Laying a Stronger Foundation [Captain's Log]
Paving the way for more directly impactful work
“Captain’s Log” is a series where I share a snapshot of how things are progressing across the ministry. Subscribe for the latest with Lightworks!
Captain’s log, stardate: April 1, 2022
While the last few weeks have been intensely focused on our first product by doing a deep dive into user research and product vision, this week needed to look quite a bit different.
This week has been much more nose-down in administrative projects. And as much as I’m excited to keep working on on our product (and our first primary work as a ministry to empower discipleship digitally), we know that administrative work is what lays a firm foundation for the more exciting work to be built upon. Looking forward to closing out some logistical projects to build capacity to focus on design & build of our first MVP soon after!
Highs:
Formally incorporated our Nonprofit!
Filed our personal taxes, after a complicated tax year for us
Completed 20+ other critical personal projects/tasks to clear mental clutter & free up more creative thinking.
Connected with someone via our daycare who does software development. He got so excited in the brief explanation of what we do and are aiming to do that he offered to volunteer and help write code. Amazing how God has continues to put developers in our path and to see them get incredibly excited about this ministry, even in a brief conversation. God is doing something - He’s the wind in the sails; we’ve just got to raise the right sails & raise them quickly to follow the wind and to move along with Him.
Lows:
Got a lot done, but not as much as we had hoped. Decided to extend our administrative focus by a week to finish some key projects. Started talking about if a personal assistant could add some lift and help us stay focused on things only we can do at this stage.
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators):
0 monthly active users (all Lightworks digital initiatives) [not launched]
0 monthly active users (digital discipleship platform) [not launched]
Looking Ahead:
Wrap up crucial administrative management tasks / projects this next week
Summarize and share some of our key findings from our user research
Scope our MVP, and determine what’s the minimum necessary to deliver real value to our users - so we can learn from that small test and iteratively build and improve over time.
Q2 planning for 2022, and starting to look a bit further into the future as well.
Prayer Requests:
Pray for clarity in communication! Have a lot of strategic communication tasks/projects coming up, and those tasks can sometimes be the most difficult (for me - to balance getting it right and what’s clear enough).
Pray for wisdom - should we get a personal assistant to help us knock out a bunch of these little-to-medium-sized projects or tasks? Should we find a more creative solution? Or just put our heads down and plow through the backlog every now and again?
Pray for general effectiveness this week. Pray that we can close out the administrative tasks at hand to pave the way for more directly impactful work in the near future.