The following is adapted, with my thanks, from the Institute for Conservation Leadership.

Are you a consultant, facilitator, or trainer?

Maybe you work as nonprofit staff, or you serve as a board member or volunteer.

Perhaps you’re an activist, advocate, or community organizer.

Regardless of your position, I’d like to offer you a new title: changemaker. Pretty much everyone involved with nonprofits is creating change. Which is amazing. Thank you!

Since you’re in the change business – more specifically, the change management business – it’s useful to have a field guide to recognize and understand how change happens.

Here are three types of change that effect nearly every organization (and probably every person) at different times. Understanding this framework can help you become a more effective changemaker.

1. Developmental (or incremental) improvements

Developmental improvements allow organizations to function more effectively and efficiently. Common examples include:

• Upgrading your financial management systems
• Switching to a better database
• Creating a board agreement that clarifies responsibilities

Incremental changes entail modest risk, usually having to do with poor timing or implementation. This is why many people prefer this change model.

However, developmental improvements may be inadequate for the challenge you’re trying to address or the opportunity you hope to seize.

2. Stage change

When your organization is ready to scale up, a stage change moves it to the next level of development. Examples include:

• Your all-volunteer group hires its first executive director
• Opening a second office in a new geographic area while maintaining the same mix of programs
• Launching a capital campaign to build a new facility

This is a complex moment, with many elements shifting simultaneously: personnel, roles, technology, culture, finances, etc. The biggest risk? Resistance to any of these shifts – externally, but especially internally – can delay or derail your transition from one stage to the next.

3. Transformational change

Transformational change occurs in moments of great opportunity or significant crisis. For example,

• Your founder (and alpha personality) leaves unexpectedly
• Two organizations – sometimes collaborators, sometimes competitors – lose major grants and begin talking about a merger
• A large bequest sparks a debate about a shifting your mission

By definition, this stage entails big risks. It requires deft, adaptive leadership and sufficient resources to navigate the change.

The combo package 

While some scenarios can be predicted in advance – you’ve needed that new database for years – others arrive unannounced. Furthermore, not every scenario fits neatly into one of these categories.

You could experience all three at once. For example, your first financial audit coincides with the roll-out of a new online education program … and then the staff member launching the program gets seriously ill and ends up in the hospital.

Your ability to successfully manage change might involve teasing apart these components and addressing them in different ways. 

What’s your favorite flavor?

When teaching this model, I present three types of change, using the graphics above. (Note to trainers: these images are really helpful and can be easily replicated.)

As I show the slides or walk down the row of flip charts, I ask people to raise their hands for the one that makes them feel most comfortable. As you might expect, each flavor has its fans.

My next question to the group: How does your change preference determine how you engage as a change agent? Do you see every change opportunity through the same lens because it’s your favorite lens? How does this influence your effectiveness?

As the old saying goes: If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Developing fluency with all three models

Effective changemakers embrace a mix of tools to address a variety of change scenarios, and are comfortable using them all.

In future posts, I’ll share additional tools to help you recognize and manage change. Stay tuned!