home. There’s no chance of a reference; there’s no safety net. I don’t have the muscles to be a builder, I don’t have the talent to be a busker and I don’t have the humility to be a beggar. But I need a pension plan, like, now.”

He thinks fast, he plans fast and he moves fast. Grabbing the file of invoices, he calls in all the debtors – everyone who owes something to the boss. In they come, one by one. Here’s the man who works the olive grove. He owes a share of the output – thousands of litres of extra virgin olive oil. At £4.99 a litre in Tesco’s that’s a tidy sum. “Tell you what,” says the manager (because he still is the manager, even if not for much longer), “Tell you what: I like you; you like me; we understand each other. You work hard, and maybe we’re asking too much. So here’s the deal: you can pay half, how does that sound? OK, we’re agreed. Yes, I’d love to come round some time for a meal. You can thank me later, I have a really busy morning.”

And so on through the queue: worried faces coming in, happy ones going out. He’s spent these last few hours when he’s meant to be putting the books in order buying favours by spending his boss’s capital. It’s not exactly stealing: he can’t be accused of having his hand in the till. He’ll be out on his ear, but he won’t be out in the cold, not with all those smiling friends who’ll be glad to see him, all those people who now owe him a big favour.

The boss gets wind of what he’s been up to and hauls him in. He’s been taken for a ride, but for whatever reason he decides to grin and bear it. “Well done,” he says to Mr Dishonest. “If only you’d been half as sharp on the job…”

And do you know? – because here’s the Sunday School teacher in me kicking in – God’s a bit like that.

What??????

Thank you, Maggi, for inviting me here tonight. You asked me to speak as the ‘ordained entrepreneur’ I call myself, and gave me the chance to look at what you and I agree is an outrageous story. It’s definitely one I need to make sense of, because I really want to know if I’m going God’s way.

If you’ll forgive me, I’d like to start by telling you some of my own story.

I’m a reluctant Christian. I was a happy atheist before I ran out of reasons to disbelieve that Jesus Christ is God’s Son. That was in my first year at Oxford, and it took me to nearly the end of my third to actually do something about it, to add a consenting heart to an assenting head.

I’m a reluctant vicar. I spent very nearly 20 years running away from a clear sense of calling to ordained Christian ministry before I became raw material for one of the vicar factories in Cambridge. And even then, I jumped off the production line leading to house and income and went ‘self-supporting,’ becoming unpaid curate of St Martin’s and keeping my family fed and housed by throwing myself into the business startup scene here at a time when our finances were rock bottom and the economy was subterranean.

But I am a happy entrepreneur. I love knocking down doors and opening up opportunities; spotting gaps and jumping into them; putting people together and seeing what happens; taking risks I think I can manage better than other people; celebrating the successes and bouncing back from the flops. And I fit my own definition of entrepreneur which is: someone who finds what they need to do what they want.

So if I am an ordained entrepreneur, most of my ministry is well off the beaten track of churches and the churchy. I’ve chosen to live with everything – faith included – at risk. And, getting back to the story, I’m bound to identify at least a bit with the opportunistic manager, if not in his ethics, certainly in his weighing up of a situation leading to rapid action to seize the main chance.

If that dishonest manager gets a thumbs-up from the boss, maybe I do too. Although I need to remember he got the sack, so I have to be a bit careful of getting smug.

Is God a bit like this boss? Well, there is something of grace about him – cheated by his outgoing staff member, he chooses to appreciate rather than incarcerate. When Jesus explains the story – OK, that’s an exaggeration, he leaves enough of a puzzle for generations of scholars and wearers of odd collars to sweat over – he says that “the children of this age are shrewder in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

So this is a story for a mixed economy. There are “children of this age” who are thoroughly worldly and at home in the here and now, and there are “children of light” who are in a way visitors to or voyagers in the world as it is, who look to the world as it could be, to the world as God willing it will be. Thinking back to the Christmas season, we recall how in the birth of Jesus Matthew tells us that “the people living in darkness have seen a great light.” Those who respond to this light become children of light. They now shine in that same darkness with the reflected glory of the one true light – that’s not their job, it’s a kind of spiritual physics.

So is Jesus really telling us that shrewdness is a no-no for his people? Here comes the great reckoning, how’s your eternal balance sheet? Shrewds to the left – no credit, all crunch; prudes to the right and amply justified bonuses all round? No, I don’t think so. This parable comes in a block of teaching that begins a chapter before: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”

Jesus is offering a new perspective on living, and it’s the pious who don’t like it one bit. Those who take their religion so very seriously think Jesus is like the cross-eyed teacher who has no control over his pupils. He has absolutely no respect for them, and no apparent scruples. There he sits, surrounded by the faithless rich and the faceless poor. If a person is known by the company they keep, this Jesus is just another crowd-pleaser, careless of the rules. At best he’s misguided, wasting his time, talents and teaching.

And so Jesus tells this story. And it is meant to provoke that response of, “What??????” It’s a challenge as direct as you could want to the complacency which so easily sets in to all of us who start to think that when we become Christians we hand over responsibility to God and cover ourselves in an insulating layer of respectability. It’s not that we don’t want to see others find what we’ve found, of course. I’m sure they’ll see us, pillars of respectability, and some will be inspired by our radiance to become just like us.

Just think what’s been put into our trust: the riches of heaven, to know and be known as friends of God, and perhaps material prosperity as well. And what have we done, what are we doing with all this that has been entrusted to us? How are we using all we’ve been given? Secretly, as a private hoard, stockpiled until we need it? Perhaps we’re pooling our resources, sharing with others who are like us. Perhaps we even take the risk of putting this wealth on display. 

But the call to follow Jesus is different. It’s a call to risk being misunderstood – especially by Christians. It’s a call to meet people as they live in the misery of the world’s broken promises, and to greet them not with words of condemnation but with words of hope and friendship. It’s a call to trust God that if he should be calling us to give up all we have, whether riches or reputation, then we will be welcomed into eternal dwellings – welcomed into a new life that is not merely endless but boundless.

This story is outrageous because the Gospel is outrageous. It’s a reminder that faith is a risk. Gospel lives aren’t safe, but they are secure. They aren’t stable, but they are anchored. And Gospel goods aren’t for keeping – we need to act to share what’s been lavished on us or else either it or we will be spoiled. Gospel clothes are worn with humility: they are always worn at the knees. Gospel people are always ready to move – and always ready to be moved.

This Jesus, the Jesus of the Gospels, is a chancer, seizing the moment. He’s a risk-taker, putting everything at stake when that’s what it takes.

I wonder if one day you may hear his call as I have? It’s a call that thrills my soul just as it knots my stomach.

“Clear your desk!”

Given at Robinson College, Cambridge, Sunday evening 21 February, 2010

Learning to crawl

It's strange after all these years finding myself with new eyes for the world that disappeared while studying, and new legs that haven't yet learned to stand.

What have I learned in this new life as an ordained entrepreneur?

That I am finding unexpected common ground with all kinds of people outside the church... and suspicion from unexpected people within.

That it's hard facing up to the meltdown economy, but good to share that experience with so many.

That there are people attempting amazing things that I would never have discovered unless I had found this nearby and altogether less heroic path.

That people are hungry for meaningful connection and that the church has largely lost the reputation of being a group that does just that.

That however it may have felt during the curing, cutting and canning process of theological education, the insights and instincts of twenty-odd years in marketing are back and busy.

That I can - just about - crawl.

Ordained Entrepreneurship

Matt Jamison, impressively confident and capable radio presenter at BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, on his Easy Sunday programme today. I was there for an interview about being an ordained entrepreneur (Thanks, Matt! Thanks, Heather! Thanks, Vanessa!).

A short while before there was a piece about churches dealing with the challenges of buildings to maintain and assets to protect. Or the opportunity of bringing the community into the church and finding everyone's best ideas of how to make best use of what we have to offer...

I'm hoping that kind of challenge and the stories of churches that have tried different approaches will be exactly the kind of thing we'll be featuring on churchcafe.org.uk, the free national podcast series launching in September. Not so much from people with ideas, but from ordinary people (including ordinary ministers!) who've tried things that have worked and things that haven't.

I'm also hoping to connect with someone as passionate as I am to give Cambridge entrepreneurs an opportunity to connect with the entrepreneurial Church (and that's the only kind we've got, however often we forget it).

Posted via email from JDAP posterous