STRATEGY CENTRAL

You can check out the main sessions from Granger Community Church’s Innovate conference online…and at a great price: FREE!  Including this one featuring Guy Kawasaki!

Great article out today from the folks at The Leadership Network .  Who Do You Say Is Most Influential? by Dr. John Vaughan.  Based on a comparison of a George Barna study and Vaughan’s own research, this short article is worth a look.  Interesting to see how the two studies compare and think about the differences.

Getting into blogging and trying to figure out how to make it work?  David Armano over at Logic + Emotion (which is another business blog to check regularly) has a great post on the keys to influential blogging.  By the way, David’s got a

If you’re around me for any time at all you’ll find out that I love to learn from all fields.  If you look at my library, it’ll jump out right away.  I really believe that if you’re not reading broadly…and especially if you’re not reading and listening in the business/leadership sector…you’re toast.  If you’re not taking a look at 800-CEO-READ, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki and Mavericks at Work (among many others)…you’re just missing out.

These blogs…and there are a lot of others…are a regular source of ideas, new books, podcasts, and more that are direct connections to what’s coming (or what’s already here).  Like this talk by Randy Pausch a professor at Carnegie Mellon,
known for his sabbatical work at Disney, creation of the program Alice
and work with Google, was one of the recent lecturers at CM. The "last"
part of the lecture is unique for Randy as he is fighting a deadly
pancreatic cancer (this is the intro from 800-CEO-READ).

Let me say it this way…if we don’t listen to what’s happening in the world, how can we feel like we have anything to say?  Really.  Want to play?  You can start right here.  

Here’s the corrected list from Outreach.

Word broke last night that the list was incorrect and that Outreach Magazine would be out with a corrected list today.  I’ll put up the new information as soon as it is available.  In the meantime, check out this post for an article on the most influential churches in America.  And thanks to Kent Schaffer for some good reporting.

Outreach Magazine is also out with their list of the 100 Fastest Growing Churches in America.  Fascinating stuff.  A new method for determining ranking was employed taking into consideration both numeric growth and percentage growth.  That makes the number more meaningful.  When you see some of the percentage jumps…well it’s just amazing what’s happening around the country.

Even a casual glance can begin to identify some interesting trends.  One that caught my eye again this year is that 7 of the 10 fastest growing churches in America are multi-site congregations.

Another thing that was interesting is the number of states represented.  Although there were the usual concentrations in Texas, California, Georgia and Florida, there were also representative churches in Idaho and Nebraska as well.  Last, there were churches in New York and Massachusetts, a region often described as being spiritually dead.

Interesting stuff…don’t you think?  You can check out the whole list right here.

Outreach Magazine is out with their 2007 take on the 100 Largest Churches in America.  As usual, Kent Shaffer scooped it first and has a good take right here.  It’s always interesting to me.  Who’s on the list.  Who’s not.

When you think about what your organization is offering, are you simply meeting the basic expectations of your customer?  Or are you attempting to go beyond what they expect?  I continue to be challenged by Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow.  Think about this line:

"Today, it is the retailer’s job not only to deliver what the customers want, but also what they’d never think to ask for (p. 152)."

Here’s the question of the day: Are we doing that?  Are you doing that?  Or are we settling?  And then wondering why we’re not reaching who we’re trying to reach?

What do you think?  Are you there?  Is your organization really committed to delivering beyond what they want…and all the way to what they’d never think to ask for?  THAT would make a great discussion…wouldn’t it?