One question on the agenda might be, to borrow a Michael Useem analogy, does the Vatican want to be Nokia or Apple? Nokia’s strategy is to sell everyone on the planet a $20 phone. Apple’s is to market a much pricier product to a more elite, high-income market. Does the Catholic Church change its standards to be more inclusive, or does it hold its dogmatic line and appeal to a smaller but loyal base? Or can it strike a balance? Either way, it’s time for a reckoning.

A second big question might be how much latitude to give to the more than 220,000 parishes. McDonald’s has a basic menu that is consistent around the globe, but it gives local franchises license to adapt to local preferences — wine with your Big Mac in France, vegetarian dishes in India. You will find Catholic parishes in cities like New York and San Francisco where gay couples are warmly welcomed, women participate in the liturgy, and the sermons and music are joyously unconventional. You will find others that favor the Latin mass, incense and everything by the book. Rome could encourage the parishes to be laboratories of worship. Useem notes that in business (and in the military, by the way), giving field officers freedom to execute the mission produces creative solutions and “it’s also just a tremendous energizer.”

Another headache the new pope will inherit is recruiting, especially in North America and Europe. In the United States the Catholic work force is shrinking by 50 priests and 175 nuns every month. One parish in five has no pastor. An obvious solution is to ordain women and let priests marry. The monopoly of celibate males, after all, is a long-established custom, but it is not core Catholic doctrine. Then again, if the church decides to be smaller (the Apple model), it won’t need so much ministering.

As you might expect of an institution that measures time in centuries, the church has been slow to join the digital world. Pope Benedict, tweeting as @Pontifex, has 1.5 million followers, which is pretty good, but he has tweeted exactly 35 times — and the messages read like boilerplate composed by a dutiful intern. Bill Derrough, a specialist in corporate restructuring and a fund-raiser for Catholic charities, said that if parishes simply got the names of their members into the computer, they could organize meet-ups, share best practices, spread news. “If the pope wanted to send a message to all parishioners, I don’t know how he’d do it,” Derrough said. Learning from product marketers and political campaigns, “I think you could drive an increase in attendance. I think you could drive an increase in collections.” My wife’s church has hired an online collection service, called ParishPay, to put the Sunday offering on digital autopilot, but most churches still pass a basket.

Finally, and obviously, the church could use some public relations help. Its stock response to criticism from without or dissent from within has been to drop into a defensive crouch, stonewall or go negative. That can come across as bullying and arrogant — in other words, not very Christian. One of the costliest examples of dumb messaging is the tendency of church defenders to treat nuns, and women in general, with condescension. (Did the Vatican really expel an order of nuns from their cloister so the place could be refurbished as a suite for the retiring Benedict? Whose idea was that?)

I realize that many devout Catholics recoil from suggestions of change, especially if the suggestions come from deserters like me. But troubled enterprises often benefit from a little outside counsel. And in the unlikely event that a new pope wants to bring the church closer to the 21st century, he will need all the help he can get. “This is a far tougher turnaround than the ones I have led,” said an executive who has helped save more than one foundering Fortune 500 company. “You might need to tap the guy that turned water into wine!”