Tool details
Align On Your Impact Goals
A framework helping the team to align on the change you want to achieve, in both short-term and long-term.
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When to use
Early in the process.
Why you should
To ensure that your team and stakeholders are all working towards the same vision of success.
What you get
To ensure that your team and stakeholders are all working towards the same vision of success.
Steps to take
Ask everyone to write on post-it notes what they hope the impact of the project to be.
Once everyone have generated their thoughts, organise the post-it notes in a vertical "ladder". The most long-term, significant and hard to reach changes should go towards the top, with the more immediate, direct and easy to achieve changes further down.
Now use the Impact Ladder worksheet to agree on and capture two statements. The first should reflect the lasting social change of the project. This will be your long-term Impact. You’ll draw from post-its closer to the top of your ladder to identify this. The second statement should reflect a more near-term goal, an observable change or behaviour that you want the people you’re designing for to achieve. This will be your Key Outcome.
At this very early stage of the project, you only need to define the Impact and Key Outcome. You’ll come back to fill in the other worksheet steps later, when you are prototyping ideas and defining exactly how your solution will have impact through a Theory of Change activity.
Further reading
Your Impact and Key Outcome statements should serve as a north star for your design challenge, helping to ensure you stay focused on your goals. Make sure any other key stakeholders are aligned with your team on these goals too.
References & Links
