City Harvest Church Success Strategy

A former colleague sent me this link: An Analysis into the Wealth of City Harvest Church.

The written word is forced into a linear mold. I took most of the arguments from the blog post and positioned the trees to form the forest in the NaviMap above. I shall be brief and my apologies to those who are unfamiliar with reading such diagrams. A lot can be written but that would be to fall back into linear form.

The key and interesting bits are the reinforcing loops (virtuous or vicious cycle depending on your perspective). They form the heart of the story.
Click on the picture to get a full size NaviMap if that is helpful to you.

While the enterprise was probably seeded by Box 1: An attractive and youth friendly church worship format, the goal is to arrive at the reinforcing loop between Box 6: "More Networking for the Successful" and Box 7: "More Success, More God's Favor".

Survivor bias ensures the monetary quality of this loop becomes more wealth concentrated. See Box 8: "The Unsuccessful Leaves" Such a church organization will win - totally man made.

For the leaders and financial beneficiary of the church, their interest is in Box 13: "Increasingly Rich Church". This is connected and flow via Box 11 and 12.

Box 9: "Trusted Network, Familiar Culture" is vital for the key reinforcing loop of Box 6 and 7.  A well established Box 9 would significantly contribute to the wealth gathering of the reinforcing loop just mentioned. Just consider how this might play out by looking at the YouTube clip on Jack Neo's testimony at City Harvest Church. What a way to gain trust and promote his new movie.

School Pressure in Singapore

Sunday Times today. Such stories of school kiasu-ism have gone on for years.

The NaviMap explains why.

Our narrow concept of success (box 1), which is the product of an elitist culture have created a vicious cycle between Box 2 and Box 3.

All our remedies so far has been to slow down this reinforcing loop, but lasting effect can only come from Box 4 - Wider Concept of Success. Tharman tried to get this started (has to be a slow process) by creating an education system and eventually a society where there are "many peaks instead of one peak". May be that is why they are investing so heavily in primary schools to make every neighborhood school a good school. This is really long term thinking but not well communicated to the people.

Errata: The blue arrow from Box 4 to Box 1 should be a dashed arrow!

Central Banks 'surprise' rate cuts

Central banks have just 'surprised' markets with rate cuts. The ECB and PBOC did just that yesterday. Here is what I see.

Business and employment prospects are becoming worse (box 1).

But for those countries with a debt disease, the money will not go out to the real economy but remained trapped in financial institutions or asset markets (box 4). Those without this problem, especially the emerging economies (box 3) it helps.

Overall these latest rate cuts smacks of desperate acts in a world that since 2008 had failed to make use of the time central banks purchased for them to restructure and retool themselves.

I wonder what comes after all these. Looks to me like we are only waiting for matters to get worse before substantial and durable action would be taken.

QE Shoring Up Markets

Consider where the reinforcing loop between Box 2 and Box 3 has gotten us! Now Box 2 is fed by the action of central banks printing money (Box 8)

Regulation (Box 10) has been stymied by lobbies and special interest. This is an untenable situation. It looks like we are not going to build a new world that can fuel growth beyond the capacity of the economies until this NaviMap is completely reshaped into something quite different. Box 9 and Box 3 are the places to watch, but Box 7 is key to determining what they might be.