On How to Measure Your Mission

The measures an organization prioritizes represent what the organization truly values; oftentimes in conflict with what the organization says it values through its mission and vision statements. Measure your mission statement and go from Good to Great.

?If you’ve spent any time in the social sector (nonprofits) or addiction and behavioral healthcare, you know that one of the most persistent challenges is measuring and demonstrating your success or impact.

Resources are finite and most are directed at the delivery of service.

And the usual refrain is, “If we help just one.”

Businesses don’t work like that. If they did, we wouldn’t have all the things we have in our world. And businesses are usually very good at measuring their success. Businesses typically don’t care about “impact”. It’s not hard to measure how many widgets are sold, nor very difficult to measure whether a service was delivered.

It gets a lot harder if you want your good or service to have a positive effect on people or places – which is why most businesses stop short of measuring impact; to do so would cut into the bottom line.

But when you are in the “business” of helping people or trying to improve society, funders (e.g., grantors, donors, taxpayers, etc.) want to know whether their money is having a direct and lasting impact.

Many organizations in this position succumb to analysis or complexity paralysis. This is why so much of what we see in the social sector are essentially vanity metrics, or metrics that make you look or feel good but don’t provide actionable insight for product or service improvement.

This is essentially the argument Jim Collins makes about the difference between businesses that are good versus those that are great. Although Collins wrote a “Good to Great” monograph for the “Social Sectors,” there’s not much distinction between what must be done in for-profit and non-profit companies.

Both require discipline. However, all businesses have money as an input (“a resource for achieving greatness”) and an output (“a measure of greatness”). Many social sector organizations do not have a financial output – although, the majority of healthcare and addiction treatment in the U.S. are organized as non-profits under an insurance scheme that does establish a financial output.

Welcome to the paradox.

A great organization is one that delivers superior performance and makes a distinctive impact over a long period of time. For a business, financial returns are a perfectly legitimate measure of performance. For a social sector organization, however, performance must be assessed relative to mission, not financial returns. In the social sectors, the critical question is not "How much money do we make per dollar of invested capital?" but "How effectively do we deliver on our mission and make a distinctive impact, relative to our resources?

• Jim Collins, "Good to Great and the Social Sector", p. 5

How do you know what to measure for greatness?

The remainder of this essay will be an exercise in answering that question.

For the sake of this exercise, let’s stipulate that as an owner, leader, or provider in behavioral healthcare, addiction treatment, and recovery support/social care, you care about the double bottom line: financial inputs and outputs that sustain your organization, AND impact measures that demonstrate the advancement of your mission.

I recognize that some (a growing sum) in the behavioral health space are in the space because it is hot and the financial upside can be lucrative. Let’s save that indictment for another time and lean into the goodness of humankind.

The rest of this essay will breakdown the various measures or metrics of an organization that delivers clinical care, housing, and recovery/social support. They are a not-for-profit, but given some services are reimbursable, there is a business element too.

Again, in the world of behavioral health, the hybrid nature of the organization is not unusual, which conflates the paradox for so many.

Recently, we were on a call with a Commonly Well prospect. This organization has been doing work in support of their mission and building a strong organization over the last 20 or so years. The organization has showed up in many great ways for its community. All good.

But now they want to have data to support their good works and further address the needs that persist in their community. And like most social care, addiction treatment, recovery support, and most non-profit organizations – this is a difficult proposition. But, unlike most in our field, they have a mindset of putting themselves out of business. They want to execute their mission so completely that they are not needed at the scale they are currently needed.

This is an organization in the social sector that sees their greatness as accomplishing their mission and closing their doors. Amazing.

Why is it so difficult to identify the right measures?

It’s difficult for a few reasons:

• Most organizations can articulate what they do and even how they do it, but struggle to articulate measures that accurately reflect what they do and how they do it.
• Business priorities (financial outputs) outweigh other success or impact measures (completing a program vs. program improving a person’s life).
• Lack of resources to effectively capture the right data to measure the right metrics.
• Other stakeholders like grantors, insurance companies, donors, and even tax payers through policy makers define what is to be measured.
• Lack of discipline to commit to measuring anything or the same thing long enough to assess effectiveness of the measure, quality of the insights, and actionability of the data.

During our call with the prospect above, we took a few minutes to workshop how we might help them figure out what to measure, how to measure it, then how to report it.

I usually ask two questions when workshopping data and measurement strategies.

1. If you were giving a 5-minute speech before the Rotary Club today, explain how you define success for your organization.
2. Now that we’ve talked about some measurement strategies, look ahead to a year from now, what’s the headline on the press release or outcomes report?

Answer to number one is possible for most, albeit not the most powerful story that could be told. Answer to number two is almost never possible to answer; at least not until we’re done with the workshop.

Let’s walk through this step by step, first taking note of the four types of measures, identifying some of those categorical measures, then walking through an organization’s mission statement to identify our final (and most impactful) measures.

4 types of measures

1. Business measures. These are mostly financial. What are the organization’s expenses and revenues (grants/donations)? If you get reimbursed for care, what are the claims and billing data? Money in, money out, what’s left over
2. Process measures. These are mostly counts of things and tracking of activities. How many people did you treat or serve, what were their demographics, and did those people complete care?
3. Clinical measures. These are mostly recording of individual diagnosis’, tracking of symptoms, recording treatment/recovery plans.
4. Impact measures. These are the more ambiguous elements, such as the effect of care, and whether there was change in social and functional aspects of a person’s life.

Combined, these measures should allow an organization to monitor its operational health and performance and make data-informed adjustments for improvement.

These measures should also allow leaders in every function of the organization the ability to tell a powerful story and maybe even answer the question: “Does what we do work?”

Mission statement breakdown

I love mission statements. It’s a weird thing to love and I blame one person for that; we’ll leave him unnamed for now. But once upon a time, I and others on our team were tasked to come up with an eight-word mission statement for our non-profit organization. We were to use a popular Harvard Business Review article as our guide.

The wonderful thing about mission statements – especially short and powerful ones – is they represent a strong reflection of what matters to that organization. If you can distill what you do – or what you are trying to do – into just eight words, then you know your business better than most.

Mission and vision statements establish an organization’s priorities and values. Stick to the confines of your mission and vision and you should do just fine. You should also be able to – whether intentionally drafted as such – identify key measures of success.

Let’s take the mission statement for our prospect and use it as an example for how to find what to measure.

We strive to guide men and women caught in cycles of homelessness and addiction into lives of purpose. We meet them where they’re at, walking with them towards recovery one step at a time. Our vision is life change for the homeless and hurting. Our mission is to help people restore their dignity, discover their destiny, and realize their dreams.

To be clear, the above statement includes a preamble and vision and mission statements. The mission statement above is 12 words – not bad. But, I would argue that the first sentence, what appears to be a principle statement or preamble is actually the mission statement. It’s 15 words but far more specific, thus measurable, and thus, thus actionable. But we are going to look at the entire 4-sentence statement.

As an aside, if I were advising this organization, we’d work on the vision statement to make it more aspirational and directional. A really good vision statement, while aspirational, usually includes restrictions. For example, the Stand Together Foundation’s vision statement is, “We envision an America full of strong and safe communities.” The parameters are all of America and seeing that vision become a reality is multi-generational. “Strong and safe communities” also sets some parameters as well, which likely guide their giving and support.

Sentence 1:?We strive to guide men and women caught in cycles of homelessness and addiction into lives of purpose.

“Guide men and women …” – This is what we are going to count. “Guide” gives a nod to the “what” the organization does. How did we guide people? What types of services were delivered that equate to guiding people? “men and women” are the number of people served. Who they are, their demographics, are simultaneously volumetric, process, and impact measures. For example, housing status. If a woman comes into the program unhoused, that is one person unhoused. A certain program leads this woman to transitional housing for some period of time. Then at some other time in the future, this woman is now owning a home. Unhoused to owning a home is an impact measure – both represented in a percentage of those served that reach that outcome and in economic terms, such as paid property taxes, increase in household income, etc.

“… caught in cycles of homelessness and addiction into lives of purpose.” – Homelessness, addiction, and lack of purpose are the conditions that bring people to the organization. Each of these elements can be defined and tracked (see homelessness above). A person comes into the organization and are diagnosed with substance use disorder, and they indicate deep hopelessness. We can pick a date after completing the program and follow-up: do they no longer have addiction, do they have stable housing, and do they report a sense of purpose. Addiction diagnosis and symptoms are both clinical and impact measures. And the notion of having a purpose is a strong longitudinal impact outcome.

Sentence 2:?We meet them where they’re at, walking with them towards recovery one step at a time.

“… walking them towards recovery …” – The term “recovery” is essentially an outcome of arresting addiction. Every organization needs to define recovery in their own way. For the sake of simplicity, the organization defines recovery as abstinence and an elimination of the negative consequences of addiction. That definition gives us a variety of measures: Did the person abstain this week? Were there any cravings? Were there any negative consequences (visits to the ED/hospital because of use, fights, loss of job, etc.)? And did the person’s recovery capital increase? It might also come down to tracking how a person identifies their state of well-being? When they walk in the door, they may not say “in recovery” but at some point forward they do.

Sentence 3:?Our vision is life change for the homeless and hurting.

“Our vision is life change …” – A lot of measures could fit under “life change,” such as stable housing, stable employment, increased income, decreased public dependence, increased life satisfaction, etc. Many of these descriptors of “life change” are already in your data (see demographics) … SO LONG AS … you regularly get updated demographic data.

Sentence 4:?Our mission is to help people restore their dignity, discover their destiny, and realize their dreams.

“… help people restore their dignity, discover their destiny, and realize their dreams.” – Dignity, destiny, and dreams are all subjective concepts that can be measured, either with direct questions (“today, do you feel like you are destined to do something specific in your life?) or more abstract questions (“today, I feel like the world is against me” (dignity). “Realize their dreams” is a lot tougher. Not many people fully realize the capital D dream. But there are ways to get at this by simply asking, “Can you describe your most ideal life?” If they cannot answer that question with some grounding in reality, but later can, you have successfully moved this person closer to realizing their dream.

Putting it all together

My recommendation is to consider a future presentation. The Rotary Club always comes to mind, because (1) I’m a Gen X’er and grew up with strong civic organizations in my communities, and (2) the Downtown Sioux Falls Rotary Club was the stage you wanted to be on to tell your story – that was the room with the people who could effect change.

Imagine being in that room. You have 15 minutes to tell this room of powerful and connected community leaders why your organization matters to this community. How do you tell that story?

You bring three things: (1) Your mission statement; (2) Data; and (3) Testimonials.

Every measure of your organization’s mission statement has data tied to it. Use the mission statement as a storytelling device. Data and testimonials bring the mission statement to life.

Your vision statement is your kicker. It’s sort of like the United Way thermometer that shows money raised toward a goal. Are you advancing toward your vision? Could that room make you get there faster?

Measuring what matters is hard. But every good organization has enough to work with so that core priorities and values can be defined, and data can be captured to represent the manifestation of those priorities and values. Establish discipline and maintain a commitment long enough, and you’ll no longer be a good, but a great organization.