Before you plan for 2026, take a moment to pause — and listen. Your best strategies don’t start with tools or budgets, but with the people behind them. Discover how people-first planning helps businesses and non-profits align technology, build trust, and create systems that truly serve.
Planning season is here. Across organizations—businesses and non-profits alike—leadership teams are gathering to map out 2026. Technology budgets are being debated. New platforms are being evaluated. KPIs are being set.
But there’s a critical step that often gets skipped in the rush to strategize: actually listening to the people who will use these systems every day.
The Strategy-First Trap
Here’s how traditional planning typically unfolds: executives identify goals, research solutions, compare vendors, make purchasing decisions, then announce the new direction to their teams. The logic seems sound—leadership has the big-picture view and the budget authority to make these calls.
The problem? This approach consistently produces expensive technology implementations that fail in practice.
CRM systems purchased with enthusiasm sit unused because they don’t fit actual sales workflows. Cloud migrations create more friction than they solve because nobody asked the team what features they actually needed. Project management tools become digital ghost towns because the interface doesn’t match how people actually work.
The technology isn’t the problem. The problem is that technology decisions were made without genuinely understanding the people who would use them.
What People-First Planning Actually Means
People-first planning flips this sequence. Instead of starting with “What tools should we buy?” it begins with “What do our people actually need to do their work better?”
This means:
- Having real conversations before making technology decisions
- Understanding daily frustrations from the people experiencing them
- Involving end-users in evaluation and selection processes
- Prioritizing adoption and training as much as implementation itself
- Building organizational trust by demonstrating that voices matter
This approach doesn’t slow down progress—it accelerates it. You avoid expensive false starts and build systems people will actually embrace and use effectively.
Why Listening Creates Better Technology Decisions
When you prioritize listening before planning, several transformations happen:
You discover the real bottlenecks. The people doing the work every day know exactly where the inefficiencies are. They’ve developed workarounds, identified patterns, and understood what’s actually broken. A 15-minute conversation often reveals problems that have quietly cost hundreds of hours.
You build buy-in from the beginning. Resistance to new technology rarely stems from the technology itself—it comes from feeling excluded from the decision. When people feel heard, they become invested in making change successful.
You make smarter financial decisions. Understanding actual needs prevents the trap of buying expensive solutions for problems you don’t have. Digital transformation succeeds when it addresses genuine business challenges, not when it chases industry trends.
You create systems that scale properly. Technology built around real user needs continues working as your organization grows. Systems imposed without user input become obstacles that need replacing during your next growth phase.
How to Practice People-First Planning
Here are practical approaches to put listening at the center of your 2026 planning:
Start with Conversations, Not Surveys
Schedule 20-30 minute sessions with employees across different departments, roles, and seniority levels. Ask open-ended questions:
- What frustrates you most about current systems?
- What takes more time than it should?
- What tools do you wish you had?
- If you could change one thing about how technology works here, what would it be?
Listen more than you talk. Take notes. Don’t defend current systems—just gather information about actual experiences.
Shadow People Doing the Work
Spend time observing how work actually gets done. You’ll see workarounds people have created, duplicated efforts nobody realized were happening, and manual processes that could be automated—things that never appear in formal process documentation.
A product manager might discover their sales team is maintaining customer information in three different places because none of the systems talk to each other. A development director might learn their program staff is recreating the same report format manually every month.
Create Cross-Functional Planning Teams
Include representatives from every department that will be affected by new technology. Make sure these aren’t just managers—include people who will use the systems daily.
A small business evaluating new accounting software should have their bookkeeper, accounts payable clerk, and someone from operations involved—not just the CFO. A non-profit planning a donor database upgrade needs program staff, development associates, and volunteer coordinators at the table.
Run Pilots Before Full Commitment
Test potential solutions with small groups of actual users before organization-wide rollout. Give them real work to do in the new system. Then gather detailed feedback about what worked and what created problems.
Pilots reveal issues while they’re still easy to fix, before you’ve invested in full training and migration.
Evaluate Technology Through a People Lens
When assessing platforms, ask people-centered questions:
- How intuitive is this for someone with our team’s technical skill level?
- What training investment will be needed?
- Does this integrate with tools people already use?
- Can we customize this to match how our team actually works?
The most powerful platform is useless if your team can’t figure out how to use it effectively.
People-First Planning for Non-Profits
For non-profits, people-first planning becomes even more critical. You’re working with limited budgets, staff who often wear multiple hats, and technology that needs to serve both internal teams and the communities you support.
Cloud computing solutions can transform non-profit operations—but only when implemented with genuine understanding of organizational capacity and mission priorities.
Successful non-profit technology implementations share common characteristics:
They involve program staff in decisions. Technology that works beautifully for development or finance but creates barriers for program delivery ultimately fails. Program staff understand how technology affects service delivery—insights essential for good decisions.
They consider everyone’s digital literacy. Solutions appropriate for tech-savvy staff might overwhelm volunteers or the communities you serve. Choose platforms that work for your least technical users, not just your most proficient ones.
They prioritize sustainability. Powerful platforms you can’t afford to maintain long-term don’t help. Factor in ongoing costs—licensing, training, support, updates—when evaluating options.
They align with mission, not just efficiency. Administrative efficiency matters, but not at the expense of program effectiveness. If a new donor database makes gift processing faster but makes it harder to track program outcomes, you’ve optimized the wrong thing.
The Trust Foundation
At its core, people-first planning builds organizational trust. When you listen before strategizing, you’re communicating something fundamental: Your experience matters. Your expertise is valued. We’re building this together.
That trust becomes the foundation for successful change management. People become more willing to learn new systems, adapt to workflow changes, and troubleshoot problems when they know their input shaped the solution.
Trust also creates psychological safety—the environment where people feel comfortable raising concerns and suggesting improvements. Organizations with high trust adapt to change more effectively because people speak up when something isn’t working.
Your 2026 Planning Process Starts Now
As you map out technology strategy for 2026, resist the urge to jump immediately to solutions. Take time to listen. Talk with your team across different roles and departments. Understand their challenges and daily frustrations.
Your best strategies won’t come from the latest industry report or competitor benchmarking. They’ll come from the people who know your organization best—the ones doing the work, serving your customers or constituents, and experiencing firsthand what works and what doesn’t.
Before you commit to new platforms, expanded cloud services, or digital transformation initiatives, have the conversations that reveal what your organization genuinely needs. The technology landscape offers more options than ever before—but only listening to your people will reveal which options are right for you.
People-first planning transforms technology from something imposed on organizations into something built with organizations. That shift changes everything—from adoption rates to long-term success to the organizational culture you’re creating.
Ready to build a people-first technology strategy for 2026? We specialize in helping businesses and non-profits create systems that genuinely serve their teams and missions. Whether you’re considering cloud migration, implementing new business systems, or planning digital transformation, we start every project the same way: by listening.
Contact us at EC IT Solutions—let’s have a conversation about what your people actually need.
