STRATEGY CENTRAL

Kent scooped us again.  For a look at the 15 largest churches in America, check out his post.   Fascinating to see the changes in a year.  In the list he also tracks their ranking in 06 and 07.

One of the bloggers I check out regularly is David Armano over at Logic + Emotion.  Often a really good way of looking at things, maybe a little unexpected, but definitely will make you think.  Check out this diagram about the Stairway to Brand Heaven:

Interesting, don’t you think?  This is all about the way things work from the standpoint of brand value (whether you’re talking corporate or personal).  Want to build loyalty in your customer?  Building loyalty takes a lot of work.  Positive interactions are only the beginning.  Consistency and credibility are important steps along the way.  Authenticity and trust get you beyond credibility to the place where you’re actually building loyalty.

The truth?  Compromise on consistency or waste credibility on a half-hearted effort…and you take a few steps down the stairway.  Fudge a little on something or break trust even for an instant…and you may take a giant leap backwards and have to rebuild.  Want to build brand loyalty?  Where are you?

Some things are just too good to pass up.  Enjoy it for what it’s worth…there’s actually quite a message if you watch through to the end.  Gotta love it!

Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) is out with a free preview of his next book on the concept of certain kinds of things "wanting to be free."  You can read his article right here.   I referred to the idea previously in Uncopyable Values, and this is a really important concept to understand.

Basic idea?  In the past some things were "free" because you bought another item (think razor blades).  Today the shift is to another kind of free.  Think email storage, youtube, the New York Times online, etc.

So if things truly "want to be free" how does anyone charge for anything?  There are things that become more valuable, like reputation and attention, and those things aren’t free.  You can read more about this in Uncopyable Values.

Anderson’s article on free is an interesting concept, packed with ideas that are important for all of us.  I particularly found these two paragraphs helpful:

Money
is not the only scarcity in the world. Chief among the others are your
time and respect, two factors that we’ve always known about but have
only recently been able to measure properly. The "attention economy"
and "reputation economy" are too fuzzy to merit an academic department,
but there’s something real at the heart of both. Thanks to Google, we
now have a handy way to convert from reputation (PageRank) to attention
(traffic) to money (ads). Anything you can consistently convert to cash
is a form of currency itself, and Google plays the role of central
banker for these new economies.

There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention
in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities — and
the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for
the sake of a business model to be identified later. Free shifts the
economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars
and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.

I don’t understand it all…but I know it applies to what all of us do.  In a way it has to do with the reallocation of what matters, "a realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today."

You can read the whole article right here.

Do you know what it is that makes leadership possible?  According to John Maxwell it is a matter of "change".  Not change like in "Things need to change."  More like, "Investing in you is like putting a little ‘change’ in the bank."  The more I put in, the more I’ll be able to take out.

Want a better explanation?  Check out Maxwell’s article over at Business Week: Got Change?

The Church Report is out with their 2007 America’s 50 Most Influential Churches report.  Very interesting stuff.  If you’re wondering how they came up with the list, here’s what they did:

"The 2007 survey was
emailed to leaders of more than 2,000 of the largest non-Catholic
congregations in the nation in April-June. Participants were asked to
recommend up to 10 churches they considered to be among the nation’s
most influential."

How’s that sound to you?  I guess that’s as sound as you’re going to get it.  I really wish they were required to show why they recommended them.  Is it just name recognition?  Is it that they hold a conference?  Is it that the pastor is an author?  Not sure.  Still…it’s a fascinating list.  Several I’ve never heard of and will have to check out.

As usual, Kent Shaffer has a very informative take on some of the other lists that these churches are on.  Here’s the link to his post: 50 Most Influential Churches. 

I don’t know if this is real…or not, but it is an interesting picture.  It looks like Snoop is reading How Good Is Good Enough? by Andy Stanley.  I tracked the origin of the picture back to GenerationPost by Jason Berggren.  Love Jason’s question: "the real question is why is a guy with so much bling riding in coach?"

I’ve talked about TED several times in the last year or so.  Great source for a very eclectic cast of speakers on a wide variety of topics.  One of my readers pointed me to Pop!Tech, described as an East Coast TED.  Check it out for yourself.  I listened to a really interesting and compelling talk by Thomas Freidman, author of The World is Flat.

Kent Shaffer has a great list of the top 22 churches in America over at over at Church Relevance.  I love the way he’s developed the thinking.  He took churches from 7 different lists compiled from 2004 – 2007, aggregated the results, and then made a list based on their presence on more than one list.  Very interesting stuff.  You can take a look at his work right here.

You may have already seen it.  There is a very interesting site that identifies the 59 smartest orgs online.  You’ve heard about Web 2.0?  This site is talking ORG 2.0.   Very interesting.  In addition to a great look at some great causes…it’s also a clear look at HOW to use the web more creatively, more compellingly, to tell your story.  The organizations were chosen for inclusion "because of their web 2.0 smarts and a willingness to engage their constituents far beyond asking them to dig into their pockets."

If you haven’t already seen the site, be sure and take a look.  You can get there by clicking here.