Lean Impact

How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good

Ann Mei Chang

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119506645
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
• Index: Business

Despite enormous investments of time and money, are we making a dent on the social and environmental challenges of our time? What if we could exponentially increase our impact?

Around the world, a new generation is looking beyond greater profits, for meaningful purpose. But, unlike business, few social interventions have achieved significant impact at scale. Inspired by the modern innovation practices, popularized by bestseller The Lean Startup, that have fueled technology breakthroughs touching every aspect of our lives, Lean Impact turns our attention to a new goal - radically greater social good.

Social change is far more complicated than building a new app. It requires more listening, more care, and more stakeholders. To make a lasting difference, solutions must be embraced by beneficiaries, address root causes, and include an engine that can accelerate growth to reach the scale of the need. Lean Impact offers bold ideas to reach audacious goals through customer insight, rapid experimentation and iteration, and a relentless pursuit of impact.

Ann Mei Chang brings a unique perspective from across sectors, from her years as a tech executive in Silicon Valley to her most recent experience as the Chief Innovation Officer at USAID. She vividly illustrates the book with real stories from interviews with over 200 organizations across the US and around the world.

Whether you are a nonprofit, social enterprise, triple bottom line company, foundation, government agency, philanthropist, impact investor, or simply donate your time and money, Lean Impact is an essential guide to maximizing social impact and scale.

Part I
Inspire

Chapter One
Innovation Is the Path, Impact Is the Destination

“Innovation” may be the most overused buzzword in the world today. As the pace of change continues to accelerate and our challenges grow ever more complex, we know we need to do something different just to keep up, let alone get ahead. Finding better ways to tackle the most pressing problems facing people and the planet is no exception. Over the past few years, the notion of innovation for social good has caught on like wildfire, with the term popping up in mission statements, messaging, job descriptions, and initiatives. This quest for social innovation has led to a proliferation of contests, hackathons, and pilots that may make a big splash, but has yielded limited tangible results.

So we should start by asking, What is innovation?

One unfortunate consequence of the hype has been that, in common parlance, innovation has often become conflated with invention. While invention is the spark of a new idea, innovation is the process of deploying that initial breakthrough to a constructive use. Thomas Edison’s famous quote, “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration,” puts this in perspective. In other words, innovation is the long, hard slog that is required to take a promising invention (the 1%) and transform it into, in our case, meaningful social impact. Social innovation involves iterative testing and improvement, refining business models, influencing partners and policy, fine‐tuning logistics, and many other practicalities. Not as sexy as a big idea, but ultimately more important.

My colleague Peter Singer, CEO of Grand Challenges Canada, sums this up nicely when he observes, “Innovation is the path, impact is the destination.” This reminds us to stay focused on the ultimate change we seek to make in the world – whether it’s to alleviate suffering, end an injustice, or protect the environment. Innovation should be in service to that goal.

DELIVERING RESULTS

When a friend or charity asks you to donate to a cause, what is the pitch you typically hear? Perhaps a story about children who are suffering and need your help, or a terrible injustice that has to be set right? The organization is committed to addressing this devastating issue, so you dig deep into your pockets and give. The world praises both you and the charity for doing good. But, this is only the first step.

We should rightfully celebrate the commitment of mission‐driven nonprofits, the generosity of philanthropists, and the sacrifices of dedicated staff and volunteers. And, we should applaud the social enterprises, impact investors, and triple bottom line companies who meld profit with purpose. But, we can’t stop there. Results matter. We have a responsibility to deliver the most we possibly can, both for those who need our assistance and for those who entrust us with their time or money. True impact comes from engaging with both our hearts and our heads.

Lean Impact takes an uncompromising attitude towards maximizing social good, drawing inspiration from The Lean Startup and other modern innovation practices. At its core are the basic tenets of the scientific method – hypothesis‐driven experiments that reduce risk and increase the pace of learning. By applying these techniques to validate perceived customer value, an engine for growth, and the ensuing societal benefit of our interventions, we can achieve greater impact at greater scale.

Despite its scientific basis, Lean Impact is not rocket science. It simply accepts that no solution is likely to be designed perfectly at the outset, particularly considering the innate uncertainty of working on complex problems in dynamic environments. Thus, rather than crafting an intricate plan in advance, a more adaptive and learning‐oriented approach can achieve better results. By recognizing when the best path forward remains unclear, we can avoid deploying solutions that aren’t wanted, don’t work, or can’t scale.

Even Silicon Valley doesn’t always get this right. Prior to joining Google, I was the VP of engineering at an exciting, venture‐backed startup. After years building an elaborate, beautifully polished online experience, we launched with great fanfare. Alas, it wasn’t quite the instant hit we’d hoped. While a number of passionate users loved the product and some features showed real promise, major gaps in both the product design and the business model were quickly exposed. Unfortunately, we had spent almost all our capital to get to this point and were running out of cash. Soon I was laid off, along with half my team and most of the other executives. An interesting coda to this woeful tale is that Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, was among the engineers at the company. The experience proved to be formative for both of us.

The lessons from that failed startup are equally applicable to mission‐driven work. In a similar way, we have a tendency to devise elaborate plans and expect them to succeed. The all‐too‐common nature of project‐based funding encourages, and in some cases requires, a model of advanced planning within defined constraints. To apply for grants, organizations are typically expected to articulate compelling answers in detailed proposals that imply more confidence than is warranted. Of course, too often, that plan doesn’t play out exactly as anticipated, sometimes leading to suboptimal results, outright failure, or, even worse, damaging unintended consequences. Furthermore, these programs are usually confined to a predetermined timeframe and budget, rather than being designed to persist and expand over time. Even when they do succeed within their original parameters, they rarely lead to transformative impact.

Consider two possible ways to design a fictional car, as shown in Figure 1.1. The traditional plan–execute approach involves lengthy planning by engineers, product designers, industrial designers, and marketers, followed by an expensive manufacturing and production process. By the time the car ships years later, environmental standards may have changed or we may discover too late that customers find an open‐air car too impractical. This is essentially what happened at my startup.

Figure 1.1 The plan–execute versus the test–iterate approach to design.

Instead, a test–iterate approach starts with the simplest possible prototype to see how users respond under real‐world conditions. We could discover early that a three‐wheeled design doesn’t handle turns well or that environmentally sensitive customers won’t buy a gas‐guzzler, and iterate to take a different tack. Addressing other lessons, such as the need for protection from the elements, might only require an enhancement rather than an entirely new direction. Once we confirm we’re on the right track, we can prudently take the next step and make a bigger investment to build a more sophisticated version. By identifying any mismatches early, we avoid wasting time and money and gain a higher confidence that the final product will be well received.

It is important to clarify that “lean” does not mean cheap. Rather, think of “lean” as cutting out the fat, or waste. Providing a tool is a waste if people don’t use it for the intended purpose. Implementing a 10‐part intervention is a waste when a 5‐part version yields similar benefits. Deploying a one‐off program for a thousand people is a waste if there could be a way to reach millions. The aim of Lean Impact is to find the most efficient path to deliver the greatest social benefit at the largest possible scale.

Okay, maybe that sounds good in the abstract, but what would this look like in reality?

LEARNING WHILE LEARNING

Testing and iterating to improve social outcomes may look somewhat different from optimizing an online business, but it is based on the same underlying principles. Let’s take a look at an education nonprofit, and how it made its transition to Lean Impact.

In the year 2000, hundreds of parents and community members in the San Francisco Bay Area came together in search of a better approach to high school education. They sought a replicable model to provide high‐quality education to every child, regardless of background. Based on these discussions, Summit Public Schools opened its first school, Summit Preparatory Charter High School, in 2003. Founder and CEO Diane Tavenner had been a public school teacher herself and was passionate about preparing all students for future success. She set her sights high, with a goal of seeing 100% of her students graduate from college.

Eight years later, as Summit Prep’s first cohort completed college, the results were impressive and significantly better than the national average, but fell short of Diane’s goal. Many students needed more intensive academic preparation, and success in college often hinged on skills, such as persevering in the face of obstacles, that Summit’s high‐support environment didn’t foster.

While she felt pressure to keep scaling based on this initial success, Diane saw the results as an opportunity to rethink Summit’s educational model. But waiting for years to see the results of each high school cohort would be way too slow. She realized that she had to change the culture, tools, and processes to enable a faster iteration cycle if she was going to make the kind of shift she needed. So, rather than deciding on a particular set of interventions up front, she focused on embedding a culture and process for constant feedback and improvement. Diane and her team reviewed learning best practices and reflected on the skills, knowledge, and habits that lead to a fulfilling life. They also read The Lean Startup.

Over the course of 57 week‐long variations with 400 students for two hours a day, Summit iterated on the duration, frequency, sequence, and structure of class elements, balancing a mix of teacher‐led lessons, Khan Academy online content and exercises, one‐on‐one tutoring, and small‐group interactive projects. Each week, the team collected learning assessments, student satisfaction surveys, and reports from focus groups. These were combined with contextual data on how students and teachers spent their time, the resources they used, and the order...