I learned long ago that large organizations make mistakes, often a long series of mistakes until the enterprise fails.
Still, failure is not inevitable most of the time. Leadership can avoid potholes and sinkholes – if they’re paying attention.
For example, the Archdiocese of St. Louis would have been well served to learn from K Mart’s mistakes…
Know Your Audience For decades K Mart thrived near the bottom of the retail food chain. Yes, Blue Light Specials were cheesy sales stunts and the overtly basic stores didn’t win awards. Yet, shoppers came in droves until the chain had close to 2,500 stores. Then they got uppity, adding Martha Stewart home stuff, Jaclyn Smith fashions and banishing the Blue Light. They even put down carpeting in many stores. Well, K Mart stopped looking like K Mart, prices went up and shoppers weren’t impressed.
The Archdiocese, meanwhile, took the term ‘universal church’ to heart, building a large number of churches in working class, middle class and upper-class neighborhoods. The new Archdiocese gleefully abandons large parts of the region. As noted by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, just one of the closed churches is west of 270. Even inside the loop moderate size parishes in Warson Woods and Ladue continue while in south county middle class parishioners face long commutes to church. The loyal Catholics in not-wealthy areas get the short end of the stick.
New Management Doesn’t Change Reality K Mart went through a series of leaders as it withered, most lacking a background in retail sales. The worst hurt came from a hedge fund manager as chair.
I went through the public meetings on the Archdiocese’s plan for my “planning region.” All the cutesy MBA and “planning” phrases were there, along with a sacrificial volunteer who tried to explain that ‘no final decisions had been made’ when the final plan seemed to be already carved in stone. A new archbishop and a new planning guy had obviously come in and decided the prior leadership did things wrong.
Don’t Punish Your Staff Remember that hedge fund manager? As K Mart evaporated, he complained about the legacy costs – especially pensions for loyal long-time workers – keeping him from making more money. Despite complaints from the federal government, the company’s pension plan got dumped on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation – taxpayers. Workers got a fraction of what had been promised, pennies against the dollars they earned.
Having worked for the Catholic Church decades ago I know that church employees enjoy modest salaries and few benefits. (For example, I was not covered by unemployment.) Yet, with dozens of churches obliterated many of those modest jobs will disappear. Fewer janitors, secretaries, organists and other loyal employees. Likewise, reviewing the lists of new priest assignments the ‘right sized’ archdiocese has a large number of priests retiring or moving to jobs outside the diocese, despite the core issue being a shortage of priests.
True, the Archdiocese of St. Louis faces hard choices. Still, they could have learned from K Mart and other failed endeavors what not to do. I wish the new Neiman Marcus style church well. Many of us will miss the Blue Lights.
Glenn Koenen