Let’s imagine that we mobilize thousands of People to create a protest. The protest happens and around 5,000 People attend it. A week later, we ask ourselves what was the impact. Unfortunately, we don’t know. There were around 5,000 People who protested for 3 hours but we can’t tell if this led to any change.

Not measuring impact is a common problem. Most People go into action without checking if what they did contributed to the outcomes the users were after.

Let me ask you.

Do you measure that what you do contributes to a People-first world?

Let me rephrase it. What signals allow you to say that what you do contributes to the well-being and happiness of others?

The best is to hear it from your users.

Imagine you have created a platform where videos that do not align with the mainstream narrative are not censored. How would you measure that what you do contributes to a People-first world? You could seek feedback from the users through a survey asking questions such as: did the information on our video platform allow you to make informed decisions?

Stepping back versus what you do matters. You could be doing many things but these actions may have very little impact on what you want to reach. It’s very easy to fall into the “busy doing”.

How do you measure it?

You may not know how to measure the impact of what you do. The answer very often lies with the users. The user knows what you have done for them. They know the impact your solution (no matter what it is) had on their well-being or happiness. I invite you to talk to your users.

Sometimes, the impact of your solution on the well-being and happiness of your users or customers only happens days, weeks, or months after the consumption of the solution. This could be the case with mental treatments for instance. If this is for your solution then you should stay in touch with your users or customers and seek to get feedback. For instance, you could contact your user or customer a few weeks after the solution was consumed or you could ask then to get back to you with feedback.

It’s fundamental to understand what impact you are having on your users/customers. The only way to know it is either through observation or feedback from them. Knowing the impact of your solution helps you to take decisions on this solution. It will tell you how to improve it and how to potentially scale it.