The Flywheel Effect of Spiritual Integration
Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s Global Event.
by Ben Erskine and Matt Miglares
Owners and operators of real estate have an opportunity to faithfully steward the properties and businesses that they have been entrusted with well. This can be achieved with superior results in the marketplace. Our fund, Callis Capital, is built on this thesis.
In our corner of the faith-driven investor (“FDI”) movement, we are deploying capital into real estate assets with operating partners that have a model for spiritual integration (“SI”). Our vision is a world where the built environments and businesses that surround us—through service, excellence, and neighborly love - more visibly reflect God’s plan for all people.
Over the past two years, we’ve engaged in conversations with hundreds of groups that are pursuing SI across a variety of real estate asset classes (i.e. residential, retail, office, hospitality, industrial, etc). This broad perspective has allowed us to observe a diversity of approaches, strategies, and tactics that we hope can strengthen the movement as a whole. In this paper, we are not aiming to define the best spiritual integration model or even to describe in detail what various models look like at the property level. Rather, we aim to highlight the patterns and ingredients that we are seeing bubble up to the surface as a part of flourishing faith driven real estate organizations and the teams that lead them.
A compelling pattern that we have recently uncovered is the early indication of the “flywheel effect” of consistent, integrated spiritual activities for many of our portfolio partners. Investors will be familiar with this concept popularized by Jim Collins in his book Good To Great. Collins writes about achieving excellence not through a single miracle program or amazing innovation, but by persistently building momentum until breakthrough. He uses the analogy of a flywheel creating momentum by building up rotational energy to illustrate how seemingly small amounts of effort applied consistently over time can lead to exponential results.
We’ve seen a similar dynamic play out in real estate spiritual integration models and have noticed a common momentum-building pattern within the Callis network—a pattern we have simplified into three main principles of practice, translation, and purpose.
Practice
Regardless of the SI model pursued, the leadership team takes critical first steps to convert a concept into an action plan involving intentional and consistent practices. Methods are diverse and varied, but frequently parallel other workflows and management practices within the organization. For example, some managers have incorporated SI updates alongside other core business functions on regular management meeting agendas. Additionally, many make specific budget allocations to resource their SI strategy. Dedicated human resources are another common thread. Several groups even appoint an SI leader at the management level to ensure accountability on SI progress reporting. Depending on their model, companies utilize both internal and external teams to carry out SI responsibilities at the ground level. A shared practice among all of these teams is to establish an open reporting channel between property-level SI activity and company leadership.
Translation
Once consistent patterns of practice have been formed, highly effective models involve regular communication about SI through vertical layers of the organization and across internal and external stakeholders. Specific communication strategies vary widely across our network, but often involve a combination of formal and informal communication. This is intended to prevent the siloing of ministry programming. Leadership teams seek to regularly communicate the values that drive their practices and help team members translate the SI philosophy into day-to-day company activities. Broadly speaking, groups will share progress and challenges with on-the-ground work. In support, many leadership teams have established prayer rhythms for internal team requests and outward facing SI activities.
Messaging varies depending on many factors including the size of the organization and how it is capitalized. One of the most fascinating things that we have noticed is how critical and impactful the words chosen to communicate practices and purpose are to the adoption and support of the mission throughout an enterprise. Groups may provide different translations of SI practices in consideration for the diverse perspectives of different stakeholder groups. Chosen words matter when considering the sensitivities of investors, employees, candidates, vendors, or tenants. They can be powerful culture-building tools, but can also be hazardous when not managed thoughtfully.
Purpose
As stakeholders experience consistent SI investment and communication over time, the increasing visibility of mission begins to build an authentic culture of spiritual intentionality. The sense of shared company purpose expands to include the larger mission. As a result, the SI practices initially implemented by the leadership begin to grow beyond programmatic activities into team-initiated habits. We’ve seen multiple examples where this increasing sense of ownership in organizations produces innovative strategies as team members leverage their experience to propose new ideas and take initiative. As an organization establishes this sense of purpose within its culture, these habits and behaviors become the truest reflection in a company of the Great Commandment that Christ-following business leaders strive to obey in the marketplace.
Key Conclusions
We are still in the early stages of the faith-driven investing movement with exciting greenfields ahead for innovation, growth, and collaboration. We are eager to continue to observe and learn. For now, here are a few key observations we can make at this point:
We believe this flywheel effect resonates with a heart posture of stewardship rather than ownership—a value central to each of us as faith-driven investors. As stewards, we strive for faithfulness in managing what has been entrusted to us—that may take the form of devoted resource allocations or communication that witness to God at work in our company. Through the consistent application of even small practices, our actions can demonstrate faith that the true Owner of our business can take even modest offerings to produce supernatural spiritual outcomes.
We see this growth process as both successive and iterative. On the one hand, a flourishing faith driven real estate organization builds on a foundation of basic SI practice without which the translation effort feels hollow. Consistent practice and thoughtful translation of those efforts fosters a culture that reflects vision and purpose. Yet simultaneously, that instilled culture and purpose fuels innovation into new SI practices accompanied by organic and authentic communication.
Practical applications of these two observations may be most obvious for real estate operators managing teams and assets, but we want to bring forward at least one application for the faith-driven investor. As we deploy capital with teams establishing SI practice and translation strategies, our partnership in prayer and encouragement is essential—especially in the early stages when SI traction can be slow. The real estate corner of the faith-driven movement needs “mustard seed capital” that can provide both prayerful support and accountability around SI practices in the collective pursuit of the SI breakthrough.