In 1975, a young engineer at Kodak called Steve Sasson built the world’s first portable digital camera. It was roughly the size of a toaster and took 23 seconds to save a single black and white picture. It was nowhere near ready to sell, and Kodak had good reasons to be cautious. But its film business was so profitable that the company was slow to embrace the very technology it had invented. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection.
I often come back to that story. Kodak had the idea first. What held them back was a reluctance to let go of what had always worked.
The same thing happens in churches, charities, businesses and small teams every week, just on a smaller scale. The purpose we exist for should stay fixed. The way we pursue it has to keep changing. When we muddle those two up, we end up protecting our habits instead of serving our people.
So how can you tell if your organisation has started facing backwards? In my experience, the warning signs tend to show up in four places.
1.Listen to the stories people tell
Pay attention to when people come alive. If the energy in the room always rises when someone says “do you remember when…”, that’s telling you something.
I’m all for honouring our history. I’m grateful for those who went before me. But there’s a difference between remembering the past and living in it.
The other story to listen for is the old grumble. If people are still unhappy about a change made five years ago, they’re unlikely to welcome the next one. Change involves loss, and loss needs grieving. That deserves compassion. But when the same complaint keeps surfacing year after year, it may be time to go back, listen properly, acknowledge what was lost, and gently draw a line under it.
Here’s something worth pausing on: at your next team meeting, ask everyone to share one thing they’re hopeful about for next year. Notice how easy, or how hard, that turns out to be.
2. Watch what happens to a new idea
Someone shares a suggestion. Within a minute, three people have explained why it won’t work. Sound familiar?
In 2000, the founders of Netflix, then a loss-making DVD-by-post start-up, offered to sell their company to Blockbuster for $50 million. Blockbuster’s chief executive saw it as a niche business and said no. Blockbuster was the market leader. Why would it need a small, struggling upstart?
That’s the curious thing about success. The better something has worked, the harder it is to question. In growing organisations, you rarely hear “we’ve always done it this way”. You hear “this is what works for us” instead. It sounds more confident, but it can be every bit as limiting.
One simple habit can change the atmosphere. When a new idea is shared, spend the first ten minutes only on how it could work. The objections will still be there afterwards, and some of them may have quietly disappeared.
3. Notice where the time goes
Look back over your last few months of meetings. Does the same item keep appearing on the agenda? Did choosing the new signage take longer than setting your priorities for the year?
When small decisions drag on for months, it’s rarely about the decision itself. Usually, something is sitting underneath: a fear of getting it wrong, a fear of losing control, or a lack of trust around the table. It often looks like careful thinking.
A leader can help by naming it kindly. “We’ve come back to this several times now. What’s really holding us back?” An honest question like that can clear the air faster than any procedure.
It also helps to end every discussion with three questions. What are we going to do? Who’s going to do it? By when? Talking about a problem can feel productive, but nothing changes until someone acts.
4. Check who’s in the room
This is the easiest sign to miss. When leaders spend nearly all their time with people on the inside, their view slowly narrows. The question shifts from “what do the people we serve need?” to “what do I prefer?”
For a church, the people outside might be those who don’t yet belong. For a business, they’re customers. For a charity, they’re the community it exists to help. Whoever they are, when leaders stop listening to them, personal taste starts steering the ship.
A practical step: ask each leader to have one meaningful conversation a month with someone outside the organisation, and bring back what they heard.
Where to begin
If a few of these rang true, please don’t be discouraged. Stuck organisations are rarely full of people who hate change. More often, a handful of strong voices dominate, and everyone else goes quiet. Don’t mistake volume for a majority.
The next place to look is closer to home. Before examining anyone else’s resistance, I have to be honest about my own. Weariness and fear are very good at disguising themselves as caution. If I’ve privately decided that nothing will ever change, the people I lead will pick that up.
Then, bring your team into that honesty. Share your own hesitations first and own any part you’ve played. Invite others to do the same. Something shifts when a group can say, together, “we might be part of the problem”.
Finally, pick one thing. Not a grand strategy, just one small, visible change that shows people movement is possible. Momentum is built one step at a time.
Room for something new
As a person of faith, I take real encouragement from God’s words through the prophet Isaiah: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up” (Isaiah 43:19). New things can be unsettling, but they’re often exactly where God is already at work.
So here’s my question for you: which of those four places would you look at first in your organisation, and what’s one small change you could make before the month is out?