How can I measure impact?
Delivering and measuring impact is hard. That’s because the impact you want to have is often a long time away and might be hard to measure. I worked at Cancer Research UK for 10 years. The research the charity chooses to fund now might not result in actual cancer treatments or saving lives for over 20 years!
And so you need to understand the connection between the activities you do now, the outcomes those have and how those outcomes are connected to the longer term impact.
Lead and lagged indicators
Imagine you decide you want to complete a marathon – your measure of success is whether you’ve successfully completed a marathon.
If completing the marathon is our metric then we’re going to have to wait until after the marathon to know if it’s been achieved. And by then it’s too late to make a difference. That indicator is ultimately what we care about and what makes a difference – but it doesn’t:
Tell you what you need to do today.
Tell you whether you’re on track to achieve your goal.
Enable you to course correct before it gets to late
Marathon completed is what we call a lagged indicator – it happens after the activity has been completed.
Successfully completing a marathon is all about the things you do in the months leading up to the marathon. It’s about putting in place consistent routines that get your body ready for race day and, barring accidents, make it likely that you’ll complete the marathon.
You might decide that you are going to:
Run four times a week in the six months leading up to the marathon
Gradually build up your weekly mileage from 20 miles per week to 45 miles per week over the 6 months
Complete 5 long runs of between 15 and 20 miles
Stretch for 20 mins per day
Do a 30 mins core session twice a week
Go for a massage once a month
These are all things that:
Help you know what action to take right now – for example by blocking out time in your diary or booking a massage; and
Can be measured to let you know if you’re on track or if you need to correct course
They are called lead indicators.
Building towards a long term vision
To build on this analogy…
There’s a club called the 100 marathon club – to become a member you have to complete 100 officially recognised running races of 26.2 miles or longer.
Achieving that sort of massively ambitious goal takes years. And there will be lots of mini milestones and outcomes (individual marathons completed) along the way. In the end it all ladders up to that big long term vision.
Applying this to business and impact
Now let’s think of this in the context of business. Specifically businesses that are focused on having a positive impact on the world.
You have a bold long term impact vision that will take years to achieve (like the 100 Marathon Club). You need to work out what the lagged metrics are for this year that put you on track to achieve that long term vision (like marathons completed).
And the lead metrics that will:
Give people clarity in terms of what actions to take now; and
Help you know if you’re on track well in advance of the end of the year – enabling you to course correct if necessary.
When deciding on these metrics:
Make sure the metrics you’re tracking are relevant and add value
Be realistic about what can be measured and making sure that the effort of measuring is aligned with the value of the metric
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