Measuring Impact: Part Two – Deciding on the Impact You Want

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Measuring Impact: Part One – Why Activity is not Enough

Once you start measuring impact, it becomes fundamental to understand what effect you want to achieve. Many organisations face the challenge of having too many different impacts to achieve.

I was very impressed when I looked at Teach First (annual report 2022/23) and its key definitions of success. They set out just two ‘Impact Goals’:

1. Narrow the attainment gap for disadvantaged children, with a particular focus on those facing persistent disadvantage.

2. Narrow the destination gap for disadvantaged young adults in sustained employment, apprenticeship and training, with a particular focus on those facing persistent disadvantage

These two ‘Impact Goals’ are then supported by four ‘Outcomes we want to see’:

Supporting the transformation of schools in disadvantaged communities
Systemic and policy changes to benefit disadvantaged children and their schools
A more diverse education system that reflects the communities it serves
People working together to transform society to benefit disadvantaged children and their schools

These four’ Outcomes…’ are supported by the ‘Pillars and Inputs of our 2023-2030 Strategy’.

There are just four ‘Pillars’ in the strategy:

Great Teachers
Brilliant Leaders
Powerful Movement
Strong Policy

Performance measures are outlined for the four ‘Pillars’, with just three key measures (Inputs) designated for each ‘Pillar.’

As you can see from the graphic, performance measures support Pillars, which support Outcomes which deliver Impacts.

Theory of Change

This may appear an overly elaborate hierarchy to support a simple vision of ‘Every child fulfils their potential’. However, it illustrates a carefully articulated ‘Theory of Change’. The theory of change is that the three performance outcomes for each Pillar will ‘Narrow the attainment gap…’ and ‘Narrow the destination gap…’.

However, having just one ‘Impact Goal’ can put the whole organisation at risk if it is the wrong one. As I write this in Q1 2025, the post-mortem on the troubled aerospace company Boeing continues. Some commentators suggest that the previous board focused too long on exceeding stock market expectations for each quarterly result. The mandate for the board of a listed company is to ‘maximise shareholder value’. However, the stock price is only a market opinion of shareholder value. This quarterly focus at any cost has undermined engineering excellence across the supply chain, resulting in catastrophic aircraft failures and a culture of suppressing whistleblowers. As a result, Boeing has come close to insolvency and destroyed billions of dollars of shareholder value.

In my view, your impact goals should be congruent with your vision and your values. When Boeing prided itself on engineering excellence and passenger safety, these values determined the approach to building long-term shareholder value.

Programme/Project Impact

But choosing your impact doesn’t have to only be a corporate-level choice. If you have a change programme in part of an organisation, then being clear about the change you want to see is crucial to support the impact goals of the programme. If you are a Portfolio Executive setting out your approach for your first three to six months, then identifying the impact you want to have will clarify why you are engaging in particular activities and how it matters for the organisation.

On the other hand, if you have too many impacts, it’s challenging to really understand your core purpose. The risk is that you will have an organisation riven by competing agendas, with different parts pulling in various ways. It also becomes much more difficult to explain what your organisation is about to internal and external stakeholders.

Characterising your Impact

I suggest that, in the way you express impact, you ensure there is a way of measuring that impact—whether through your theory of change or because you can actively measure the change that has occurred.

But I would also counsel you not to define success by achieving a particular impact measurement in a specific time frame. The impact should be higher than those lower-level activity or outcome measurements. If you tie your colours to the mast of an effect that is too specific, you lose the flexibility to build the organisation that can ultimately make the necessary changes.

Some of you may remember a recent UK election (2024) in which the Prime Minister talked about the five things he wanted to be judged on, including inflation, stopping the boats, etc. Although this had clarity of message, stating explicitly the five impacts he wanted, he had made the impact goal so explicitly measurable that ultimately, he failed to satisfy the electorate that he achieved what they needed. It might have been wiser to focus on the areas where he wanted things to improve rather than saying, “By this date, I will have improved them this much.”

So, be careful about characterising your impacts and the timeframe you seek to deliver them.

Conclusion

In summary, the process by which you decide the impact you want and the way that you define success from the measures are absolutely crucial to ensuring that your organisation is properly aligned, has the flexibility to respond to the changing environment, and communicates clearly with its stakeholders.