Successful Nonprofit Technology Change Management
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This document outlines a simple framework for successful nonprofit technology change management. The framework consists of three steps: 1) Define the change specifically and gain agreement, 2) Identify who is impacted, how they are impacted, and the level of impact, 3) Prepare for impacts by activating leadership, communicating, and providing training and support. The document then provides a case study example of a nonprofit moving from manual spreadsheets to a new time and expense tracking system. It demonstrates applying the three-step framework to define the specific change, identify impacted groups and the level of impacts, and develop a plan to prepare for impacts. The goal of the framework is to properly consider how technology changes impact people in order to achieve desired results and avoid common
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Successful Nonprofit Technology Change Management
- 2. Interact Ask questions via chat. Connect on Twitter. Focus Avoid multitasking. You may just miss the best part of the presentation! Webinar Recording and Slides Links to the recording and slides will be shared after the webinar.
- 3. Invested Work exclusively with nonprofit organizations; have served over 1,000. Strategic Help our clients make IT and IS decisions that support mission. Collaborative Empower you to make informed choices.
- 5. Ourthree itemagenda 1. Why technology projects fail 2. A simple approach to improve your chances 3. Walk through a case example
- 13. TheProblem We make technology changes without properly considering the impacts on the people affected. Those impacts disrupt the results we want.
- 14. TheProblem Example 1 “Our fundraisers insisted on moving to a new cloud-based fundraising solutions. They are still unhappy and not using it. It turns out the old system was not used because: • Leadership did not set clear expectations for its use. • No fundraisers were involved in the implementation.”
- 15. “We implemented a new system to capture receipts for expenses and thought staff would be thrilled because it is so easy. It turns out most of our field staff never actually captured receipts before so this was added work and they are furious. I wish we had known that earlier. “ TheProblem Example 2
- 17. WhatisChange Management? ”Change management is the discipline that guides how we prepare, equip and support individuals to successfully adopt change in order to drive organizational success and outcomes.” - Prosci
- 18. DoIneedit? If your technology change requires people to adjust their behavior in order to achieve your goals….you need change management.
- 20. TheBuildChangeManagementFramework DEFINE THE CHANGE IDENTIFY THE IMPACTS PREPARE FOR IMPACTS STARTIN G POINT 01 02 03
- 21. DEFINE THE CHANGE IDENTIFY THE IMPACTS PREPARE FOR IMPACTS 01 02 03 • Write it down and be specific • Share and gain agreement
- 22. DEFINE THE CHANGE IDENTIFY THE IMPACTS PREPARE FOR IMPACTS 01 02 03 • Write it down and be specific • Share and gain agreement • Identify who is impacted, in what ways, and how big the impact is
- 23. DEFINE THE CHANGE IDENTIFY THE IMPACTS PREPARE FOR IMPACTS 01 02 03 • Write it down and be specific • Share and gain agreement • Identify who is impacted, in what ways, and how big the impact is • Activate leadership • Communicate • Train and support
- 24. DEFINE THE CHANGE IDENTIFY THE IMPACTS PREPARE FOR IMPACTS 01 02 03 • Write it down and be specific • Share and gain agreement • Identify who is impacted, in what ways, and how big the impact is • Activate leadership • Communicate • Train and support TheBuildChangeManagementFramework STARTIN G POINT
- 25. CaseStudy
- 26. DEFINE THE CHANGE IDENTIFY THE IMPACTS PREPARE FOR IMPACTS 01 02 03 Write it Down and Be Specific Moving from manual spreadsheets to a single system for time and expenses, project budgets, invoicing and payments. This will affect partners, employees, the bookkeeper and our clients. Share and Gain Agreement The partners voted 4-0 to authorize and fund this implementation. Staff and subcontractors are clear on the change and why it is happening.
- 27. DEFINE THE CHANGE IDENTIFY THE IMPACTS PREPARE FOR IMPACTS 01 02 03 Process Area Groups Impacted Impact Description Impact Rating Time and expense entry Employees New system and processes for entering time and expenses High Time and expense approval Partners New time approval process and system High Invoicing Bookkeeper New system for creating invoices High Invoicing Clients Invoices will look different and will come from Harvest email Low Process invoice payments Bookkeeper New system for processing payments Low Recording of financial data in QuickBooks Bookkeeper Accountant Invoice and payment financial data will flow into QuickBooks and may require review and correction. High
- 28. DEFINE THE CHANGE IDENTIFY THE IMPACTS PREPARE FOR IMPACTS 01 02 03 Process Area Groups impacted Impact Description Impact Rating Invoicing Clients Invoices will look different and will come from Harvest email Low Recording of financial data in QuickBooks Bookkeeper Accountant Invoice and payment financial data will flow into QuickBooks and may require review and correction. High Time and expense approval Partners New time approval process and system High Time and expense entry Employees New system and processes for entering time and expenses High
- 29. DEFINE THE CHANGE IDENTIFY THE IMPACTS PREPARE FOR IMPACTS 01 02 03
- 30. DEFINE THE CHANGE IDENTIFY THE IMPACTS PREPARE FOR IMPACTS 01 02 03
- 31. Theevaluation leadstoa planforchange You can now develop the plan to make your change successful for each impacted stakeholder and the entire organization: • Stakeholder Involvement Plan • List of job, process and policy changes • Leadership activation plan • Communication plan • Training and support plan
- 33. Questions
Editor's Notes
- Matt’s
- Pause Our agenda for this webinar is very simply...
- Pause - 5 seconds At Build Consulting we have two core beliefs that motivate us both to do this work and to approach it the way we do. The first is our belief that technology can empower organizations to both work more effectively and to change the world.
- Pause 5 seconds... The second is that technology fails so often because we treat it like a baseball field in Iowa - we think if we build it people will come; We get the shiny new technology – but don’t recognize the need for the organization to get shinier too.
- Pause 5 seconds The fact that they don't just come when you build is perfectly captured in our favorite formula – OO+NT=EOO. Old Organization plus new technology = expensive old organization. The key is to find the right things to add to the formula that will make the outcome a transformed organization because that is critical to your success.
- Pause We believe that a truly effective approach to transformation using technology starts with a focus on leadership and governance. This allows us to ground technology efforts in the strategy and mission of the organization and ensure buy-in from the highest levels of the organization. From that strong foundation, we can make good decisions about the operations that must be in place, design solid processes and organize our data. In all cases, technology is an accelerator - not a driver of transformation.
- Pause If you pair technology with organizational transformation – you will make the world better.
- We have worked with hundreds of organizations to help them leverage technology and transform their organizations. We have three primary ways we do that – First, part-time CIO services, that put experienced nonprofit technologists in your organizations. Second, we lead projects such as assessments, system selections and support for implementations. And our Build Teams offering that provides organizations with highly skilled data administrators.
- So, to reground ourselves in the problem we are trying to address– we are here because of the extraordinary failure rate of technology projects.
- Pause - For us, a good deal of the failure rate of technology projects is related to the fact that we simply do not do a good job of anticipating the effect of these projects on the people they are supposed to help. When these impacts hit them, we lose the hearts and minds of those we serve. And as a result, we don't get the return on our investment we hope for.
- Pause - We have a couple of examples to illustrate the problem. We follow the desires of our users to get modern new technology - and then they don't use it - because it turns out the technology was not the problem. The fundraising leadership did not set expectations and we did not involve the fundraisers in the implementation - so we got it wrong. We see this story repeated over and over – and not just for fundraising – but for membership, case management, program management, events, etc.
- PAUSE This is a recent story we heard from a client where they implemented a new credit card reconciliation tool for expenses and receipts. Because they did not involve actual end users, they did not realize that this actually added a lot of work to their plate. Both of these are examples where because we did not critically examine the impacts of a proposed change – we made decisions and choices that jeopardized the ability to get a return on our investment.
- The answer to a lot of these challenges lies in the field of Organizational Change Management. An academic sounding term for what is a pretty simple concept.
- Pause We like the definition by Prosci – which is a leading research and consulting company in the field of change management. prepare, equip and support individuals to successfully adopt change You will notice, it does not say "guides how we make everybody on a project happy." It is a frequent mistake about change management - it is not about making everybody happy - it is about making everybody ready for change.
- Pause So when do you need to use change management techniques. Here is the test: Up to behavior - twice
- Pause There are tons of research and books and theories and frameworks out there for change management. But we have simplified it.
- Pause In the Build framework, there are three steps – define the change, identify the impacts from that change, and then prepare for those impacts. This framework works regardless of whether you are talking about a very small change or an extraordinarily large change.
- I can't overemphasize how important this definition is. Frequently people plow forward into a change without being clear on what is actually changing. Write it down, share it, revise it, share it again and then finalize it. Gaining agreement means two things: 1. ensure that the decision makers and key stakeholders agree that this is the right change. And 2. For everyone else, ensure that they are clear on the change that is coming – but that does not mean everyone agrees to it.
- For those of you familiar with stakeholder analysis - this is a version of that. Identify the individuals and groups impacted by the change, determine how they are impacted, and how big that impact is.
- Pause Once we know who is impacted and how, we can employ a number of strategies to ensure we are ready to change: First, we activate leadership - which basically means ensuring that the leadership in are prepared to be cheerleaders, supporters and users of the systems or other changes. Second, determine who needs to be communicated with during the project, what messages and through what mechanisms. Third, ensure that the training and support mechanisms are in place to train users
- So this is the framework. Now we are going to....
- Walk you through a specific example - the example we are using is meant to be somewhat neutral and manageable - and involves my company Build Consulting implementing a new time and expense system.
- The first thing we would do is define the change and you can see that I have written it down and been at least somewhat specific. We intentionally did not get terribly specific here for the sake of not overwhelming all of you with words on this slide. Basically replacing our spreadsheets with the a new time, expense and invoicing system. To gain agreement, what we would do internally is to discuss it among the partners, vote on the change and also consult with staff and subcontractors so they are clear on what is happening and when and what will be expected of them.
- Pause So we go from defining what is changing to what the impact of those changes are on specific groups or individuals. As you can see, there are a few processes that are changing. Time and expense entry and approval, invoicing, payments and accounting. SLOW: In each case, we have identified who is impacted, what the impact is and whether it is a big or small impact.
- I know it is a lot of information and I want to call out just one of these lines to make the point that the impacts you identify will be a combination of system-related ones and process-or job-related ones. Not only do the partners have to use the new system but they have never done formal time approval before. That requires that we develop a policy about how they should evaluate employee time and also the expectations for how quickly time approval will occur.
- Once we identify the impacts, we can then create strategies for addressing those impacts. The entire version of this list is about 10-12 rows for this relatively small project.
- Pause Again, we are focusing in on the one specific impact for partners of doing time and expense approval in a new system and there are five areas where we identified strategies to address the impact First - we need to adjust their job descriptions to include expectations for time approval. And it is not listed here but we should also include an update to our policy manual with that change. Second - Partners must be a champion of the change and set the example to the whole organization including attending training, speaking at project updates, and encouraging their direct reports. Third, we will provide the partners with weekly progress updates on the status of the project. For employees and others it might be a monthly update. Fourth, we know that the partners will require training on the application as well as in the new policy about how and when they approve time. Finally, we want to make sure that at least one partner is involved in the process design and testing the system to make sure that that we implement that functionality properly.
- Pause The evaluation we just went through, if you go through it for all the impacts and all the stakeholders you will be able to form a plan in each of those five areas. You will know - who to involve in the project You will be able to ensure that changes to jobs and processes and policies are accommodated. You will know what you need from the leaders and how to get their activated in their role. You will communicate to the right people at the right time. And you will be prepared for training and support.
- We hope that these tools that we have described here will help you to make your projects more successful. After the webinar, we will be emailing out a change impact template (similar to what you saw here but with a little more detail ) that you can use to apply to the next change you face at your organization. I hope that was helpful and....
- I look forward to answering your questions.