At the start of a new year, you may come in with a resolution, a change, or a new habit you’re putting in place (I’m trying a version of a “phone fast,” which I’ll share more about in a later piece). Or perhaps you’re doing some vision casting, strategic planning, or other goal setting work (if you’d like support in this work, contact us). What, if anything, are you trying out for the new year?
This can also be a good time to map out your year ahead in other ways beyond goal setting. There are things you know about your year – based on previous history or your currently scheduled activities. Setting aside anything unexpected, you can predict and map out a pretty significant aspect of your year ahead. In particular, you can map out your ripple effect.
Last year I wrote about being on an interactive Zoom call with 750 other facilitators. We calculated at the beginning of the call that collectively we would be working with over 500,000 people in the next year, so if we all left with one takeaway and implemented it, that one call could have an impact on more than half a million people. (A brilliant way to create engagement and reframe a large group call; one I’ve offered and implemented a number of times since.)
While your measures may be different, and may take more than one form, each of us could be well served by starting each year by mapping out the impact we can reasonably expect to have in the next twelve months. Yes, Big Hairy Audacious Goals are great and valuable, as are Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Time-bound Goals. But being inspired by what could be sometimes comes at the cost of being inspired by what you are already doing. Mapping your ripple effect allows you to be inspired by who you already are and the work you’re already doing.
(Before we go any further – Yes, of course, these things could happen at any point, but the start of a new year, as arbitrary as it may seem, comes after a wider collective wrap-up and break, so the new year is a helpful starting point for many people.)
A key component of thinking about your ripple effect is the “So that…” of your work. We will return to this idea in a future piece, but for now, the basic idea is to think about what your work enables, either for yourself or, more likely, for other people – often clients, customers, and yes, even strangers who you will never know. Use it in a sentence connected to a piece of your workflow. “I spend time each day [writing code, processing orders, analyzing risk factors…] so that… [it’s easier for another team to do their jobs, customers receive their orders on time, I’m saving the company $600,000, etc.].” (Sometimes this is considered the “So what?” of your work – I find that “So that…” comes across as less judgmental, and creates more of a “yes, and…” mentality.)
Then take it one step further, for the next ripple out. What is the “So that…” of those outcomes? If it’s easier for another team to do their jobs, or customers receive their orders on time, or you’re saving the company $600,000, what does that allow? Perhaps you’re helping others be more successful in their days, or bringing them happiness, or allowing your company to explore new avenues and be more creative? One note: the more specific you can be on the numbers, the more impactful it can feel for you. If the work you’re doing makes it easier for 6 others to do their jobs, awesome; if this is the case, you probably know them and can feel the impact it’s having. If the work you’re doing makes it easier for 227 people to do their jobs, you might not be able to pick many of those people out of a crowd, but that number means you’re making a pretty large ripple, which then probably grows exponentially from there.
So how might you map out our ripple effect this week?
This Week’s Tips:
- Take some time to follow the “So that…” of the various components of your work to map out your ripple effect. Why do you do each aspect of your work? What does each one allow, for you and for others – either people you know or people you don’t? Then try to extrapolate a ripple or two beyond that: what impact does that have? Try not to get too imaginative here – the point is to see the impact of the work you are doing, not to get too into the butterfly effect of it all. Write down any metrics you can, whether that’s numbers of people, money, customer satisfaction survey results… And if you can pull together some actual anecdotal comments people have made because of the work you’ve done, keep those also. As you map this out, you may find that you want to create a visual to post around your desk, or as a desktop background on your computer, or perhaps even to share with others.
- Consider offering this as an exercise within your team. You could map out your own ripple effect first and share it with your team, or go through it together as an experiential exercise. You could consider your team’s ripple effect as one exercise, and then invite people to map out their personal ripple effect to share at the next meeting. If your team would be served by having an outside facilitator run this, contact us!
Try these out this week, and let us know how it goes – we’d love to hear from you.
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Building Bridges Leadership 