Complex, Costly, Irrelevant, Risky? Demystifying Results Measurement
Measuring results is important. We all know it. We all say it. We don’t do it.
Why not? Maybe because results measurement is scary.
It’s a big, hairy beast, and we are afraid to come close to it.
Do any of these scary ideas sound familiar to you?
Scary Idea 1: Complex - You need a PhD in statistics to start measuring
Measuring results lingo sounds very complex. The results chain. The difference between impacts, outputs, outcomes. The sample size. Our eyes go blurry when we hear this verbiage.
And then come the tools: IRIS, GRI, DCED, SROI ... Who on earth understands what’s behind all the acronyms? But shouldn’t we know that, when we claim that we understand results measurement?
Scary Idea 2: Costly - Proper measurement costs at least 20% of your budget
Have you looked into the face of an impact measurement expert and told him that you are only tracking two simple KPIs? Well, then you know what contempt looks like.
To understand the real social impacts of your soap, you need to set up a 3 year study with at least 1,000 participants to understand whether people wash their hands,whether they are less ill and how household dynamics have changed because of this and what happens amongst those that don’t have your soap. This might cost more than your actual market entry project. All other data is basically useless, isn’t it?
Scary Idea 3: Irrelevant - So what?
Imagine you spend all the money and the time and you learn ... nothing! You already knew that people pay for glasses to help them see better and not much more has been learnt. After all, how does all this fancy data about social impact affect the bottom line? All we need to know is that our product sells, right?
Scary Idea 4: Risky - Oh, is it so little?
Even scarier: Imagine what you find is not what you like. Your intervention is in fact pretty useless regarding the social value. Very few people benefit from our beer being sold in the last village of this earth. And there are even some negative consequences because people drink alcohol, spend scarce financial resource on it and become aggressive . Do you want to explain this to your boss? Clearly, a nice picture of a happy family is a much better measure of success!
To sum up: results measurement can seem really scary. But it doesn’t need to be.
Once we set our feet into the results measurement world, whole new unknown landscapes emerge. But we usually don’t have months and years to explore them. Most of the project managers tasked to set up a results measurement system are expected to get going within weeks and deliver something useful within months. How can this best be done?
There are simple ways to embed measurement in your business processes that allow you to understand the performance of your business and adapt it accordingly. There is a jungle of jargon and a myriad of different approaches out there. But you don’t have to be expert in them all. You only need to know how to choose the tools that meet your own company’s need and how they work. And it helps if you know the pitfalls that others have discovered and how to avoid them.
The most effective approaches are always based on a clear understanding of how your actions will lead to the desired results. This “results chain” effectively spells out your business strategy and your value proposition. After all, without a real benefit for your target group, your business won’t be in business for long.
Ashley Insight and Endeva are currently working on training services that can give practitioners easy access to these insights. Options on the table are an on-demand training for organizations, a one-day open training in London and Munich, and a webinar.
As a practitioner, would you be interested in this kind of support? What are your most pressing questions? And what format for learning would suit you best?