I started working for Woolworths in 1986 and the complaint that people of a certain generation always made when visiting the store was "why do you no longer sell wool?" Apparently they once did, though I couldn't find anyone who actually remembered selling wool and one of the ladies had worked there since the store opened, which, though not 99 years, was still a long time.
Imagine, then, my surprise when in 2001 Woolworths announced that, at sellected stores, it would once again be selling wool.
Sadly, this appeared to be Woolworths principal response to a changing market: to look back to the things that it used to do well and to try and do them again. Now, it is true that some stores opened cafe's to try and increase their footfall and a few others evolved into Big W's (although cruelly you could just say that all this meant was they had all the things you didn't want to buy under one, albeit murch larger, roof). For the most part Woolworths remained the same. It was very nostalgic to walk back into Woolworths in Uckfield 20 years after I worked there and see pretty much everything in the place it always was, but it was also indicative of a store somehow lost in time. The parellels with the church are obvious, aren't they?
Now, the way I see it, there are two obvious problems with the growth strategy of trying to do again those things that you used to do. The first, is that it requires ignoring the fact that there were probably very good reasons why you stopped what it was that you used to do; and the second, is that it assumes those who used to give you their custom will simply switch back to you now that they can. But of course they won't, and in the case of Woolworths, didn't, not for the most part anyway. The reason for this is simple economics: they either realised they didn't really need it; or sourced it from elsewhere (probably more cheaply).
All that looking back does is to reinforce in people's minds that you aren't as good as you used to be: and they're probably right.
2. Sympathy is not a business model.
Recently, a survey amongst the older members of society who weren't regular church attenders has shown a decline in their identification with their local church. The age groups that used to identify most strongly with the established church are now significantly more diffident - and this has caused quite a stir. But does this really matter?
I wrote previously that I am sad that Woolworths has closed down, and I always will be. Nor am I alone in thinking this. Whilst walking through the empty shelves in the High Wycombe store I met scores of people who had come not shop, or gloat, but to reminisce. People really cared about Woolworths, seemingly more than Adams, Zavvi, Officers Club and any of the other high street stores that have also closed, but sentiment was not enough. Ultimately, people sympathised but didn't shop.
So, if the church is losing the sympathy of an older generation (and that really is only an if) if this is true then it should make us ask why, but it shouldn't make us panic. Think about it. A decline in sentiment actually only tells us that those who didn't regularly attend church are less likely to care that they don't attend, or, perhaps, less likely to attend in the future. Sympathy is not a business model. Sentiment is not the same as support - all this really means is that less people will be upset to see the church sink below the horizon!
Also, did you notice the M&S trading figures for the third fiscal quarter? They showed like-for-like sales down 7.1% over the previous year (which itself was 2.2% down on 2006). On the High Street, M&S is struggling as many of its traditional shoppers now buy at Tesco, or in other specialist stores, but this isn't the whole story. Online sales were up nearly 30% compared to 2007 and this itself was an increase on 2006 of 78%.
If you ask my mum, M&S isn't what it used to be, and she won't shop there anymore! But the truth is she rarely shopped there in the first place, and one of the reasons she doesn't like it is that they are in the process of rebranding to new markets, and no-one likes change. Maybe that's also why everyone liked Woolworths?
3. Have the right hedgehog.
Those of you not familiar with Jim Collins business books will think that I have finally gone mad, but in Good to Great he identified that one of the charactersitcs of truly successful businesses is that they have one thing that they do well, and they make this the heart of their business. This is what he call their hedgehog concept, in business speak we would call it their core business.
If you think about Woolworths, what was their core business? What was the one 'thing' that they did better than any other? What did you go there to buy? Ladybird clothes? Pick-n-mix? Music and DVD's? Household and garden? Soft toys? Even holidays?! I think if we asked 30 people we might get 30 different answers and ultimately this was their downfall. You could buy most things from Woolworths, that used to be their strength, but you could also buy everything they sold somewhere else, and in the end you could get it elsewhere for less.
Woolworths never really evolved from being a general store. If they ever had a core business it got lost over time, and that's the real lesson that the church needs to learn from Woolworths. Without a hedgehog concept to shape and guide the business every new initiative is just another turn of the doom-loop, and it will never lead to sustainable growth.
If the church is to be effective and healthy then it needs to (re) discover its purpose, and it needs to orient itself so that this purpose can be achieved. Ironically for the church this will probably mean looking backward to move forward. Not back to 10 years ago, or back to the Victorian Age, or even back to the Reformation, but really back, as in Revelation chapter 2 verse 5: to do again the things that they did at first, as a missionary church, and to do them with that first love.
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