But like all strategic tools, the compounding phenomenon can work both to the benefit and detriment of your organization. A lesson that most companies (and people) learn the hard way.

A quick analogy.

Right now, there is infection in five of my toes. I’ll spare you the details but know this: IT HURTS. I’m a pitiful sight right now, wincing and grimacing as I hobble around. But it didn’t start out like this. It started with my winter boots which, though functioning correctly, have a narrow “toe box” which caused my toes to rub against the inside of the boot.

Now add to that the fact that it’s winter and I wear the boots for extended period, the rubbing starts to become intense. Add to that the fact that (as a diabetic) I have poor circulation to my feet. Now my toes are being irritated and don’t receive a sufficient supply of “clean” blood to keep them healthy. What happens? Infection sets in and then spreads to the toes that have been weakened by the compounding effect of my constricting boots and lazy pancreas.

What started as a minor irritation quickly became a near-debilitating condition.

How small problems can compound in an organization.

Now imagine a similar situation in your organization.

One member of your team (let’s call him ‘Tony’) is being slightly but continually irritated by a tool that isn’t quite what he needs. Annoying but no big deal, he’s team player and times are tight so he’s making due with the best he can.

Now imagine that some other part of your organization, say Human Resources, starts having problems. It doesn’t have to completely fail to function, like my pancreas has; it could be as minor as falling behind or forgetting to complete something on time. But as a result, Tony doesn’t get his pay check when he’s supposed to.

Now Tony is being worn down by a minor inconvenience and the flow of resources that he needs has been disrupted. As anyone who has ever had to deal with a missing pay check will tell you, Tony’s condition has just gotten a lot worse. The stress of his inefficient work environment is now compounded by the disruption that flows from another part of the organization. Tony’s pissed. Infection has set in.

Let unchecked, Tony will now start to have a detriment effect on those around him, compounding any difficulties they’re enduring. This is how the infection spreads. Suddenly, what started as a minor problem has compounded to a critical issue that will take a lot of attention to heal.

Don’t sweat the small stuff.

As entrepreneurs, leaders, and managers, you’re accustomed to working in less that perfect conditions. And in many regards inefficiency will always hinder our efforts. In order to accomplish our strategic goals we’ve learned not to sweat the small stuff.

But that doesn’t mean that we can ignore the small stuff completely. You need to pay attention to what’s happening around you. And it is especially important to keep a pulse on the “health” of your team and make sure that you are creating the right conditions for them to succeed in their positions. Because if you don’t, something minor can quickly compound into something major and hobble your efforts.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. But don’t ignore it either.

The following is another excerpt from the BAM Survey 2007 Report. The BAM Survey 2007 Report is an in-depth assessment of the state of the Business as Mission movement based on survey responses from 497 people in 38 countries. You can purchase an electronic copy of the BAM Survey 2007 Report for $14.99 here.

Creating Eternal Value through Strategic Management

Business as Mission Methodology – BAM Business Organization and Resource Coordination (part 1)

In order for Business as Mission objectives to drive the strategic management of BAM companies, the structure of a BAM company must align with those objectives. Analysis of the survey results suggests that correlations^[1] exist between respondents’ perceptions of key elements of a BAM company (structural elements and management considerations) and perceptions of key BAM objectives.

Structural elements

Different strategies that integrate business activities with ministry efforts hold to different principles on how a business should operate. How each of these principles is manifest within a business is a subject of much debate. Core principles such as operating with integrity and honesty are universally accepted as important to Christians in business. However, research shows that three key considerations regarding structure (commercial function^[2], licitness^[3], and management oversight) are not universally accepted as vital elements of Business as Mission (Exhibit 5).

• Nearly 10 percent of respondents do not think that commercial function and legal structure are vital for Business as Mission. (5.1 and 5.2)
• One out of four respondents expressed no opinion about whether an advisory board is a vital element of a BAM business. (5.3)

Management Considerations

Exhibit 6 summarizes how perceptions of corporate structure as well as management considerations regarding oversight and sustainability correlate with the perceptions of the strategic objectives of the Business as Mission movement.

Corporate structure (6.1-2)

• Aspects of corporate structure (licitness and commercial function) are recognized by 77 percent of respondents as important elements of BAM companies.
• Both licitness and commercial function are considered to strongly influence a business’s ability to make a profit. Both also influence evangelism efforts and focus on the developing world.
• A BAM company’s commercial function influences that company’s role in building the local economy. (6.1)

• Commercial function has a negative correlation with providing access to countries. (6.2)

Management oversight (6.3-5)

• Survey respondents heavily favor Management participation in discipling and accountability relationships (87 percent). Additionally, 68 percent agree that BAM companies should have an advisory board. (6.3 and 6.4)
• Results indicate that the primary influence of these two types of management support is on the company’s evangelism efforts and focus on the developing world. (6.3 and 6.4)

Sustainability (6.6-8)

• Sustainability is considered a highly important aspect of Business as Mission, with over 85 percent of respondents agreeing that Net profitability of the organization, Growth in capital base for future development of kingdom businesses, and Development of a succession plan are valuable elements.
• Respondents correlate net profitability with the ability to build the local economy and to bless the nation. (6.6)
• Respondents also believe that developing a succession plan facilitates the ability to evangelize and the focus on the developing world. (6.8)

• All three aspects of sustainability are negatively correlated with the goal of gaining access through Business as Mission.

The following is an excerpt from the BAM Survey 2007 Report, an in-depth assessment of the state of the Business as Mission movement that I wrote while developing the consulting services division of EC Group International. The report is based on survey responses from 497 people in 38 countries.

Though based on data collected in 2007, many of the insights contained in this report are valuable in understanding the state of the Business as Mission movement at the beginning of 2010. That is why over the course of the next several weeks I will be posting excerpts from the report on this blog. Additionally, you can purchase an electronic copy of the BAM Survey 2007 Report for $14.99.

Whether you are a BAM practitioner, a church or missions organization that supports Business as Mission, or an individual who is curious what Business as Mission is… this report will provide you with a comprehensive view of the global Business as Mission movement as well as an in depth analysis of many of the issues and trends that are shaping the future of BAM.

Introduction: Defining the Business as Mission Movement

In recent years the Business as Mission (BAM) movement has been mired by debate over the central principles of this special expression of ministry and missions that is occurring in the global marketplace. As individuals with traditional business or missions/ministry backgrounds approached Business as Mission, points of contention arose from the efforts to integrate the alternate worldview. Primary among these were issues with the implied/intrinsic inferiority of secular (or “lay”) vocations and with the sanctity of profit. Efforts to resolve these conflicts have been hindered by immature language and misconceptions among each group about the other. Feeling rejected for believing in the transformative power of business and facing difficulty in gaining acceptance, those who embraced Business as Mission disengaged from the church and proceeded in building their businesses.

During this period, the concept of Business as Mission was shaped by the relatively few kingdom companies in operation and was subject to much debate. Due to the broad scope of what it means to be a business and to be a mission, even within the growing BAM movement it was difficult to identify generally accepted interpretations of key issues and elements. This has been complicated by the tendency within the movement to personalize the definition of Business as Mission, manipulating it to encompass the particulars of one’s situation, to account for personal worldviews and goals, and to support personal agendas. Efforts to organize and address the subtle nuances and layered complexities created by the integrating business and missions have had limited success.

As a result, BAM practitioners have been operating without a generally accepted framework for describing what many feel is their calling in life, further isolating them from their communities and limiting their ability to get support on many of the challenges they faced. In 2004, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization hosted the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization: Business as Mission Issue Group, which produced the Lausanne Occasional Paper No. 59 (PDF). This paper for the first time defined the Business as Mission movement’s identity by clarifying many of its terms and addressing what Ken Eldred refers to as “significant barriers to the idea of Kingdom business being a viable missions tool.”^[1] One of the outcomes of the Lausanne conference was that Business as Mission was affirmed as a major effort of the evangelical church.

Since that time, Business as Mission has increased in popularity, particularly among traditional missionaries who recognize its potential for achieving their various goals. These events have helped to raise the level of awareness of BAM, especially within the church. As more and more people join the growing Business as Mission movement a number of things are beginning to occur:

Business as Mission operators are having their calling validated – affirming their beliefs and recognizing the challenges they still face in overcoming barriers.

Missions organizations are integrating Business as Mission into their strategies and operations – testing the compatibility of key elements of the business and missions worldviews and (in some cases) developing alternate approaches for BAM operation and support.

The roles the church will play in the BAM movement are being established - beginning to address the church’s own barriers and determining how it can identify and offer what the movement needs.

Support networks are forming – Business as Mission courses is being offered; capital is being raised for BAM investment; BAM “industry groups” are forming; the number of BAM publications is increasing.

The Business as Mission movement is entering a growth stage that, like any maturing industry, is marked by economies of scale, increased awareness, and new participants emerging. Given that the history of conflict that has shaped Business as Mission, it is important to study these changing dynamics in order to identify new challenges facing the movement.

For this reason, we set out to develop the first ever Business as Mission Survey with the goal of identifying how the BAM movement has addressed a number of its historic challenges as well as uncovering new ones that merit further research. The survey was sent to over 10,000 individuals in over 40 countries and received responses from 497 people in 38 countries (Table A). The survey was designed to be preliminary research across Business as Mission broadly and was not intended to be representative of all issues, components, geographies, or interest groups. We believe that survey data are suggestive of developments and trends in the Business as Mission movement and will serve as the basis for further research.

The practitioners, educators, and supporters of Business as Mission, as reflected in this survey, are coalescing in their understanding/views of what Business as Mission is. Light is being shed on previously divisive issues and the movement faces a tremendous opportunity to overcome many of the challenges and limitations of the past. But in order to capitalize on this potential, BAM practitioners and the church must put aside their differences, seek to understand each other, and work together leveraging the strengths and experience of each.

As the body of Christ we are Christ’s envoys to the world today. His rescue mission is our rescue mission. Tonight I got a first hand look at a broken, shriveled, and hardened heart. The kind of heart that only the pure and perfect love of Jesus can heal.

I participate in a ministry every Thursday night called EMS (short for Elementary and Middle School). We provide dinner, playtime and Bible lessons for about 50 kids in our neighborhood. Tonight one of the boys came in looking for a fight. During playtime he got in the face of one of the leaders for no apparent reason. During the lesson, things just blew up and he had to be escorted out. Fortunately a fight did not happen but this kid was made. And when his dad came to pick him up he was mad too, and he yelled at one of the leaders.

It was scary and sad and maddening all at the same time. And to see the hurt and anger rooted deep in this boy’s heart reminded me why we do this. I am a Kingdom Strategist, I am in my God given glory when I am working with organizations creating strategies for improving their ministry and service efforts. I work with strategies, ideas, principles, trends, research, organizational design, programs… conceptual tools for coordinating the efforts of multiple people. But none of it is effective if I am not humbled and constantly reminded that my heart was once broken, shriveled, and hardened too. And every Kingdom strategy, no matter how creative, is empty if it is not rooted in the very truth that only the free grace of Christ can pour love into the hearts of those we seek to serve.

Father God, thank you for Your grace which is the power to heal my heart and others. Please work powerfully in the lives of the young men and women of EMS. Pour your love into their hearts and in their lives that they may be redeemed. Amen.

2. Business as Mission as a means for addressing challenges facing the organization

According to my work at Unconventional Method developing Business as Mission programs for global missions organizations, some of the top challenges facing both field missionaries and organizational leadership can be classified into five (5) categories:

• Lack of strategic focus
• Security/stability
• Generational change
• Lack of funding for launching projects
• Shifting view of missions field

Lack of strategic focus

One thing that mission organizations from around the world consistently communicated the difficulty they face (particularly in a restricted access countries) in aligning their field missionaries with the overall objectives of the organization. This is primarily attributed to the entrepreneurial nature of the missionaries and staff that are recruited. It seems that the missionaries that are being attracted to the full-time, foreign field these days are typically the adventuresome, self-driven types. No surprise there. However, given the complexity of the changing environments their working in, the difficulty in coordinating global activities across multiple countries and cultures, and the reduction of central resources to bear the cost of fund command and control mechanisms (policies and procedures), it is no wonder that field director-level resources are having a hard time balancing between the requirements of HQ and the ideas and energy of their teams. More often than not, HQ will lose.

Here are some quotes from my conversations with field leaders:

“An internal challenge that comes to mind would be honing the individual desires of our missionaries so that they are more and more strategic, more and more aligned with our vision and strategy.”

“Our area’s top goal? I’m not sure that I could give a top goal for each of our fields, much less top goals for the entire area. We have a diverse set of missionaries, cooperating at various levels and to various degrees.”

Key Insight:
It is likely that Business as Mission will exacerbate this challenge by (1) creating additional areas of activity which (in the absence of a systematic process for creating alignment across all levels of the organization) could further distract field-level personnel; and (2) attracting more entrepreneurial types who’s ambitions and areas of interest are difficult to channel.

Recommendation:
For Business as Mission to be successfully integrated within a missions organization, it must first be shown to be in alignment with the organization’s existing strategy. Additionally, all BAM initiatives must be designed intentionally with clearly defined boundaries and that will ensure that the business resources remained focused on the established goals.

Security/stability

Another challenge facing missions organizations is the hostile and dynamic environments of some of the restricted-access countries in which they operate in. The challenges range from threats to personal safety, to complexity navigating government processes, to difficulty obtaining visas.

“Externally, the environment here changes monthly, no weekly, sometimes daily. Getting a business license legally for instance, you cannot just lay out the procedure for people to follow. It all depends on recent regulations and how the district you want to work in is applying those regulations. And even how the individual you deal with this week wants to implement them… that person may not be there next time you go in. Unlike the ‘Bureaucratic Raj’ in India, we have red tape galore, but you’re never quite sure if you should cut through it, or where the best place is to apply the scissors.”

Key Insight:
Though legitimate business will provide some stability and alleviate some of the challenges highlighted in these categories, it must be understood that business will not fix the root causes of these problems. Business as Mission businesses also face challenges stemming from hostility toward Christianity, government employee inefficiency and greed, and governmental restrictions on foreigners. Experience has shown that the negative influence of these factors can be off-set by the goodwill legitimate business creates through its business activities and their perceived benefit to the community. However, creating and maintaining this requires intentionality toward and investment in business activities.

Recommendation:
Business as Mission will not solve the problems we face regarding security and stability in the field. However, it can make the problems a little better. The key is a business’s goodwill and in order to build that, your organization must be clear in its intentions regarding businesses (regardless of how you relate to the business – directly or indirectly). Invest the time and energy into establishing high standards that will help prevent abuse of business as a means of gaining access.

Generational change

A lot of organization are struggling to understand how post-modern Christians and millennials fit within their organization. One thing is certain, the power of these individuals stems from the fact that they don’t need a centralized system to be effective.

Key Insight:
The concept of Business as Mission is attractive to younger generations that appreciate what they perceive as a progressive approach to Christian missional strategy. Additionally, these individuals desire to engage their faith within different elements of culture, including business. To that end, Business as Mission can create a powerful draw for recruiting younger Christians to your organization. However, a challenge facing the Business as Mission movement is that in general, younger individuals have limited business experience, limited financial resources, and smaller support networks and are thus constrained in their individual effectiveness in creating and running businesses.

Recommendations:
The Business as Mission movement is facing a catch-22: it is getting a lot of interest from younger Christians who want to live out their faith in the marketplace; however, there are not very many positions available in BAM companies that are suitable for younger people. Incorporating Business as Mission is a good way for a missions organization to attract younger Christians. However, it should not be assumed that they will be well suited for starting Kingdom businesses. There a tremendous opportunity for missions organizations who are able to either provide or connect them with employment opportunities overseas.

Lack of funding for launching projects

Western giving levels are declining, especially in today’s economic climate. Missions organization are limited in their ability to fund its activities using donor dollars. Additionally, business projects often have higher funding requirements due to start-up, capital costs.

Key Insight:
One of the reasons Business as Mission is gaining popularity is because it is a means for self-funding missions efforts. However, it is important to recognize some limitations on businesses in terms of their ability to generate extra funding:

• Profitability is not a given. A number of factors influence the profitability of a company.
• Ownership and control influence how business profits are used (e.g. funding of extracurricular missions activities will compete with internal ministry activities, purchasing supplies, compensating investors, and re-investing in growth).
• Extraneous activities increase the cost burden of operating the company and limit the overall profitability. Mandatory conditions- (e.g. language training) and legacy ministry requirements may impede profitability.

Recommendation:
Business as Mission operations have a great potential for creating additional profit which can be used to supplement your organizations’ financial needs. It is critical that you identify and clearly define funding expectations with any partner businesses and establish governance and control mechanisms that create the necessary and appropriate levels of influence over how profits are used. Additionally, you will want to show how these requirements align with the strategic objectives and creates benefit for the business in order to avoid limiting the potential of the business to earn profit.

Shifting view of missions field

As views of Christian missionary work changes (long-term focus to short-term, shifting focus from evangelism to relief, increased emphasis on national workers), new missionary model are needed to adapt.

Key Insight:
In many ways, the Business as Mission movement has evolved as a result of these shifting views. To that end, educating yourself about Business as Mission will help your organization to adapt. However, the Business as Mission movement has not clarified fully where it lies within the different spectrums of opinions. For example, in the shift of focus toward relief, Business as Mission is often identified with micro-development and micro-enterprise; however, there are important differences between each strategy.

Recommendation:
I recommend that all organizations take a good look at these shifts in order to understand where the organization stands on each spectrum. It is also important to limit the arenas in which you operate to areas that clearly aligns with your organization’s identity. This must be clear before a Business as Mission strategy is further developed to avoid potential conflicts that may arise due to misaligned expectations.

Overall Recommendation

It is important for any organization that is considering Business as Mission to identify and capture all of the challenges facing the organization and rank them based on some established criteria (e.g. relevance to overall strategic goals, cost to organization, etc.). This gives a framework for universal understanding of what the organization is up against. For there you should explore how BAM will either address, run in parallel, or compound these challenges and estimate the magnitude of impact (either positive, negative, or neutral) on each challenge.

This understanding will allow your organization to:

• Focus investment in areas where BAM has a positive impact;
• Create linkages for transforming areas of neutral impact into positive impact;
• Develop processes to ensure that BAM does not become a liability in areas of negative impact.

I will conclude this series in part 3 where I will discuss how mission organizations believe BAM will benefit their organization.

1. Profit is good.

During the settling of accounts, the master responds positively to the servants who had earned profit by:

• Saying “Well done!” – the master views their efforts as good.
• Calling the servants “good” and “trustworthy” – the master expected his servants to pursue profit.

2. Profit is not the motivation.

The servants’ reward for their efforts in earning a profit is their master’s praise and increased responsibilities. It can be assumed that increased responsibilities carries with it monetary gain. However, this should be viewed as an additional benefit. It is clear in the parable that the power to give and take away financial resources belongs solely to the master (as evident in the command to take the one mina away from the wicked servant and give it to the servant who earned ten).

3. Ability to earn profit is not universal.

As Christians, we cannot assume we all are equally capable of achieving the same results.

• The two good servants do not earn the same amount: one earns ten times what he was entrusted with; the other earns five times what he was entrusted with.
• The wicked servant is chided for not transferring his mina to bankers; allowing them to use the financial resources while earning interest for the master.

4. We have an obligation to earn a profit.

At the beginning of the parable the master says, “Put this money to work.” Wicked servants disobey this command out of rebellious fear. Good servants seek to multiply what they have been given thereby multiplying the work that can be done.

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Money is a resource provided by the Lord to facilitate Christian work in the world. We are obliged to use it wisely and morally, seeking its increase in order to extend our effectiveness in fulfilling our calling.