Not long ago, I had a 45-minute meeting with Jessica Carlson about improving her non-profit’s focus and impact. (This isn’t her real name – I’ve changed a few minor details in this story to protect confidentiality.)

Jessica leads a $10M initiative related to poverty reduction in a major American city and is a long-time community organizer.

But, Jessica was facing a challenge that many changemakers face: she was coordinating so many activities that her impact felt diffuse. She told me that she couldn’t sleep at night because of this one question:

Are my efforts translating into meaningful impact?

In today’s issue, I’m going to share our discussion, my recommendation, and the results.

Jessica’s biggest challenge: A vague goal and many uncoordinated activities

Jessica and her organization (a collaborative of about 12 foundations) had been trying to reduce poverty in the city for about nine years, but they weren’t getting the results they wanted.

So I asked her to walk me through their current goals and activities related to city-wide poverty.

Here was her answer (paraphrased from their strategic plan):

We seek to address inequity and economic immobility by collecting data, increasing partnerships, and advocating for policy change.

It’s a challenging directive for a couple reasons.

First, the goal is too high-level and vague (“address inequity and economic immobility”). It leaves unanswered questions about what reduced inequity might look like and for whom more economic mobility is desired.

Second, it’s not clear how the activities listed (e.g. collecting data) will translate into meaningfully achieving the goal.

Jessica had been spending all her time managing a range of stakeholders, committees and work groups. They had been successful collecting some data, creating a few partnerships between organizations, and advocating for several policy changes at the legislature. 

But under the flurry of activity, there was confusion and disappointment. Many of those involved had differing ideas about the ultimate goal. And the activities, though executed successfully in and of themselves, weren’t resulting in reduced poverty.

As leader of the multi-year initiative, Jessica’s job was becoming increasingly difficult. 

It didn’t have to be that way.

My recommendation: Clarified ultimate objective and high-impact activities prioritized

I told Jessica that she should more clearly articulate the ultimate goal and then identify the top three sub-goals that would work to that end.

To do that, we used a fundamental objectives hierarchy. It’s a process and tool for visually organizing objectives and determining which are most important. 

Here are their current efforts (one goal and 3 activities) in hierarchy form:

To convert it into an objectives hierarchy, we needed 1) a clearer ultimate goal, and 2) component sub-goals rather than just three disparate activities.

We started by clarifying her organization’s top goal: “to address inequity and economic mobility.” I used the 5 whys technique, an iterative questioning protocol developed in Japan, to go deeper about why they wanted to work on these issues. After each answer, I’d ask why? again to clarify further. 

After a few minutes, we had this updated fundamental objective:

Increase the number of low-income residents earning more than $15 per hour.

Much more understandable and tangible.

Next, we turned our attention to the three activities already identified: collect data, increase partnerships, and advocate for policy change.

While keeping the new end goal in mind (more low-income residents earning more than $15 per hour), we asked the 5 whys of each activity. For example, why should they collect data and how does this relate to making an impact on the end goal?

In a short time we had updated each of the three activities into sub-objectives that work in service to the end goal.

• Collect data → Improve job training program employment outcomes 
• Increase partnerships → Connect job training programs and hiring employers
• Advocate for policy change → Increase public investment in best job training programs

As anyone can see, each of these new objectives contributes directly towards the end goal.

The new fundamental objectives hierarchy looks like this:

For even more details about what to do, Jessica could break each of the sub-objectives into further actions. “Improve job training program employment outcomes”, for example, could have components of “providing more supportive services to students” and “increasing on-the-job training.” 

The results: 10x impact

We eliminated vague thinking and random activities by developing a set of clear and organized objectives. Now everything – ends and means – fits together and makes sense.

Jessica began to adopt this strategy immediately. 

She worked with her funders to outline how an improved set of objectives could further their mission. Instead of showing them her newly created objectives hierarchy, she led them through the same process I outlined above. As a group they clarified the top goal and each of the activities/sub-objectives. The end result was very similar to what Jessica and I had created in 45 minutes of coaching.

Here are the results of the organization operationalizing the new set of objectives:

• Public tracking of the number of low-income adults completing training and hired in jobs paying more than $15/hour.
• Many more direct relationships between training providers and hiring employers.
• More money – public and private – invested in job training programs with the best outcomes for low-income adults. 

Before our conversation, Jessica wasn’t spending any time directing money into the best training programs. After seeing how the programs could contribute directly to her organization’s ultimate goal, she prioritized investing in them.

Her proposed changes would mean not investing in several other lesser impact activities, but many funders were glad to stop what had become aimless research and time-consuming convenings.

Jesssica’s back-of-the-napkin estimates show that changes in her members’ investments alone could 10x the number of low-income residents enrolled in training programs (compared to the number they had previously funded). 

Not bad for 45 minutes.

Based on my experience, it’s not always this straightforward. But sometimes it is.

If you’re interested in making more impact, like Jessica and her 12 foundations, I’d recommend reading this article or this one.

Or, if you’d like one-on-one support, consider one of my one-on-one coaching packages. 

I hope you found this article helpful.

See you again next week.

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Whenever you’re ready, there are two ways I can help you:

→ I’m a strategic advisor for the toughest societal problems like poverty, crime and homelessness. People come to me when they want to stop spinning their wheels and get transformative, systems-level change.

→ I’m a coach for emerging and executive leaders in the social and public sectors who want to make progress on their biggest goals and challenges.

Let’s find out how I can help you become transformational.