Freedom and Failure: The Steward Leader as a Manager of Risk By George Warton and Dr. Kent Wilson A Million Dollar Venture That Failed (Kent’s Story) I never thought that I would be entrusted with such a huge investment: the privilege of leading a skilled team developing a new Christian women’s magazine for a major Christian publisher. We had done as much planning as the best New York publisher would do, using sophisticated marketing analysis tools and research to project how much it would cost to get the magazine off the ground in a nationwide launch. The price ticket took my breath away: almost $1 million. But God had provided a donor who was excited about the ministry potential of the magazine and our Board was impressed with the concept and potential as well. Our plan involved a number of risk assessments and critical milestones where we agreed to periodically stop and compare the results against projections so that we didn’t ignore any warning signs. And so the green light was given to move ahead with the launch. Fast forward to when #3 was on the drawing board. Subscriber response wasn’t as good as we had projected, but it wasn’t horrible either. We went back to our marketing plan and revised the assumptions to reflect what was actually occurring, and it showed that we needed just a little more money invested to get the magazine over a hump. The donor was willing to invest more in the project, but our Board wasn’t convinced. In a move that shocked us all to the core, the Board voted to shut the magazine down after only 3 issues and walk away from the project. I was devastated along with the entire team. I assumed that my job was over. How could they keep me on after I had lost the largest amount of money on a single project in the ministry’s 50-year history. After a week of soul searching and writing all of the lessons I had learned from that experience, the Director of the ministry came to me with words that I will never forget: can you tell me what you’ve “Kent, learned from this experience? [I showed him 15 pages of lessons learned] Then I’d like to know what you are going to work on next. This experience has been expensive for all of us, and it would be a shame to lose you now after all that you’ve learned from it.” That was pure grace in the face of failure.
Freedom and Failure: The Steward Leader as a Manager of Risk By George Warton and Dr. Kent Wilson A Million Dollar Venture That Failed (Kent’s Story) I never thought that I would be entrusted with such a huge investment: the privilege of leading a skilled team developing a new Christian women’s magazine for a major Christian publisher. We had done as much planning as the best New York publisher would do, using sophisticated marketing analysis tools and research to project how much it would cost to get the magazine off the ground in a nationwide launch. The price ticket took my breath away: almost $1 million. But God had provided a donor who was excited about the ministry potential of the magazine and our Board was impressed with the concept and potential as well. Our plan involved a number of risk assessments and critical milestones where we agreed to periodically stop and compare the results against projections so that we didn’t ignore any warning signs. And so the green light was given to move ahead with the launch. Fast forward to when #3 was on the drawing board. Subscriber response wasn’t as good as we had projected, but it wasn’t horrible either. We went back to our marketing plan and revised the assumptions to reflect what was actually occurring, and it showed that we needed just a little more money invested to get the magazine over a hump. The donor was willing to invest more in the project, but our Board wasn’t convinced. In a move that shocked us all to the core, the Board voted to shut the magazine down after only 3 issues and walk away from the project. I was devastated along with the entire team. I assumed that my job was over. How could they keep me on after I had lost the largest amount of money on a single project in the ministry’s 50-year history. After a week of soul searching and writing all of the lessons I had learned from that experience, the Director of the ministry came to me with words that I will never forget: “Kent, can you tell me what you’ve learned from this experience? [I showed him 15 pages of lessons learned] Then I’d like to know what you are going to work on next. This experience has been expensive for all of us, and it would be a shame to lose you now after all that you’ve learned from it.” That was pure grace in the face of failure.
Steward-Leadership-and-Risk-Article.docx