Leaving a legacy

When can we call impact a legacy?

Which societal challenges do you want to tackle?

From concern to control

Your legacy statement

Measuring your impact

As human beings, we want to have an impact but unfortunately, not everything we do has a positive impact. After all, humans are the only species on earth that destroy their own habitat. As previously stated, impact can be positive or negative, intentional or unintentional. Impact can be very small, or impact can be extremely large. Some people have such a positive impact that they leave behind a legacy.

At what point does our impact become a legacy? We believe that there are four major conditions to leaving a legacy.

To leave a legacy, you must have an:

1.intentional

2.positive

3.impact on a significant scale

4.that will outlast your own life/company’s lifespan
The positive impact will still exist even when you or your organization is no longer around. You are creating a better world for the next generation.

IMPACT COMES IN DIFFERENT WAYS

It is clear that impact does not happen by itself. Significant impact often involves courage, determination and risk. It is surprising that so many people resign themselves to the idea that major changes can happen without taking any risks. In fact, everyone should have the courage to take risks, since they are necessary to progress and create impact.

To ensure that our impact is positive, we need to truly understand our impact and intend to make a positive difference. We should attempt to understand the causality between our efforts and results as well as any possible negative effects. Be aware of the risk that good intentions will have a negative impact. Be conscious about the impact you want to have and the ways in which you can avoid having a negative impact. The response of the government of the island nation of Kiribati to declining fish stocks illustrates this point well. This government subsidized coconut farming with the help of aid organizations to reduce fishing. However, the program had the opposite effect. The increase in the profitability of coconut farming meant that the people of Kiribati had more disposable income, which increased the amount of leisure fishing and improved fishing equipment and technology. Although the government had intended to create a positive impact on the declining fish population, it created a negative impact.

The story of Alfred Nobel is probably the world’s most well-known example of good intentions creating a negative impact. His invention, dynamite, helped to build roads and mines but it also created a weapon of mass destruction. This was definitely not what he had had in mind, hence the Nobel prize for inventions and research that have a positive impact.

To leave a legacy, you will need to focus. While it is possible to affect the world at different levels, if you want to achieve a long-lasting positive impact, it is important to stay dedicated to your goal.

There are several frameworks used across the world to create a positive impact, the most well known of which are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) developed by the United Nations. These 17 SDGs are endorsed by many actors (governments, industry, civil movements) and include f.i. ‘no poverty’, ‘no hunger’, ‘clean and green energy’ and ‘partnerships’. Very interesting is how Kate Raworth’s model of the Doughnut Economy visually emphasizes that we have a duty to act within the upper limit of our planet’s limits as well as the lower limit of social conditions that we must be able to foresee. Both models have been combined. This global framework helps us to define the impact domains in which you could focus your impact.

In our legacy canvas, we decided to group the 17 SDGs into four main impact domains. The triple P is a well-known synthesis: people, planet and prosperity. We added cohesion to our model because we believe that it is a basic need. We want to create a healthy planet where there is no poverty, no hunger, decent work for everyone AND cohesion because without it, people feel lost and lonely. In the following table, we grouped the SDGs under these four headings: People, Planet, Prosperity, Cohesion.

PEOPLE

A decent life for everyone.

Improving people’s lives.

SDG1: No Poverty

SDG2: Zero Hunger

SDG3: Good Health and Well-Being

SDG4: Quality Education

PLANET

A healthy planet. Humans living in true balance with the planet.

SDG6: Clean Water and Sanitation

SDG7: Affordable and Clean Energy

SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production

SDG13: Climate Action

SDG14: Life Below Water

SDG15: Life on Land

PROSPERITY

Sustainable growth for societies.

SDG8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

SDG9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

SDG11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

COHESION

A warm and inclusive society.

SDG5: Gender Equality

SDG10: Reduced Inequalities

SDG16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

SDG17: Partnerships

 number DEFINING YOUR IMPACT

Which societal challenges do you want to tackle through your organization? We invite you to do this prioritizing exercise. Tick the boxes next to the societal domain. The more boxes you select the more important the domain is to you. The total number of boxes ticked should not exceed 10!

It is possible that you are dealing with different impact domains, such as the Belgian organization NNOF (Nearly New Office Facilities) which creates a circular economy for furniture and employs people from minority groups. What is your main impact domain, and what might be your second impact domain? Prioritizing one domain does not mean that you will ignore other societal challenges. Your organization’s work might fall within all four domains, but this exercise helps you to define your primary impact domain.

This is about your ambition. On which societal challenges do you want to make the biggest impact?

Societal challenges are difficult to tackle. Very often, we are confronted with wicked problems such as poverty, loneliness or massive carbon pollution. To what extent do you think you can control these challenges? What is the extent of the control or influence you have? To what extent do you feel you can impact the societal challenge that concerns you the most?

In this exercise, you can map to what extent you feel you have control upon the societal challenge that you are facing. Which part of the societal challenge will you tackle, and how? Try to gauge the gap between what you can achieve and what the problem actually requires.

First, identify which aspects of the societal challenge you are concerned about. For example, if you want to tackle loneliness, consider the case that lonely people are living amongst us but cannot find ways to express their need for social contact. Then, write down what, in your opinion, you can inﬂuence. What will change when you act? In the center of this mapping, write down what you believe to be able to actively control.

Now, try to think of strategies to move topics from your circle of concern to your circle of influence and eventually to your circle of control. Find a sparring partner and identify how you could get items from your circle of concern to your circle of influence.

You might be surprised by how much impact you can have. Change always requires actions, and those actions can come initially from you. Some things will always be out of your control, such as the weather, but if you are considering specific strategies, you might be surprised by how big your influence can be. Every day, it is possible to create a positive impact within the world, provided we have the will to do it.

The key to increasing your impact is to stay truly committed to your intended impact. To achieve this, your legacy statement is your starting point.

What is the specific change you want to make? How big will this change be within 30 years? What kind of world are you building for future generations? Which societal challenge do you want to tackle? The legacy statement expresses your ambition to have an impact and to scale it, which sets an ambitious but clear target.

Your legacy statement can help you to understand which of your different activities need to be scaled in order to achieve your goals. It is the driving force behind everything you do. What you focus on is what you will change. It is the foundation of your actions, strategies, branding and interactions. This statement will help you to work towards your ultimate objectives and better assess new opportunities. Without a legacy statement, your employees, partners, board members and stakeholders might misunderstand the future you are working towards. If they are not aligned with your mission, they might lose the necessary focus and energy to create change.

Tout objectif sans plan n’est qu’un souhait

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 number CREATING YOUR LEGACY STATEMENT

What will be your organization’s legacy? What would you like to have achieved by 2050? Consider what kind of society you wish to create, instead of predicting the kind of society in which we will live.

Your legacy statement should meet several criteria:

• It’s short (one or two sentences only)

• It explains the impact you want to create

• It explains how you will change the world

• It’s appealing

• It’s brave

• It’s ambitious

Have faith in how much things can change in 30 years. Have a look back at what you were doing 30 years ago in the early 90’s. Back then, did you imagine the world as it is now? Are you aware of how much things have changed in so little time?

 Some examples of legacy statements:

FAIRPHONE

changing the way products are made

BLOMMM

for a world full of organic flowers

DAMIAANACTIE

for a world without leprosy

PEERBY

sharing is the new buying

YOUR LEGACY STATEMENT

It’s better to be naïve than to be cynical

A decent life for everyone.

Improving people’s lives.

A healthy planet.

Humans living in true balance with the planet.

PROSPERITY

Sustainable growth for societies.

A warm and inclusive society.

We want to fight poverty, give people opportunities, create happiness and save our unique planet. But how do you know if your actions yield the results you are hoping for? How do you ensure that you are having a positive impact?

Measuring impact is an important discipline that is still in its infancy. It is difficult to measure factors such as happiness and health in euros. Moreover, these factors are often interlinked: work opportunities lead to increased self-esteem and better health, leading to a higher motivation to contribute to one’s neighborhood. There is more to measuring social impact than just ticking boxes or counting employees.

However, measuring social impact is important. Impact investors want to know where their capital is going, and employees feel more motivated when their actions have meaning. Moreover, customers are also interested in social issues and appreciate the added value of a socially responsible organization. Sharing information about policies and performance on environmental, social and governance issues helps you to build trust with your customers and partners.

It is important to demonstrate how you create an impact and improve your work. Measuring your impact and making it visible affect your management by helping you to make strategic choices and improving how you market yourself. Claims about making a difference are no longer sufficient. It is increasingly the case that funders and investors require evidence of how you are creating an impact.

There are plenty of reasons why impact measurement is important. However, do not go too far down the road of impact measurement because that will use up valuable time that you need to maximize your impact. You must ensure that the metrics you are using are reasonable, proportional and actionable.

So how do you measure your impact? Many of us are familiar with RoI (Return on Investment). What is the financial return you get for your actions? When you are working on societal impact, you cannot solely define your success through financial returns. Issues such as poverty, climate change, social cohesion, etc. require other impact assessment methodologies. Furthermore, one must bear in mind the multi-layered effects. The Peerby sharing platform, for example, targets three areas: people – you get to know your neighborhood better by sharing; the planet – you are going to be thrifty together to use material and; profit – participants getting access to more resources.

There are many ways to measure your impact and ultimately it is down to you to determine how sophisticated your impact assessment needs to be. Take, for example, the TRASI database, which has more than 200 different methodologies. Indicators differ a lot; for instance it is possible to examine the impact on people (how happiness has increased or how many new jobs have been created), policy implications (the number of policy recommendations that the government has adopted) and the environmental (the quantity of recycled material or reduced CO emissions).

Impact Wizard (www.impactwizard.eu) can guide you through indicator sets and methodologies. It will help you to report your impact and enable your organization to make better decisions that create social, environmental and economic benefits for all your stakeholders.

Some basic tips for impact measurement:

■Bear impact measurement in mind from the beginning.

■When measuring impact, there are two questions to consider:

■The WHAT: what is it that you want to measure?

Make sure that the topics you measure are aligned with your mission.

■The HOW: how will you measure it?

-Impact can be measured quantitatively and qualitatively.

-Keep it as simple as possible, so that you do not become overwhelmed with fragmentary impact assessments.

-Decide what you will assess regularly and what you will do as a one-off, in-depth study.

■For your ongoing impact measurement, measure things that are measured anyway such as the number of participants, the number of participants who passed tests, the number of people that got a job or were lifted out of poverty, etc.

■Qualitative evidence can be gathered with varying levels of frequency e.g. through annual or biannual interviews.

■See how you can link back to the SDGs. It helps to link to a broader framework. On this website, each Sustainable Development Goal is broken down in different metrics: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/database/.

What do you plan to measure through your organization? How will you measure it? Choose what you will measure in an ongoing process and choose what you will measure in more in-depth studies that you carry out occasionally. Identify what you will measure through quantitative and qualitative research.

IMPACT MEASUREMENT PLAN

INTERVIEW

THE LEGACY OF A CIVIL SERVANT

FONS LEROY

The legacy of a civil servant

I was thrilled to interview Fons Leroy, the man who’s considered by many the “visionary warm-hearted ambitious head of the public employment service in Flanders VDAB”. Fons is about to retire, so this is the perfect time to look back on his impact and forward to his legacy.

Fons has been leading a government department with over 4,000 employees for many years. Clearly, in this position one can make an impact. But why do we consider him as someone leaving a legacy? His success seems to boil down to two important factors: on the one hand, he is a natural people manager and on the other, he helped the organization creating very conscious positive impact.

How can you become someone who creates such a significant impact? Fons explains that his parents raised him to become a conscientious leader. His father worked in the coalmines and was one of the few people who anticipated their closure. Despite working six days a week, his father managed to attend courses to become a teacher. He inspired his son to look ahead; to create and take opportunities. Later on, when his father was teaching, Fons was proud to see how much his father affected young peoples’ lives. For Fons, learning how to create opportunities proactively was key to his becoming a visionary leader.

Fons also attributes his ability to create impact to a series of events during his student years. Fons was very active in the student movement in the 70’s when farmers were struggling because of failing harvests. Fons decided to set up a model whereby students would help them. He asked for his professor’s permission to be absent for several weeks. The professor agreed, on the condition that Fons would share his experience afterwards. This provided Fons with the opportunity to explore how farmers struggled with unfair contracts, which provided him with insights that he would have never gained through a textbook. This experience nurtured Fons’ belief that many of the skills required by the labor market come from outside the traditional education system.

When Fons is concerned about society, he merely worries about the world we are leaving our grandchildren. It is not digitalization that concerns him, but how society is becoming more accusatory, selfish and harsh. Fons believes that today’s leaders are largely to blame. They should be inspiring confidence and kindness instead of stoking fear.

When asked how someone in his position could maximize his or her impact, Fons answered that they should “start with ethical values”. Through values one can connect with society. In Fons’ opinion, every organization should have a value charter that is supported by employees, clients and stakeholders. However, introducing shared values in such a large organization is difficult. Commitment from all involved is a subtle process. To get everyone’s support for VDAB’s values, Fons spent his first months at VDAB by travelling and holding meetings in all the local offices. He not only met with management and core teams, but also with the cleaning and technical staff. However, Fons states, that the organization’s shared values are not the result of a bottom-up approach because, in an organization of this size, getting everyone to agree would take too much time. Instead, Fons created a “value compass”, and he had discussions with employees about how to implement this compass across the entire organization. The entire process was repeated three times so that the strategy was clear for everyone. By co-creating, Fons and his colleagues were able to determine how the organization would establish its shared values.

At the end of the day, the size of an organization presents challenges, which add to the existing challenges of civil servant culture. How do you deal with these challenges? For Fons it was simple: you should not act differently then when you would be leading a small organization. Give your employees opportunities to meet up with you. Every month, Fons organized breakfast meetings with employees from different branches to stay up to date. Another important lesson Fons shares is that you have to earn credibility in what you do and to act evidence based. Use the right arguments to proceed, provide open source models, leverage partnerships, etc.

Fons advises policy makers to create policies that benefit everyone, but that ensure that those who suffer the most will make the greatest progress. According to Fons, this is how all government agencies should act.

At the end of the interview, we broached the topic of the end of his professional career. What will Fons do after his retirement? Fons smiled. “People tell me that a black hole is waiting for me, but I don’t believe this is true.” Fons is chair of several impactful organizations, consults public services abroad and acts as a European assessor of public services. Fons will continue to work towards a European policy that ensures better quality public services. It is crystal clear that Fons will continue to build his legacy.