Valuing Impact-ful technology
Good infrastructure, like meaningful impact, is almost invisible. You don't notice a server that doesn't go down, and that's the point.
Many businesses try to create impact, but few can actually measure it. It’s easy to measure how many clicks someone makes on a website, or how people use solar power, it’s less easy to measure how you have impacted a community or an ecosystem.
At the end of last year I did some work for ‘Valuing Impact’, a global consultancy that helps organisations measure, understand, and act on their impact.
I was introduced to the project through my friends at ‘Downstairs Design’ who were looking for someone to help with the more ‘techy’ stuff.
A mission driven company looking for ‘product’ related help - enter StudioRhys 🎉
Valuing impact
Valuing Impact is ‘simply’ trying to help organisations measure their impact, not only as a compliance exercise for the various regulations, but as a strategic tool.
I see two value propositions in their work
- As I’ve written about before, ‘doing sustainability’ for the sake of sustainability just isn’t going to work. People might care an awful lot about the environment and have strong values, but it’s rarely the top of their list and will take a back seat to revenue or convenience. Valuing Impact endeavours to make ‘valuing impact’ strategic - not only measuring, but utilising sustainable practices for investment, long term economic success, etc.
- Secondly, and maybe more importantly, you have to know a rule to break a rule, a blunder isn’t a revolution. If you don’t understand your starting point, if you can’t measure how you’re doing, it’s more than likely you’ll act in the wrong direction. Anyone who says they’re doing something impactful but can’t show you how - quantitatively - is running on good intentions.
Valuing Impact offers impact accounting, strategy, and innovation services - each designed to give decision-makers something they can trust. The credibility of their advice is their product. Their focus is on being good, clear, and reliable communicators of impact.
Which is why, I was very glad to see, when it came to rebuilding their digital presence, they weren't looking to just do it themselves or a quick fix.
Valuing focus
Through Maxime, who I used to work with at Earth Action (he’s great) I was introduced to, Samuel (CEO of Valuing Impact). He got in touch about upgrading their website. They wanted to move off their existing ‘all-in-one’ tool, establish an updated web presence, and migrate everything they’d done on their previous site to a new set-up.
I want to be clear, they could have done all of that themselves. With the various AI assistants it would have taken them a good chunk of time, they probably would have made some mistakes along the way, and maybe it wouldn’t be as good as it could be … but they could have done it.
Of course, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.
So instead, they were looking for folks who knew what they were doing. I’d done almost everything they were asking for before for various other companies - for something like what they wanted I’m cheaper than a dev house or IT agency, and perhaps most importantly I’d worked with Downstairs Design before.
Downstairs Design are, as the name implies, designers, who led the project. They worked through a big re-brand and messaging and design re-do and worked with me to align the technology with their design (crucially, not the other way around).
The result is a site that looks like the organisation it represents - considered, credible, and clear: https://valuing-impact.com.
Valuing technology
Similar to when you do work to have an impact, the best outcome of all that technical work is that nobody thinks about it again.
Good infrastructure, like having a meaningful impact, is almost invisible. You don't notice a server that doesn’t go down. You don't notice email automation that fires on cue. The return on investment from this kind of work is made up of things that don't happen - the outage that isn't, the migration that doesn't corrupt, the form that captures leads without anyone needing to check.
This is hard to sell, and harder to buy. It means confidence in something that’s success looks like nothing changing.
Valuing Impact seems to have understood that. Their digital presence is a long-term investment. The site will keep working. The email system will keep running. Six months from now, I hope, nobody will be thinking about it.
Valuing network
To be quite honest it was a nice, relatively simple project that I learnt from. The biggest learning being that Sam, the CEO, is working on a lot of interesting things.
I set up and handed over their hosting, wordpress, mailing system, automations, and analytics a month or so ago.
It’s not the kind of work I enjoy necessarily, it’s not challenging, but when an organisation with their kind of mission is looking for help, I’m in. And when Downstairs Design is involved, I know it’s going to look good.
All I can hope for now is if Downstairs or Valuing Impact needs ‘product’/’tech’ help again, they’ll call.
