Success requires alignment of character, competence and context
So I’m at a new church the other week and it just felt disjointed: it felt like it had been built taking the ‘best of’ from a number of other organizations. The music guy literally looked like a well known artist — down to the facial hair and slightly cocked hat. The pastor modeled great communicators, yet it didn’t seem natural.
The reality is that this organization is 100 people, not 1,000 or 10,000 like the models it emulates. The reality is that this communicator is the only pastor on staff, not the ‘lead communicator’, like those he emulates. The reality is that the acoustic guitar and keyboard are good, but don’t have the production support of the bands they emulate.
The speaker, music and model didn’t make sense in the context. The music didn’t work with 2 people. There was something inauthentic about it. To be clear, they were quite sincere in their message and meaning, The guitarist can indeed sing and play, yet I was lost in the dissonance between what was and what they seemed to model.
I don’t mean to vilify this organization, but to note the cognitive dissonance that distracted me from what was good material. (I was with a large corporation later in the week that shared their desire to be another organization). We learn from our models — we should — and both of these organizations chose good models. The gap for them both to close is to internalize and personalize authentically the intent of their models. Trucker hats make sense in warehouses-turned-office-space, not unoccupied Lutheran Churches-turned-contemporary-worship-center.
Either this church knew exactly who they were designed for the organization they want to become (1,000s, not their current 100s) or they were trying too hard to be something or someone they aren’t (Think Microsoft store vs Apple store).
The questions for me are:
What can I authentically integrate from my model?
What does an authentic expression of me look like?
What does an authentic expression of me look like in this context?
What do I do when others expect a different expression of me in the context?