Introducing new technology to your non-profit: it all starts with people
You can spend months selecting the best technology or AI for your organisation and planning how to integrate it. But your people stack needs to be as good as your tech stack if you really want it to work. Despite what you might think, the most complicated part of embedding new technology is NOT the tech. It’s the humans!
Assessing the people-related aspects of our organisation may be trickier than measuring the numbers, but it is essential if we want to move closer to digital maturity. The more digitally mature we are, the more likely we are to make the right strategic decisions about new technologies and AI.
So how do you go about getting a better understanding of your people and teams – your ‘people stack’?
A straightforward approach
If we’re really serious about making new technology and AI work for us, and enjoying all the benefits it can bring, we need a deep understanding of every aspect of our organisation.
I designed my Digital Maturity Assessment (DMA) tool as a way for organisations to get a more complete picture of where they’re at across 17 digital maturity competencies – including the more intangible, human aspects. This is more than just a survey of statistical data. This is a conversation starter which helps us reveal the hidden frustrations that are holding us back.
When we start having those conversations, and take action – our journey to digital maturity becomes much more straightforward.
Problem solving by listening and understanding each other
The DMA surveys the workforce and gets individuals to score the organisation in key areas. Once the scores are in, you can pick out problem areas, talk to stakeholders , then identify issues and co-design the solutions.
In one situation, I had a frustrated stakeholder who rated organisational data competency as one out of five – the worst it could be. She said if she could have scored it a zero she would have! One of her colleagues, who had scored data competency as a five, asked her why she had scored so low. They quickly identified the source of the frustration, and between them they worked together to resolve it. That stakeholder session on digital maturity showed us there were challenges around data competency. As a result, the organisation decided to put in full effort on understanding their data situation and finding solutions.
In another organisation, scores for project management competency were uniformly low. We did a deep dive to uncover the reasons. It turned out it was not about their project management process (as first thought), but how individuals worked with each other and how they held each other accountable. Our work led to the creation of a team manifesto, which the team hoped would move their rating from 2.5 to 3.5 by the end of the year.
The role of the scoring system is to help organisations create a change narrative of where they are at (baseline digital maturity/competency rating), where they want to be (target digital maturity/competency rating) and steps to get there.
They did not see the increase in their competency ratings to 3.5 12 months later. But by then they had a much clearer idea of what they did and did not know. So their rating of 3.0 had much more maturity in thinking than when they created their baseline.
Skills gaps: the biggest challenge for transformation
One of the biggest people-related challenges with new technology is creating confident users. New technology often divides a workforce. Some people love adopting tech, can see the benefits and will embrace the change. Others may feel they simply don’t have time to learn something new, or fear their skills are becoming redundant and that they will be left behind.
Working out the gaps you have, and understanding individual concerns and how you can address them, is an essential part of introducing new technology successfully.
Recruitment is one side of the coin, putting measures in place to ensure that digital skills AND behaviours become the norm for everyone – not siloed with one techy person or team.
It’s also about helping your existing workforce understand how they can add value. New people coming into the organisation may bring fresh skills, but your existing workforce have depth of knowledge that, when paired with tech, can bring about improvements and innovation.
DMA results over the years show that ratings around Learning and Recruitment are consistently the lowest amongst 17 digital maturity competencies. So it’s important to ensure that organisational competency frameworks, job descriptions, interview questions and tests will bring in the people with the right skills and attitudes.
And if skills and behaviours are needed amongst staff, the right methods need to be developed to address this. This isn’t about sending people on a two day training course and hoping it will solve the problem. This is about starting with small experiments which introduce new ways of working into practice, then scaling that across more people and teams.
Showing your progress
Once we’ve successfully benchmarked our starting point, we keep measuring at key points (quarterly or annually), throughout our implementation journey. As well as spotting any potential problems that need addressing, this is a great way to demonstrate to stakeholders how things are progressing and the impact the transformation programme (which includes both people stack and technology stack) is having.
Have you tried the Digital Maturity Assessment? I’d love to know what you think if so!
Since 2015, more than 2,000 individuals and a few of large non-profits have taken part in the Digital Maturity Assessment. If you’d like to find out more you can visit digitalmaturity.org/about or get in touch!
