The Depth of Our Impact

How do you measure success? How can you tell if things are going well? How do you know when your ideas are spreading? I haven’t figured out a metric, a number, a percentage that represents the idea of impact. A hard discussion companies have to have with themselves, how do you measure your impact? Let’s talk.In business often times you see the same metrics talked about repetitively, sales, margin, bottom line. This is how we measure our respective businesses and how we determine our “value” in markets. Yet when we look at decisions that don’t impact these statistics, but more so impact our people how do we measure it? When we make a change in our belief system or make a change to the culture in our office how do we know when we have made the right decision. I want to talk about a story Simon Sinek speaks on.Simon shares about the impact his message on his ideas. He talks about the metrics that typical businesses look at and says that the problem is the only one level. The depth can only show one layer to the story. We can see that books may be selling or that sales may be rising, but nothing more than that. How do we know when we have impacted our customers or our people? How do we know that one person read the book we wrote or the message we gave and told someone who then told someone who went and read the book which then allowed them to change their life? The impact off our decisions and our messages are often times beyond our understanding.We don’t realize the depth we have in our lives. The little discussions, words of encouragement, the ted talks, the books, all ranging from big to small, we never know until we hear the other side.The only way I know of knowing how you impact your team and the people in your lives is when you hear them from the people who have experienced it. The real life testimonials of change and stories of trials and tribulations, show you the impact you made. It all comes back to communication. The more we communicate with our teams, our customers, our following to understand and know what people think. It’s not about asking though. 90% of what we say isn’t from our mouth. When you ask something, ask because you care about the answer, show that you care and listen to the answer.We don’t realize our impact until we open the lines of communication in a candid and venerable way. Show that you actually care, because we often never know the true depth of our impact. On purpose, Matt