Impact itself is not a new concept, but for many people and organisations, it remains unfamiliar. The Discovery stage introduces the fundamentals, such as defining what impact truly means, while also drawing on the experiences of others who are further along in their impact journey.

This stage explores how these organizations approach understanding, capturing, and measuring impact, providing valuable insights that can help inform your own strategy and lay a strong foundation for more advanced impact initiatives.

After completing the Discovery stage, you can begin to deepen your Understanding of impact.

Impact is often unique and can be both positive or negative, but it is highly beneficial to start identifying benchmarks and recognising what constitutes “good” impact capture and reporting.

With this knowledge, you’ll be better positioned to identify gaps within your organisation and more effectively articulate the support needed to advance your team on its impact journey.

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During the Engagement stage, building an impact-driven culture is key. This requires both top-down leadership support and bottom-up buy-in across your organisation, fostering collective engagement.

You can achieve this by highlighting the impact successes you are already delivering and by clearly communicating the value of impact, reinforced by the latest trends and insights in the field. This helps create a shared understanding of the importance of impact and encourages active participation at all levels.

Getting the Management stage right is crucial, as the complexity of impact measurement can quickly escalate. It’s important to embed impact into broader strategic plans, not only for individual teams but also at an organisational level. Since impact often unfolds over extended periods, planning with longer timeframes is essential.

To facilitate this, consider the tools and systems that will best support your journey, and identify the training resources needed to scale up your teams effectively. This ensures that your organization is well-equipped to manage and sustain impact initiatives over time.

The Optimisation stage focuses on refining the processes you’ve developed and the systems you’ve implemented, making your expanding impact ecosystem more efficient and adaptable.

As the demand for impact-related information continues to grow, it’s essential to remain flexible in how this data is utilized across various departments. Leveraging impact data effectively can support diverse performance reporting needs, helping to align organizational goals and showcase progress in key areas.

In this final stage, you’ll focus on scaling your impact, guided by your strategic approach and supported by the right tools.

As your impact expands, your profile should grow as well. It’s important to confidently promote your achievements to the right audiences, ensuring your work gains the visibility it deserves.

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