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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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.
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.
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
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
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
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Our agenda for this webinar is very simply...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So when do you need to use change management techniques.
Here is the test:
Up to behavior - twice
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There are tons of research and books and theories and frameworks out there for change management. But we have simplified it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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....