You left home a bit late and didn’t have breakfast. You think you can grab a cheese roll on your way to work. But then you remember that 7-Eleven a few blocks away has an offer for three croissants at the price of two. You go for it, even though you can’t really eat three croissants. Two is actually too much as well.
Where am I going with this story? Just like with the croissants, small temptations and unplanned distractions in your change efforts can lead to inefficiency and wasted resources. I want to remind you that your path through the world is paved with temptations. This applies to your mission for change, and distractions come at a cost.
In the case of your morning escapades, you arrived at work later because you took a detour. You spent more money than you planned. And you got something different from what you intended – and in excess.
Such distractions should be avoided as much as possible in your efforts to create social change.
Here is a guide on how to keep your change community on the straight and narrow.
Beware of Data Overload
In Social Sector Hero, Adam Luecking writes about “Side-Quests” – activities or details that distract you and cause you to deviate from the set course.
The fewer of these side missions you have, the better you can focus on achieving your goal. In the third part of our series, The Funder’s Guide to Change, we help you develop the right performance measures for your change project and describe a system that minimizes distractions.
Series: The Funder’s Guide to Change
As a funder, donor, or investor, you play a special role in systemic change. You are the one who sets the overall goal and assembles the team that can make the necessary change happen.
To succeed, you must ensure that the goal is clear, your community is in sync, and you consistently measure the progress that takes place.
In this series, based on Adam Luecking’s book Social Sector Hero, we go through eight key strategies that can help you build an effective, system-changing alliance.
If you want to read Adam Luecking’s book in its entirety, you can download it for free as a PDF here.
As always in this series, data is your friend. But too much data is a bad friend. So let’s say it right away: Don’t set up too many performance measures. You will regret it.
Data overload is the direct path to analysis paralysis – the state where overthinking leads to inaction.
The paralyzing effect of data overload is documented in countless studies. But let’s exemplify it for you: Imagine you fund 20 actors, each reporting on 20 performance measures. That gives you 400 performance measures to evaluate. Doesn’t that sound like a recipe for a headache?
The more measures, the less time you have for each one, and the less you can improve overall performance. And that’s not fair to you, your partners, or the people you’re working to help.
The fewer performance measures you mandate for your grantees, the greater efficiency and less stress you achieve.
3 Time Robbers to Avoid
Time robbers are everywhere. Don’t let them steal too much of your and your partners’ time. Here are Adam Luecking’s tips on three things to avoid:
Don’t discuss action plans for hours: From my experience, most leaders have substantial background knowledge about what’s happening in their field. You can create a Turn the Curve action plan in an hour or less. I’ve seen people spend hours or days on each step. Don’t let perfectionism take over. Remember, you can always come back to the plan later.
Don’t set up too many results or indicators: Limit the number of results to three to five. And stick to the same number of indicators per result. This will sharpen your focus on the most important factors.
Don’t ask your partners to report on data without providing them with the necessary tools: Provide your partners with a common IT system for reporting and give them the necessary tools. This will make it easier for your partners to collect and report data and ensure you get timely, consistent, and actionable data.
Has Anyone Gotten Better?
So how do you develop performance measures that create focus and provide your change community with an effective shield against time robbers?
As mentioned earlier, you should strive to master the art of limitation. Fewer performance measures are better than many. And you should avoid performance measures that do not reflect the impact you want to create.
The most important type of performance measure for everyone in your community is: Has anyone gotten better as a result of what we do?
Other measures – like the number of people you’ve reached or the number of visitors to a website – are useful, but they don’t say anything about whether you’re making a difference.
What Are Performance Measures?
Let’s get a definition in place. A performance measure is a measure that does one of the following three things:
- Quantifies activities associated with a program or initiative
- Tells about the quality of the initiative
- Tells about the effect of the initiative on the target group
The three types of performance measures provide different types of information – here exemplified by questions you can ask if you run a reading café for schoolchildren with reading difficulties.
- How much did we do?
- Number of participants in the 2023/24 school year
- Number of reading sessions held
- Number of materials distributed to parents
- How well did we do it?
- Attendance rate – how many children participated each time
- Participant satisfaction – the average percentage of children who, after a reading session, said they had fun
- Percentage of staff/volunteers with relevant professional qualifications
- Cost/benefit – how much money have we spent per child versus the percentage of children with improved reading skills after X months
- Is anyone or anything better off?
- Percentage of children who have increased interest in reading/parents who report increased interest in their children
- Percentage of children with improved reading skills after X months
- Percentage of children who read more than before outside of school
How to Choose Performance Measures
All participants in your change community should have performance measures. But they don’t necessarily have to be the same.
You can either develop a set of standardized measures that go across the program. This is beneficial if the efforts from the individual partners in your community are similar or comparable.
If they’re not, you can let each partner develop their own performance measures.
The important thing is that the principles for managing efforts and reporting are the same. Therefore, you must ensure that they are comprehensive and flexible enough to account for the differences that inevitably will be between the organizations in your community.
Make sure each partner has at least one measure that tells about the number of recipients of their service.
But even more importantly: Make sure they measure whether the target group has gotten better as a direct result of their work.
And make an effort to ensure that your partners feel engaged and have ownership of the chosen performance measures. This significantly increases the likelihood that they will use the measures.
Read Your Data and Turn the Curve
You and your change community are on a mission: You need to turn a negative development into a positive one. A structured approach to data – and the use of the data you collect – helps you reach the goal.
Learn from Adam Luecking in Copenhagen
How do you create measurable social change across sectors?
Adam Luecking has been working on this for two decades. And in September, he is coming to Copenhagen to share his experiences.
Adam Luecking is the CEO of the American company Clear Impact, which advises philanthropic and political leaders on creating systemic change in cross-sector alliances.
In his book Social Sector Hero, he presents a framework for systemic change – consisting of eight strategies.
Understand the strategies and find your way to create social progress.
You can meet Adam Luecking at Impact Insider on September 18 at 9 am and again at 1 pm at Lygten 39, 2400 Copenhagen NV. Register here.
In Social Sector Hero, Adam Luecking operates with what he calls Turn the Curve Thinking. Your data shows whether you are making progress with the curve you want to turn. Here are his suggestions on how to work with data, based on the Results-Based Accountability framework.
- Develop a Graph of the Chosen Measurement – including a forecast of how data will develop if you do nothing differently: Here, it’s beneficial if you’ve invested in an IT system for handling data. It will increase the accuracy of data, secure sensitive data, and make it easier to organize and analyze data from the many partners in your community.
- Explore the Story Behind the Curve: Analyze the factors contributing to the historical and expected development in your graph. Consider what has stood in the way of a positive development and what has enabled improvement. Also consider if there are factors that have contributed to the development being more positive than it could have been. The goal is to get to the bottom of the causes that have shaped the curve.
- Identify New and Existing Partners Who Can Change the Data: There are many involved in your change project. Think through who contributes to your success – internally in your organization and among your partners, and externally in the form of contributors around your community. Are there any missing who could positively influence the curve? Think of NGOs, sports clubs, schools, libraries, businesses. Basically, anyone who could have an interest in your success.
- Brainstorm on What Can Create Progress: What is needed to improve your performance measures? Consider the following:
- Ideas that have worked elsewhere
- Ideas that have worked in your area before
- Ideas supported by evidence
- Ideas that have not been implemented but have potential
- Ideas that seem unorthodox
- Ideas that appear expensive but are likely effective
- Ideas that will be cheap or even free
- Refine the Ideas and Make an Action Plan: Once you’ve generated enough ideas, you can narrow them down to a manageable number that is likely to turn the curve you are studying.
Collect your ideas into an action plan and consider the following four parameters:
Effect: How much will the proposed strategy impact the curve?
Feasibility: Is the proposed strategy technically, politically, and financially feasible?
Specificity: Who will do what, when, why, and how?
Values: Is the strategy consistent with the values of your own organization, your partners, and the surrounding community?
The action plan should describe the necessary steps, who is responsible for each step, and include a timeline. It should also provide an overview of the entire project.
Turn the Curve Thinking is not a one-time event but an iterative or circular process. This means you should expect to go through the above steps at regular intervals. The 1×4 meeting schedule from chapter 3 of our series is perfect to incorporate into this process.
In the next part of our series on system change, we break down data and look closer at the underlying trends beneath the surface.
And remember, you can meet Adam Luecking in Copenhagen on September 18. Read more here.
