Chang’s three core guiding principles in the book are Think Big, Start Small, and Relentlessly Seek Impact – which is today’s focus.

Many nonprofit organizations are born because the founders had a new solution to a problem that others had not thought of.  While that inspiration is great, it can create “blinders” if the solution is not really as wonderful as the founders first believed.  They can be so “in love” with their solution that they do not realize it is not actually working all that well.

This is why Chang encourages us to “Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution.”  That is, of course, falling in love with what the world looks like when the problem is solved.  This is, for sure, our true inspiration and we need to keep our focus there.

“Falling in Love with the Problem” means that we run continuous experiments with Minimal Viable Products to learn how to improve the solution – as was discussed in the last blog.

But it also means “getting to the root cause, wherever that leads.” (p. 51)  One way she suggests getting to the root cause is using the 5 Whys technique where you iteratively ask “why” over and again to get to the cause.

Another aspect of “loving the problem” is continually testing your Theory of Change.  Are the string of outputs, outcomes, and impacts truly what you want?

Finally, Chang encourages us to not be satisfied with making an impact until we have truly figured out how to scale our solution to meet the complete need that exists.

She tells a compelling story of the nonprofit VisionSpring which seeks to provide eyeglasses worldwide to those who cannot afford them.  While they had initial successes in reaching many people with their approach, they realized it would not scale to the millions who need the glasses.  They have pivoted to new approaches with continued success but are still not satisfied and so they continue to pursue new ideas.  They truly love the idea of a world in which everyone who needs glasses has them.

This three blog series focusing on the Lean Impact themes of Think Big, Start Small, and Relentlessly Seek Impact just scratch the surface of the value of the book.  Check it out today and learn how you can make even more of a Mission Impact.

Chang’s three core guiding principles in the book are Think Big, Start Small, and Relentlessly Seek Impact.  Today we are focusing on Start Small.

Once you Think Big about the difference you want to make, then you should start brainstorming ideas to carry out your Think Big dreams.  But rather than picking one idea and fully implementing it, you should Start Small first.

Lean Impact builds on ideas from the book, The Lean Startup, and applies its five basic building blocks to mission-driven organizations.

Once you believe you have a new idea of any kind that is worth implementing in your organization, then go through these steps:

1.  Identify Assumptions.  What must go right for your idea to work and what could possibly go wrong?

2.  Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – a small version of the idea.  Run at least one experiment as quickly and inexpensively as possible to test the most important assumptions.

3.  Validate Your Learning.  Gather data from the experiments to confirm what works and what does not.

4.  Build, Measure, Learn.  Keep iterating with your experiments and data collection as you learn.

5.  Pivot or Persevere.  Based on your data, either change your idea or continue down your current path.

One of the important keys with the process is Starting Small with your MVP.  Chang says “Think of an MVP as the cheapest and quickest prototype or proxy that can enable learning.” (p. 69).  You want to test your idea before investing a lot of time and money in implementation.

Learning, and especially learning from failure, is a major theme of Lean Impact.  And you want to learn as quickly and inexpensively as you can.  Running multiple experiments in succession advances the learning process.

In the final blog in this series next time we will look at the theme of Relentlessly Seek Impact.  Stay tuned!

Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good

Here are the three core guiding principles of the book:

*Think Big.  “Be audacious in the difference you aspire to make, basing your goals on the size of the real need in the world rather than what seems incrementally achievable.” (p. 23)

*Start Small.  Create small experiments to test your ideas so you can learn and adapt quickly to changes that need to be made.

*Relentlessly Seek Impact.  Don’t fall in love with your first idea on how to address a problem; it needs to be tested and perhaps changed.  Fall in love with the problem, instead, so you can be open to the best solution possible.

In discussing the principle of Thinking Big, Chang points out the importance of having proper metrics for aspirations: “. . . in the absence of a clear time frame or measure of success, how do we know if we’re making enough progress?” (p. 28).  This is certainly consistent with the book Leap of Reason and another calls for the importance of accurate outcomes measurement.

Other great Thinking Big quotes include:

“The birth of innovation begins with a clear, aspirational goal.  This is the top-down vision of the change you want to create . . .” (p. 29)

“. . . unclear and conservative goals are one of the root causes of inertia in the social sector.” (p. 29)

“. . . the purpose of aspirational goals is to stretch thinking and inspire.” (p. 34)

All of this resonates especially for me as it is so consistent with the Mission Impact book.  For more on aspirational goal setting, see this article.

Stay tuned for the next two blogs which will focus next on Starting Small and then on Relentlessly Seeking Impact.

You want to drive innovation throughout your nonprofit, but you don’t think you have the time or money to try new things.  You would benefit from learning about the “Lean Startup” method – which is the current model that businesses use to develop new products and entrepreneurs use to start new companies.

Here are some of the key ideas of Lean Startup that apply to nonprofits:

*Experiment.  You don’t have to have everything figured out at the beginning to try out a new program/service.  Use an experimental mindset.

*Develop a Minimal Viable Product/Program.  This is a scaled down version of the program that you want to run, but it is robust enough to make the impact that you intend.  If it works as an MVP then you can scale it for more impact.

*Listen and Learn.  Use the MVP with small selected groups of people and be open to feedback from them.  Measure your results.

*Pivot.  Be prepared to take the feedback and make continual changes until you get it right – until the program is making the impact you really want.

Example.  Imagine you have a brilliant idea for a new program to provide to those you serve in your community.  But you know it is going to cost a lot of money to scale up and hire the staff you need to serve everyone.

What to do?  Try a Lean Startup! Develop the program idea to a point that it is a Minimum Viable Program – it is robust enough to make an impact.

Then use some of your current staff to try it out on a smaller subset of people you serve. Treat it as an experiment you can learn from.  Make improvements as you listen and learn.

Once you have made changes based on the feedback and you are ready to scale it, you can take the results of what you learned to funders.

Use the Lean Startup approach to try new programs/services, see what works, and expand your Mission Impact.