To create a strategy to maximise social impact we really need to focus on what we actually mean by social Impact. People often mean different things when thinking about social impact. This creates real problems when we try to improve it and address the needs of our communities. Whilst at the same time try to demonstrate social impact in the eyes of our funders and key stakeholders.
If we don’t agree on what social impact is how can we improve it? Read on to learn how you can focus on a more meaningful and useful framing of social impact. Which we can then use to take a more scientific approach to improving and maximising the outcomes of social impact work. Addressing the needs of your community and key funders and stakeholders.
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What does social impact actually mean?
It doesn’t take long listening to people talking about social impact to realise that we all mean something slightly different. How can we maximise social impact when there are so many different understandings about what it means in reality?
We want to create a situation where we become increasingly knowledgeable and effective in making social impact, so that we can better address our social problems as well as gain more funding and support. If we all understand it differently, we can end up pulled in different directions and being less effective as a result. This is the essence of the difference between Good Strategy and Bad Strategy as argued by Richard Rumelt. We have to be clear about what meaningful or useful social impact is and then look to enhance it.
You Can’t Have a Strategy To Maximise Social Impact if It’s Messy
If we want to create a deliberate and scientific approach that leads to a strategy to maximise social impact, how can we do that if the end goal of impact is so messy? Most of the professional approaches to measuring social impact are often extremely complicated, time consuming, open to interpretation and arbitrary. They can often create perverse incentives. e.g. (by rewarding the high activity such as by feeding someone every day, rather than give them the capability to feed themselves.) Good social impact shouldn’t be about creating high dependency.
Another major hurdle to creating a good strategy to maximise social impact is that science is increasingly showing us that the world is fundamentally unpredictable. We cannot accurately predict the future. So how can we reliably plan to change the future? How can we create a good strategy to increase impact in an ever changing world? Hitting a precisely defined and documented target sounds great. The reality is much harder in a world where the target is moves unpredictably and we can not even be truly sure what the target is! (Philosopher’s even discuss whether social epistemology is better than traditional epistemology meaning definitions can be debated endlessly)
Transforming the Idea to Maximise Social Impact Strategy
When listening to people’s stories of social impact. Especially those that are most inspiring. There is often a familiar pattern: A clear theme of transformation emerges. People were in one status of existence, then they were impacted by something, and this in turn led to a transformation in them. This transformational pathway gives us a little insight into how we can create a useful way of defining a pathway to maximise social impact. Not from the activity, or the effect, but in the way it changes their outcomes.
Social impact = person (condition A) + intervention = person (condition B – transformed person)
A Formula for a Social Impact Story
The Environment Can Help Or Hinder Maximising Social Impact
Another key factor in this transformation is that at the beginning of the process, the person was restricted or deprived of something important to them. Whether the limitation was in the environment or in their own ability (even if they were not aware of it). Maybe they were lonely, maybe they were struggling with their health or perhaps they had a problem expressing themselves. After the transformation, not only was that limitation reduced or removed. The person discovered new abilities. They tapped into otherwise hidden potential and were able to improve their health and well-being as a result. We can add this to the formula:
Social Impact = Environment + Person (Condition A) + Intervention = Intervened Environment + Person (Condition B Transformed person) + new capabilities
A for Social Impact Transforming Capabilities.
The intervention may affect either the person or the environment or both. Rather than using arbitrary measures to achieve a self interpreted impact. This leads us to a more coherent strategy and a more meaningful and useful interpretation of the type of desirable results we want to maximise social impact:
What is Social Impact?
Social impact in this context means: A sustainable reduction in unhappiness and poor outcomes as a result of a change in their capabilities or their environment. Empowering people to overcome their problems and live with greater potential for happiness.
I hope you agree we now have a slightly more direct meaningful and useful framing of what positive social impact we want to achieve. Allowing us to better formulate strategies for social impact. It allows us to think in a more scientific way about how we might focus improve optimise and maximise social impact. The key is that we aim to reduce the limitations on people or enhancing their ability. Giving people a greater capability to live a better life in future.
Obviously in this case we are talking about a strategy to maximise the social impact on individuals within a society. To turn this into a society level transformation you have to look at a strategy of targeting groups within society, as if they were individuals.
But Social Impact is More Complex than an Equation?
It could be argued that this reduces social impact to a transactional model. (a common idea in social impact investment) That change is complex and unpredictable and that we need to capture the subtleties of how people change. I would agree with all of that. This strategy should go hand in hand with the meaning-making of people’s stories and experiences.
The goal is to maximise social impact by creating more positive stories of change and fewer negative ones. This should happen along the whole journey of change. This model of social impact change is ‘the bones’ that we need to put ‘the flesh’ of people’s experience to. By adding waypoints along the journey it gives us a path of change we can follow. The equation really only captures the start and end of the journey giving us a sense of direction.
Shouldn’t We Considering The Negatives When Maximising Social Impact?
Another argument is that you need to fully capture and record every aspect of social impact, to avoid negative impacts elsewhere. Whilst in principle this is an excellent idea. It results in an endless exhaustive amount of work. Work that would often be more efficiently channelled into achieving positive results.
Maximising documentation and measurement can’t also be the path to maximising social impact. The problem is as you effect more people in more ways and mitigate more effects the work to capture and record ever possible impact increases exponentially. Yes the risks need to be managed and mitigated. However, a bureaucratic ‘record everything’ approach is often counter productive in itself in distracting from the core work of enhancing the impact.
An Example of Maximising Social Impact: Baking in the Impact
An example of this approach in action might be: Creating a social impact strategy for bakery employing people from a disadvantaged community. The bakery might choose their impact as giving people a gateway to future employment. In which case they can maximise social impact through training and enhancing their workers skills. Alternatively, they may choose to increase wages, so that their workers can better support their families. In which case the bakery may choose to maximise social impact by diversifying. However, how many cakes they made, how many hours they spent working or even how many customers were served would not be real impact, it’s incidental to the core social impact that is to be maximised.
What is clear though looking from this approach is that there is in reality a tradeoff for the bakery. Do they focus on the impact of providing a good income for the workers? Which will lead them more likely to stay. Or do they instead invest on upskilling the workers, so that they can get a better income elsewhere.
Traditional approaches to social impact says that you should do both. Preventing you from optimising either. It is an incoherent strategy and means decision makers can often get caught in indecision and uncertainty. What this approach does, through focusing on capabilities, is make clear their is a tradeoff and helps us make an informed choice about how much tradeoff we want and what aspects of social impact we want to enhance and maximise.
A New Lens to Empower us to Maximise Social Impact
This approach aims to enhance the path of change by enabling us to create a strategy to focus on whether an intervention has impacted on someone and how. It gives us a powerful lens through which to create more useful and meaningful impact.
Looking at how an intervention has affected someone’s capabilities. This is something that we can then clearly communicate to our communities, funders and stakeholders to gain further support for our work. It enables us to create a focused scientific strategy for continuous learning and improvement. Whilst at the same time as allowing us to continue to use human experience as a guiding light in our social impact. Empowering us to maximise social impact by giving it more focus and direction.
Conclusion
To create a strategy to maximise social impact, we need a clear, focus on what is the meaningful impact we want to create. This allows us to move towards a more scientific approach that allows us to continuously learn and improve our impact. This involves focusing on sustainable, transformative changes in people and their environments, empowering them to overcome limitations and realise their potential. By reframing social impact in this way, we can more effectively direct our efforts towards impactful, meaningful community transformations.
What do you think? Do you agree? How can we improve this approach?
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