The data needs to be integrated into business process flows, not just meant to be internalized by a human. We need to move from it being interesting data to being data that drives actual business decisions.
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I think many companies are wary about sharing failures because of the potential for bad press and things being taken out of context. This leads to less sharing of learnings, which would be useful for everyone.
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Exactly!!! that goes to my earlier point on efficiently allocation of resources.
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Time to move from a communication plan (reporting) to a business plan (strategic planning)?
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Firstly stop it being ‘reporting’ and make it disclosure. As soon as it’s reporting, comms get involved and then glossy PR gets involved. Data can be clunky spreadsheets. Disclosure can be policies and internal documents. But reporting is very weighted with expectations and risk management/comms caution.
Interesting to hear about the challenges of going beyond linear measurements. When I worked in the beverage sector, for every one person directly impacted, it was assumed that 3 more people in the household benefitted as a result of that.
Couldn’t agree more… How do we avoid focusing only on complex metrics when doing the right thing is a starting point
This worries me! Practically speaking, businesses and their investors need to know about the bad and the good that they’re doing (whether or not they choose to manage it all).
There is widespread consensus therefore that an outcome is: ‘the result of an action or event which is an aspect of social, environmental or economic well-being" - and I would encourage folks to read the OECD research on this
Therefore ‘impact’ is defined as A change in a social, environmental or economic outcome caused by an organisation, [either partially or wholly]. An impact can be positive or negative, intended or unintended.
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Never thought of it that way… we do both, reporting, communicating, and aim to manage impact. That is, we go back to our clients that have performed badly and try to understand what happened. Often the obstacles are beyond our reach…but some changes can be done.
for example, we started to serve less women in Chile (the women-clients we serve have proven to be more vulnerable, so we specifically have a target to not lose sight) and the issue was that our credit officers were struggling to address them (cultural issues, lack of networks, etc.). We immediately started activating various protocols and shifted from 70% to +80% female clients served in less than a year.
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To be fair, some companies are transparent (yay) and raise the bar for their peers. But then they get clobbered by civil society for revealing harms in their operations. It’s where raising the baseline on disclosure helps remove the first mover disadvantage and freerider issue.
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@oliviaprentice do you have a link to the OECD research you could share with us?
This is also why we need to widen our lens and not just look for our keys and the streetlamp cause that is where the light is. We need to assume we are having unintended consequences and develop methods for capturing them.
That’s where good project management and operations practices help make that easier. Those processes leverage funds / people / resources effectively. The measurement process should be about “social value” and not about business impact. The social progress index does that. https://www.socialprogress.org/
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Def not linear! in our case, 20% of our vulnerable entrepreneurs in 5 latinamerican countries have “volatile” incomes. The main characteristic of impact is that it is multidimensional, dynamic and interrelated! Makes is quite complex.
I believe the role of impact measurement is to help prioritize your actions and monitor outcomes.
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I think that’s interesting - I tend to see the terms ‘reporting’ and ‘disclosure’ used to mean the same thing
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sure thing Katie! https://www.oecd.org/statistics/measuring-well-being-and-progress.htm
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Surveying is a widely regarded method of capturing unintended consequences - Social Value, Keystone and 60 Decibels are some leading thinkers on that
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There is nothing more rewarding or fulfilling than when your community stands up for you. One of our factories went on strike for the vaguest reason (it was later ruled as an illegal strike by the labor arbiter). Who stood up for the factory? The many sub communities who knew exactly how our programs benefited them. When the dust settled the strike blew over. We knew that our community and its leaders were on our side. Just sayin’.
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A request for your closing remarks to this LIVE portion of the online written discussion
Please do share: one thing that has struck you during the conversation or one takeaway for others.
Thank you for all the research that was shared on top of the comments, and the link to initiatives that can indeed be very helpful. Lots of takeaways for me to reflect on!
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