Case Study: Turn­ing Change into Momen­tum at Nextech

# Key Outcomes

✔ Established a shared, cross-functional framework for leading change
✔ Replaced reactive change with structured planning and alignment
✔ Integrated change principles into customer implementation
✔ Improved customer adoption and shortened implementation cycles
✔ Strengthened leadership ownership and cross-functional accountability
✔ Elevated awareness of downstream impact from leadership decisions

# About Nextech

Founded in 1997, Nextech is an award-winning healthcare technology company supporting more than 16,000 physicians, 5,550 practices, and over 60,000 office staff members in the clinical specialties of Dermatology, Ophthalmology, Orthopedics, Plastic Surgery, and Med Spa.

Nextech’s fully-integrated Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Practice Management software powers daily clinical and business workflows that fuel growth and enhance patient experiences. In an environment where operational change directly affects patient care, the stakes of getting change right are incredibly high, both internally and for the customers they serve.

Challenge

# When Change is Disruptive, Not Transformative

For a fast-growing healthcare technology company like Nextech, change is inevitable. To improve patient care and keep pace with an increasingly competitive market, the business has to continuously innovate and evolve its solutions. That evolution, however, requires change not only in what Nextech delivers to the market but also in how the company operates day-to-day.

Robin Ntoh, Vice President of Aesthetics at Nextech, has seen firsthand how growth can complicate change. As the organization grew, she says leadership lacked visibility into how change was experienced on the ground, while employees often lacked context for why change was happening at all.

“We didn’t always understand how a decision at the leadership level found its way down to an individual contributor. And [employees] didn’t understand what changes meant for their role, so for them, it often felt like disruption or surprise,” Ntoh said.

The stakes were further heightened by the sensitive nature of Nextech’s industry. Its customers, healthcare practices focused on patient care, must continually adapt to operational change while continuing to deliver critical services. This means that technology updates are not merely system upgrades but rather workflow changes that directly affect how care is delivered.

“We constantly deal with change ourselves,” Ntoh explained, “but we also manage change for our customers. That made us step back and ask: do we actually understand what good change management looks like?”

The answer became increasingly clear. Understanding the effects change was having on both clients and their corporate culture, Nextech saw an opportunity to rethink their approach to change management.

“Our CEO often says, ‘Culture eats strategy for lunch,’ and that really shaped our thinking. We needed to be smarter about how we operationalize change so we can build the culture we’re aiming for.

Key Challenges

• Leadership decisions didn’t always translate into clear team-level action
• Change often felt reactive rather than intentional
• Rapid growth put cultural alignment at risk
• Healthcare customers had to adapt without disrupting patient care

Solution

# Building Practical Change Capability with Propeller

That realization marked a turning point. Nextech knew that managing change couldn’t remain informal or reactive, and instead it had to become a core leadership capability. To achieve that, Nextech partnered with Propeller during its leadership offsite to align leaders around a common framework for leading change at scale.

Some of the questions they explored were:

• How do we manage change effectively as we continue to grow?
• What consistent framework should we use to lead and implement change?
• How do we preserve and strengthen our culture during company-wide transformation?

Propeller facilitated two interactive workshop sessions, bringing together more than 50 leaders across functions. Grounded in Prosci’s ADKAR methodology, the sessions focused on practical application, helping leaders connect change theory to Nextech’s real operating environment.

The experience stood out for its focus and relevance. “It was more intentional than other trainings I’ve been through,” said Ntoh. “Instead of trying to boil the ocean, the workshop really hit home.”

Structured frameworks were paired with open discussion and hands-on exercises, allowing leaders to compare perspectives and align on shared responsibilities. Cross-functional participation helped shift the conversation from individual ownership to collective accountability.

“We’re all busy and running in 10 different directions,” Ntoh explained. “No one wants to raise their hand and take on more responsibility. But the workshop showed us that everyone was willing to carry part of the burden. It was powerful to see people care about working together toward a common goal.”

Rather than prescribing solutions, Propeller guided leaders through reflection and dialogue, helping them see how decisions ripple across teams and customer experiences.

“We don’t always think about the impact of our decisions,” Ntoh reflected. “So it was a reminder that what I say and what I do can impact the person next to me or even the person that may be five leagues away.”

Key Solutions Implemented:

• Aligned leaders through cross-functional, interactive workshops
• Established a shared, practical framework for managing change
• Strengthened leadership ownership and sponsorship of change initiatives
• Reframed change management as both an internal capability and a customer experience imperative

Results

# Changing How Nextech Changes

The workshops didn’t create an overnight transformation, and that wasn’t the goal. Instead, Ntoh says it helped the team establish a shared understanding of change and a common framework that began shaping how leaders approached work across the organization.

Leaders became more deliberate in identifying where initiatives lacked clear ownership or alignment. Conversations around sponsorship, communication, and accountability grew more explicit, reducing reliance on reactive or ad hoc approaches.

Change management isn't something ever done in a silo,” Ntoh shared. “You have to rely on other leaders to ensure that you're both focused on the right answer and the right goal, and that you're all doing your part to get there.”

For many leaders, the true “aha moment” was realizing that change management was not merely an internal capability but could fundamentally reshape the customer experience as well.

“We started asking ourselves: What impact could this have on our customer relationships if we brought this thinking into how they experience change, too?”

Implementation teams became an early testing ground. Rather than treating implementation as a purely technical process, teams began applying structured change thinking when introducing new workflows and when supporting customers through adoption.

As a result, change management evolved from a way to reduce internal friction into a differentiator that helped Nextech deliver greater, longer-lasting value to its customers.

Key Results:

• Improved customer adoption through implementation
• Reduced time to move customers through implementation phases
• Increased clarity on how leadership decisions drive operational outcomes
• Established change management as an ongoing leadership discipline

Next Steps

# Making Change a Leadership Discipline

For Nextech, the engagement marked the beginning of a more intentional approach to change.

“We should have done this five years ago,” Ntoh reflected.

Leaders now share a common framework for understanding how decisions ripple through teams and customers, helping them align earlier and execute more consistently. Change management is no longer a reactive response but an ongoing discipline embedded deeply in how the organization operates.

“The workshop was a great way for us to think about change differently, create awareness, and see how we could actually manifest that throughout the organization,” Ntoh added.

Nextech’s experience highlights a broader lesson: Strategy rarely fails because of vision. It fails when organizations lack a shared mechanism for translating decisions into coordinated action. Building that capability starts with leaders who understand how change manifests in real work and who are willing to lead it deliberately and together.