Outsider journeys into the SA

Lee Stiles refers to himself as an “outsider” because he’s not a Salvationist and, in his words: “I am not a church-going person.”

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fter twenty-one years on The Salvation Army advisory board in King County, Washington, USA,  I went to work full-time in the development department of the Northwest Division in September 2005. As a result of my board service, I assumed an easy transition, but to my amazement, it has involved a steep learning curve. From the inside, I see that this Army marches to its own, special drumbeat.

While participating on the board, the officers I have worked with have been amongst the happiest and most successful people I have known, even though their salaries hover around the poverty level. That should have been a tip that the success of The Army is not the product of scientific management. Even as I examined Peter Ducker’s declaration a few years ago that The Salvation Army is the most effective organization in the United States, I overlaid my beliefs and prejudices and assumed that meant the Army excels in modern management.

From the time I studied management at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration in the early 1970”s, I have believed in Theories X and Y, MBO, One-Minute Management, The Peter Principle, Quality Circles, and the Adizes Method of solving the mismanagement crisis, and I have taught and still practice the Promega Results Team Management system. From the start of this management odyssey, there are a few common themes that I thought were unassailable. Speed is key to survival, bigger is always better, the customer is always right and pushing decision making down to the lowest qualified level have been keystones to everything I have seen work. Until now.

Since going to work with The Salvation Army and experiencing its management system, my beliefs about speed and pushing down decision making have been roundly challenged by what I am living. This has caused no small amount of cognitive dissonance for me as I struggle to remember there is always more than one right way to get to the goal. In addition, I believe growth for the sake of growth is necessary to survive. I believe the people who make donations to us are the customer, and are therefore always right. I believe increasing our annual income is a key goal for its own sake. And, I believed just helping people deal with their problems was enough for us to succeed.

No one in The Salvation Army would argue against any of the above tenets, yet their actions contradict every one of them. Recently, I spent two days in a strategic planning retreat with sixty or so Salvation Army officers. While I am sure the whole picture has not been revealed to me yet, the underlying motives that cause the Army to employ a management style that contradicts so many management fundamentals is coming clear. The difference might best be explained using an illustration from Dr. Bill Hoyt, a prominent consultant to growing churches. According to Dr. Hoyt, in the business sector, the starting point for developing strategy is to identify the shared values of the organization. These form a sort of “field of play,” establishing the boundaries that the group would not violate even if they had to for the mission. This addition to business planning became popular in the seventies and is useful in hiring, decision-making and many other ways, and is quite standard in well run organizations today. In church planning, however, Dr. Hoyt asserts that the beginning is one step further upstream: beliefs. Last week, in listening to the group of officers, it started to become clear to me how beliefs influence The Salvation Army and directly affect how it is managed.

Consider the implications on goals and tactics of the fundamental belief that Jesus is going to come back to Earth someday, and that all who believe in him will go to heaven and those who don’t will go to hell. When that fundamental belief frames and informs your strategy, things like efficiency, speed, customer service, return on investment, market share and such just do not seem so important all at once.

Likewise, if you have the fundamental belief that all wealth is God’s wealth, then wealth that God has entrusted us takes on a whole new level of importance. Generally accepted accounting principles are no longer good enough. As they say at Hebrew National Hot Dog Company, “We answer to a higher authority.”

So in light of bedrock beliefs such as these, what sort of goals and tactics emerge? The first and most important is bringing as many people to Jesus as possible before his return. Nothing is more vital to The Salvation Army than that. What is the principle tactic in bringing people to know Jesus? Building relationships. Not only building relationships, but in fact seeking out relationships with people whose acquaintance could, at face value, produce little if any benefit. The only relationship building goals I have ever written were in relationship to customers, and deliberately self-serving. What asset is consumed in building relationships? Time. The most fundamental tactic of The Salvation Army officer, driven by his/her beliefs, is taking the time necessary to develop relationships with people who can do them no good. Talk about causing me cognitive dissonance! Maybe that is why I got headaches as a child in Sunday school!

If all wealth were God’s, what sort of stewardship strategy would logically emerge for the gifts we get from individuals, businesses, foundations and government? It would be a strategy designed not to encourage risk taking and speed, but rather to protect against making any errors in the deploying of God’s assets. Decisions would be triple checked by different committees; recommendations would be scrutinized from every possible point of view - and would have to be OK from every angle. One person at the top would retain veto power even after massively thorough scrutiny. Forms would be developed to facilitate communication between all the involved parties, and to avoid confusion, how they were filled out would become more important than the original purpose. All of that makes total sense when one senses the burden of responsibility in stewarding God’s assets. The stewardship system squashes many good ideas and in fact saps initiative in many cases, but the risk of a mistake is too great to worry about those shortcomings. Bad ideas cannot survive the tortured journey through The Salvation Army decision-making process. That is the main goal.

So, if Peter Drucker was right (and he was more often than anyone else in his sixty-year career as the world’s leading management scientist) and The Salvation Army is the most effective organization in America, it is for reasons that students of management cannot easily grasp. In fact, it might be specifically because the leaders of The Salvation Army do not bend to proven techniques of scientific management. The Salvation Army “answers to a higher authority.” As the National Commander, Commissioner Israel Gaither, replied in a recent interview to the question of how we avoid the integrity problems so many large organizations have today: “I get up every morning and pray for guidance.” The follow-up question was: “There must be more to it than that?” to which the Commissioner responded: “No, that is all there is.”

Writer: Lee was born and grew up Seattle, Washington, USA. After graduating from Cornell School of Hotel Administration in 1973, he joined his dad in the family wholesale baking business for twenty years, working up through all the jobs to president.

After selling the bakery, Lee spent stints as COO of an exercise equipment company, and growing his own food brokerage business before settling into a career as a leadership coach. Lee still does leadership coaching today for Promega LLC in Seattle and his prime client is The Salvation Army, where he serves as Director of Development for the Northwest Division.

Lee’s association with The Salvation Army began with donating bread, and grew into a twenty-two year stint on the advisory board including two terms as chair. He is most proud that he was called to resurrect and preserve the doughnut ministry of The Salvation Army.

Lee is a past member of Young President’s Organization, a current Rotarian and past member of the Board of Directors of the W.E. Long Company, Independent Bakers Coop in Seattle.

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