Michael E. Porter

I was profoundly impacted by the first session of the second day of the Leadership Summit. Michael Porter is a Harvard Business School professor. He talked about trying to do good in our community. He made the point that it is easy to good, it is remarkably hard to do well at doing good. I was forced to ask of me and my church - how well am I (we) doing at doing good? Are we serving our community effectively?

Michael Porter suggested that most organizations tend to get involved in a lot of different things that don’t receive the necessary focus to get the good results. We go too wide and never go deep.

The community activities in church often are more about the church than the recipients. If that is our only objective, at best we are ineffective – at worst, we do harm.

Charity is not enough, intention is not enough. We must create value.

Where can we do the most good with the resources we have. We must ask ourselves a series of questions.
-What are the most pressing social needs of our congregation
-What are the most pressing problems in other communities that we care about
-What other organizations are available to meet those needs (a good question when asking about value – we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, sometimes we should just support organizations that are already working - outsourcing)
-What kind of resources do we have
-Where can we do more than just unskilled labor
-Where are we passionate

Charity is hard – it is hard to do well at doing good. Its easy to give and feel like your doing good, but if our goal is to have an impact than it involves rigorous thought and strategy.