Impact

You’ve said it. I know you have. Maybe you even said it to me. “It’s important to me to make a difference.” “I want my work to have an impact.” And you may have quietly thought…..“it doesn’t currently,” “I’m not exactly saving the world” or even “I think it does matter but it doesn’t really feel like it.”  Some kind of statement about the limits of your impact-ful-ness.

Impact comes in lots of forms. Of course, there’s the kind that makes headlines. And, then the kind that changes ONE person in ONE way that is important to THEIR life. And lots in between. All are worthy of a headline. Micro-impacts add up to macro-impacts. I see it time and again. One brand of Impact isn’t better than the other. They are different.  

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in their book, Designing Your Life, outline a great tool called an Impact Map which helps us understand what flavor of Impact we prefer – and where we want to play more. Imagine a simple horizontal line. At one end is Renewing/Repairing – and at the other end is Creating. Sustaining goes in the middle. Now draw a vertical line through the middle – right through Sustaining – so that the intersection creates four quadrants. And on this line you can note the Scale – Global/Far at the top, and Individual/near at the bottom. And the range in between.    

With that in hand, you can plot your activities and see what it shows. Let’s say you have worked on a new product that will have a global reach – top right. Or maybe in your work you have tutored students one to one to improve their math skills. Bottom left. As you start to plot your previous experiences, you may notice that you gravitate towards one quadrant – or maybe you notice that you prefer a variety.  

Play with it. There’s no single way to use this tool. You could plot positive/fulfilling experiences in one color, and ‘meh’ ones in another – so the differences stand out. That might be informative. Or, when I used this, I plotted individual client work both in the bottom right – individual/creating – and then connected it with a dotted line up to top right. Why? Because the individual shift ripples to the whole system. 

An individual who learns how to communicate and collaborate more effectively with their team raises performance…and confidence….and results – and who they are at home for dinner changes too! And they may have more energy for the whole of life – service, health, growth.  Will I get a Breaking News alert when they start communicating better? Sure hope not. But it sets off a chain of events that changes the world. (sounds like a lot, but I really believe it – and if you are reading this, well, I think you believe it too). 

So the next time you wonder about your impact, see if you can tune into which types of impact match with your preferences, skills, and experiences. If you go looking for proof of impact, you can find it. Lean into the places you are already creating impact – I have zero doubt it is plentiful! And if you find spots that are missing, then that’s a great place to put your focus and energy.  

From your new awareness, and the choices and action that will follow, your relationship with this idea may change. Let me know where you go with this!