Things That Get in the Way of SE at an Organisational Level (Kotter chapter 1)

Sometimes in a corporate organisation there are issues with the structure and mentality that can get in the way of change taking place. Scripture engagement is all about seeing change happen in the lives of people and communities as they engage with God through the Scriptures. Therefore some of the books about theories of change are helpful to us as we investigate issues within our family organisations. Here is a list from John P Kotter's book, Leading Change, p 16:

1. Allowing too much complacency
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
3. Underestimating the power of vision
4. Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 (or 100 or even 1,000)
5. Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
6. Failing to create short term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture

All of these can be an issue in our family of organisations. Here's why:

1. We allow ourselves to believe our own propaganda about the importance of peoples' 'heart language', and how all we need to do is provide Scripture in that language and God will do the rest. We also underestimate how hard it is to change these well-embedded views in our organisation - folk need to understand that Scripture engagement needs to be embedded within a translation programme from the its very conception
2. The Scripture engagement (SE) department is seen as 'small' and not as important as e.g. the translation department. SE is viewed as an optional add on. Senior management needs to get on board with the SE vision. I recently overheard one CEO say, 'The main reason Scriptures aren't used is because they aren't translated yet.' That person needs to go and read Wayne Dye's Eight Conditions of Scripture Engagement
3. We underestimate the importance of SE. It might be an integral part of our vision statement, or mission statement, but we ignore that fact and do what we have always done. Programme managers are unable to succinctly state the vision for the programme they manage, and get bogged down in details ("We can't get the staff, applying for funding takes too much time", etc.)
4. Students of linguistics and Bible translation rarely take many (or even any) classes in SE, which means that when they reach their area of future work as a translation advisor (TA) they have little vision concerning the impact of Scriptures in their area (or a very over-optimistic view of the usefulness of Bible translation - see point 1). We need to reach hearts and minds early on in their career, and also reach out to those who have been in the organisation for some years to help them to change
5. The old guard are allowed to stand in the way of change, which means we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, or the structure of the organisation gets in the way. For instance, if we say, 'We want transformation' but then pay for verses translated per day, there is a mismatch in what we are prepared to fund vs. what we want to see happen. Also, the translation department is allowed to have more clout than the SE department
6. We are only interested in outcomes (change we see as a result of the project) as impact stories in order to gain financial sponsorship, not as ways to motivate the translation team to greater zeal in seeing portions of Scripture distributed and in use. We need to build in clearer performance statements that include the monitoring of the outcomes we want to see, such as peoples' lives being transformed
7. The New Testament or Bible dedication is seen as the end of the project. The SURAM (Scripture Use Research and Ministry) report in PNG recommended that TAs stay on in the language area for a couple years after this to engage in SE and other ministry. Another issues is that when changes are introduced at the top level of the organisation, insufficient time is allowed for them to trickle down to the working coal face. It takes more than a couple of years for change to really filter through to every level of the organisation
8. Our corporate culture is very slow to change. We still prefer to finance translation of verses over use of those same verses. The latter is seen as someone else's job (though the very existence of SE specialists means that we do have people set aside to make sure Scriptures are used). What needs to change is "the way we do things here" i.e. attitudes need to change. Sometimes we appoint people who like to keep to the status quo into CEO roles, when what we actually need is someone who wants to see change take place, and is on board with the new vision of the organisation. Organisational culture needs to change, and as I wrote above, this takes time 

There is some good news: 'These errors are not inevitable. With awareness and skill, they can be avoided or at least greatly mitigated', writes Kotter. I hope to write more as I read the rest of the book. See below for the full bibliographic information:

Kotter, John P., Leading Change (Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 1996).