Wholegrain Digital - 2022 impact report review

The impact report under the spotlight this week is from Wholegrain Digital. I've been looking forward to it as I've recently referred lots of people to their honest articulation of who they do / don't work with.

👍🏻 3 things I like...

1. IMPACT IS BUILT INTO THEIR BUSINESS MODEL

When they build websites, they aim for the carbon footprint to be below the industry average. Reducing digital footprint is core to the service they deliver. When this happens, the impact a business has is super-sized.

In reality, they’re doing much better than this target. It makes me wonder if they could be more ambitious?

2. INFLUENCING CLIENTS TO CHANGE

They're influencing clients to move to green hosting. 

I know from the Impact Pioneers group that Nicky Leach and I lead that many service-based businesses want to influence their business clients to ‘be better’ so am curious about Wholegrain Digital's approach. I imagine lots of businesses could learn from them.

3. THEY HIRED A TEAM COACH

When I led the Cancer Research UK innovation team, we hired a team coach to focus completely on the team and help them be the best team they could possibly be. This is often the role of the team leader who is also trying to spin many other plates.

We found it had a big positive impact in our team. And so I was excited to see a business valuing this role. 

The MD and team coach have now launched a separate culture consultancy to help other organisations build a brilliant team culture, so scaling up their impact.

❓3 questions it raises

1. WHAT DENT DO THEY WANT TO MAKE?

Their website is pretty clear on their mission: “create the best websites in the world, use our business as a force for good, and help to accelerate the shift to an Internet that’s good for people and planet”.

But this isn’t the stated mission on p10 of the impact report. And then in other parts of the report (p19 and p33) they refer to their mission again, but in different ways.

Just reading the impact report, it made me unclear on the dent they want to make on the world.

2. WHAT’S THEIR STRATEGY FOR DELIVERING THAT MISSION?

After telling me the dent a business wants to make on the world, I like an impact report to say how they’re planning to do that – e.g. through a strategy with 5 pillars.

With Wholegrain Digital’s report, I was left wondering what this strategy was.

3. WHAT ARE THEIR OBJECTIVES?

What did they want to achieve in the year? How much progress did they make? 

What progress are they making against their overarching strategy?

What are their specific, measurable objectives for the next year? So that next year’s impact report can measure progress against these.

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You can read the report for yourself here and let me know what you think.

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If you’re preparing to write your own impact report, you might find my FREE Impact Reporting Roadmap helpful: