Roller coasters and web sites

So yesterday I got to attend the “ACE Day” at Six Flags Magic Mountain (SFMM) with my family. ACE is the acronym for “American Coaster Enthusiasts”, of which my 13-year old son is a member. The cool thing about “ACE Day” is that those of us who attended as part of the group were given the opportunity to enter the park early and stay late to ride the best rides when no one else was there. This allowed us to get on rides (such as the new “X2”) which normally had two hour lines in less than 15 minutes. One other benefit of attending with ACE was that the management of Six Flags gave us some “behind the scenes” opportunities. We got to see some parts of the park that are normally closed to the general public and we got to have a Q&A with senior management.

So why am I writing about this in a blog about Internet ministry? Well, I’ll try to make this short:

Over the past 15 years, Magic Mountain has gotten a reputation as a park where you would NOT want to take your family. As the park became focused on having the biggest, most extreme roller coasters in the world, they lost focus on the overall experience of the customer. The park became a place full of teenagers and young adults who were only interested in riding the biggest, most extreme roller coasters. The park was dirty, the “kiddie land” was ignored. Less popular rides were in disrepair, closed down and left there to rot. A couple of years ago, there was serious talk to sell off the park and possibly close it down.

When we arrived yesterday, we were greeted with “Welcome to the NEW Six Flags Magic Mountain!”. We weren’t sure what that meant, but as we spent the next few hours at the park we noticed friendly employees, cleaner grounds, and more focus on family activities (such as the new “Thomas the Tank Engine” area, which unfortunately wasn’t open yet). We were impressed and were saying how we were pleased with the direction the park was going and hoped for further improvement in the next few years.

So how did they do this? How do you change a reputation and a organizational mindset? Because of our ACE status, we got to hear the answers to this first hand in the afternoon Q&A session. And this is where I can draw the lessons for those of us in Internet ministry.

Many ministries have outdated or poorly designed web sites. Many are neglected or ignored and everyone says “What can we do about it?” but nothing gets done. Just like SFMM, many “customers” have written them off or given up on them. But a peek behind the curtain shows just how a turnaround can be accomplished:

• A decision has to be made at the top that a change is necessary. At SFMM they made a conscious decision that a focus on the family experience was primary. While they still pride themselves on having a monster lineup of extreme roller coasters, the focus is now on the family. This includes employee shirts that say “Please keep our park clean, my family goes here too.” This is the first step needed when making over a web ministry as well. Without top level support, the time and resourced needed may not get provided.
  
• Employees must be empowered to think for themselves and try out new ideas. One of the key changes being made is that the employees themselves are being given the authority to propose and make changes. One example of this given during the Q&A was the kids karaoke show. For very little money, they were able to add a program where kids can get on stage and sing songs and “play” instruments while their parents and grandparents take pictures and video. This contributed to the overall goals of the park and gave employees real ownership of the changes being made. In web ministry, you want to get the entire organization on board, not just a couple of staff members. What can you do to bring in everyone and help them “own” the changes?
  
• Outside help must be brought in when necessary. SFMM recognized certain situations where doing it themselves would not give them the best result. Where in the past they would have just settled for something done themselves, this time they sought out experts outside their organization and paid them to complete a project. If your organization does not have all the talent necessary, you may need to bring in outside help and pay for it. Volunteer work may be possible, but you need to recognize when it will work and when it will not.
  

SFMM still has a ways to go to re-create their image, but they have convinced me that they are on the right track. We are looking forward to our next trip there with our entire family.

Are web sites obsolete?

As I have been working on a web site for my church, I have started to wonder if the whole idea of having an all-encompassing web site is becoming obsolete. It seems that all the effort going into designing, developing, and maintaining a web site is a tremendous amount of work that must be re-done every two or three years. And now, with the advent of XML, where the form and content have been separated (see this video for a good explanation of what I am talking about), it seems that we should instead separate content creation from web site design.

What I mean is this: for each type of content we want to make available, we should find the appropriate tool and use it. Then we should allow those who are consuming our content to view it in any way that they would like. For example, for a church calendar, use Google calendar (my personal favorite) to manage the calendar and then make it “public”, which allows someone to integrate it into their personal calendar, bring it in to their “home page” via an RSS reader, or just view it directly.

Or take another example: each ministry wants the ability to communicate with their members. A youth pastor could use a blog as a way to keep his youth group up to date on what is going on in the ministry, complete with photos (linked from Flickr) and videos (from YouTube). The members of his group could keep up to date by subscribing to the blog via email, importing it into their Facebook profile, or just viewing the blog directly.

OK, you say, this is all fine and good, but we still need a web site! Well, yes, you do need something that is a place with your basic information and a place to direct search engines, but it should really be an aggregation of all these other tools.

One key to successful web ministry is a distributed model of updating. By allowing each ministry to update their own information, you will get the most dynamic web site possible. But the challenge to this then becomes: how do you change the culture within your organization so that each ministry is willing to do this kind of updating?

So do you agree or disagree? Could a church (or other parachurch or nonprofit) have a successful web ministry without a full-fledged web site? Or am I going out of my mind?

Technology is not the problem

When I teach my class on the management of information systems here at Biola, the first thing I present to the students is the concept of an information system being much more than just computers. My students learn on the first day of class that the five components of an information system are hardware, software, data, people, and processes. And it is the people and processes where information systems have the biggest impact on an organization. As I study how the Internet is used for ministry, I am becoming convinced that this breakdown of an information system can be modified slightly and used as a model for the implementation of Internet ministry. For a ministry to successfully implement a web presence, they must deal with three key areas: technology, people, and processes. And again, as with information systems, it is the people and processes components that are the biggest impact.

You can find books, blogs, vendors, consultants, and volunteers to help with technology. In fact, it seems as if everyone I know has an idea or is a self-proclaimed expert at one sort of technology or the other. And technology changes so fast that there is no way to always be doing the best and greatest of everything. Of course, technology is very important and a lack of good technology will get you in trouble, but it is not the key factor to success of an Internet ministry.

I am working with our church to develop a new web presence (to be unveiled soon). The technology we are using is suitable to our environment and is a huge step forward from our existing web site. As we are getting closer and closer to being ready to go live, though, I am getting more and more concerned that the people and processes will not be ready to go. I am finding that implementing technology is a whole lot easier that changing people’s work habits. Because of this, I have delayed the “go live” date of our web site by a month so that we can have adequate time to be sure that the people at the church fully understand their role in keeping the web site current and the existing processes can be modified properly so that the web site becomes fully integrated into the day-to-day activities of the church.

I think one of the biggest mistakes a ministry can make is to focus solely on the technology and the features of their web site and forget about who they are: the people who work in the ministry and the different tasks performed by the ministry. Both of these must be taken into account before any technological solution can become successful.

Strategy and the Internet

When I teach my course in E-Business Strategy here at Biola, one of the first readings we do is Michael Porter’s Strategy and the Internet. Michael Porter is a professor at Harvard Business School who has developed a reputation as the guru of “competitive advantage”. This classic of business strategy, published in the Harvard Business Review in March, 2001, is a bit dated but still a great starting point for understanding how businesses should plan their Internet strategy.

This article makes several key points regarding the use of the Internet for strategy, and several are useful for us as we look to develop a strategy for Internet ministry. The first of these points that I want to consider is the idea of having a strategy for Internet use at all. As Porter points out in this paper:

Even well-established, well-run companies have been thrown off track by the Internet. Forgetting what they stand for or what makes them unique, they have rushed to implement hot Internet applications and copy the offerings of dot-coms…And many established companies, reacting to misguided investor enthusiasm, have hastily cobbled together Internet units in a mostly futile effort to boost their value in the stock market.

Porter is very critical of firms who do not consider their overall organizational strategy before determining how to use the Internet. Instead, he says, companies need to understand who they are and then use the powerful tools provided by the Internet to enhance that strategy. He gives six principles of strategy (taken from one of his previous papers), several of which are applicable for ministries, which I summarize here:

1. Know the goals for your organization. This is the starting point. For businesses, the goal is sustained profitability. For your ministry, what is the goal?
2. Understand that there will be trade-offs, you cannot do everything. What are you good at? What shouldn’t you be doing? What makes your ministry distinctive?
3. The activities of your organization should be mutually reinforcing. Does everything “fit”?
4. Have a continuity of direction. Do not continually reinvent yourself or you will only confuse those to whom you minister.

Does your ministry have a strategy for their use of the Internet? Are you using the Internet to enhance what your organization does, or was it quickly put up as a way to just “get on the net”? This is the starting point for effective Internet ministry. I will continue to examine Porter’s paper and how it applies to Internet ministry in future posts.