The Importance of Impact

Photo by Nadir sYzYgY on Unsplash

Impact is the recognition that our activities contribute to some enhancement of the community and the world around us. As humans, and within our organizations, there is a fundamental desire to make things "better".  We want to make a difference from our contribution to the world around us; at home, work and in the communities we belong to.  While getting paid is important - the ability to see that what we do contributes to the greater team effort is an important motivator.  

When I was in business school we talked a lot about the difference between efficient and effective.  Efficient was doing things right.  Effective was doing the right things.  Impact is all about doing the right things well.  Results-Based Management uses a tool called a Logic Model that articulates the effectiveness and efficiency connection really well.  The logic model is a hierarchy that takes Resources (people, money, data, etc.) and converts those resources into Outputs through Activities.  The outputs have a technical name; we call it "stuff".  That stuff contributes to Outcomes or Expected Results.  A Logic Model can have several levels of Expected Results.  

Efficiency is the capacity to convert resources, through activities, into outputs/stuff.  The better able we are to do that - the more efficient we are.  That being said effectiveness is more important.  It doesn't matter how efficient we are if we are not being effective! The Logic Model gives us the ability to understand both of those dimensions and how they connect. 

Impact is the correlation between our planned expected results and what we actually realize. Impact is a journey, not a destination.  Impact can happen at the personal, professional and organizational level. The role of data driven impact is the ability to use data to inform our capacity to be both efficient and effective. Data driven impact uses key metrics that help give us the insights we need to understand our impact. We need data to provide the feedback evidence to make informed decisions on our next steps, our strategy and activities.  We need data to help us understand our world. 

The good news is that there is data all around us and it is growing at an ever increasing pace.  The other good news is that there are now software and data analytical tools that allow virtually anyone to utilize that data without being a computer or data scientist.  The democratization of data is upon us.  On other words, all of us can experience data driven impact.