{"id":1145,"date":"2011-07-05T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T06:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottcochrane.com\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2011-11-24T19:41:37","modified_gmt":"2011-11-24T19:41:37","slug":"how-leaders-measure-impact-beyond-the-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/2011\/07\/05\/how-leaders-measure-impact-beyond-the-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"How Leaders Measure Impact Beyond the Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, you\u2019re thinking of pulling the plug on that ministry.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve looked at the numbers. Participation is down. Volunteers are getting harder to recruit. Impact is diminishing.<\/p>\n<p>But wait.<\/p>\n<p>Before you send that ministry out to pasture, take a moment and be sure you\u2019re looking at ALL of the relevant data.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s possible that the impact this ministry is having isn\u2019t showing up on the normal metrics report. You may need to look beyond the numbers.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1146\" src=\"http:\/\/www.scottcochrane.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/down-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"metrics report\" width=\"216\" height=\"162\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/down-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/down.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 216px) 100vw, 216px\" \/>Years ago I had lunch with a leadership mentor of mine, who served as Vice President of one of Canada\u2019s largest, national grocery store chains. They had recently made the decision to open many of their stores 24 hours, and I asked him for the rationale behind the decision. Did their market research really find a sizable group interested in shopping at 2:00 am?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cActually, no, we found very few customers interested in shopping at 2:00 am,\u201d he laughed. \u201cBut what we DID find was that even though few of our customers were interested in shopping at 2:00 am, many were VERY interested in shopping at a store which they knew WAS open at 2:00 am\u2026Even if they had no intention of taking advantage of it. In other words, it became very important to our customers who were shopping at 2:00 in the afternoon to know that their store cared enough about them to also be open at 2:00 in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line? Impact doesn\u2019t always show up on the normal metrics report, and leaders need to develop a 6<sup>th<\/sup> sense about where ministry impact is showing up outside the limitations of hard numbers.<\/p>\n<p>So before you pull the plug on that struggling ministry, ask yourself these questions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Could it be that the impact of this ministry is being felt ELSEWHERE, outside the constituents of the ministry itself?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Where else should we be looking for possible impact this ministry could be having?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Would the decision to end this ministry leave an unanticipated hole that could be hard to climb out of?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019ve learned that effective leaders pursue answers to these questions with relentless fervour.<\/p>\n<p>Because sometimes the most significant impact of a ministry just doesn\u2019t show up on the normal metrics report.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How do you evaluate ministry impact \u2018beyond the numbers\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, you\u2019re thinking of pulling the plug on that ministry. You\u2019ve looked at the numbers. Participation is down. Volunteers are getting harder to recruit. Impact is diminishing. But wait. Before you send that ministry out to pasture, take a moment and be sure you\u2019re looking at ALL of the relevant data. It\u2019s possible that the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[579,580,585],"tags":[696,685,697,41],"class_list":["post-1145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ministry-2","category-results-2","category-wisdom-2","tag-answers","tag-impact","tag-measure","tag-ministry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1153,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions\/1153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}