missio

A tidbit on leadership culture.

I’m currently reading an utterly fascinating book about the startup of the largest search engine on the ‘net: Google. It’s written by David Vise and Mark Malseed, aptly titled The Google Story, and has some great tidbits for church planters. One I’ve gleaned?

But Google had something else special about it that Bharat (inventor of Google News) relished: a rule that software engineers spend at least 20 percent of their time, or one day a week, working on whatever projects interested them. The 20 percent rule was a way of encouraging innovation, and both Brin and Page (founders of Google) saw this as essential to establishing and maintaining the right culture and creating a place where bright technologists would want to work and be motivated to come up with breakthrough ideas….at Google, the 20 percent approach sent the opposite message- spend one day a week on something you, not your boss, are passionate about, and don’t worry about such pedestrian matters as whether the idea could be a moneymaker or something that could be turned into a successful product.

What if we, as leaders of our staffs, took this approach? We came to our staff and said: one day a week is yours. Use it for whatever you want to do related to the church. Don’t go run errands or anything; but be ministerially productive creatively and redemptively. I guarantee a few things would happen: our worship leaders would write more original songs. Our discipleship pastors would write great books on small groups. Ministry ideas would overflow come staff meeting time. “I’ve been working on this, what do you think?” Innovation is key, even in the church, and Google’s 20% rule is a great way to foster it.