December 5, 2024 | By David M. Wagner

Imagine taking a day-long trip to a new destination.

You’ve packed everything you need. You’ve planned your route.

Partway through your drive, your navigation app notifies you that there’s an issue on your current route. It proposes an alternate.

There are no other indications that you need to change course. Your fuel gauge shows you’re good on gas. Your engine temperature looks normal. Even the compass heading shows the right direction.

But you accept your app’s suggestion anyway.

Why?

Because you have one overarching concern: reaching your destination.

Time to Change Course

The same is true for your organization’s journey.

It’s important to know when it may be time for a change in direction. That’s true whether you’re following a strategic plan, completing a project, or just tracking a list of goals.

Unfortunately, your team likely doesn’t have a built-in navigation app to automatically notify you of trouble ahead and suggest alternatives.

That’s why having a plan to monitor your progress is so helpful.

Know What to Monitor

And that plan starts with knowing what to monitor.

I advise my clients to identify key outcomes that they expect their plans to improve.

Activities and outputs may be easier to measure. They’re useful for determining whether your team is following the plan.

But those measures will mainly just tell you where you’ve been, not whether they’re helping you reach your intended destination.

Outcomes measures, on the other hand, while difficult to assess, can tell you whether your plan is working. If you’re not seeing the outcomes you expect, it may be time to switch up your plans.

Myriad other factors may drive a change in direction: staff, leadership, and board turnover, changes in your funding landscape, changes in your constituents’ needs, unexpected new opportunities, etc.

Putting Evaluation into Practice

In my white paper on metrics that matter for social programs, I highlight how one client monitored their healthcare workforce development programs.

Program activities can be straightforward to measure. In their case, the important metric was how many high school students their career programs reached and for how long.

Measures of mission outcomes, like how long it took local healthcare providers to close open job requisitions, could take a long time to show progress.

Interim measures can serve as early indicators of expected outcomes. Look to your theory of change. For this client, they might expect to see student interest in healthcare careers increase, as evidenced by greater enrollment in health-related classes and degree programs.

When I facilitate strategic plans, I guide my clients to include evaluation plans with at least annual reviews of outcomes or interim measures.

Successful strategies and other plans don’t remain static forever. Regularly monitoring outcomes and related indicators will tell you if your plan is on the right track or if you need to shift course to reach your destination. If you need help identifying critical measures, set a free consult with me.