I left Adobe in May to aim to spend the rest of my career on mission-based work for the Church.

Thirty years in media, marketing, and tech, culminating in eighteen years at Adobe, a good run leading a large consulting practice, and then a deliberate decision to stop doing that work and start doing this one. May 2026 - six months ago.

What I'm doing now has become specific enough that it's worth writing about.

What I thought I was starting, when I left: a prayer and formation company, and a consulting practice focused on Catholic institutional work across three domains - mission clarity, technology, and organizational effectiveness. The three pillars were legible enough in the abstract that I named them, built a site around them, and started conversations with institutions that fit the shape of each.

What the first six months have actually taught me: Mission is where the first conversations start. Technology and organizational effectiveness are where the paid engagements almost always live.

That's not a negative observation. It's actually the opposite. The Mission essays in this Weekly - the ones about weaving the leadership team's many true descriptions into one voice, about the mission statement for the parish secretary you're trying to hire, about the volunteer who shows up once - those essays are the first conversation. They're the thing an executive director reads on a Monday morning and forwards to the pastor or the board chair. They're the thing that gets a diocesan foundation president to pick up the phone.

But the actual engagement, once we're in the room together, is almost always about something that looks more operational. The diocesan foundation whose six donor-facing technology systems have overlapping data and no governance framework. The engagement there isn't deciding which system to keep. It's writing the data governance policy that should have existed four years earlier.

The parish that wanted a new website and discovered, two conversations in, that the website couldn't actually function without staff workflow clarity that didn't yet exist. The engagement wasn't web design. It was mapping who actually owns the content, who approves it, who publishes it, and what happens when the volunteer who used to do all of it leaves in June.

These are not strategic consulting engagements in the enterprise sense. They are the setup-for-tech work that most Catholic institutions have never developed the muscle for - because most Catholic institutions were not operating at the scale that required it, until somewhat recently, and the governance disciplines have not caught up with the operational reality.

Which is where I keep landing, six months in. The work that Catholic institutions need most - and that they are quietly asking for in the engagements I'm actually being paid to do - is the pre-system work. The privacy policies. The data governance frameworks. The vendor evaluation criteria. The workflow clarity. The decision-rights mapping. The small pieces of operational infrastructure that have to exist before any new technology can actually serve the mission.

Thirty years in media, marketing, and technology - eighteen of them at Adobe leading consulting teams that did exactly this kind of work for Fortune 500 companies - turns out to be preparation for a specific kind of ministry. I did not know that in May. I know it now.

The three pillars are still the right frame. Mission is what the institution has to get clear on first; it is the question underneath every other question. Technology is where most of the institutional pain currently shows up. Organizational effectiveness - decisions, meetings, hiring, operations - is what makes the technology actually work once it's in. The pillars sort the thinking. They don't predict which one carries the engagement.

What has surprised me most in these six months is how ready the work is. Dioceses, foundations, parishes, religious orders, and Catholic schools are not waiting for someone to tell them they need this kind of help. They know. They have known for years. They just have not had anyone to call who speaks both languages - corporate operational discipline and Catholic institutional life. The gap between who they could call for one and who they could call for the other has been real, and it has been costly. Closing that gap is the thing I thought I was building. The engagements since May have told me that is exactly what is actually needed.

I did not leave Adobe to see if a mission-based consulting practice could work. I left to see if I could spend the rest of my career on this type of work.

The practice is Ad Alta Leadership. The essays here are what I keep learning about the pattern. The next six months will bring more clarity, and I suspect more surprises. I'll keep writing.

In fieri. Ad alta.

-Michael
Deacon Michael Halbrook

If you want to see where your institution actually sits across mission, technology, and organizational effectiveness, Where You Stand is a free fifteen-question diagnostic. adaltaleadership.com/diagnostic

If your institution is sitting with a technology decision, a governance gap, or a workflow question - and you want to think it through with someone who speaks both languages - an Hour with Michael is a focused way to start. adaltaleadership.com/hour

Know a leader at an organization - a parish, diocese, foundation, Catholic school, or another Catholic organization - who should read this? Forward it to them.