Achievement is 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration; have you heard that or experienced it?  I have half an eye on the tennis at Wimbledon and the occasional stroke of brilliance turns a match but by far the biggest proportion of the successes are built on large quantities of preparation and practice behind the scenes.  The same is true of innovation in business.

Although ideas may come out of the blue, the biggest advancements are made first by recognising their potential and second by tuning the idea until it is ready to be made and marketed.  There is a company at the Science Park that does just that – from an original idea, it puts a lot of effort into ensuring that the product is effective, worth making and made in the right way … and, as all you manufacturers know, it is far more important putting the effort in early on before things become rather too expensive to change.

In a pastoral letter in June this year by Bishop Gordon, he talks of the blue-sky thinking that some companies are now putting great emphasis on.  Actually, it is not a recent phenomenon – I came across it at GKN Technology over 20 years ago and was privileged to be in the 20-strong core team that was charged with making the organisation more creative.  However, I think it can only be truly effective when it generates a culture change within the community as a whole.

Bishop Gordon compares it to the prophetic element in the scriptures and suggests that business can teach the Church a thing or two about putting blue-sky thinking back into the heart of Church-life.  I’m sure that he is right, but even scripture tells us that: "prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house" [Matthew 13:57]; in other words, they have great difficulty in persuading change in the local culture.  The change we are talking about in the language of the Church is the effect that the Holy Spirit can have on our whole way of life.  Jesus received that gift at his baptism and spent three years using it in his local ministry.  We are all encouraged to follow his example; if we do, we could easily go out, inspire and change the world as he did, but let us not forget that it is the ever-present Spirit that provides us with all we need:

This site was developed to contain work by Mike Fox relating to the WMMTC course
and subsequent experience during ministry in the parish of Codsall and the BCUIM.
This page was last updated on 2007-07-05

E-mail: mike@maofox.me.uk Copyright © 2007 Mike Fox All Rights Reserved