Last week the eKidz team had the opportunity to attend a conference called Think Orange.  We don’t do this a lot but sometimes it’s good to step away and look at the big picture.  Attending this conference gave our team the opportunity to do that and we wanted to share one of the key takeaways that we got from being part of Think Orange.

I want to credit Reggie Joiner (Founder of the ReThink Group and the main speaker for Think Orange) for laying out the idea that started the best conversation with our team – essentially his idea was that there is a big difference between a vision and a strategy.

He explained that you can have a great vision to reach kids but if your strategy stinks you won’t make any difference at all.  It really clicked with our team.

Here’s the difference between vision and strategy in some real life examples:

In football your vision might be to get to the playoffs this year – your strategy, however, is the play you’re going to run this down.

In parenting your vision is to have kids that follow God when they grow up – your strategy, on the other hand, is tested in the moment when you have to decide, “should I discipline him for this one or show him grace?”

Pastor Steven has said that the difference between a vision and a daydream is the audacity to act – in the same way the difference between our vision and our strategy comes down to what we’re actually doing.

eKidz has a great vision – engaging kids and empowering families – but effectively applying that vision requires a great strategy.

So our vision says we’re all about engaging kids but did the game we played in motion this week engage them?  Or maybe a better question would be, do we know what kind of games engage kids and can we consistently come up with them?  We’re excited to continue to ask questions like these about everything we’re doing in order to get better at achieving our vision.

We believe that we have a great vision!  At Think Orange we were reminded that we need to continually work to create an equally great strategy for achieving it.  And we’re honored and excited to make that happen.

The eKidz Team

– Engaging kids and empowering families