Decentralizing stewardship

Minister’s decision a lesson in the power of empowerment.

By Jerry Ash.

There is no better way to understand how the rules can change, how people can become engaged in making better decisions, and how surprise and discovery can ignite communities than to follow the collection plate of a community church where the pastor chooses to think differently.

Follow the money in most churches and you will see it travel through the hierarchy: from the donor to the finance committee where decisions are made on how it is spent. Sometimes spending decisions are influenced by individuals or special interest groups who want to support worthy causes or people in need.

The administration carries out the will of the committee and, of course, there is an accounting process and the members receive a financial report.

One hundred parishioners got $100 bills with one simple instruction: “It must glorify God and benefit others.” Otherwise, it was a personal decision.

Denny Bellesi, then minister of the Coast Hills Community Church in Aliso Viejo, California, turned the process around. The clergyman gave out $100 bills – a total of $10,000 from his church’s general funds – to 100 parishioners with instructions they were to invest it outside the church in line with the goals and objectives of the church mission.

“It had to be glorifying to God and it had to benefit others,” Bellesi said. Beyond that, how each spent the money was a personal decision.

Soon hundreds of people and funds far greater than the original $10,000 were involved. The results ranged from small acts of kindness such as helping a local family get on its feet to large projects such as funding the construction of a church in Asia.

Bill Shedd, one of the parishioners, said, “It was the most important $100 I ever held in my hands.” To add to the pot, Shedd’s 13-year-old son donated $100 he had saved from his allowance. Then his daughter pitched in too. Soon the Shedds had collected $1,000.

After weeks of debate, the family donated $800 to a shelter for abused women and children.

Then Shedd read a newspaper article about 15-year-old Javier Zambrano in nearby Santa Ana, California, who was collecting holiday gifts for children even though he didn’t have enough money to buy soccer shoes for himself. Shedd gave Javier the remaining $200 for soccer equipment.

Michael Rodriguez used the $100 to begin a donation drive at the Internet consulting company where he worked. The money raised helped a family with funeral costs for two daughters who had died. Gene Shook used the money to buy Bibles and study guides to train pastors in Asia. Nine-year-old Alex Benson sent the money to a four-year-old Oregon girl to help her family with expenses for a heart transplant.

Pastor Bellesi intended the lesson to be about stewardship. In business we would have called it an experiment in the decentralization of decision-making.

By accident, Pastor Bellesi may have learned a lesson for himself – that in the era of information and knowledge, people like to think for themselves, and great things happen when hierarchy gets out of the way.

The explosion of the Internet and other forms of personal communication – coupled with the highest level of human intellectual activity ever – have created a new order in human enterprise.

It is a phenomenon that transcends all ages, not just the young and impetuous. Patients enter doctors’ offices these days already having researched their symptoms. They make decisions about their own care based on what they know, not just what the doctor tells them.

Shoppers go online not just to buy, but also to learn all they can about a product from every point of view. They depend much less on what the salesman advises; in many cases, the customer knows more – or better.

The selection of media is no longer limited to newspapers or broadcast journalism, creating an even freer flow of information and ideas. Doing business with the government is as close as the desktop, allowing citizens to take charge of their own affairs by bypassing intermediaries who have “government connections.”

The impact of this dramatic culture change is both in the marketplace and the workplace. People like Pastor Bellesi’s parishioners not only thrive on the responsibility of decision-making, they have come to expect it. When people go to work, they are looking for an environment that will use their brains as well as brawn.

The knowledge effect is ubiquitous. Self-direction and decision-making are at the heart of this cultural change.

Some who were schooled in the command-and-control management methods of the past may call it disorder. Certainly, the open field attitude of today might have been anathema in the Industrial Age, but we are now in a knowledge economy.

Bright people with fresh ideas and initiative are just the fit for enterprises that need innovation and agility to keep up with rapidly changing methods and marketplaces. Customers are approaching organizations directly with their ideas for new products. They are no longer content just to consider what’s available. They want to participate.

So, the knowledge resource and the knowledge culture aren’t a problem. Organizing a knowledge-friendly environment that encourages knowledge sharing and collaboration is.

The new order requires a new style of leadership and “followership” that fits the new kind of enterprise.

Pioneers on the leading edge of these phenomena are too often thought of – mistakenly – as promoters of a new fad. Such a reaction is understandable since this seemingly sudden focus on the knowledge phenomenon follows closely on the heels of a succession of popular management fads that have business leaders and workers somewhat skeptical of the next short-lived craze.

But this is not a craze and it is not temporary. It is real and it will change the way we think, live and work in the foreseeable future. The champions of KM and SN are the futurists of our time. They work between an outdated past and an uncharted future that is already upon us. They approach issues from the perspective of their own backgrounds in management, communication, human relations, training and development, education, strategic analysis, technology, project management and academic research.

But the most effective champion of all is Mother Nature. The technology may be the work of humans, but the effect is nature at work.