Why should you care about impact? The 4 A’s
I firmly believe that a key aspect of encouraging people to change, whether it be their behaviour, attitude, approach, etc., is to demonstrate to them why they should care about the change you are looking to drive.
Adopting an impact management approach – i.e., processes for planning, monitoring, and evaluating impact – for your organisation, team, or project can provide important benefits across four key spaces – the ‘4 A’s’:
1. Allocation
When you are planning to allocate your scarce resources for maximum benefit, focusing on the ultimate value which your organisation or team aims to deliver can be highly advantageous. Tractuum’s approach to impact management has been used by multiple organisations to:
- Inform their strategies to ensure they align with their desired impacts;
- Inform their investment decisions, to enable more effective and targeted use of resources to drive better returns on investment; &
- Align organisation/team capabilities to the needs of stakeholders, to facilitate the uptake and adoption of the deliverables needed to achieve the impacts targeted.
2. Advocacy
One of the key benefits we have seen for organisations who adopt the Tractuum approach to impact management is that it facilitates an evidence-based articulation and communication of the value of their work. This value communication drives greater confidence among stakeholders. Not only does it demonstrate that the organisation or team have a clear understanding of its targeted impacts, but that they also have clarity about the pathway to the delivery of those impacts. Importantly, it also shows how the attributable role of the organisation/team in the delivery of those impacts will be evidenced through effective, fit-for-purpose KPIs.
3. Accountability
Adopting an effective impact management approach provides organisations and/or teams with the ability to demonstrate to relevant stakeholders their accountability for the use of the resources entrusted to them. These stakeholders include clients, shareholders, and/or the general public. Increasingly – especially for research or not-for-profit organisations – funding bodies require impact management approaches as part of the demonstration of the value derived from funds to be provided to support specific projects or activities.
4. Analysis
While many organisations and teams are driven to consider impact management approaches through a need for accountability, implementing such approaches provides a significant opportunity for learning, especially in terms of enabling a greater awareness of the benefits of both collective action, and adopting an impact focus, within an organisation. The analysis which effective impact management provides can be used to inform future program/project design and delivery, as well as to drive improvements in performance management.
Adopting appropriate impact management approaches can provide significant advantages for your organisation. Are you ready to introduce impact management into your organisation? Do our ‘impact health check’ to find out.