A Natural Fit

Now that you understand your team’s daily digital reality, the temptation is to rush in and start fixing everything at once. We’ve seen well intentioned charity leaders get excited about digital transformation and announce sweeping changes, only to watch their team go back to their old workarounds within a few weeks.

The truth is, making digital improvements that actually stick requires a completely different approach than you might expect. It’s not about finding the perfect solution, it's about building solutions that fit naturally into how your team already works.

We’ve seen an example in the past of a non-profit that needed a way to sell their programme to schools. The knee jerk reaction by their digital partner at the time was to build a Woocommerce subscription platform. Horribly complex and rigid, as well as requiring lots of developer input to just keep running.

When we started working together, the first question we asked was, how do you typically sell to schools? “One-to-one and face to face, after we’ve built up trust and established a relationship.” Great, and how do they typically pay? “Well teachers don’t have credit cards so it’s typically bank transfer, once the headteacher has signed off the investment” Here was a clear example of building software and finding a problem.

This is what we mean by building solutions that stick. They work with the grain of how people actually behave, rather than expecting people to fundamentally change their habits to accommodate technology.

The most successful digital improvements we’ve seen follow a simple pattern. They start small, they solve one specific problem really well, and they make someone’s day noticeably better almost immediately. Grand digital transformations sound impressive, but small improvements that compound over time create much more lasting change.

This is why we always recommend starting with the smallest possible change that will make the biggest difference to someone’s daily experience. Not the most impressive change, or the most technically sophisticated change, but the one that will make someone genuinely grateful that it happened.

Starting small

How do you identify these high impact, low effort improvements? Go back to those daily frustrations your team identified. Look for patterns where multiple people are doing similar workarounds, or where someone is spending a disproportionate amount of time on administrative tasks that could be streamlined.

But here’s the crucial part: before you implement any solution, test it with the people who will actually use it. Not in a formal user testing environment, but in their normal work context. Can they understand how to use it without training? Does it fit into their existing routine? Does it solve the actual problem, or just the problem you think they have?

The best digital solutions often feel invisible once people start using them. They don’t require learning new skills or changing fundamental work practices. They just remove friction from things people are already trying to do.

When you’re evaluating potential improvements, ask yourself: Will this make something that’s currently difficult become easy? Will it save time that can be redirected towards mission critical work? Will people notice the difference immediately, or only after extensive training?

If the answers are yes, yes, and immediately, you’re probably onto something that will stick. If you find yourself explaining how the long term benefits will justify the short term disruption, you might want to look for a simpler starting point.

The key insight here is that sustainable digital change happens when technology adapts to people, not when people adapt to technology. Your team already has expertise, established workflows, and practical wisdom about what works in your specific context. The role of digital improvement is to amplify these strengths, not replace them.

This doesn’t mean accepting inefficient processes just because people are used to them. It means understanding why current processes exist before changing them, and ensuring that any improvements genuinely make the work easier rather than just making it more technically sophisticated.

A Foundation for the Future

When solutions stick, they create a foundation for further improvements. People who have experienced positive digital change become more open to additional changes, more creative about identifying opportunities, and more confident about adapting when new tools are introduced.

But this only works when each individual change is successful on its own terms. One poorly implemented improvement that creates more work than it saves can undo months of careful relationship building around digital change.

The goal is to create a pattern of small wins that builds both competence and confidence. Each successful improvement makes the next one more likely to succeed, creating a virtuous cycle that can eventually support much more ambitious digital transformations.

In the 4th post of our series, we’ll explore how to get your whole team enthusiastic about digital improvements, even if they’ve been burned by technology promises before.

Building solutions that actually stick