Google This

Each year around this time, I look forward to this issue of Fast Company magazine arriving in my mail box: "The World's 50 Most Innovative companies." This year the company in the #1 spot is Google. On the cover is a quote from Google's Chief Information Officer:

Innovation is super fragile. It's very easy to kill. We need a stubborn, rebellious attitude.

This is great news for those of us who have been fired a time or two (ok, or three, as in my case!) for insubordination. But it is very, very bad news for a lot of organizations - including most churches I know. Rebels, especially stubborn ones, are hardly embraced. They rock our boats, asking questions we'd rather not hear and making suggestions we'd rather not consider. Sometimes they even dare to DO things differently.

What would it look like if, instead of trying to shut them down, we asked them for their help? What would it look like if we gave them permission to help us dream big dreams...and step OUT of the boats we're clinging to? It might look like this description of this year's #1 most innovative company:

Talk to more than a dozen Googlers at various levels and departments, and one powerful theme emerges: Whether they're designing search for the blind or preparing meals for their colleagues, these people feel that their work can change the world. That sense is nonexistent at most companies...

But isn't that what we all want to be a part of? Work that matters? Lives that mean something? Isn't that what those of us who are part of faith-based organizations, especially, are supposed to be doing?

The marvel of Google is its ability, after 10 years, to continue to instill a sense of creative fearlessness and ambition, even as it has grown to more than 16,000 employees. Prospective hires are often asked, "If you could change the world using Google's resources, what would you build?"

Good question for any company to ask of its prospective hires. Imagine if churches asked this question of potential new members, of pastors they're interviewing for call, or of those who are running for leadership positions!

In the end, the resources and liberty Google entrusts to its workers infuse them with a rare sense of possibility - and obligation: "Are we taking advantage of what we've got here?" they ask. "Are we doing enough? Are we doing everything we can?"

I know a lot of nonprofit leaders, including those who lead faith-based organizations, who are very skeptical of taking their cues from for profit companies. "We have a different bottom-line," they tell me. "We have a different value system." Sure, that might be true, in one sense. But, from where I'm sitting, there are a whole ton of things to be learned from the kind of people who are leading an organization like Google. Check out their list of Ten Things Google Has Found To Be True, for example. But we could just start with learning how to keep asking ourselves questions like these: "Are we doing enough? Are we doing everything we can?"

I'm picturing a world in which every nonprofit, every faith-based organization, every synagogue, every church was asking itself those questions...and then daring to act with creative fearlessness...setting their people free to try stuff, build things, learn from their mistakes, work playfully, and keep dreaming new dreams.

Can you see it, too?

All quotes are from this month's Fast Company cover article called Google: The Faces and Voices of the World's Most Innovative Company written by Chuck Salter. Click here to read it online.

Comments

[kerry]

Re: "Google this" and being a Rebel.
It is hard being a rebel even if that is the Spiritual fruit that we grow. Indeed, we are not often embraced...until we are needed, and then we get lots of hugs. But those occasions are rare, and hardly seem to make up for the very many times that we have been "fired" and rebuked.
Jesus said not to fear the World because he has overcome it. I am confident that rebels have to search long and hard for daily comfort in that truth - and wait on the Lord; and just as confident that we will find timely truth in those words of Christ. Everyday there is someone/somewhere who needs a rebellious act of love from a rebel follower of Christ.
It is our fruit. To the world it is as useful as a weed; but to the needy, the stranger, the sick, the poor, the widow/widower, the fatherless/motherless...our untimely fruit is a wonderful and timely blessing.
We are what we are. We came into this world as rebels and the Lord called and chose us...thank God.
Google that.
Kerry