How Do We Measure Change?

What difference have you made?This question is key in evaluating the success of your strategic plan and the goals you set out to achieve. And you can’t answer that question unless you know what you are measuring.

Your strategic plan will include Goals, Objectives/Outcomes and Targets/ Benchmarks, and all three of these components will in some way be linked to Indicators.

What is an indicator? An indicator is what you measure to assess progress towards the target or objective. An indicator may be quantitative, that is a specific number, percentage or ratio. It may also be qualitative, for instance, a perception, an opinion, or a level of satisfaction.

But which indicator is best for your specific needs? The goal is to select a target that is as precise as possible. So, suppose that one of your goals is to increase communication with your membership, and to do this, you are going to launch an e-newsletter. One indicator of success would be the number of e-newsletter subscribers you have. But is simply subscribing to your e-newsletter enough of an indicator? Since many emails are never opened, perhaps a stronger indication of the success of your communication with your membership is the open rate for your e-newsletters—what percentage of those who received the email actually open it.

Ideally, your indicator also needs to be measurable in some way. Perhaps one of your goals is to increase your organisation’s influence in your region and internationally on a particular issue. But influence is a difficult thing to measure—what indicators might show an increase in influence? At a basic level, showing an increase in web traffic to articles or resources on your website related to that issue could be considered an indicator. But you might also consider other indicators: the number of times your organisation’s work is cited in international reports; the number of invitations your organisation receives to present at or participate in international conferences, meetings or discussions; or the number of times your organisation is quoted in news reports on the issue.

And because an indicator is supposed to show a change in activity over time, you need to ensure that you take a baseline—or beginning—measurement at the outset of your plan. Knowing that your organisation presented at eight conferences during a particular year is useful—but it may be more useful to know that compared to the year before, you have doubled the number of conference presentations.

Who is responsible for tracking what difference you have made? This is a question you need to address as you develop and implement your plan. Typically, managers are responsible for monitoring their teams’ activities and progress. At a minimum, annual reporting will be required in order for your organisation to craft its annual workplans, but you may decide that more frequent reporting will help your organisation troubleshoot barriers to your progress and adjust your activities throughout the year as required.