Dear Dismayed in Dublin.

This situation is extremely frustrating and I am not surprised you are losing your enthusiasm.

What you are experiencing is status quo bias – that expectation that if we just keep going with what is not entirely broken, we’ll be ok – because it’s not a complete disaster at the moment.

In the worst cases, this hesitance gets moulded into some worrying assumptions – “we are protecting our staff by not disrupting them with a major project;” “we are doing the right thing by our supporters;” “we could waste time and money moving when we do not have to.”

It’s also likely the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the current supplier is a personal friend of the leader of your organisation.

I think you will continue to face real resistance even though you may have common and business sense on your side. Somewhere in this, a difficult conversation between friends needs to happen.

So, to move things forward.

You mention recent support from your line manager who I assume is a member of the management team. If they are Sponsor for this project, this person is now your Champion. You must continue to build the Business Case with their buy-in, input and even their content. Joint ownership of the case.

You did not mention much the other members of the management team. This is a blind spot for me. Yet I would suggest you attempt some subtle investigation of their views, outside of the forum of the management review meetings.

To maintain integrity, I suggest you do some one-to-one work with the CEO on how this change can be safely delivered while managing a transition from your current supplier.

If your CEO starts to hear the rationale for change coming from many voices not just yours, the case becomes very hard to negate.

And you are doing the right thing by gathering the information from your users and focusing on the operational risk to the organisation. In addition to the outdated technology, there is the ‘key person’ risk – what if the CEO’s friend is run over by the proverbial bus? Realistically, this element of risk should be hard to ignore.

What is the current impact on your supporters and their feedback? Can you identify an evidence base that shows the charity is suffering a loss of income or reputation through not modernising?

Evidence is the key word there. Business Cases get approved when the facts are undeniable and enough people are bought in, to break the status quo bias, and bravely commit to change.

Keep going!