The Safeguard Snowball

Ian Miller | 10/02/2025

The longer an organization [church, nonprofit, etc] exists, the larger the Safeguard Snowball becomes. When you experience something negative you want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So you make a policy or develop a safeguard. This creates a temporary sense of safety and comfort which brings initial positive response. 

As time goes on, more and more safeguards are created. There reaches a point that the Safeguard Snowball becomes a stinky, stagnant puddle. It creates a toxic environment that contaminates, and possibly even kills, the vision of the organization. Slowly, people leave. 

And here's the thing. Sometimes the leaving creates enough pain and disruption that it rescues the organization from death (or a leader with enough pain tolerance, vision, and commitment to the group instigates disruption). But many times, the stagnancy is terminal and the organization eventually dies. The obituary might read something like this: 

Due to [not enough funds, conflict, difficult people, anything negative that might have happened in the organization] this organization could no longer continue and had to close its doors. 

Rarely do we look back far enough to determine the root cause. 

1. Where is your organization at in the cycle? 

2. What can you as the leader do to keep inspiring everyone to stay true to the vision?

3. What are the Safeguards that are hindering innovation in your organization right now?