How do you measure your impact at work?

Are you valuable? Are you essential? Do you deserve that new job? Do you deserve a raise? Do you deserve to be promoted?

What is your worth at work? Do you know? More importantly, do those who matter most know?

For the past couple of years, I have served as the career coach and relationship leader for dozens of individuals across different staff classes and disciplines within a global professional services firm. In my role as a coach, I help mentees craft and share stories about their progression and impact for year end reviews.

For most, showing progression is straight forward. Through visual tools, individuals can track their growth across a number of categories to see where they have grown. Impact, however, seemed more challenging to articulate.

Two years ago, I noticed a trend with my mentees — they were having difficulty quantifying the impact of their work. The more I interviewed them and those they worked with, the more I noticed difficulty in the articulation of quantifiable value and/or impact the individual delivered to the team, project, organization and customer. There was plenty of praise, but not enough substance. For example, “The work PERSON delivered enabled our team to deliver on time and budget.” or “The client loved having PERSON on the team because they brought great ideas and energy.” I dubbed these “Wannabe Differentiators”.

This led me to ask myself, how could I help people better understand and share their impactful stories?

I came up with two ideas:

1. Develop a Ripple Effect mindset
2. Use a framework to capture their stories

First, the Ripple Effect Mindset

One of my favorite poems is For Want of a Nail. I learned it from my father when I was young. It reads,

For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
for want of a shoe the horse was lost,
for want of a horse the knight was lost,
for want of a knight the battle was lost,
or want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
So a kingdom was lost — all for want of a nail.

The poem has always fascinated me because it explores the significant impact of a seemingly insignificant action. Every task you perform may not lead to something profound, but how do you know if you are not curious? If you are not curious, perhaps no one else will be. Wayne Gretzky (or his dad, or Michael Jordan — it’s a debated quote) once said “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Maybe 100% of the contributions you don’t measure have no impact. Seb thought this sounded more like a “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” I think both work.

What if all your efforts lead to quantifiable change? What if that change was measurable? What if you tried to quantify that change? Developing a Ripple Effect Mindset will help you unlock the answers to these questions.

Second, the Five C’s Framework

The Five C’s of Impact model complements the Ripple Effect Mindset, helping individuals articulate their impact within specific categories to help create a comprehensive impact story. I used it over the past year to craft my own story. Seb used it before his last year-end review. My mentees, and others used and are using it to prepare for their reviews..

Here are the Five C’s and some sample questions you can use to ignite conversations. (see the template below)

1. Craft — The work you do and the skills required to do it.

• What new skills have you developed to make a difference?
• What processes, techniques or methods have you introduced to the craft
• How have you brought these new skills, processes to others so they can improve?
• How have your efforts improved work (faster times, less errors, etc)? Get specific.
• How are you working to make these improvements sustainable?

2. Crew — The people you work with closely in your discipline or on a project.

• How have you improved the work and lives of your team (discipline and/or project)?
• How did you create a new way of working?
• How did you connect with others and foster culture?
• How did you amplify your team’s culture? How did you improve your team’s culture?
• What changed because of your efforts?
• How did these changes impact quality, speed, sales, etc?

3. Company — The organization for whom you work.

• How did you help the company grow?
• What significant work did you sell? What makes it significant?
• What notable work did you help win? What makes it notable?
• Did you help retain customers? What was that worth?
• Did you have a hand in improving our position in the market?
• What metrics did you help achieve?

4. Customer — Those you service with your work and your team.

• How did you improve the day-to-day life of a customer beyond the work we were hired to do?
• What new ways of working did they adopt because of you?
• How did your work impact their business, experience, technologies?
• What have your efforts meant to the company’s growth?
• How did you strengthen your relationship with your customers?
• How did you strengthen the relationship of our organization with the customers?

5. Community — The world outside your team, org and customer.

• How have you impacted the lives of people outside work?
• What organizations did you volunteer your time? How did you spend that time?
• Did you help influence or impact a professional community beyond work?
• What was the change you helped realize?

What does a good Five C statement look like? Here is a rule of thumb: Impact is about specifics. Numbers are a great way to get specific. Here are a few examples of impact statements. Names have been changed to protect the innocent (gratuitous Dragnet throwback). Please note, these examples are skewed based on my background in design and consulting.

1. Craft — The work you do and the skills required to do it.

• Created “Session Stats” to quantify the amount and acceleration of work achieved during a workshop. This infographic affirms our claim of “months of work in days”, creates a summary of the experience that can be immediately sent to the client rather than the day after and it has also become a value-add slide for proposals and pitches to help us differentiate with clients — Pitches using this slide have won $6 million in sales over 8 months.

2. Crew — The people you work with closely in your discipline or on a project.

• Created the “Super Scrum Sandwich Squad”, a weekly gathering where agile and scrum methodologies are shared . Over the past 3 months, 25 people from within our department and 13 from other departments have joined the discussion. All of the members of the Squad have become Certified Scrum Masters. This has led to members of our team being sought out as scrum advisors to other teams and increasing “between work” billability by 23%.

3. Company — The organization for whom you work.

• While working on the Generic and Co, I was asked by the senior client contact to give a Lateral Thinking presentation to a group of program leaders. She was impressed by the approach I shared during our customer findings research phase. She ultimately extended our project and added an additional research project valued at 750k. In addition, we received RFPs from the group of leaders I gave the presentation to with a potential value of 4.5 million. This has increased our total revenue from the client and expanded our footprint into three other groups where we previously did no work.

4. Customer — Those you service with your work and your team.

• After sitting in on the clients morning meetings, I noticed how disengaged people were. After speaking to a number of staff, I put together the “Sixty-Second Stand-Up”. I pitched it to the Manager and she agreed to try it. Morning meetings are now 50% shorter. Team members are able to get out onto the sales floor faster and they have reported how much better the meetings are. This has also introduced the “Make it Better Mondays”, an initiative where team members can offer up ideas on how to make work better. Since the start of “Make it Better Mondays”, 8 ideas have been selected for implementation.

5. Community — The world outside your team, org and customer.

• Participated in Children’s Center Turkey Takeout to help provide Thanksgiving Dinner to over 600 families in need in our local community.

The Final Step

Look across the categories and consider the unofficial sixth C of the framework: Comprehensive.

When compiling your comprehensive impact story, try to answer the following:

1. What accomplishments are unique to you?
2. What do you do that no one else does?
3. What distinguishes your impact from what was expected of you?

The Ripple Effect Mindset and the Five C’s framework might not be a perfect fit for you, but they may be useful. They are not catch-alls. They are not a guarantee you will get that job, that raise, or that promotion. They are meant to spark curiosity that leads to exploration that leads to the discovery of the very real impact your efforts have on the world around you.

Or, you could decide not to take the shot.

Curiously yours, Garett.