Over the past year I have spotted – I fear – a 7 stage process that many people will be going through in responding to the forthcoming government cuts.

It is something I shared with public sector and charity managers at a CIPFA event I spoke at this week in Manchester, just down the road from the TUC annual bash.

Most public bodies are facing severe budget reductions. How well staff, customers and other stakeholders cope will depend much on the quality of leadership in those organisations (as well as their unions and professional bodies). This, I would argue, is particularly bound up with keeping people informed, and getting them quickly to a point where they can make constructive contributions to change.

Here are the 7 stages I suspect many individuals (as well as groups and organisations) will find themselves going through:

1. Ignorance – Here people know there is a fiscal crisis but have not bothered themselves with the details
2. Denial – At this point, awareness increases about cuts, but there’s a belief that somehow it’s not going to affect them in any significant way
3. Shock – Here the reality hits: yes, this is coming their way and this is what it’s going to mean (and how severe it will be)
4. Special pleading – Now arguments are made by individuals, professions, service departments or entire organisations that they are a ‘special case’ and should be excluded from extreme cut backs
5. Anger – Once it sinks in that we’re all in this together, real anger begins – combined, no doubt, with a range of other emotional responses
6. Adjustment – By this stage people recognise they have to deal with the world the way it is and start to look constructively at how to respond. This will include contemplating some things that would have been unthinkable or unacceptable earlier on, including cutting services and jobs, remodelling the way services are delivered, entering into partnerships and outsourcing work
7. Action – At this stage tangible action is taken, change is implemented and various innovations are put into effect.

Two points are important here.

-          First, while people go through stages 1-5, time, energies and opportunities will be lost

-          Second, getting people quickly to stage 6 is the responsibility of the organisation’s leaders.

Looking at the media this week, I can’t help but feel that many people (particularly in certain unions and professional bodies) are being poorly served by their bosses in this regard. Certainly, making an argument about the value you provide is important. But this needs to be combined with an honest examination of the activities that really make a difference to users/customers.

The years ahead are going to be difficult, but unless politicians and senior managers help staff and other stakeholders to focus positively on addressing the new reality, action will be delayed, change will be harder and opportunities for innovation will be missed.

With the Pope now on his State visit to the UK, we at insiteability and 3^rd Sector Digital will be taking more of an interest than most technology-based businesses.

By arriving in Edinburgh (and being greeted by the Queen), travelling to London and then heading to Birmingham, the Pope is visiting three of Britain’s biggest Roman Catholic dioceses:  St Andrews, Westminster and Birmingham.

All are major customers of ours.

Innovation and modernisation

There aren’t many institutions as old as the Catholic Church. And there can be few that are dogged so much by arguments over the need to change and ‘modernise’.

But over the past 5 years, in working with staff and priests across a number of dioceses and parishes, we’ve had a rather different view of the church - one that itself has been about, well… modernisation!

Through website design, donor management and accounting support, we’ve been helping dioceses and parishes to adopt new technologies and ways of working that reflect some pretty impressive bouts of innovation.

From online Gift Aid and accounting…

Take Gift Aid, for example - the scheme by which charities can reclaim tax paid by their donors (providing accurate records are kept and managed). A large diocese might have upwards of 60,000 registered Gift Aiders, with annual tax reclaims in excess of £2.5 Million.

In the Catholic Church, it is the diocese that claims tax back. There is thus an ongoing exchange of data between the central diocese and (in some cases) 200+ parishes and other bodies that receive donations and help enrol donors into planned giving and Gift Aid arrangements.

3SD’s ‘Gift Aid Manager’, which has been designed and implemented with the support of several dioceses, supports this process – allowing for the two-tier approach typical in the Church. Based on a browser interface, with a hosted data solution, the system gives both parishes and the centre real-time access to records, as well as secure back-up and advanced analytical facilities.

For some dioceses, Gift Aid support has also been integrated with ‘Financial Manager’, 3SD’s accounting solution.  Unlike many similar organisations, where local branches (think ‘parishes’ in this case) manage funds using a potpourri of spreadsheets and accounting packages, a number of Catholic dioceses now manage their accounts via a common web-based system.

Again here, the data is hosted centrally, using a secure, advanced server farm, giving both parish and the central diocese access to the same information, and a more seamless link between local financial data and the central chart of accounts.

…To website design and Web 2.0 developments

Then there are all the things we’ve be doing on the website side, employing more modern design principles and using ‘web 2.0’ technologies and mobile platforms. One diocese now enjoys over 70,000 website visits a month.

As far as we know, we also built the first ‘virtual diocese’ in the UK – a mash-up of directory data and Google-Maps, which allows users to search for churches, schools and diocesan events (like the Pope’s visit) using a graphical, map-based interface (for example, see Westminster’s: http://www.rcdow.org.uk/virtual/).

We could say more

So innovation there has been – and some of it cutting edge. We could say more…much more. But then we’re not the real stars this week – those that have implemented these technologies and embraced change in their dioceses are.