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Archives for July 2011

Jump in With Both Hands and Feet

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Andy Stanley, in Visioneering: God’s Blueprint for Developing and Maintaining Vision (a fantastic book, by the way):

If God has birthed a vision in your heart, the day will come when you will be called upon to make a sacrifice to achieve it. And you will have to make the sacrifice with no guarantee of success.

I talk to people all the time who have what seem to be “God ideas” but who are unwilling to commit with both hands and feet. The conversation often begins with, “If I had a million dollars.”

A well-meaning lady once said to me, “You know, I am so burdened by the problems in the inner city. If I had a million dollars, I would love to go down there and start a school for underprivileged kids.”

As sensitively as I knew how, I said, “I know people with far less than you have now who have started schools for inner-city kids. You don’t need a million dollars to start a school.” What she needed was the courage to act on her vision.

The difference between those with a burden for inner-city kids and those who actually do something is not resources. It is a willingness to take risks and make sacrifices. The people who make a difference in this world commit to what could be before they know where the money is coming from. Their vision is enough to cause them to jump in. Money usually follows vision. It rarely happens the other way around. Consequently, vision always involves sacrifice and risk-taking.

How Should the Reality of Sin Affect Our Approach to Management?

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In my article “Management in Light of the Supremacy of God,” I place significant emphasis on how the core of great management involves extending people’s autonomy rather than exercising detailed control over people.

One reader recently asked: “How does this relate to the reality of sin? How should the doctrine of sin and the fallen human heart affect our understanding of management?”

That’s a great question. I typed up a very quick response. Here’s what I said:

Glad you enjoyed the article, and thanks for your question.

Briefly, I’d say the reality of sin is addressed by the “accountability for results” component. We should maximize people’s freedom, but this is freedom within a framework. The framework is not only necessary because of sin — people are served by helpful structures and systems in themselves. But this also is one of the ways sin is kept in check as well.

A couple other thoughts. The emphasis on expanding freedom also takes into account the reality of sin, because as Paul teaches, the law actually makes sin increase. He is talking broadly there about God’s law and the human heart in general, but it does have an application to management: creating detailed rules is more likely to stir up sin in employee’s hearts than control sin. There is a place for rules, and sometimes even pretty strict ones (for example: in relation to financial reporting), but when there isn’t someone’s life at stake (airplane checklists, for example) or laws/ethical realities, the disposition should be to allow people freedom to identify their own way to accomplish the outcomes.

Another issue is: what are the specific sins of most people in the workplace? While all people are sinners, I don’t think that, for most people, their sin manifests itself as laziness and unwillingness to work. I think most people want to do good work and seek increased responsibility. Much sin in the workplace falls in the realm of motives and such things as that — a lot of which is outside the purview of management. So giving people freedom within a healthy overall framework will typically not be abused because of sin; and when it is abused by a few, it doesn’t serve the organization to punish everyone for a few bad apples.

One last thought: We also need to think of the sins of management. Sometimes people think “let’s tightly control people, because they are sinners,” not realizing that the managers themselves who are the ones to exercise this “tight control” are also sinners. So a tightly controlled approach as a response to sin runs into its own problems. Freedom within a healthy framework takes account of sin in the best way, in my view, because most people will excel when given the chance and since this also minimizes the opportunity for management to sin by overly controlling their people and viewing them mainly as means.

Register for Together for Adoption's Fall Conference on Missional Orphan Care

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This is a guest post by Dan Cruver, director of Together for Adoption.

Want to learn more about missional living and our call as Christians to care for orphans in their distress?

Last year over 1,000 gathered together in Austin, TX to consider The Gospel, the Church, and the Global Orphan Crisis. Join us this October 21-22 at Redemption Church (Gilbert Campus) in Phoenix for Together for Adoption (T4A) Conference 2011 as we explore the theme Missional Living, the Gospel and Orphan Care.

As written in Reclaiming Adoption: Missional Living Through the Rediscovery of Abba Father, “To live missionally means to live each waking moment in light of the gospel so that it increasingly affects every part of our lives for the glory of God’s grace in our fallen world” (p 17). James 1:27 tells us that the practice of true religion necessarily involves caring for orphans in their distress. Therefore, to live missionally means that the Gospel is increasingly moving and empowering us to care for those who live on the razor-sharp edge of our world’s brokenness. Whether we are conscious of it or not, the Gospel is at the center of missional living and the evangelical orphan care movement.

General session speakers include: Darrin Patrick, Tullian Tchividjian, Tim Chester, Bryan Loritts, Juan Sanchez, and Jeff Vanderstelt

Worship Leaders: Shaun Groves, Aaron Ivey, and Jimmy McNeal

General Session Hosts: Shaun Groves and Johnny Carr (National Director of Church Partnerships at Bethany Christian Services)

Save $30 by registering this week for Together for Adoption’s October 21-22 orphan care/adoption conference (read full-details here). You may now register for just $75 today, July 26th, through Saturday, July 30th. This limited-time discount is over $30 less than our current early bird special. Take advantage of this super early bird price and help us spread the word about it this week. This sale ends on Saturday, July 30th at 11:59pm. Register here for this super early bird rate.

Note: If you are coming with a group from your church, this would be the perfect opportunity for your group’s members to register.

How the Gospel Should Shape Your Web Strategy, Not Just Your Web Content – My Message at the Christian Web Conference

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Here’s the message I gave at the Christian Web Conference on “How the Gospel Should Shape Your Web Strategy — Not Just Your Web Content”:

Here are some of the things I talk about:

  • A few words on my upcoming book, and how technology and productivity practices exist to amplify our ability to do good.
  • What usability is.
  • Why there is a biblical case for making our websites (and everything else we do!) usable and helpful to people.
  • The process we went through creating the major redesign of the Desiring God website of 2006 on the basis of sound usability principles.
  • Some of the (perhaps unorthodox!) extreme productivity measures involved including 90 hour weeks and three all-nighters in a row.
  • On the necessity of avoiding the self-protective mindset in organizations in order to keep the user and people you serve first.
  • How it is Christian to make websites usable and just plain good workmanship in general.
  • Reducing friction so ideas can spread.
  • 5 principles for making websites usable.
  • A few words on why ministries should post everything online for free.
  • And other stuff!

Here are my slides (there’s just a few for this one):

And here is my manuscript/notes for the message:

Most of us aim for the content of our sites to be true to the gospel and gospel-centered. The gospel—the truth that Christ died and rose again for us, and that through faith in him we enter a right relationship with God—is at the heart of what we are here to say. Everything else that we say is founded on this. That’s what makes us Christian ministries and organizations, and just plain Christians, period.

This is as it should be. But I want to take us a step further and argue that the gospel should not only shape our web content, but should also shape our web strategy—that is, it should shape how we go about our websites altogether.

In other words, the gospel has implications not only for what we say on our sites, but also for the strategy behind how we architect our sites and design our sites and build our sites and utilize our sites. It should be behind everything about our sites, not just the content.

In particular, I want to look at two primary ways the gospel should shape our web strategy. First, the gospel implies that we should make our sites maximally usable. In fact, we should take pains to do this. Second, the gospel implies that we should make our sites free—even at sacrifice to ourselves.

And these two factors—a site that is maximally usable and free, combined with excellent content—are the pillars of an effective web strategy. That is, they not only are fitting ways to reflect the gospel, they are also what work best. There is no ultimate conflict behind a web strategy that seeks to embody the gospel and a web strategy that works.

1. We Should Take Pains to Make Our Sites Usable

We should take pains to make our sites usable. But what is usability? What do I mean when I talk about usability?

What is Usability?

Here’s one definition of usability, from Web Design: The Complete Reference: “Usability is the extent to which a site can be used by a specified group of users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use” (Powell, Web Design: The Complete Reference, 50).

But as Steve Krug has so simply shown in his book Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, one simple sentence sums up the definition of usability: A usable website is one that doesn’t make people think about how to use it.

In other words, it doesn’t raise question marks in people’s minds about how to do this or that, how to get here are there, or how to respond to the information on the page. They see the page, and know what they need to do, and how to do it.

[Here’s an example of a hard to use page]

[Here’s an example of an easy to use page]

This principle is “the ultimate tie-breaker in deciding whether something works or doesn’t in a Web design” (Krug, Don’t Make Me Think, 11). It is the very definition of what a usable site is.

Krug fills out the meaning of this principle more fully:

It means that as far as is humanly possible, when I look at a Web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory.

I should be able to ‘get it’—what it is and how to use it—without expending any effort thinking about it.

Just how self-evident are we talking about?

Well, self-evident enough, for instance, that your next door neighbor, who has no interest in the subject of your site and who barely knows how to use the Back button, could like at your site’s Home page and say, ‘Oh, it’s a _____.” (With any luck, she’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s a _____. Neat.” But that’s another subject.)

Everything boils down to this: Don’t make people think. A usable site minimizes the amount of thinking people have to do to use the site.

But why should we make our sites usable? One reason is that making your site usable is simply good strategy in general.

Why This is Good Strategy in General

1. If your site is not usable, it distracts from the content.

Hard to use sites add to people’s cognitive workload. This causes frustration and is distracting. Here’s how Steve Krug puts it: “When we’re using the Web every question mark adds to our cognitive workload, distracting our attention from the task at hand. The distractions may be slight but they add up, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to throw us” (Krug, 15).

People are doing important things. When our sites are hard to use, it makes it harder for them to do what they are doing—such as doing research for a sermon, or preparing a Bible study, or trying to find answers to questions their friends have asked them about the Bible or apologetics or such. We don’t want to make these important tasks even harder for people. We want to enable them to focus on their task rather than adding to their already significant cognitive workload.

2. In fact, if your site is not usable, people might not even invest the time to find and benefit from the content.

Not only are you making things harder for your user if your site is hard to use, you are also shooting yourself in the foot. When the user has a hard time with your site, he or she might just give up altogether and go somewhere else.

A hard to use website can cost you site visitors.

And even if it doesn’t cost you site visitors, it will cost you user satisfaction. People won’t like coming to your site as much, and they will be less likely to tell others because they won’t be having a good experience.

Conversely:

3. When your site is usable, everything just seems better.

Usability creates a better impression all around for the user. The user might not even be able to point to why they like the site, but they will walk away with a better experience and more enthusiasm for the site because it met their needs.

Here’s how Krug puts it: “Making pages self-evident is like having good lighting in a store: It just makes everything seem better. Using a site that doesn’t make us think about unimportant things feels effortless, whereas puzzling over things that don’t matter to us tends to sap our energy and enthusiasm—and time” (Krug, 19).

4. When your site is usable, it increases site usage and user satisfaction

This is not just theory. We have seen results of this in the real world. For example, in 2006 we redesigned our entire site on the basis of sound principles of usability. Within four months of releasing the new site, visits increased 99%, audio listens increased 356%, and page views increased 359%.

To this day, we receive a continual stream of comments from people on how easy to use the site is. In other words, usability not only increased site usage, but also increased user satisfaction. People go away from the site with a more satisfying experience that makes them more inclined to tell others and come back to the site.

So there is a strong strategic case for focusing on usability. But there are also biblical reasons for making your site usable. And this is what is most important.

Why This is Biblical

So usability is good strategy. But that’s not the main point I want to make. The main point I want to make is that usability is biblical. In other words, there is a biblical case for usable websites.

1. Good usability is a matter of loving your neighbor as yourself

Jesus said the Great Commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and “your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:37-39). The Golden Rule is another way to put that: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is the law and the prophets.”

How do we want people to do unto us? Do we want them taking shortcuts on their web design so that we have to muddle through their hard to use sites? Do we want people making things easier for us or harder for us?

Is there anyone here who likes hard to use websites?

Making our sites easy to use is simply a way of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. It is a way of loving our neighbor.

Here’s the thing: we often think we have to go to Africa to obey the command to love your neighbor; that’s a rare and special thing you have to pick up and leave town to do. You don’t, you don’t, you don’t. It’s great to go to Africa. But don’t limit your notion of service to large and complex and uncommon acts of mercy, like missions trips. We are to spend ourselves for the good of others right where we’re at: that is, in our vocations. And if you are in charge of your organizations website, that means making it usable.

Wilberforce said “Where is it that in such a world as this, health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?” Do this with your websites. You don’t have to Africa to do this. Start in your vocations. Make a difference where you are.

Now, it is interesting that this also syncs with good web strategy. Most people point out that the key to an effective blog or website is to serve the reader. You need to be about your users and creating value for them, not first for yourself. Sites that are about themselves don’t work. Sites that put the reader first are the sites that succeed.

Well, that’s not just good strategy. That’s biblical. That’s a matter of loving your neighbor—of loving your users.

And this extends not just to content, but to site architecture, site design, site construction. Everything.

We should be always seeking to make things better for people. Life is hard enough. Seek to make things better, not harder for people.

GPS: time crunch, tired. I don’t need the added difficulty of the buttons being hard to push.

Hotel room lights: Always hard to find. Last night I walked in, it was totally dark, no light switches turned a light on, and I had to feel around for the lamps.

My house: The hose box. The sump pump. (My whole neighborhood with sump pumps.)

In everything, we should seek to be making things work well for people.

2. Good usability is a matter of serving your user

This is simply another angle on what I have already said. Making your site usable is a matter of serving your user.

This angle also adds another dimension: it shows that we should make our site usable even at cost to ourselves. This comes out when we look at some of the texts on serving.

For example, Matthew 20:28 says:

“For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

We see this teaching continued throughout the NT:

“Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me’” (Romans 15:2-3).

“Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor” (1 Cor 10:24).

“So then, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1).

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who … made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:4-7).

Spend yourself for the good of others.

And where are we to have this mindset? Only when we do large and complex things, like going into missions or going on a short term trip? Certainly not. This is a mindset we are to have every day, in everything that is before us. And so one of the primary avenues in which we exhibit this mindset is in our vocations—our day-to-day responsibilities of life. The very fabric of our lives and work, and therefore of our strategies and approaches to our websites—is the arena for manifesting this mindset.

Be looking out for the interests of your users. Be genuinely concerned about their welfare, as Timothy was for the Philippians (Phil 2:20), and as Epaphroditus was, even to the point of risking his life (Eph 2:30). This is not about you. It is about them. Many web strategists rightly point out that the key to an effective site is to serve your users. Focus on them. Do what will benefit them and add value for them, not first yourself. That’s good strategy. And now we see that this is also biblical. What secular web strategists have recognized is simply an echo of the greater realities that the Bible teaches. So how much more, as Christians, ought we to be devoted to our users?

And we should take pains to serve them, because this is the biblical ethic of putting others before ourselves. We make our own lives harder in order to make other’s lives easier. We are to take the burdens of the user on ourselves.

Which means: instead of creating a site that the user has to spend time figuring out, spend that time yourself on the front end to iron out the problems. This may take you a lot of time, but it will save thousands and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people lots of time and trouble. And that’s a pretty good investment: a few people taking time to iron out the difficulties saves time for thousands of people. That’s a pretty good investment.

That’s why at DG we took an inside-out approach to technology rather than an outside-in approach. Explain.

3. Good usability adorns the gospel

Mt 5:16: the meaning of good works again, and their role in relation to the gospel.

Dan Cathy example.

4. Good usability is simply good workmanship

“He who is slack in his work is a cousin to him who destroys” (Proverbs 18:9). Hard to use websites are slack work. If your website is hard to use, you are a cousin to him who destroys because slack work makes life harder for people. Life is hard enough. Don’t make it harder.

5. Good usability enables maximum spreading of the gospel

Because it reduces friction.

This is all about reducing friction so the content can be primary. Eliminate anything that gets in the way of accessing and spreading the content.

Making your site maximally effective for spreading the gospel.

6. Good usability echoes the gospel

 

How Do You Make a Site Usable? Five Principles

1. Don’t Make People Think. This is the guiding principle, and we have already discussed this above. Seek to eliminate question marks. Etc.

2. Provide good orientation. Global navigation and local navigation.

3. Use good principles of classification.

4. Make obvious what is clickable.

5. Use the smallest effective difference.

 

Synopsis

The first principle for an effective web strategy is: create excellent content and make your site usable. You want users to think hard about your content—not about how to use your site. But usability doesn’t only make your site better and more effective. It is also important for biblical reasons because it is a way of serving your users and demonstrating the gospel that we exist to proclaim.

In other words, the gospel has something to say about how you do your website. Not just what content you put on your site, but what your overall web strategy is.

That’s what we’re going to talk about in this session. We will look at how the gospel should shape our web strategies and how we have sought to do this so far at Desiring God. This will take us on a tour of the biblical and strategic reasons for making your website usable, five simple usability principles that are at the center of every easy-to-use website, the four principles that matter almost as much as usability, and more.

As a bonus, bring your most difficult and challenging questions on web strategy. We’ll spend the last part of the session talking about them.

Cuts

We Should Make Our Sites Free—Even at Sacrifice to Ourselves

Reasons

Making your site maximally reflect the gospel

Free is a form of usability

Reduces friction and increases spreading

Funding: A Biblical Case and a Business Case for Why This Won’t Bankrupt You

One of the big questions people raise about free is: How do you fund this? What is the funding model to support making everything free? I wish I had time to talk about this, because there are two very cool things here. There is first of all a biblical case to be made for how making everything free can actually create a self-sustaining source of funding, and there is also a business case to be made that shows exactly how making everything free translates into revenue—often more revenue than you would have had if you sold sermons. So there is a biblical case and a business case for free, and if I am able I’ll make those another time.

Our Vision at Desiring God

Our web vision at Desiring God, stemming from these things: Post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface.

This is actually very efficient. I spent 2 weeks I think it was pouring over how to do the architecture for the Desiring God site. During those two weeks, my visible productivity was very low. But the time I invested has saved millions of others substantial time. That is a high leverage activity.

Other Notes

It follows from the Christian principle of service, which is rooted in the gospel.

– First, this is actually rooted in the law. “Love your neighbor.”

– But it is even more rooted in the gospel, because of Christ’s example. And so we have a new commandment, “love one another as I have loved you.”

– So we are here to serve, and our love for ourselves and Christ’s love for us are the two principles that guide us here.

– How do we love ourselves? We don’t make things harder for ourselves, but easier. Now, the Christian ethic doesn’t say: “focus your life now on making things easy for yourself.” Rather, it says, “OK, you love yourself by making things easier for yourself. So now sacrifice that to some degree by spending yourself to make things easier for others.”

Related: See my message from the following year for additional discussion on the nuts and bolts of how to make your site usable.

What is Encouragement?

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Here is a good summary from an article I came across again recently in my files:

Encouragement includes the giving of courage, hope, confidence, support and help.

The apostle Paul ties the act of encouragement to the process of building up one another: “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (1 Thess. 5:11).

We can aid our understanding of the word encourage by looking at the gift of encouragement (or exhortation) as stated in Romans 12:8. Students of the Greek language indicate the word comes from the same family of words used to describe the Holy Spirit as our paraclete, “one who comes alongside us to help.” Leslie B. Flynn wrote of encouragement as helping to strengthen the weak, steady the faltering and console the troubled. . . .

In Scripture encouragement is often closely aligned with restoration and renewal of Spirit. For example, Psalm 3 is David’s reflection on the horrible experience of having his son turn against him, causing such a rift that all David’s relationships were broken. Psalm 3 indicates, among other things, that God replenished David’s courage (encouragement), restored his confidence (depleted by his experience) and revived his hope. Some of the same of the same results will accrue from our involvement in encouraging others.

A study of 42 NT references to the word encourage quickly reveals this is a ministry for all believers, though some have special ability because of God’s gifting. Encouragement is coming alongside another to offer help and hope.

The Value of B Tasks

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Just a quick thought.

I do think it is valuable, in planning your day, to identify which tasks are “A” priorities for that day and which tasks are “B” or “C.” Prioritizing can be done wrong, but I think it is helpful in general.

Here’s a nice outcome of this: If you identify “A” and “B” tasks, then when you are done with your “A” tasks, the rest of the day has lower pressure. You can be more free to be interrupted because these tasks aren’t absolutely essential for the day (they are “B” priorities for that day), and yet it feels like you are getting ahead with whatever you do get done.

I don’t think it’s good to have your whole day consist simply of pre-defined tasks and appointments. But it’s hard to get around the need for some sort of list. This helps you keep that list from becoming a tyrant rather than a tool and servant.

Short Documentary of Cape Town 2010

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Below is a short documentary of the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization that was held in Cape Town, South Africa, last October.

Here’s the intro from the website:

Cape Town 2010 has been called the most representative gathering of Christian leaders in the 2000 year history of the Christian movement (Christianity Today).  Four-thousand Christian leaders representing 198 countries attended the Congress in Cape Town, South Africa.  The Congress was brought together by a globalized leadership team from Africa, Egypt, Malaysia, India, North America and elsewhere.  Several thousand more leaders participated in the Congress through the Cape Town GlobaLink, Cape Town Virtual Congress and Lausanne Global Conversation.  Learn more about this gathering by watching this short documentary.

Bill Hybels on Taking Responsibility for Your Leadership Development

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A good video from the Global Leadership Summit, which is happening August 11-12:

Here’s an abbreviated transcript:

“I do leadership development as a discipline. I don’t do it as a recreation. I read one or two leadership books a month by sheer discipline. I don’t ask myself if I feel like it. I need to read–I have to take responsibility, God has given me, whatever size platform it is- big or small. I have some people I’ve been given charge to lead well. I have to read to get better as a leader. I’m asking you leaders, take responsibility for your leadership development and read more and read as a discipline.

I’m asking you to get around other leaders that are better than you –as a discipline, I’m not asking you to do it recreationally. Every 30 days, ask yourself who could I ask to lunch or dinner? Who can I get around who’s been where I haven’t’ been – built something I have not yet built? How can I ask them the right questions so I can stretch my mind and heart and get better?”