Investment vs. impact

I absolutely love this blog entry by Kurt Johnston. Here's what Kurt said, and I agree with 100% of it.

Ever wonder whether something is worth the time and effort it takes? Is it really worth it to spend a full day making a 5 minute video that your students don't seem to care about? Is it worth it to spend two days making a 3 minute video that they absolutely love? How much time should be spent creating cool graphics? How much money should you spend on your summer calendar?

A few of us on our team recently made a commitment to try to run the vast majority of these types of decisions through this little grid. Basically, I want our team to avoid doing things that are high in investment and low on impact. However, I would love for us to focus on things that are low in investment and high on impact.

A few examples of things that might be high investment/low impact:
- A game that takes an hour ahead of time to set up, 10 minutes to explain but only TWO minutes to play!
- A 5 minute story/illustration that is funny but doesn't tie into lesson well.
- Running every aspect of your own camp instead of letting the camp do the programming (maybe the same impact but much different investment....)

A few examples of things that might be low investment/high impact:
- Borrowing ideas from our ministry friends.
- Repeating really good lessons and series from time to time.
- Buying pre-produced videos instead of creating our own.
- Less time spent creating promo and fliers and more time "talking it up" with students.