Grace
Agree to create an umbrella of grace during the time of transition. For a period of time, there will be no experts on the new system. Give people a chance to poke around and learn [review on demand videos and participate in Ask the Expert Sessions]. Communicate, model and reinforce this key component of the Christian life. People are much freer to take a chance on change in an atmosphere of grace.
Communicate the grace message to your congregation too. They can make the transition to new check-in procedures and contributions posting processes much smoother if their also extended grace.
Some of your staff will need to spend extra time on system-related issues during the transition and go-live phases of implementation. Give them the time needed to do a good job on these important tasks.
We as parents have considerable grace for our children, in this situation the end users are very childlike moving into a new product. Another area where children look to us is through example. In the next and last blog we will discuss serving as an example to your staff.