Sacred Accidents

0 comments | Aug 21, 08:45 AM | best-of-earl | by Earl Creps

Leaders put great emphasis on the importance of being intentional. In fact, this sensitivity to the role of intention in organizational life may be a defining trait of a leadership personality.

However, the literature of other fields is filled with examples of great accomplishments in which accident played at least as big a role as design. Thinking of leadership effectiveness, then, as a simple dichotomy, either getting it right or getting it wrong, may be too simplistic.

The role of accidental phenomenon in science and technology may offer some lessons that Christian leaders can use:

1. Accident is a critical factor in innovation. In 2004, for example, the Discovery Channel featured on program on the Top Ten Accidental Discoveries, that included Velcro, X-Rays, Penicillin, and even the humble popsicle. In fairness, of course, we must point out that chance does not always create positive innovations, as Berkley University Law School discovered when administrator Edward Tom accidentally sent out 7000 emails to prospective students erroneously informing them of admission to the school. The prestigious school actually admits around 800 law students annually. Tom was demonstrating email software to a new employee when he hit the Send button accidentally. The software expert who normally conducts the training was not available that day.

2. A profitable accident is called, creativity. Robert Austin, Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School, points out that, A surprising number of important discoveries and inventions are associated with stories about spillage, breakage, and other manner of unintended action that led to valuable, though unexpected, outcomes. The person who happens to be there when the right accident happens becomes the inventor or creator of the product. In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin (a fungus) when one of his petri dishes became contaminated with mold while he was doing research on influenza.

3. The person present when the accident happens is called an inventor. In Mark 4 (26-29) Jesus compared the kingdom to a farmer who scattered seed only to find that, Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. This parable affords a healthy balance to our tendency to borrow uncritically the worlds emphasis on intentionality as the cure for all our ills. Certainly, Christian leaders can use a big dose of intention, but not at the expense of recognizing who owns the work itself. We need to be able to say that we planted and watered, but God made it grow. (1 Cor. 3:6 NIV)

4. The person who correctly interprets accidents as opportunity rather than failure is called the leader. A primary issue for Christian leaders, then, may be how to put themselves in a position to experience what I call sacred accidents. The first microchip developed by Intel (the 4404), for example, was meant to be just one component of a calculator owned by a Japanese firm. Intel parlayed this one small development into a worldwide conglomerate, not by getting everything right, but by getting enough things right that their accidents had a chance to thrive. Intel Chair, Andy Grove, explains it this way: “It has become Intel’s defining business area. But for…maybe the first 10 years, we looked at it as a sideshow. It kind of makes you wonder how many sideshows there are that never become anything more. Groves thought makes me wonder how many ministries have success staring them right in the face, but the opportunity looks too much like failure, or appeared in a way we did not predict, and so is being ignored or even destroyed.

Sacred accidents may be the best and most satisfying part of being a Christian leader. I understand them as the things that happen when we create enough white space for the Holy Spirit to have opportunity to move in our organizations.

As with accidental innovation in science, sacred accidents dont happen just because we want them to. We have to work hard, to plan wisely, and all the rest. But what if we thought of these things as ways of creating the white space rather than as the instrumentalities that actually produce the results? The difference is subtle but vital if were going to produce anything more than equally-talented atheists could. The Spirit has to be operating in our organizations in the same power with which we believe He operates in our worship services. We have faith for the latter, why not for the former?