Executive takeaway: Contrary to popular opinion, change management is not optional in a major system implementation. It is the work that helps staff, volunteers and stakeholders move from the old way of working to the new one. Without it, Not for Profit organisations risk lower productivity, frustrated users, poor data, unhappy stakeholders and a reduced return on their technology investment.
When an organisation implements a major new system, such as a CRM, payroll system or finance system, there is usually a business case that explains why the change is necessary.
It might be to increase revenue, reduce manual processes, improve the employee or customer experience, give leaders better access to data, or future-proof the organisation with more flexible modern technology.
Whatever the business case says, buying the system is only one part of the change. The organisation still needs people to achieve the return on the investment. Yet too many times Not for Profits see these activities as a nice-to-have.
What is change management in plain English?
Early in my career, I found myself defending a change management budget to a senior executive. At the time, I didn’t fully understand the term myself.
So, after speaking with the project consultants and doing my own research, I realised the problem was not that change management lacked value. It was that it was such a “fuzzy” word that people misunderstood what it meant.
In plain English, change management is the activities required to support successful adoption of new technology. And from my experience, it usually means four things:
- Communications: Not one announcement at the start and another at go-live. It’s ongoing communication with staff, volunteers and other affected stakeholders, such as donors, members or service users.
- Role alignment. People need to understand how their work is changing. If a role used to involve reconciling staff time against participants for government reporting, and the new system automates most of that work, what happens to that person’s role? Are they retrained? Redeployed? Given new responsibilities?
- Process change. Implementation and support costs are usually lower when the organisation changes its processes to suit the system, rather than customising the system to match every old process. But those process changes must be designed and included in training.
- Training for the new way of working. Training should not just show people which buttons to press. It should help them move from the old process to the new one. Otherwise, people will keep using the spreadsheet they trusted before, even when the information has a proper place in the system.
And while the vendor or implementation partner can support these activities, they CAN’T do them for you. Still, I see this expectation from Not for Profits all the time when they fail to add appropriate roles to their implementation team.
The productivity dip is real
Many people are familiar with the Kübler-Ross change curve. The picture below shows how productivity is often aligned with that curve and the gap I see between a weak and strong change management process.
- The organisation starts with uninformed optimism or a positive expectation that the new system will benefit them in some way.
- After go-live, productivity will drop before it improves because people are learning new processes and the system.
- With the right change management support, people climb out of the dip faster, and the organisation starts to realise the benefits.
- Without that support, the dip lasts longer, and the business case takes longer to deliver (if ever).
This is why change management is so important. It does not remove the dip altogether, but it helps reduce how deep it is and how long it lasts.
The goal is not simply to implement the system. The goal is to help people move through the dip quickly enough that the organisation can realise the benefits promised in the business case.
What happens when change management is weak
Weak change management tends to show up in practical, visible ways:
- Staff productivity drops and never fully recovers.
- Reports cannot be produced because no one knows how to run them.
- Data quality declines because people keep working outside the system.
- Stakeholder complaints increase because services feel slower or more difficult.
I experienced this myself as a member of an association that made a major CRM change recently. I received a renewal notice a few months out but couldn’t renew through the system.
Rather than helping me through the issue, the support team told me to try again in a month or so. No apologies or “Let me help you do this another way.” It appeared that they’d literally given up.
I tried again two weeks before my membership expired and faced the same problem. However, this time I received some actual help as the support team was clearly moving up the change curve.
What good change management makes possible
With proper change management, the benefits are easier to see:
- Staff productivity can bounce back more quickly after go-live.
- Morale improves as people see the benefits of the new system.
- Stakeholder complaints will eventually reduce because the organisation has fixed issues that made the old process frustrating.
- Self-help options can reduce calls and emails.
- Leaders may finally get the reporting and insights they expected when the project was approved.
Unfortunately, the recurring problem I see in Not for Profit technology projects is that change management resources and activities are treated as optional when they aren’t. Instead, they are what help you achieve the business case, usually much faster.
Final thoughts
A new system cannot deliver the business case on its own. If leaders want the benefits they promised the board, they need to treat change management as part of the investment, not an optional add-on.
Otherwise, they are not really funding the change. They are just buying software and hoping people will work out the rest.
I regularly help Not for Profits with major IT investments and budgets. If you need some help, let me know.
P.S. If you found this article helpful, you might want to read these too:
- When your CRM is too complex for your Not for Profit
- When your IT systems constrain your Not for Profit’s mission
Tammy Ven Dange is a former charity CEO, Association President, Not for Profit Board Member and IT Executive. Today, she helps NFPs with strategic IT decisions, especially around major investments and risk mitigation.