Do You Need New Tech?
It is officially winter, and thus begins my season of using analogies and metaphors to draw lessons about technology through my experiences snowboarding. Let’s kick it off by tackling a common question among nonprofits and snowboarders alike:
Do I need new tech?
Even if it gives us trouble and causes us some pain, we have a hard time letting go of what we currently have in place. I hadn’t even really been thinking about new gear until Facebook sent me a memory of when I got my current snowboard...10 years ago:
(young and in love)
Hopefully your tech systems haven’t gone unchanged in that long of a while (I’m looking at you anyone working with Office 2010 products), but even if you’ve had the same systems or processes for just a few years, you may be thinking “this is what I know, it is generally of working, so I’m just going to stick with it.” That’s approximately the attitude I had with my snowboard, and more than that, I have real love for this piece of equipment - I even got a tattoo featuring the same design on the bottom of the board:
("tat on my ribs arm like I do not know what permanent is" -Drake)
So how do you know when it is time to let go of what you know and make a change (big or small) with your technology?
Surprise surprise, the variables have a pretty wide venn diagram overlap with the ones that would help you decide to get new snowboarding gear:
How old is it?
How much are you using it?
Under what conditions is it being used?
How much has the underlying technology changed over the years?
How much have you (and your organization) changed over the years?
Before we look at each of these more in-depth, let’s just get one other little scenario out of the way: when shit breaks. Sure there are workarounds and ways to patch things together again, but sometimes you just gotta accept that things aren’t working anymore. That is exactly what happened to me this week - I felt something off in my boarding when I was on the mountain, and when I got back down to my car to drive home I discovered that I had totally busted both my boots:
(Snapped the lace on the left boot and ripped the lace and plastic holder out of the right boot)
So I still got a day of snowboarding in with these poor things (scroll down for the short video edit), but seeing my boots tore up made it pretty clear: I need new gear. Sometimes your systems break - they just are not working anymore, or the workarounds are taking so much time that they might as well be broken, too. At that point there is no use trying to tough it out - you need new technology.
Now let’s take a look at each of those questions again:
1. How old is it?
There isn’t an exact number of years for any particular system, but consider the fact that it is pretty typical these days for cloud-based technology systems to come out with updates every few months. If you haven’t been in the habit of keeping up with the changes or even installing them when necessary, then your tech systems may be even older than you think. This can go for processes, too. How long have you been updating that spreadsheet in the same way? The longer we’ve had something familiar, the harder it can be to see that you may need a change. Getting new technology can of course be an exciting experience, but also a scary one. But if your tech feels old, then your intuition telling you to get something new is probably right.
2. How much are you using it?
I probably would have busted my boots a lot sooner, but I only get to the mountains a handful of times during the winter season here on the east coast. But before all the COVID mess, we did get an indoor ski slope in New Jersey, so I had been doing some more technical training there over the spring and summer. If you have a tech tool that you only use every so often, then upgrading to something new and shiny isn’t necessarily going to be critical right away. The more you use it, the more maintenance it will need, and the quicker the time may come that you’ll need to upgrade what you’ve got or move on to something completely new.
3. Under what conditions is it being used?
At first, I was just using my board for joy riding. Seriously, for a few years it was enough for me that it could just slide on snow. But then I started putting more pressure on all my gear by stomping out some jumps and messing around on features like boxes and rails. Plus these east coast winters, they pack a lot of ice when it is cold, and then when it gets warmer you might be sliding over some grass and dirt in places. What are the pressures on your tech systems? Maybe they used to be just for a small internal staff but now you’ve got a variety of internal and external stakeholders either using the technology directly or indirectly by getting reports and dashboards based on data in your system. You used to report to one or two donors, but you’ve scaled and now you’ve got a dozen donors and grant makers and you need to give somewhat different and unique information to each of them. When your conditions change, your technology will need to adapt and change to fit your new needs.
4. How much has the underlying technology changed over time?
Remember earlier when I threw shade on anyone using the old versions of Microsoft Office? Even though I really love the newest versions of Excel and you will be missing out on things like xlookups and PowerQueries if you don’t have the latest updates, you can still spreadsheet like a badass with the old stuff. On the other hand, if you haven’t updated your Salesforce instance in a year or two, it will continue to get exponentially harder to get to the latest versions when you are ready to do it, since so many changes will have happened incrementally over all those updates that come out every 3 months. And don’t even talk to me about how hard Wordpress is to navigate once it is out of date. But a word of warning here - don’t be taken by “shiny new thing” syndrome. If I coveted the advancements in snowboarding tech each year, I’d probably be spending way too much money on new gear all the time. But the gear isn’t what is going to make me a better snowboarder - it is the time and consistency that I put into my snowboarding practice that will do it. It’s the same for tech - the more you put in, the more you get out, regardless of what systems you are using.
5. How much have you (and your organization) changed over time?
This is really the most important question on the list. Technology exists to support our work, and without that context of what we are doing, technology is really useless, meaningless. Over time, you’ve learned, you’ve grown, you’ve had experiences, and you’ve changed. That goes for the individual as well as for the organization. Celebrate that progression first, and then ask yourself - where I am now, does my technology still work for me? If your mission or how you are achieving that mission has changed, then there is a good bet that your technology will need to shift with you. Snowboarding as a sport may not have changed much over time, but where I am at in my progression is definitely changing each year. Even if my boots hadn’t broken, the board that I have is not going to support me in the kinds of new tricks and terrains I am trying out at this point, so I really needed something new. If you can realize that before something breaks, that is even better!
There you have it - if you are questioning or discussing the possibilities of upgrading your tech systems or even switching to new ones entirely, ask yourself some of these questions. You may already know intuitively that you’ll need something to change with your tech, and in that case these questions and their answers can be a helpful point of reference when you are looking for a new system or process.
Let’s end this with a little bit of encouragement - here is a short video edit of me snowboarding, blissfully unawares (if a bit cautious) that my boots would not be able to help with the job of securing my feet. You are doing great with whatever systems you have now - but imagine how much more successful you could be with the right gear!
