Current e-Journal
-
July 14, 2026
Measuring
REAL
outcomes
In this week’s Systems Change Newsletter…
- Invitations and Announcements
- Catalytic Thinking Exercise: Measuring real outcomes is NOT impossible
- Resources to Further Your Practice
Invitations & Announcements:
Equitable, Participatory, Community-based Program Evaluation
What if your community members were the ones evaluating your programs? As Creating the Future begins documenting what we’ve learned from our 30+ demonstration projects, YOU will be leading that process! From determining what is important to document and share, to interviewing the folks who led those efforts, this process will be as open and participatory as all our work. That effort will kick off in September. If you’d like to join the fun, click here to let us know.
Catalytic Thinking Exercise:
Measuring Real Outcomes is NOT Impossible (Part 1)
As Creating the Future heads into the “documenting what we’ve learned” phase of our mission, we are thinking a lot about what that evaluation phase looks like – not just for us, but throughout the social change arena.
It is obvious that changemakers are awesome at crafting projects and programs, aiming those efforts at the change they want to see. And yet, often “evaluation” is where those plans begin to crumble.
See if this sounds familiar.
Your team has a plan for improving conditions in your community. Perhaps that is a new program or perhaps it is to improve the work you’re already doing. No matter how small or how sweeping in scope, your ultimate goal is a shift in the lives of people and/or planet.
Having decided on a direction to take, you get to work. Tons of logistical steps will go into making that project a reality - actions and deadlines and funding proposals.
A year or two into the project, it is time to evaluate that program’s success.
And that may be the first time you begin pondering, “How will we know if anything has changed?”
If you recognize yourself in this situation, you’re not alone. And the reason for that is simple…
We humans tend to be really good at accounting for actions. Did we DO what we planned to DO? Hooray! We tick the box and pat ourselves on the back.
Tracking actions
(Did we do it?)
vs.
Tracking outcomes
(Did we accomplish the goal?)
What we do not ask nearly as often, though, is “Did we ACHIEVE what we wanted to ACHIEVE? What did we ACCOMPLISH? Is anything CHANGING? Are we getting closer to the OUTCOMES that are the real goal?”
Most planning processes spend more time and focus on the doing than the accomplishing. But there is a huge difference between DOING and ACCOMPLISHING.
If we are to create what is possible for the people in our communities, one of the most important steps will therefore be to focus back on the big question: What do we want to accomplish? And how will we know if we’re getting close?
There are several important ways to fill the outcomes gap in standard planning. This week, we’ll talk about benchmarking. And in the next few newsletters, we’ll tackle the others.
Try this
Benchmarking
We don’t realize the extent to which benchmarking is part of our everyday lives. Living in a culture of filled with checklists and tick-boxes and project management tools, we are all experts at keeping track of the work we accomplish.
Therefore, to make sure we are not just accomplishing tasks but, importantly, accomplishing the outcomes of our plans, we can simply take that benchmarking prowess, and apply it to our ultimate goals.
What we pay attention to grows.
The good news is that you already know the questions you want to address in that analysis!
Using Catalytic Thinking to craft your plan, you’ve asked and answered the following questions:
- Who will be affected by whatever we decide?
- What do all those people care about? What is important to them? What do they wish for?
- What is the ultimate outcome we want to be part of creating for all the people who will be affected? What is the best possible outcome for them?
- What conditions will lead to that outcome? What will people need to know? What will they need to experience? What will they need to feel?
- What actions will we take to create those conditions?
Before diving into the implementation plan of who-will-do-what, NOW is the time to consider evaluation questions. Not in 2 years, but the moment you determine that you’re going to take action. What do you want that action to accomplish for the people who will be affected?
- What do you want to have learned at the end of the project?
- What relationships do you want the project to have nurtured?
- What stories would you like to hear?
- What ultimate results do you want to see?
And here’s the good news: By using the questions of Catalytic Thinking to craft your plan, you will have already answered many of these questions!
Look at #4 above. You’ve already answered questions like, “What would people need to know? What would they need to feel? What would they need to be assured of?” (For a more comprehensive list of those questions, see the Resources section below.)
Those are the the things you want to assess when you’re done!
- If you’ve already determined that people would need to feel X, have those feelings shifted? From what, to what? How will you know?
- If you’ve already determined that there need to be more trust relationships, have those relationships changed or grown or been nurtured? What might you see and hear, to know what has changed?
- If you’ve already determined that people will need to be able to do X, are they now able to do so? What stories might you listen for, to answer that question?
While you are still in planning mode, before getting down to work, calendar benchmark dates to check on your progress. You already do this for your actions – team meetings where folks report on their progress. This step now creates a system for checking in on what is being accomplished. Are we getting close on our outcomes? Do we need to adjust?
NOW you are ready to create your implementation plans and get to work.
By asking these questions during the planning process itself – before you get lost in the lists of tasks and assignments – you are setting yourselves up to accomplish those outcomes. And by using the answers to those “conditions for success” questions, you don’t have to invent anything. It’s all already there.
What we pay attention to grows. The more we can keep our desired outcomes front and center, the more likely we are to achieve them. And that is the power of the questions of Catalytic Thinking.
Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter, when we will focus on the next step for filling in the accomplishment gap – accountability. See you next week!
Resources to Further Your Practice:
- WATCH: Another learn-by-doing opportunity at Creating the Future. We’ll be determining the questions we want to answer in our own evaluation process. Be part of that process and take your new skills back to your organization! click here to let us know.
- READ: What needs to be in place for our goals to be realized? These questions will help you find those conditions for success. Find them here…
- LISTEN: From hopelessness to possibility, this interview with Hildy is like a cool breeze on a hot day. What does it take to fight the current reality and building something better? Listen here…
Help Keep Our Programs Freely Available
Creating the Future’s eJournal is free. And there are no financial barriers to our classes – tuition is whatever folks can afford. Because we never want money to stand in the way of people learning.
If you value our content and our approach, please donate here – and please consider becoming a monthly supporter of our work.
eJournal Archives:
If you’re new to our eJournal, or just want to remind yourself of past practice exercises we’ve shared, check out our eJournal archives here.
SUBSCRIBE
to get this e-Journal
Creating the Future is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization in the U.S.A