Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- Do you want to prove your effectiveness to anyone and achieve professional success? Do you want to learn how to measure and show the value of your projects, programs, or initiatives, even if they are not directly related to financial outcomes? If so, you should read the book Show the Value of What You Do: Measuring and Achieving Success in Any Endeavor by Patricia Pulliam Phillips and Jack J. Phillips.
- In this article, we will provide a summary and review of the book, and highlight its main points and takeaways. We will also share some of the tools and tips that the authors offer to help you apply their six-step process to your own projects. By reading this article, you will learn how to show the value of what you do, and how to use evaluation and measurement to improve your projects and communicate their impact. Read on to find out more!
Show the Value of What You Do (2022) provides a step-by-step framework for defining, tracking, evaluating, and communicating the impact of any project or initiative. The book outlines techniques for setting objectives aligned to stakeholder priorities, collecting meaningful performance data, isolating program effects, and conveying value through metrics like ROI.
Introduction: Prove the money value of your work
We live in an age in which everything must show tangible value. But quantifying the impact of efforts like social work, creative projects, or community programs can be tricky. How do you put a dollar figure on providing comfort to a grieving family or nurturing a child’s confidence?
This summary to Show the Value of What You Do by Patricia Pulliam Phillips and Jack J. Phillips is the best place to start. This model is the missing link to winning wider support: it will prove the worth of any initiative, even those with seemingly intangible impact.
Steps in showing value
Consider a chaplain working in the ICU of a hospital. Many will agree it is important work, but what if an administrator insists on knowing how the chaplaincy brings in or saves money. Can the department justify its cost or need for expansion?
To prove that the chaplaincy is needed, the head of department should start by clearly defining what success looks like at every level of spiritual care.
At the basic level, are patients and families reacting positively to support? Do they find comfort and meaning during difficult times? Are patients spending less time in hospital, thereby saving themselves and the hospital money? Investigate by asking everyone involved to obtain and record feedback.
Look at learning next. Are you imparting new knowledge and skills to help staff better care for patients holistically so that they spend less time in the hospital? Can nurses now spot spiritual distress? Examine behaviors, too. Do staff implement new spiritual care habits you taught them? Are they regularly screening patients for unmet spiritual needs?
Over time, these new behaviors will influence care. You could benchmark metrics like patient satisfaction, length of stay, or readmissions. Hard data convinces administrators your program adds real value: Calculate your benefit-to-cost ratio, and compare program expenses to the measurable benefits to showcase the return on investment. This financial case further compels investment in your department.
After each initiative, thoughtfully evaluate results at every level. Keep improving the program based on what the data says is working or not working. Refining your approach will build increasing value.
The key is defining success upfront through metrics tied to stakeholder needs. Rigorously gather data on reactions, learning, behaviors, impact, and ROI. This framework demonstrates how any professional can show administrators, staff, and stakeholders how their program measurably improves outcomes.
You just learned the process. Now hang on and learn how to apply it.
Always start with your goal in mind
Say a new police chief takes over a department struggling with frequent citizen complaints against officers. Each complaint costs the city tens of thousands in legal payouts. The chief makes reducing these complaints a top priority. This specific, measurable goal provides clarity on the desired impact.
When starting any new program or initiative, it’s crucial to begin with the end in mind – what do you want to achieve? Clearly defining your goals upfront leads to greater chances of success.
To build support, identify goals that resonate with stakeholders. Here, for example, city officials would want to minimize costly complaint payouts, making them likely to fund the chief’s efforts. In another example, when Uber launched, its goal was faster, cheaper rides than taxis – a clear benefit to riders.
Some goals are easier to quantify than others. Hard numbers like cost, time savings, and output are straightforward. Soft impacts like reputation can be harder to measure. In these cases, consider what would happen without action – like, say, employees quitting without flexible schedules.
After setting impact goals, establish a baseline starting point. This helps quantify progress later. The chief could track annual complaint payouts before and after changes were made. Most importantly, calculate potential return on investment, or ROI. This shows whether solving the problem is financially worthwhile. For the chief, reducing six-figure payouts would likely warrant investment in officer training.
In any sector, define the impact first and tie goals directly to stakeholder priorities. Quantify both hard and soft goals, set a baseline, and make the business case with ROI. Following this process leads to greater buy-in and support for new initiatives aimed at creating positive change.
Selecting the best solution
All right – let’s say you’ve nailed down the impact you want to have with a new program, like reducing homelessness. Now comes the intriguing bit: figuring out how to actually achieve that goal.
First, identify the specific performance that needs change. Do staff skills need improving? Are new systems or processes required? Pinpoint the gaps blocking progress. Brainstorm solutions that fill those gaps. Some you may handle internally, while outside experts may be needed for others. Prioritize solutions for greatest impact.
Next, determine the learning required for people to implement the solutions. Identify new knowledge or skills needed. Tap internal experts or external research to provide insight. Ask staff directly about their learning needs.
Calculate the time and cost of acquiring the necessary knowledge. Factor in training materials, hiring consultants, staff time in courses, and associated costs. This gives the full picture.
Lastly, get buy-in from those enacting solutions by showing the value for them personally. How does this improve their skills? Connect to their passions for community service. When staff are motivated, success is far more likely.
In your nonprofit, follow these steps to match solutions to identified impact goals. Pinpoint performance gaps, find proven solutions, determine associated learning needs, and calculate costs. Most importantly, inspire staff by communicating the value of the project for beneficiaries and their own growth. That personal motivation leads to the best outcomes.
Prioritize your objectives
Martin Burt wants to end poverty in Paraguay. A worthy goal – but what are the indicators that he’s making progress? Through his Poverty Stoplight program he’s developed 50 indicators with objectives like getting participants to buy in, creating a plan and budget, and helping them access credit.
Setting clear, measurable objectives is crucial for program success, whether you’re launching a new mentoring initiative or imparting new skills. Objectives provide guidance, motivation, and a means to demonstrate value.
Start by defining specific goals for each level of your program, from participant satisfaction to increased performance. Baseline metrics become your starting points. Set target outcomes you want to achieve within a set timeframe.
Inform funders and partners about objectives so everyone aligns. Provide staff an implementation blueprint with their roles before, during, and after. This level of detail enables consistent tracking of progress.
Once launched, diligently collect data to evaluate against objectives. Assign who will gather information, from what sources, when, and how often. Plan who will analyze data to isolate your program’s impact from other factors.
Include clients, participants, and staff in reviews to build understanding of program design and show how objectives are driving decisions. Their feedback helps refine approaches. Celebrate wins along the way to maintain morale.
If you face setbacks, stay flexible. Failure happens – learn from mistakes and course-correct, using objectives as progress markers, not judgments.
The bottom line is that well-defined goals provide direction while enabling measurement of growth. Consistent evaluation against objectives, with stakeholder input, proves value and allows for improvement. Keeping objectives front and center will lead your program toward life-changing impact.
Collecting data
Your value will ultimately depend on evidence – so how do you collect your data?
Start by leveraging predefined objectives to shape what data you need, who will provide it, and timeframes for gathering info. This keeps the focus on key metrics instead of going off-track haphazardly collecting data.
Carefully select collection methods aligned to objectives. Surveys gather broad opinions, while in-depth questionnaires provide detailed responses from participants. Observations assess behaviors unobtrusively. Tests gauge learning retention. And be sure to collect cost data for later ROI analysis.
Identify credible, unbiased sources like respected experts in the field or reputable databases. Seek perspective from different informed angles to get a well-rounded picture and reduce bias. Consider gathering data from participants, managers, executives, and public records.
Set clear timeframes for data collection. Leverage technology like online polls, fitness trackers, or email volume analysis to gather information efficiently at scale.
Make participation easy and assure confidentiality. Educate participants on project goals to prevent misperceptions from skewing results. Ask about challenges to elicit candid insights. Have participants share action plans with managers to motivate follow-through. Fact-checking responses deters exaggeration.
Also, be sure to collect data at every level – reactions, learning, application, impact, and ROI. Carefully summarize data and visualize key insights through charts, graphs, or illustrations to convey the story clearly to stakeholders.
Well-defined objectives guide effective data collection. Using multiple methods and sources provides a holistic understanding of outcomes. Following best practices leads to compelling, trustworthy data to clearly demonstrate your program’s value and impact.
Analyzing your data
Remember the police chief trying to reduce the cost of citizen complaints? How does he analyze his data to prove that it’s his initiative that’s saving his station money and not another program?
To find out your initiative’s impact, the first thing to do is isolate it from other influences. One way to do this is to use an experimental group that receives your solution and compare it against a control group that doesn’t.
You can also track data trends before your project, project future performance if nothing changes, then compare actual performance post-project to see your impact. If needed, consult experts to help estimate the contributions of other factors. Don’t go it alone.
Research whether measurement standards are already there to leverage. Colleagues may track costs you can reference, too.
Use datasets to find monetary equivalents for things like quality, satisfaction – even happiness. Note intangibles like agility gained as well. Some organizations value these people metrics.
Calculate benefit-cost ratio by dividing total benefits by project cost. For ROI percentage, subtract costs from benefits, divide by costs, and multiply by 100. For example, say your training program cost $50,000 but increased revenue by $150,000. The benefit-cost ratio is 3:1. The ROI is (150,000 – 50,000) / 50,000 = 2. Multiply that by 100, giving you a result of 200% ROI.
This shows the substantial value created. Communicate ROIs like this with concrete numbers to prove worth to stakeholders.
Does it sound too easy? That’s actually because it is. You’ll also need to isolate your impact through comparisons. Leverage existing data and standards. Account for intangibles that matter, too. Crunching the numbers into benefit-cost ratios and ROI percentages makes your case persuasively.
Leverage results
Success is sweet, but life goes on, and new challenges come. How do you leverage your success and the lessons you learn from failure to continue to achieve value?
First, evaluate results thoroughly. Then set communication objectives, like how audiences should react to results and what they should learn and do next. Choose communication methods suited to each audience.
Present to sponsors if seeking renewed funding. Share with staff to motivate them. Summaries, presentations, websites, articles, and press releases are all effective ways to convey results to different groups. You can always find creative ways.
When briefing sponsors, involve them from the outset for greater buy-in. Tying together multiple successful efforts multiplies the impact, so bring all your trophies to the party and let each one set the others off.
Use outcomes to improve projects. Review processes openly to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Analyze your black box, like airlines do after a crash. Black box thinking instills constant improvement; that’s why aviation is the safest means of transport.
After communicating value, leverage results for greater awareness and impact. Some people write books codifying know-how; others give talks to reach more people. Some even start a new career applying their newfound expertise to new fields.
For example, say you led a highly successful youth program. Now compile tips into a book and speak at conferences to spread what worked. Consult for other nonprofits to replicate the model.
Or say you simplified a cumbersome admissions process using technology at a university. Now advise other institutions on digitization to increase access. The possibilities are endless! Some entrepreneurs and leaders apply business lessons to help their communities, then their success at home starts to inspire change in another part of the world. Leveraging knowledge creates enormous value.
The key is evaluating thoroughly, setting communication objectives, tailoring delivery for each audience, extracting lessons learned, and finding new applications for your expertise. This amplifies impact over time.
Conclusion
First, start initiatives with a clear, measurable impact goal resonant with stakeholders. Quantify hard and soft goals. Project ROI to justify investment.
Pinpoint performance gaps blocking progress. Find solutions addressing those gaps. Identify associated learning needs and costs. Motivate staff by conveying project value.
Set specific, measurable objectives guiding efforts and enabling measurement of growth. Track progress through consistent evaluation against objectives.
Collect quality data guided by objectives using surveys, observations, and other methods. Leverage technology for efficiency. Ensure confidentiality.
Isolate project impact through comparisons. Convert impact to financial value. Note intangibles that matter, too. Communicate ROI persuasively.
And finally, evaluate thoroughly, then share results tailored for each audience. Improve projects via black box thinking. Once your project is executed, leverage results for greater awareness and wider impact.
About the Author
Patricia Pulliam Phillips & Jack J. Phillips
Genres
Career Success, Business, Management, Leadership, Evaluation, Measurement, ROI, Performance Improvement, Project Management, Evidence-Based Practice, Professional Development
Review
The book is a practical guide for anyone who wants to demonstrate the value of their projects, programs, or initiatives to their stakeholders, whether they are managers, clients, funders, or policymakers. The authors, who are the cofounders of ROI Institute, a leading provider of evaluation and measurement services, present a six-step process that can be applied to any type of project, even those that are not directly linked to financial outcomes. The six steps are:
- Identify the business measure that is most relevant to your project and its stakeholders. This could be anything from customer satisfaction to employee retention to social impact.
- Develop a logic model that shows how your project influences the business measure, and identify the assumptions and risks involved. A logic model is a visual representation of the cause-and-effect relationships between your project inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts.
- Collect data to track the progress and results of your project, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. You should also collect data on the costs and benefits of your project, as well as the intangible benefits that are not easily measured in monetary terms.
- Analyze the data to isolate the effects of your project from other factors, and calculate the return on investment (ROI) of your project. ROI is the ratio of net benefits to costs, expressed as a percentage. You should also analyze the data to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your project, and the factors that contribute to its success or failure.
- Report the results to your stakeholders, using clear and concise language, visuals, and stories. You should tailor your report to the needs and interests of your audience, and highlight the value and impact of your project. You should also provide recommendations for improvement and action steps for the future.
- Use the results to improve your project and communicate its value to others. You should use the feedback and insights from your evaluation to enhance your project design, implementation, and management. You should also use the results to advocate for your project and secure more support and resources.
The book is a valuable resource for anyone who wants to show the value of what they do, regardless of their field or sector. The authors draw on their extensive experience and expertise in evaluation and measurement, and provide numerous examples and case studies from different domains, such as education, health care, social services, and government. The book is written in an accessible and engaging style, and explains complex concepts and methods in simple and understandable terms. The book also provides useful tools and templates that can help readers apply the six-step process to their own projects.
The book is not only informative, but also inspiring, as it shows how evaluation and measurement can help improve the quality and impact of any project, and how showing the value of what you do can lead to personal and professional success.