Accelerating the Dynamic Church : Change Management

Change or Die?

jhook — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:35:00 GMT

We have seen over and over that the biggest hurdle to embracing the real value of better information systems in churches is change management, or should I say the lack thereof? Amongst us church management software vendors, it is even a point of occasional conversation at industry conferences. “If only churches would learn better how to change.” Improvements require change! It is said that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

I titled this blog entry Change or Die? But adopting new systems and processes in churches is not really a physical life or death situation, is it? So why change? There is not even a profit motive involved to motivate change. What’s the urgency? Why the importance? A better question might be, “If we know we need to change, can we?”

In a recent book called Change or Die, the author, Alan Deutschman, points out that research shows even when change is a life or death matter, change only occurs about 10% of the time! So that is the human state, for every 10 times we need to change, we only accomplish it 1 time! How do we know this? What do we base this on?

In Mr. Deutschman’s book, he refers to the following statistics: about 600,000 individuals have heart bypass surgery every year in the United States, and 1.3 million heart patients have angioplasties – costing our society billions of dollars. These procedures temporarily relieve chest pains, but around half of the time, the bypass grafts clog up in a few years; the angioplasties, in a few months. Why? According to Dr. Edward Miller, the dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at John Hopkins University, “If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyles.” So even in a life or death matter, people refuse to do the work to change.

The church is an institution that asks people to change their lifestyles as well. Not for physical reasons, but for spiritual, emotional and relational reasons. We know this can be hard to accomplish, yet all things are possible through Christ. But, as an industry, I am not sure we understand change well enough to do so because we in fact have difficulty changing ourselves.

Dynamic churches take change seriously. They understand that it will not happen by itself. They understand that it takes leadership, planning and continuous improvements. They know that momentum can be sustained by creating a sense of urgency, by focusing on short-term wins and then communicating and celebrating the positive effects of change. They also know that there are bumps along the way that must be managed through instead of allowing the small setbacks to bog down the ultimate goal. Effective change requires everyone looking forward, focusing on the future, and not allowing people to relish the past and desire to, as one of our customer puts it, “go back to Egypt to make bricks.” Remember, that’s what some of the Israelites wanted to do once they were out in the wilderness heading to the Promise Land. For some of them, the change was simply too hard!

Change management cannot be delegated like some administrative process! To make ministry work, the leadership and ministers must provide firm direction to the staff, not delegate it to their administrative assistants like many other things they tend to do.

Change or Die? Progress or Die? Perhaps it is our flesh and sinful nature that avoids change. But if we don’t learn to change, if we do not learn to embrace better ways of caring for and growing people, the church will become irrelevant and perhaps even die itself. Even more critical, people will die – spiritually.

Grace to you,

jhook

What stops a church from fully Experiencing Fellowship One?

jhook — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:29:00 GMT

As I write this blog entry for our new community site, I contemplated the above question: What stops a church from fully experiencing Fellowship One? There are many different answers for the various customer situations ranging from 1) lack of leadership to drive change, 2) staff turnover, 3) lack of infrastructure for proper Internet access, etc.

Is it ever Fellowship One? Sure, when what a church wants to accomplish is not supported by the product, but situations like that should be determined during the sales cycle, not during implementation; or worse, after six months of trying to use the system. We try our best to help a church discern whether our product is a fit for what they are trying to accomplish because our desired end-result is not a paying customer; but, instead a delighted, “reference-able” customer that pays. Profit is not the goal of our business; it is the result of providing value to the customer.

Back to the question at hand - I believe the most common issue among churches having problems fully experiencing Fellowship One is the change management around processes required to implement the level of change required to implement a true ministry tool rather than a “back-office” system. In other words, business process management.

Recently we hosted Tim Vineyard, Lifeway’s CIO (www.lifeway.com), and some of his key staff members here in our offices to update each other on the progress within our respective organizations. I have met with Tim a couple of times over the course of our business life now and have always been impressed with him personally and professionally. I say this as a big compliment – Tim is a southern gentleman in all ways. He is articulate, engaging and personable.

One of the things that Tim and I agree on is that many churches simply use their church management system as an electronic Rolodex, primarily used for name and address look-up, labels, giving statements, etc. - the simple stuff. This requires very little process or process management. Let’s face it, access to a Rolodex is primarily ad hoc.

We agreed that one thing missing in churches is well-defined business processes. What we have found lacking in churches that attempt to implement change (and implementing Fellowship One, if done right, requires change) is well-thought out, well-documented process diagrams defining who does what resulting in what metrics to measure. Once these metrics can be measured, they can be “baselined” and then tracked to determine whether programs and ministries are being successful. Are people being reached, touched and impacted based on the resources expended?

One of our new goals within our Services group is to document a set of “best practices” business processes to augment the implementation of Fellowship One. By providing swim lane diagrams showing inputs, process flows, outputs, participants, inspection points, etc., church management and staffs can have a visual view of what forms are required, what metrics should be measured, what reports are run when, etc. For the Dynamic Church, hopefully, these process diagrams will function as living documents that are modified as business processes change to incorporate new goals and operations of the church, and to educate new staff members so that the entire church staff can get on the same page when it comes to measuring metrics that reflect the mission and vision of the church.

Grace to you,

Jhook

Managing change versus avoiding change

Jeff Hook — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 22:53:00 GMT

Although I used to think that you should not break something if it is not broken; I am now convinced that in order to make improvements, change must happen and that change requires you to break things in order to build other things. If change is to happen, old processes and old habits, no matter how well they are working, must be broken to make way for the new. However, change does not just happen on its own, it must be managed; thus the term coined by the large management consulting firms - change management.

In the relatively short period of time we have been a company we have seen some churches manage the change to our software very successfully and then others who have failed miserably. It is amazing how the ones that manage the change well seem to embrace the software and are excited about the possibilities of having a new tool at their disposal. Then again, not unlike corporate America, many times the churches that fail at the change management aspect of a system implementation blame the software for the failure.

But as the solution provider, I see a different aspect of their failure because I see many other churches that are being successful with the same exact software. That is one thing about a true SaaS (Software as a Service), the system that one customer uses is the same as what all customers are using from the code base (capabilities of the system) to the servers (performance and response times) to the support departments (Delivery, Training and Technical Support). Since it is the same software and the same organization supporting that software, there are only a handful of variables that can cause the differences: business processes, data quality, network configuration and performance, success of the training of the people and change management.

To eliminate as much of the change management problem as possible, consider the following guidelines during project planning:

Provide leadership from the top - do not allow failure to adopt the system by the staff as an option;
Establish a sense of urgency to get the project done - no one wants an implementation to take longer than it has to;
Get all of the influencers and users of the system on board; do not let anyone shoot from the bushes; if they do not want to be part of the new solution then they are part of the old problem;
Create a vision for the church and how the new systems and processes are going to enable that vision to be achieved. The only way to rally behind change is a new vision or a burning platform that requires change no matter what! Even with a burning platform situation is present, casting a vision creates a rallying point which the organization can strive for during the tough times.
Communicate the vision - over and over! Staff needs to be reassured that leadership believes in what was once said. By repeating the vision, people have no excuse to getting the message and thus getting behind the vision.
Encourage "out-of-the-box thinking" that can get people envisioning how things can be improved.
Plan for and create early wins to build momentum. This process should be active not passive - look for who has the most to gain from the changes and implement their system capabilities first. Look for those on staff who have the most to lose because of the new system and isolate their ability to sabotage the project. Celebrate the early wins, but do not let up thinking that the job is done.
Hire and/or develop the employees who can implement the vision. Do not let "avoiders of change" short circuit progress. Do not allow the staff the option of going back to Egypt to make bricks! Reinforce the vision and the reasons for the change.

Change is never easy; I guess it is engrained in how God made us, at least some of us. But by doing the right things the right way, "change" can be successful. Conversely, doing the right things the wrong way or the wrong things the right way will not be successful. Shortcutting the change management process can lead to frustration, disappointment and ultimately failure. But also remember, improvement requires change!

Grace to you as you go out and improve,

jhook

Acceptable insanity?

Jeff Hook — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:45:00 GMT

One of the things that we have encountered as we implement some churches is their lack of wanting to change the way they “do church,” yet wanting to experience different results. I participated in a seminar once that characterized such behavior as “insanity” – doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results.

During the sales cycle, we will be told about how a church wants to do this and that so that certain results can be achieved. However, when the point of implementation comes around, the fortitude and commitment to change comes up lacking. Yet, the desired results are still sought. How can this be?

If a person wants different results, they need to do different things or do things differently. Technology can be the change agent, but processes need to be evaluated and changed as well. Sometimes mindsets and motivations require changing. And even still, if these cannot be changed with the same people, then the people must be replaced. Perhaps these are hard words for a church to consider, but no less real if different results are desired.

At Fellowship Technologies, we are constantly changing to improve. I believe the really successful organizations are always improving; adapting to new opportunities. How has your church changed in the last year?

Grace to you,

jhook