01
The Mission Ratio
Mission-driven teams measure their success not by how much money they make, but by the outcomes they create in the world. It could be something as large as taking a giant company to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, or as small as matching people who need in-home medical care with available care providers. Success is measured by delivery on the mission.
For-profit companies use things like gross margin and EBITDA to measure operational efficiency. Their goal is to make the most money for the smallest expense. Because they work in dollars (or other units of currency), this ratio of expense to revenue is always expressed in numbers.
When making money is a secondary, or tertiary goal (or it’s not a goal at all), the calculus is less explicit, but the impetus is the same: maximize the valued outcome per unit of expense/effort. This is the mission ratio: For the resources we have, and the rate at which we are consuming them, how much impact can we generate.
For-profit companies use things like gross margin and EBITDA to measure operational efficiency. Their goal is to make the most money for the smallest expense. Because they work in dollars (or other units of currency), this ratio of expense to revenue is always expressed in numbers.
When making money is a secondary, or tertiary goal (or it’s not a goal at all), the calculus is less explicit, but the impetus is the same: maximize the valued outcome per unit of expense/effort. This is the mission ratio: For the resources we have, and the rate at which we are consuming them, how much impact can we generate.
02
Magnify Impact
- We help organizations magnify their impact through a deep focus on improving the mission ratio. For some, this may sound like a call to streamline operations: eliminate non-essential roles, rent cheaper real estate, keep the lights off and the heat turned low. But this is not the path to improving the mission ratio. A starved athlete can’t run.
- We improve the mission ratio by focusing our efforts:
- Understand the specific outcomes we want to achieve in the world
- Identify a quantifiable means to measure those outcomes
- Focus our activities on things that we believe will drive those outcomes
Many non-profits refer to this pattern as their Theory of Change. There’s nothing new here. Good organizations function this way all the time.
But it's easy to get lost in the woods.
But it's easy to get lost in the woods.
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