Asking the Wrong Questions: Challenging Technocentrism in Nonprofit Technology Planning

By Michael Gilbert

In every domain in life, the questions we ask shape the responses we get. Our questions reveal our frame of reference and impose that frame on our answers. As a result, much is revealed by examining the assumptions, the reasoning, and the logic models of our questions.

I believe that most practitioners of nonprofit technology planning are asking the wrong questions. Because their questions are largely about technology, the results of these questions are answers dominated by the logic of technology itself, rather than by the mission or methods of the organization.

Many observers will agree that common complaints about technology projects -- resistance to change, long sales cycles, inappropriate technology, unexpected costs, unused tools -- are often the inevitable result of this technocentric planning. The only way to unravel this problem is to go to the source and challenge the questions we ask.

In this short essay, I will touch on three questions of my own: In general, what kinds of questions should planners be asking? What kinds of questions are they actually asking, in the field of nonprofit technology planning? How can we fix this?

What Should Planners Ask?

It's useful to look at other domains for inspiration about what the right questions might be. Although a proper examination would involve a much larger set of domains, for our purposes today, let's look at eye doctors and shoe sales-people.

Eye doctors don't determine how to correct your vision by looking at what kind of glasses you have been wearing recently. They evaluate your vision directly and possibly they investigate some lifestyle or workstyle issues, such as the typical distance of objects that you need to see. Even though your current glasses might reveal something about your eyesight, they don't use that as a form of assessment. Eye doctors rely on questions about eyes and about seeing, not questions about eyeglasses.

Shoes sales folk don't do an inventory of your shoes in order to sell you a new pair. Even though it's true that such an inventory might help them sell to you, even people with such a solid sales agenda focus instead on other things. They measure your feet, for example. They investigate your walking habits and contexts. They watch you walk. Shoe sales folks rely on questions about feet, fashion, and walking (or running or standing), not questions about shoes.

From these two examples, we can start to learn what kinds of questions planners should be asking. In both of these cases, the questions that allow the professional to offer the right technology are not technological questions. Instead, they ask questions about behavior and context. The behavioral questions are often goal directed and look at practices which, though they will likely be served by the technology, are not about the technology. The context questions, being both personal and practical, give the professional an understanding of the systems into which the technology will be introduced. Those systems include other technologies, but are in no way limited by them.

What Are Nonprofit Techies Asking?

I'll start by looking at NPower and Compumentor, two organizations who, I believe, both influence and represent the mainstream of thinking about nonprofit technology planning. I hope to study this question in greater depth in 2006, through surveys and direct investigation of technology consultants, about whom we need to learn much more.

TechAtlas is NPower's technology planning platform and probably represents the core of their thinking about the subject. This is not a direct critique of the TechAtlas platform, since it can accommodate any questions that the technology consultant would like to add. Rather, I'm using TechAtlas in its default configuration to explore NPower's default thinking on the subject of technology planning. NPower has branded TechAtlas as "THE tech planning tool for nonprofits".

I started with the TechAtlas Basic Interactive Technology Assessment & Technology Project Recommendations. To their credit, TechAtlas asks you to describe your organization's mission. They promise to include that mission statements at the top of the documents produced. Unfortunately, there is very little in TechAtlas that actually tries to connect the technology plan to that mission, other than technology vision statement. Instead, the Basic Assessment asks about hardware, networks, virus protection, backups, databases, email, the Web, the Internet, training, and software.

What's missing? It doesn't ask about communication practices, business processes, stakeholder relationships, or anything else that might actually lead to meaningful requirements. The questions of the Basic Assessment provide a classic example of the determinism inherent in technocentric inquiry. In essence, each question takes the form of "Are you doing ______ (insert tech we think is good)?" If the answer is no, then the recommendations are more or less "Well, you should!"

What are the consequences of this technocentric approach? For example: TechAtlas recommends that The Gilbert Center buy more printers, even though our success is founded on the practice of communicating almost exclusively online. TechAtlas recommends that we standardize on one word processor and one operating system, even though we use more than one to avoid the risks of lock in, support standardization of file formats, and encourage innovation and cross training. TechAtlas recommends extensive investment in client side virus protection software and training, even though the actual risk of our being infected by a virus is tiny, because we have Mac OS client machines. To be fair, TechAtlas adds qualifiers to each of these recommendations, but that just calls attention to the fact that we're fighting against a flawed methodology.

Does Compumentor offer us a better framework for nonprofit technology planning? Like NPower, Compumentor is a diverse organization, so have I chosen TechSoup to represent their thinking. Furthermore, TechSoup is a resource upon which many technology consultants and nonprofit decision makers have come to rely. With some searching, it's not too hard to find TechSoup's prevailing views on the subject of technology planning. A seminal and thematically unifying document appears to be a solid piece called "What's Involved in Technology Planning? Seven steps to a better technology plan".

Step One of this guide is to assemble a technology management team, a laudable recommendation. But Step Two is a resource assessment, which appears to be grounded in hardware, software, networks, databases, email, groupware, as well as policies for using and managing the technology. Step Two closes with some good questions about how well the technology is working, but all in all serves to frame the entire planning process in technocentric terms. Step Three is a needs assessment and is a good faith effort to get beyond technology as a frame of reference. But in my experience, it's too late at this point. The technological terms have already been set and "needs" in particular lend themselves to being shaped by those terms.

Dozens of smaller examples of technocentric nonprofit technology planning processes are available from other sources. I single out these two organizations not because their positions are egregious. Indeed, both of them make an honest effort to acknowledge other frames of reference, but even with such integrity, that acknowledgment ends up being little more than lip service. I single these organizations out because they are large, influential, and very much in the mainstream flow of ideas around nonprofit technology.

Do we know for sure what practices are being followed by most nonprofit technology consultants? Not until we study them more directly. But from the prevailing documentation of their work, the instruments they use, and the focus of online discussion, we can tell this about our field: We have good intentions, but technocentrism dominates our work. Experienced technology consultants, who have a passion for communication and management, can sometimes mitigate the damage done. But they are fighting against the current and, along with their clients, are often swept downstream.

How Can We Fix This?

The purpose of this essay is not to propose a well packaged solution, but to provoke a conversation about this profound flaw in our approach to technology planning. Above all, we need a planning methodology that asks about communication practices, business processes, stakeholder relationships, and then connects those things to meaningful requirements.

Some of the questions that need to be discussed include the following:

First, how do the many parties involved in nonprofit technology planning contribute to this phenomenon? Nonprofits themselves are easily sucked in by technocentric fears, promises, features, language, and logic. Vendors have a hard time ever stepping out of the technocentric point of view. Technology consultants play a pivotal role, but are torn between sticking to technology and becoming communication and management consultants. The latter is a job for which most of them did not sign up. And finally, how do funders influence all this?

Second, is this phenomenon part of some larger issues in the nonprofit sector? Can it be reasonably addressed on its own? I wonder, for example, at the general inclination of many organizations to avoid difficult reflection. Sometimes it may create less cognitive dissonance to submit to a technological imperative. On the other hand, I have seen a patient, communication centered approach be tremendously empowering for the participants.

Third, who is pushing technology planning methodologies beyond the point of paying well-intentioned lip service to organizational mission? Is the approach we've taken, called Communication Centered Technology Planning, palatable to a critical mass of technology consultants, nonprofits, and funders? Can we take some of the methods out there that focus on needs assessment and develop them into a framework that takes control of the planning process from step one? How can we leverage the work of the consultants who call their methods "strategic technology planning" or, even better, "strategic communication planning"? I suspect those methods might blend well with the communication centered approach. Is there a way for us to enroll communication and management consultants in the process of reframing technology planning?

Fourth, who is willing to pay to solve this problem? There are few enough funders who will fund sector-wide programs of any kind, let alone one that seems as abstract as a methodology problem afflicting a category of planning for a sector-wide issue. Furthermore, funders can get caught up in the technocentric frame as well and nonprofits can rarely get funding for a good requirements process. We need leaders among all the parties I listed in question one above, including leaders from the funding community.

Fifth, at the very least, we need to document the costs of this problem. How many projects fail as a result of technocentric requirements, or no requirements at all, because of technocentrism? How many organizations have been alienated from technology as a result of the technocentric approach and what has that cost in program terms? What innovations and opportunities have been lost or indefinitely postponed as a result of the rarity with which we truly let mission lead the way?

It's time we stepped up to the task of reforming nonprofit technology planning. We have the infrastructure in place for this conversation. We have the collective wisdom to develop and disseminate powerful alternatives to technocentrism. We have at least as much integrity as the shoe sales staff and the eye doctors, who know better than to start with the tools. I look forward to being part of the solution with you.

Note: Michael Gilbert will be leading a discussion at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in March. If you are interested in offering some input to that discussion, please write to Michael at RightQuestions@gilbert.org. He will be teaching an online workshop on this subject on January 26. Check it out!

Michael Gilbert is an internationally known consultant to foundations and nonprofits, an innovator and researcher in the field of nonprofit communication, and a social entrepreneur.