Changing a large organization’s culture often takes a large and focused push to drive adoption of a new technology or behavior.
I found this idea of Immerse and Disperse extremely helpful when thinking about how to tactically drive an organization forward in digital competency.
Immerse and Disperse:
- 15+ people do a stint on a social media team
- Served for approximately one year.
- Moved on to another part of the business.
- Result: 20+ experts, dozens more at intermediate level. T
Every organization or part of an organization reaches a plateau as it seeks to adopt social media. Either “the expert” reaches his/her level of influence, or the fatigue of staff amidst constantly changing online tools sets in and halts change. “Immerse and Disperse” can be a great strategy for moving beyond the plateau.
Large non-profits often have distributed teams that each possess their own highly customized systems for communicating and sharing resources online. Immerse and Disperse allows an opportunity to align these disparate practices and harness the best practices from a wide range of leaders.
I think immerse and disperse could apply to a lot of things – actually I think it could apply to ethnic minority ministry in our largely white org. Everybody is looking for how to’s, but not many are choosing the type of immersion experiences that change or transform hearts and perspectives. I think this is a great paradigm for a lot of different aspects of leadership and development, but it requires high short-term commitment for many to actually put themselves in a place where they are going to get something -skills & experience that won’t get anywhere else. I like it.
agreed. the problem w many short-term ethnic minority ministry experiences is that they rarely yield immediate and positive results that create a desire to do more back on the place from which staff come.
i think of going out to a community college for a day and “trying to launch Destino.” for me that has literally been wandering around a campus that I’m not that interested in, and talking to students who are lingering, which is often very few on a community college since most commute.
what would be awesome for epic and destino is to have a flagship ministry somewhere that has enough ongoing momentum that an immersive experience would provide not only an initial positive experience but a common thread between that experience and the one that they came from.