Align on Your Impact Goals
Align on Your Impact Goals is an early-project exercise from IDEO.org's Design Kit in which a team and its stakeholders write down the change they hope the project will create and arrange those hopes on a ladder from near-term to long-term. The group then distils the ladder into two statements: the lasting impact it is working towards, and one observable key outcome that would show progress in that direction. The two statements stay visible for the rest of the project as its reference point.
Facilitation script
- 1
Explain the purpose: one long-term impact and one observable key outcome by the end of the hour. Show the empty ladder and what belongs at the top and the bottom.
5 min - 2
Silent writing: everyone notes the impacts they hope the project will have, one per sticky note.
10 min - 3
Each person places their notes on the ladder and reads them out in a sentence. Group duplicates as they appear; hold the discussion for the next step.
15 min - 4
Work on the top of the ladder: discuss the differences and agree the wording of one long-term impact statement.
12 min - 5
Work on the lower rungs: agree one near-term key outcome, phrased as an observable change in what specific people do.
13 min - 6
Read both statements aloud, check that every stakeholder can support them, and agree where they will be kept visible and when the ladder will be revisited.
5 min
Tips
Keep pressing on the key outcome until it names who does what differently, because "greater awareness" cannot be observed and a behaviour can.
When stakeholders place notes at very different heights, treat that as the main finding of the session and discuss it before wording anything.
Do not let the group settle on a long list of outcomes; the discipline of choosing one is what creates alignment.
Common pitfalls
Writing the key outcome as an output ("launch the service") instead of a change in behaviour, which leaves the team able to finish the project without knowing whether it worked
Smoothing over disagreement with wording broad enough for everyone to accept, so the differing expectations return at the first review
Letting the funder's notes define the top of the ladder while the team stays quiet, which produces compliance and no shared commitment
Choosing a key outcome that cannot be observed within the project's time and budget, so it never gets checked
Filing the two statements away after the kick-off: they only guide decisions if they are in front of the team when it selects ideas and prototypes
Variations
Remote: use a shared whiteboard with a vertical scale, give five minutes of private note writing, then have each person drag their notes into position. Stakeholders who cannot attend: collect their hoped-for impacts in short calls beforehand and post them on their behalf, marked as such. Later in the project: return to the ladder after the first prototypes and fill in the middle rungs with the intermediate changes the team now expects, then check that the key outcome still fits.
Where it fits
When to use it
A project is starting and the funder, the sponsor and the delivery team have never said aloud what success means to each of them
The stated goal is a large social or organisational change that will take years, and the team needs something it can observe within the project's lifetime
Stakeholders describe the project in very different terms and you suspect they expect different results
The team has to report on outcomes later and wants to agree now what it will look for
A project has drifted into delivering outputs and needs to reconnect them to the change they were meant to produce
When not to use it
The impact and outcome are already fixed in a grant agreement or contract: review them together instead of pretending they are open
You need a plan linking goals to actors, behaviours and deliverables: Impact Mapping gives that structure
The team wants to work back from a future state to the steps that lead there: use Backcasting
Key stakeholders cannot attend and cannot be consulted beforehand: an alignment exercise without the people who need to align produces a team opinion, not an agreement
The organisation needs quantified targets for a planning cycle: run an OKR Workshop, which this exercise can feed but does not replace
Related methods
Frequently asked questions
What is Align on Your Impact Goals?▾
Align on Your Impact Goals is a kick-off exercise from IDEO.org's Design Kit. The team and its stakeholders write down the changes they hope a project will bring about, arrange them on a ladder from immediate to long-term, and agree one long-term impact and one observable near-term key outcome. It takes about an hour and gives the project a shared definition of success.
What is the difference between an impact and a key outcome?▾
The impact is the lasting change the project contributes to, usually something that takes years and depends on more than this one project. The key outcome is a nearer change in what particular people do, which the team can observe and which signals progress towards the impact. One gives direction, the other gives something to check.
Who should be in the room?▾
The project team plus the stakeholders whose expectations will decide whether the project is judged a success: funders, sponsors and implementation partners. A group of roughly four to twelve works well. If a decisive stakeholder cannot attend, gather their hoped-for impacts in advance and confirm the result with them afterwards.
Is Align on Your Impact Goals the same as Impact Mapping?▾
No. Impact Mapping is a planning technique that links a goal to actors, the behaviour changes needed from them and the deliverables that could cause those changes. Align on Your Impact Goals is a shorter alignment exercise that produces only two statements. It can be a useful first step before more detailed planning.
What do you do with the Impact Ladder afterwards?▾
Keep the two agreed statements visible and use them when choosing between ideas and when planning what to prototype. The rungs between the key outcome and the impact are left open at kick-off. The team returns to fill them in once it has concrete solutions and can say which intermediate changes it expects.
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Try it freeMethod descriptions on Workshop Weaver are original content written by our team, based on established facilitation practices. This method was inspired by work from IDEO.org (Design Kit).