Sunday, July 08, 2012

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.

3 comments:

think-free-and-fair said...

Hi NaviMap,

I am the writer of the original article. I accidentally stumbled on this wonderful diagram. It is an ingenious thinking tool. One diagram to express the causal relationships among the different factors of influences on an issue. I love it!

May I ask what software do you use to draw your diagram?

By the way, is this your invention? A Singaporean invention?

Thank you.

navimap said...

Thanks! I had used three different software to draw such diagrams over the years. You can try Visio, Dia (free and open source) and finally TouchDraw (iPad). I like TouchDraw the best.

Yes, I came up with this stuff, a true Singaporean thing. I had been doing this for more than a decade.

think-free-and-fair said...

Impressive! Who says local talent cannot beat foreign talent?

Do you have an email address? Mine is think.free.and.fair@gmail.com