We aim for “impact” but, what impact do we want?

We often think it’s self-evident what kinds of impact we want to create with our mahi and why it’s worthwhile.

​“Progress studies", an emerging self-styled academic field and intellectual movement, raises the bar for thought on this.
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"There is no broad-based intellectual movement focused on understanding the dynamics of progress, or targeting the deeper goal of speeding it up. We believe that it deserves a dedicated field of study" 

 Progress studies aims to dissect the causes of human progress in order to better advance it. Progress Studies has a strong focus on economic growth which raises many interesting questions such as, progress for who, and what is progress?

For a brief and interesting read on the history of Progress Studies as well as some of the counter arguments to its tenets check out this great article on the BBC: Do we need a better understanding of 'progress'? - BBC Future

Progress Studies is Monitoring and Evaluation at a macro scale on steroids.
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The article describes the tensions that can arise when discussing what the issues/challenges/opportunities are for a problem as well as what is the impact/future we want.

It’s a great reminder that having a clear consensus of the challenges to be solved and what outcomes are planned is a great place to start when thinking about any piece of work. It can be helpful to refer to our mission statements or statements of core intent but these can be too lofty. There are tools and processes you can work through to help reach a consensus and a great place to start learning about these is the iPEN training courses. 

Not sure what some of the terms in this blog are? See if we have included them in our Impact Glossary - and if not you you'd like to see them - get in touch and tell us what you'd like to see added.