bhakti-vriksha

This frank admission of the challenges faced by the Bhakti-vriksha program is a breath of fresh air.

Here are a few of my observations:

1. Lack of leadership support

One of the issues explained in this article is a lack of widespread support for the initiative by the leadership of ISKCON.

One of the qualities of an effective manager or leader is realism. Leaders need to be able to make a realistic assessment of the situation, in order to calculate a course from where they are now to where they want to go. "Know yourself and know your enemy and you need not fear defeat in any battle". Another word for this is "practical".

Unfortunately a lot of the information coming out of the Congregational Ministry up to this point has been transparently unrealistic. Managers want to know about the bottom line. "What are the cold hard facts"? From the Congregational Ministry so far we've been hearing inflated accounts of successes "in other parts of the world". Level headed organizers and administrators have not been taken in by this, and have not lent their support to it as a result.

This kind of hype may work on the simple masses, but jedi mind tricks and smoke and mirrors are of no use on the kind of people whose support you need. They want to know what's really going on.

2. "Over-promised, under-delivered"

The Bhaktivriksha program has committed the cardinal sin of "over-promising and under-delivering". Too much hype was created as a way of trying to create a massive wave of enthusiasm. Instead it needs to be approached in a level manner with management of expectations.

First of all: "These are the challenges that you are facing". To demonstrate that you have a realistic appreciation of the situation.

"Here is the opportunity". Explaining how the cell structure of Bhaktivriksha addresses these challenges.

"Here are the present success stories". Showing what has happened in ISKCON, and what has happened outside ISKCON.

"Here are the problems". Explaining that no-one has yet converted an existing ISKCON yatra to the cell model.

At this point we have at least one very successful BV yatra which demonstrates the potential. However, we have not been able to convert from a classical ISKCON organizational structure to a BV structure. That's OK. We don't have to obscure this fact. It is at a pioneering stage. If you're willing to explore the potential of this program, we're willing to go along with you. We'll all be learning as we go, because as we explained, there is so far no success story - but you can see the potential.

Some forward thinking leaders will work with this. Otherwise they just see an unproven system being pushed by unrealistic people in either a naive or dishonest fashion, and there is no way they are going to risk their present success, however close to failure their yatra may be, on that.

In the article you mention that ISKCON yatras are failing. However, you cannot provide one example of where you have saved one with BV. *That* is why leaders are not going to take to it whole-heartedly. Effective managers and leaders are extremely practical. ISKCON's present leaders got where they are now by making safe bets on calculated risks, not by embracing every snake-oil salesman who rolls into town.

Adjust the pitch and try to create a single reference site. Manage the expectations and work with a brutally realistic but visionary manager who is open to trying this somewhere in ISKCON.

This is not another program - it's a replacement organizational paradigm

Something that needs to be very clear is that this is not simply another program - this is a replacement organizational paradigm.

There are two implications of this:

1) If you try to chase two rabbits, both will get away

Without understanding that this is a new organizational paradigm that will undergird the entire yatra you end up with these two conflicting organizational models. Dilemmas arise: "Who's in charge? What's the relationship between the BV and the temple? What's the authority structure?". Energy to one sucks energy from the other. The success of one is at the expense of the other.

2) You are in direct opposition to the current temple organizational paradigm

The temple became successful (whatever state they are) following a particular paradigm. You are trying to replace this underlying paradigm. Although initially it's presented as another program that you add in, soon it becomes apparent, either through its symptoms, or when devotees grasp the implications, that you are going to change the entire fundamental power structure of the community.

You are undermining the authority and the processes of the existing yatra. People got to where they are doing certain things in a certain way, and you're about to do away with that. That's very, very scary for people. They respond by trying to protect their personal situation to keep it safe, and that manifests collectively as an attack on the BV. At the very least it manifests as indifference, but more usually it will result in preaching against it (or preaching against some of its symptoms), withdrawing resources, etc....

Obviously where there is no previously "successful" (or rather entrenched) paradigm to displace, BV starts up a lot easier.

These points need to be understood. If BV is going to be implemented in an ISKCON yatra it needs to be clearly discussed and understood that this represents a complete conversion to a fundamentally different paradigm of organization. This is going to lead to a different structure of power. If this is clearly understood and the leadership is fully committed to it, then it can be worked through. Otherwise it will be a train wreck. The BV and the temple are headed for a head-on collision.

At this point there is no roadmap for doing a conversion. No-one has pulled it off yet. So whoever agrees to doing this has to agree to the following things (essentially):

Some combination of the following:
1 a) We're in such a bad state right now that we'll try anything - we have nothing to lose so we're willing to bet the farm.
1 b) We can see the huge potential of this and are so inspired by it that we're willing to bet the farm on it.

2) We understand that this implies giving up our present paradigm for a new paradigm of organization, that it involves trusting people and allowing the yatra to expand beyond what we can "control" and trusting in our ability to "direct" it through preaching.

3) We understand that this has never been done before and that we are pioneering this process of transition.

4) We understand that this involves a massive amount of fundamental change and this will be very unsettling for people. People will be asked to give up what made them successful individually, and will be asked to have faith in a new way of organizing the yatra, going against their experience to this point. We acknowledge these challenges. We commit to open communication, complete honesty and transparency, ongoing discussion and analysis in order to help people to understand, process, and adapt to these changes.

5) We have the complete commitment of our leadership to this course of action.

Without this BV cannot be successful in an existing ISKCON yatra without killing the temple. Which hasn't happened yet either, but at the moment the only hope for a successful conversion is for an ISKCON temple to become so weak that an inspired and dedicate BV preacher is able to overwhelm it with a BV program.

It's no surprise that ISKCON leaders haven't supported this. Basically in areas where there are ISKCON temples you've been getting some fringe visionaries who are discontented with the current status quo to start it and pitting them against the temple power structure. Existing temple authorities have everything to lose, and little to gain, based on what they've seen other temple managers gain as a result of giving up control.

ISKCON leaders en masse will have more faith in this when there is a successful implementation. I would focus on creating one success first.

I was restoring a back up of my machine today and found a couple of articles that I wrote about Bhakti Vrksa. Phanisvara could tell me about when they were written if he can remember the event that I describe in it about namahatta.org, but it think it's a couple of years ago. Not sure if I published them previously, but here they are:

I spent a couple of years working in technical support for a Linux operating system software vendor, supporting my family in between trying to do some missionary work. All too frequently in my job I would have a similar exchange to the the following with a customer:

Me: "Could you please try XYZ."
Customer: "It didn't work."
Me: "It didn't work... anything more specific than that?"
Customer: "It's just sitting there blinking."
Me: "O...K... but after you typed in the command, what did it say?"
Customer: "Oh, it said 'Error something something' and then a whole bunch of stuff."
Me: "Right... Do you think you could you read that error message to me please..."

The customer is calling because they don't know how to solve their problem. And unfortunately, they don't even know enough to be able to describe their problem. If they did, perhaps they wouldn't need to call. "I don't know doctor, I just feel... 'sick'!".

I saw an exchange the other day in the namahatta.org forums that reminded of this situation, in relation to the Bhakti-vriksha program. Kaunteya prabhu was probing for information on why the Bhakti-vriksha program had failed to take off in a particular area. The preacher who had tried it replied: "The groups just folded". ("Right.. anything more specific than that?")

Recently on namahatta.org a call has gone out to participate in discussion of what is working and what is not working, and why, in the Bhakti-vriksha program globally. I welcome this frank, open dicussion, which I believe to be essential to the success of this program.

When the Bhakti-vriksha program was first launched in 1996 the word was to keep it under wraps, "in case the opposition heard about it". The idea was that it was so explosive that it represented a significant "competitive advantage". That has proven to not be the case. Like anything in preaching, it doesn't work on autopilot, and the hard, personal, work of implementation cannot be replaced by a one-two-three formula.

So I think that there is nothing wrong with open discussion, in fact there is everything right with it, but I think it needs some reference points. Perhaps a lot of people will have trouble saying more than: "It didn't work".

I'd like to contribute to this discussion. I'd like to present my observations and experience as one reference point that people can use as a sounding board - to compare, to contrast, to refute.

I don't claim to be an expert on Bhakti-vriksha, but I am a believer in the "cellular" or "network" model of preaching that it attempts to implement in ISKCON. I'm a 100% drank-the-koolaid convert since I read the BV manual. Since then I've been involved in one of the longest running Bhakti-vriksha programs in ISKCON, in Lima, Peru, both in the Bhakti-vriksha program itself, and as the administrator of a temple in the same yatra. I've seen it from both sides of the fence, and I wrote an article about that experience that was published in Congregational Preaching Journal, entitled: "Integrating Temple and Bhakti-vriksha, a temple manager's perspective".

Since coming to Australia in 2004 I've been steadily plugging along tinkering with the system and launching probing attacks with a group of like-minded pioneers. Today, Christmas Day, 2006, we held our strategic planning session to cast the vision for our preaching here reaching out to 2010. We're not expecting victory before then, and we're not accepting defeat before then.

Here are my thoughts on Bhakti-vriksha and the cellular model of organization, specifically related to our situation here, and my particular experience to this point.

Understanding The Need

First of all, we have to understand the need for a cellular organizational structure. To illustrate its importance I'd like to draw an analogy from the natural world. Small animals, such as ants and cockroaches, have exo-skeletons. Their bones are outside their body. This is very strong for small sizes, much stronger than having the bones inside the body. Ants can take crushing forces that would pulverize a larger animal if an equivalent force were applied.

However, this efficiency does not scale. Once we hit crabs, who spend a lot of time in water, the largest animals with exo-skeletons are lobsters (crayfish), who have to live in the water where their weight is offset by the bouyancy of their medium. Without this, they would be unable to sustain their weight on the land. The efficiency of the exoskeleton has a point of diminishing returns.

In order to scale further an organism needs an internal structure to stop it from collapsing in on itself as it grows. An endoskeleton supports all larger forms of life, from a chimpanzee to an elephant.

Let us know consider what are known as "megachurches" in the United States. These are churches that have congregations of over 1000 people. Some megachurches have congregations of tens of thousands. It is a common fallacy that megachurches are impersonal places, due to the large number of people and the impossibility of forming meaningful personal relationships amongst so many people. Of course if it were all random that would probably be the case. However, megachurch leaders have understood that in order to grow big, they have to grow small at the same time.

While such a huge congregation would collapse under its own weight, defeated by its own proselytizing success, if it simply had an exo-skeletal organizational structure, these churches do not, because they have an "endoskeleton" structure within that supports the whole organization.

A church is not simply a building - it is a body of believers living in community. Part of that "life in community" for megachurches is participation in one of their small groups. Megachurches have been enabled, and have grown to the sizes that they have, not through the force of a cult of personality, although there is always an inspired, dedicated, and sincere personality involved, but through a system that enables people to receive individual care and attention. Do you know how attractive that is? Attractive enough, and structurally sound enough, to create local communities numbering in the thousands to tens of thousands.

What's an exo-skeletal organizational structure? It's one that relies on external authorities, externally organized programs, static boundaries, solid processes that do not scale well.

An ISKCON yatra is a classic example of an exo-skeletal organism. It is extremely strong at small sizes, but does not scale well. It's ecstatic in the early days, but as it grows it becomes a victim of its own success. It becomes impersonal as too many people are added and no-one can look after them. Congregations actually become a burden as they become disgruntled and start complaining and criticizing.

The systems, processes, and organizational structures that are typically employed simply do not scale beyond a certain point. Gridlocks develop. People start mentalling out about "losing control". In order to retain control they actually begin to restrict the expansion of the organization, consciously or unconsciously. Volunteer organizations, by definition, cannot run or even be directed, by legislation. They run on good will, "buena voluntad" in Spanish.

The exoskeleton defines the shape of the organism. Without the exoskeleton, the organism will run out of control! It must be contained!

I said this in my earlier article, and I repeat it here: this fear of losing control is at the root of our institutional rejection of Bhakti-vriksha.