andi's perspective

IT'S ALL STRUCTURES

Once again i am impressed by the difference that clear structures make! Everything is or follows structures: bodies, technology, language, thinking patterns, interaction, not to mention work processes or knowledge repositories!

Enjoying another intense working time here in Fribourg with my long-time Swiss business partner i was again super impressed by the way he manages his staff and overwhelming amount of projects. Besides being just a strategy genius, his key secret seems clear: diligently prepare strategically consistent structures for others to build on them.

Structures is becoming a major red line in my life and thinking.
What structures are you living in? Any to be changed?

STRASBOURG RESEARCH ACTION

Going down to Strasbourg in a complete faith action to see what we can achieve in 4 days in terms of local strategic research. We, that is Paul Haenze plus son David from Poland, Timotea plus friends from Slovakia and myself.

Here is the official announcement of our "Open Your Eyes" week. The idea is to lead an AJC short term missions team into utilizing research for city outreach.  We will basically send them two by two to "spy out the land" utilizing basic etnografic observation and questions. If the Spirit kicks in, it might actually turn into kind of a Luke 10 thing. If rain kicks in, it might go the other way.

Or as Paul put it: Never prepare beyond 60% to allow the Lord of the harvest to utilize at least the 40% risk margin to His liking. Good thinking! No risk, no fun, for sure... Let's see :)

NORWAY MEMORIES

Memories from an enjoyable and encouraging DAWN team meeting up there in Kristiansand, Norway, two weeks ago (yes, i am late..)
We learned a lot about the essential ingredients for a great meeting: Take a boat, get lots of shrimps, make the sun shine and invite excellent people to talk kingdom strategy. End with having a pizza at home. I could get accustomed to this :)

Read more at Marc's, Andrew's or Reinhold's.

WEAK SIGNALS

Wow. Choosing between 150 presentations and listening to world class entrepreneurs was a huge stimulation for thought and quite an information overflow here in Tours. One of my primary take aways is a the need for sensitivity to the weak signals from within the wider environment. Innovation does have a lot to do with creativity and a reframing of the usual perspective.

I see a time coming where kingdom actors are not only sitting together with sociologists to broaden their horizon, but with quantum physicists as much as with web2 entrepreneurs, information brokers, primary school teachers,  and creative democracy theorists.
-> How could your very lcoal church become a leader in such kind of interdisciplinary and multi-perspective value integration?!

OPEN INNOVATION

There is a growing realisation in industry and research today that innovation cannot rely on the corporate resources only, but that the speed of our networked knowledge economy requires to collaborate on innovation - in some instances even with competitors. Open Innovation is the buzzword.

Tomorrow i am going down to Tours, France, to a big Open Innovation Conference organised by a network of "professionals in innovation management" to present our recent business activities in this field and to see where the scene is headed.

PERSPECTIVE MATTERS

-> find Europe! :)

RODNEY STARK - DEUTSCH (DE)

Für alle, die der amerikanische Religionssoziologe Rodney Stark (siehe hier, hier und hier) interessiert, aber eine deutsche Version bevorzugen, hier die gute Nachricht: Marlin hat es getan - und das deutlich besser und ausführlicher als ich es konnte! Überhaupt scheint mir Marlins Blog eine großartige Ressource für deutschsprachige Gemeinde-Über-Denker!  Cool Marlin, weiter so!

VISUAL MAIL THREADS

ThreadVis is a remarkable Thunderbird Add-on which i highly recommend if your email inbox like mine is an infinite pool of complexly interrelated conversation threads. By including "sent emails" it goes far beyond the standard "cluster by theme" option without messing up the inbox.

The grafic shows the flow of an email conversation i am having with two colleagues: red starting, green answering, me replying to green, red replying, both replying to red, and finally red answering my reply. Each of the dots comes with By, Date, and About info in a mouse-over pop-up and hyperlinks to the corresponding email. Coolest of all: the time distance between two replies is given in minutes, hours or days and displays in correct proportions!
Now, this does not only give me  a better handle on the multitude of parallel threads, but it might have the potential to increase email response time as it so obviously shows the delays ;-)
I love it! How ever could we have emailed without it?

PERSON TO PERSON LENDING

Just now totally enthusiastic about the Kiva micro-loan scheme: the world's first person-to-person micro-lending service.  100% throughput to the entrepreneur!

"Kiva's mission is  to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty."

You "browse the catalogue", choose profiled entrepreneurs in the developing world, and lend $25 upwards enabling them to work themselves out of poverty or at least continue to survive in it!   

Are you the only Westerner without $25 to spare?

I think i love this!

CHURCH AS RELATIONAL ACTION

What if we would be church the following way:

• covenant with Him and celebrate life
• share our lives and celebrate each other
• open our eyes and together contradict evil around us?

Actionwise this could mean to

• teach each other how to live a good life with eternal perspectives (lecture, dialogue, workshop, training etc.)
• explore and celebrate each other (peer groups with story telling, listening & feedback, prophecy & intercession, fun & feasting...)
• meet each other's needs by sharing resources (ideas, time, money, equipment, space, contacts, know-how...)
• actively seek-out and solidarize with those in need (latch-key kids, lonely elderly, single parents, unemployed, your normal neighbor, anyone coming your way...) and find ways to do good (and no, i am not talking "servant-evangelism"!)
• understand and counteract destructive cultural  patterns around us and find ways to contradict evil in the public space (of media, professions, politics, curricula, the web, the street...)
• and to use the time freed up by less religious activities to do these things together!

Structurally this could mean to think about

• networks of and meetings with friends
• global/ local clusters of friendship networks 
• an extensive online social network environment
• specialists and interspecialists connections
• engaging the culture task forces
• specific outreach/ project/  neighborhood groups
• training workshops/ lectures
• area resource centers [term borrowed] etc.

I cannot imagine this is easily done. To start with a minimum budget of time i suggest we stop our overdose of religious activities (like singing and praying, reading and talking, and talking and reading and singing and praying...) and start Loving God, Each Other, Our Neighbor and This World together with Him.

Just for a change.