Managing Projects for Ministry

178 Manag i ng Pro j ec t s for Mi n i s t r y

The Continuing Reign of Adhocracy: TUMI’s Prototype Shop, continued

that will inspire and bless the urban church in all of its diversity and difficulty. Now is the time for our best, and I am convinced that we can provide that, by the Spirit’s guidance and direction. Several months ago I informed Dr. Phillips that we would use our present gear and equipment to create prototypes of resources only. We would make only rare exceptions for select, in-house cottage products and projects deemed critical for our operation. We are now in a position to act on these ideas. TUMI was never conceived to be a publishing and distribution center, and I do not suppose we ever will be. Most of our equipment purchasing and acquisitions were simply not made for continuous, unbroken publishing and reproduction. Furthermore, most of our staff are neither trained nor expert in the art of mass production and duplication, nor do we have the funds to do so. While we are well able to create workable prototypes from our machines, we would not be able to meet the diverse, constant, and highly numbered product creation required for demanding production quotas. To put together twenty-five booklets for a class is feasible, but to create two thousand, five hundred would be a challenge, and twenty-five thousand would be a disaster for us! We are neither tooled nor staffed for that. As a matter of fact, even with the volunteers we recruit, we simply do not have the manpower or the expertise to produce mass quantities of the ever-growing reservoir or TUMI goods. My desire is to organize the entire catalogue of materials and resources of TUMI so that any item we have created can be found digitally, and made available to the appropriate publishers and shippers for purchase or production. We are already in the process of selecting text file formats (.pdf text files) and video formats (PowerPoint files, archiving video files on DVD, etc.) that will allow us to make available our goods to any and everyone, and yet be as frugal as possible in our operation. The idea of creating TUMI Prototype Shop is meant to ignite new kinds of thinking that will help us produce a product innovation process that is both highly creative yet strategically focused.