An Impact Story is simple, emotional, human, relevant, enables to audience to self-identify, results in repetition, behavior change, and lasts long past the original telling
Impact Stories are important because they add a human and emotional factor which has greater impact than simply the raw data.
Impact stories should not be written at the end of a program; they should be created at each stage of the value-creation process.
What constitutes an Impact Story?
An Impact Story is difficult to define however, we all know one when we see and hear one. Several criteria can be used to craft an effective Impact Story, including:
Simplicity - the story is simple and can be easily. simply and quickly understood.
Emotion - the story evokes emotion.
Human factor - the story puts a human face on quantitative data.
Relevance - the story is relevant to the audience being addressed, and connects with what the audience already knows.
Self-identification - the story enables the audience to identify and have empathy with the subjects of the story.
Repetition - the story can be repeated and is repeated. People talk, question, and argue about the story.
Behavior change - the story is about a change in behavior and can cause a change in behavior.
Shelf life - the story lasts long after the story is first told
Why are Impact Stories important?
Quantitative data provides information but it is not the complete picture. A story puts a human face on data. There is awareness of the hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world due to the COVID pandemic; however, it is the interviews with and stories around individual family members that really bring the impact of these figures home.
There are several reasons to uncover and create Impact Stories:
Stories add to the arguments that the data is being used to show the impact of policies and programs.
The emotional impact of stories show progress to senior managers in a way that raw data does not.
The very human side of stories bolsters the arguments for initial funding and support for additional funding in a way that donors and funding agencies can relate to, especially when they can identify closely with the subjects of the stories.
Stories help highlight the value of CoPs as key contributors to organizational goals at a visceral level.
Stories should be a key part of reports to stakeholders, senior managers, and members. For detailed information about reporting results, see the article Creating Reports about CoPs.
How do you create Impact Stories?
We all know the value of stories in supporting and reinforcing data points that show the impact of development initiatives. However, we tend to wait until the end of the development cycle to create the stories that best support our case. However, Wenger-Trayner in “Learning to Make a Difference: Value Creation in Social Learning Spaces” argue that value can be created through the activities of communities of practice throughout the whole set of community activities, which they label “cycles of value creation” and that their value should be actively sought out and documented, that is, stories should be created at each cycle.
Cycles of Value Creation
Wenger-Trayner provide a framework of eight cycles where value creation occurs within each cycle. “Each cycle involves a progression through moments of engagement, including activities, negotiation, recognition and adjustments.”
Cycle 1: Immediate Value – what the experience is like, (for example, connecting with others who care about what you care about)
Cycle 2: Potential Value – what comes out of it, (for example, getting answers to questions, and advice)
Cycle 3: Applied Value – what you are learning in the doing, (for example, putting a new idea into practice)
Cycle 4: Realized Value – the difference it makes, for example, gaining reputation recognition from peers and achieving professional advancement)
Cycle 5: Enabling Value – what makes it all possible (for example, Increased familiarity with recurring processes and better documentation speeds up processes and facilitates learning)
Cycle 6: Strategic Value – the quality of engagement with strategic stakeholders, (for example, increasing awareness of different stakeholders and their influence and ability to negotiate criteria of success amongst different stakeholders)
Cycle 7: Orienting Value – locating yourself in a broader landscape, (for example, increased ability to explore and leverage personal connections external to the community and learning space)
Cycle 8: Transformative Value – when the difference you make has broader effects, (for example, achieving broader transformations, innovations, or changing mindsets that provoke radical rethinking of different participants regarding goals and methods)
A story touches, generally chronologically through several, not necessarily all the cycles of value creation:
1. It might start with a community or network activity-- such as a meeting, an event or a project, and how productive it was (cycle 1).
2. The story then might highlight a resource, such as an answer to a question, a suggestion, a document, a new process or procedure, a new framework, or a new contact or relationship (cycle 2).
3. The story might then explain how the resource was applied and with what effect or impact (cycle 3).
4. The effect on the practice might then be linked to an outcome, such as a measure of performance in the organization or for a person (cycle 4).
5. Finally, it might be that “current measures of performance are found inadequate to fully account for the new development so that in some cases; a story might even involve a reflection on the definition of success and new considerations to frame the expectations of value creation (cycle 5)” (Wenger and Trayner).
Creating these stories often needs some kind of structure to highlight the connections between the cycles of value creation. Wenger suggests the following questions with which to frame the conversations to produce the story:
What meaningful activities did you participate in?
What specific insights did you gain? What access to useful information or material?
How did this influence your practice? What did it enable that would not have happened otherwise?
What difference did it make to your performance?
How did this contribute to your personal/professional development?
How did this contribute to the goal of the organization? Qualitatively/quantitatively?
Has this changed your or some other stakeholder’s understanding of what matters?
Key Takeaways on Impact Stories
There are several points to bear in mind from the Wenger framework and from looking at story-creation through that lens.
Flows and loops – A value-creation story touches, and flows generally chronologically through several, not necessarily all the cycles of value creation. One value can lead to another and can loop back, just as better practice leads to greater good, which leads to more lessons learned, which leads to better practice in a feedback loop. The loops can be long loops or short loops. Stories retrace the way that communities of practice make a difference. The flow is the basis of your theory of change.
Knowledge is in the doing – Knowledge flows into learning which flows into doing. “There is no learning without doing.” (Wenger) It is only through the doing (implementing the practice) that true learning takes place and feeds back into creating better practice. Especially for communities of practice, “true learning begins and ends in practice.” (Wenger)
Values are different for different actors – Value for members (such as being with each other, producing new ideas, tools, documents, and processes and procedures) can be different from the value sought by the organization or by key, especially funding stakeholders. However, it is still valid. Communities of practice are most successful where the value of all the actors is most fully realized.
Relationships with stakeholders are key – Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but value is definitely in the eye of the stakeholder. Key stakeholders fund projects and only continue to fund projects if they get the value that they are looking for, be it increase in literacy levels, reduction in mortality, reduction in wealth disparities, and so on. According to Wenger, the most successful communities of practice are those that have the closest relationship with their stakeholders.
Seek contribution not attribution – With so many factors involved in any development outcome, it is very difficult to draw a straight line between an outcome and a specific activity in a community of practice, that is, to give full attribution to that activity. However, you can look back at an activity, for example, a meeting at a conference where new approaches were discussed that would never have been adopted if that community meeting had never happened. That is the contribution of the community to the outcome, to the impact.
Aspirational stories are also important – Real stories chronicling real events are important, but aspirational stories are important too, for example, “imagine what would happen if we looked at this issue in a completely different way ignoring all financial constraints?”
Trust – Expert practitioners increasingly operate in environments of uncertainty” where trust in themselves and trust in each other becomes increasingly important. The greater the trust, the greater the impact. A community of practice must operate in a climate of trust where it is accepted that not all the answers are known, where “mistakes” or learnings can be shared without negative consequence so that the practice can be advanced.
Note: It is usually not a question of quantitative data versus qualitative data. Both are needed. Also, with enough qualitative data, quantitative data can be extracted, for example, in the form of multiple instances of impact or trends over time.
Blog » Crafting Impact Stories
Crafting Impact Stories
Summary:
An Impact Story is simple, emotional, human, relevant, enables to audience to self-identify, results in repetition, behavior change, and lasts long past the original telling
Impact Stories are important because they add a human and emotional factor which has greater impact than simply the raw data.
Impact stories should not be written at the end of a program; they should be created at each stage of the value-creation process.
What constitutes an Impact Story?
An Impact Story is difficult to define however, we all know one when we see and hear one. Several criteria can be used to craft an effective Impact Story, including:
Why are Impact Stories important?
Quantitative data provides information but it is not the complete picture. A story puts a human face on data. There is awareness of the hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world due to the COVID pandemic; however, it is the interviews with and stories around individual family members that really bring the impact of these figures home.
There are several reasons to uncover and create Impact Stories:
How do you create Impact Stories?
We all know the value of stories in supporting and reinforcing data points that show the impact of development initiatives. However, we tend to wait until the end of the development cycle to create the stories that best support our case. However, Wenger-Trayner in “Learning to Make a Difference: Value Creation in Social Learning Spaces” argue that value can be created through the activities of communities of practice throughout the whole set of community activities, which they label “cycles of value creation” and that their value should be actively sought out and documented, that is, stories should be created at each cycle.
Cycles of Value Creation
Wenger-Trayner provide a framework of eight cycles where value creation occurs within each cycle. “Each cycle involves a progression through moments of engagement, including activities, negotiation, recognition and adjustments.”
A story touches, generally chronologically through several, not necessarily all the cycles of value creation:
1. It might start with a community or network activity-- such as a meeting, an event or a project, and how productive it was (cycle 1).
2. The story then might highlight a resource, such as an answer to a question, a suggestion, a document, a new process or procedure, a new framework, or a new contact or relationship (cycle 2).
3. The story might then explain how the resource was applied and with what effect or impact (cycle 3).
4. The effect on the practice might then be linked to an outcome, such as a measure of performance in the organization or for a person (cycle 4).
5. Finally, it might be that “current measures of performance are found inadequate to fully account for the new development so that in some cases; a story might even involve a reflection on the definition of success and new considerations to frame the expectations of value creation (cycle 5)” (Wenger and Trayner).
Creating these stories often needs some kind of structure to highlight the connections between the cycles of value creation. Wenger suggests the following questions with which to frame the conversations to produce the story:
What meaningful activities did you participate in?
What specific insights did you gain? What access to useful information or material?
How did this influence your practice? What did it enable that would not have happened otherwise?
What difference did it make to your performance?
How did this contribute to your personal/professional development?
How did this contribute to the goal of the organization? Qualitatively/quantitatively?
Has this changed your or some other stakeholder’s understanding of what matters?
Key Takeaways on Impact Stories
There are several points to bear in mind from the Wenger framework and from looking at story-creation through that lens.
Flows and loops – A value-creation story touches, and flows generally chronologically through several, not necessarily all the cycles of value creation. One value can lead to another and can loop back, just as better practice leads to greater good, which leads to more lessons learned, which leads to better practice in a feedback loop. The loops can be long loops or short loops. Stories retrace the way that communities of practice make a difference. The flow is the basis of your theory of change.
Knowledge is in the doing – Knowledge flows into learning which flows into doing. “There is no learning without doing.” (Wenger) It is only through the doing (implementing the practice) that true learning takes place and feeds back into creating better practice. Especially for communities of practice, “true learning begins and ends in practice.” (Wenger)
Values are different for different actors – Value for members (such as being with each other, producing new ideas, tools, documents, and processes and procedures) can be different from the value sought by the organization or by key, especially funding stakeholders. However, it is still valid. Communities of practice are most successful where the value of all the actors is most fully realized.
Relationships with stakeholders are key – Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but value is definitely in the eye of the stakeholder. Key stakeholders fund projects and only continue to fund projects if they get the value that they are looking for, be it increase in literacy levels, reduction in mortality, reduction in wealth disparities, and so on. According to Wenger, the most successful communities of practice are those that have the closest relationship with their stakeholders.
Seek contribution not attribution – With so many factors involved in any development outcome, it is very difficult to draw a straight line between an outcome and a specific activity in a community of practice, that is, to give full attribution to that activity. However, you can look back at an activity, for example, a meeting at a conference where new approaches were discussed that would never have been adopted if that community meeting had never happened. That is the contribution of the community to the outcome, to the impact.
Aspirational stories are also important – Real stories chronicling real events are important, but aspirational stories are important too, for example, “imagine what would happen if we looked at this issue in a completely different way ignoring all financial constraints?”
Trust – Expert practitioners increasingly operate in environments of uncertainty” where trust in themselves and trust in each other becomes increasingly important. The greater the trust, the greater the impact. A community of practice must operate in a climate of trust where it is accepted that not all the answers are known, where “mistakes” or learnings can be shared without negative consequence so that the practice can be advanced.
Note: It is usually not a question of quantitative data versus qualitative data. Both are needed. Also, with enough qualitative data, quantitative data can be extracted, for example, in the form of multiple instances of impact or trends over time.
This article is part of the WBG Communities of Practice Toolkit licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The toolkit features practical resources to help you develop impactful Communities of Practice. 📖 Learn more about the Toolkit. ▶ Access the Toolkit.