I have written several obituaries in my life. It is not easy to describe what someone has done and what they have achieved in a few paragraphs. It also raises the question of success – have these people succeeded in what they have done? Have they attained their individual goals? Can we consider their life as being a success – or a failure?
This got me thinking about what do we mean by success – what yardstick can we use; and, indeed, are the conventional yardsticks the ‘right’ ones?
In introducing this, allow me a couple of anecdotes.
A relative of mine is just graduating and his father was saying that he hopes he gets a job in the City of London and makes lots of money. Why? Because he will then be regarded by his peers and others as a ‘success’.
Mmm…
About twenty years ago I met an elderly Irish priest in Central Java. He had moved there donkey’s years previously and worked in what we used to call ‘community development’. He worked with community groups supporting them to improve their and their children’s, livelihoods. He did this very successfully but with little recognition.
Mmm…
These contrasting examples raise several points about what we mean by success. ‘Success’ (or indeed failure) is dependent on the definition of ‘success’ – and more particularly the parameters used to define ‘success’ which are often dictated by the society and culture that one is a part of…
Defining and measuring success is as important for enterprises as it is for people. With enterprises, assessing success depends on the type of business as different types of enterprise use different measures for assessing their success or failure:
- With mainstream commercial business, recognising success is relatively easy. If a business is growing, if the turnover is increasing year on year, if the profit margins are widening; if shareholders’ dividends are increasing – then it is seen as a successful business.
- With a business that has a social conscience and a strong commitment to social responsibility, success can be assessed by the normal business measurements alongside how much money and resources are given for charitable or social aims.
- With a social or community enterprise, assessing success gets a bit more complicated. These are enterprises that use economic activity to benefit people and communities, provide value to society and are consciously not adversely affecting the environment. Achieving these things is their core business – not just an add-on to a mainstream business activity.
However, in reporting on success/failure, a social or community enterprise has specific challenges. One of the most immediate problems is to regularly report on how they affect people, communities, the environment, the local economy and the prevalent culture.
Social enterprises often consider that it would be good to do this – but why, as it is not a statutory requirement? And then how can it fit in with what they are already doing? How do they know it is a good use of resources to report regularly? And how do they understand and demonstrate whether or not they are successful in achieving their main purpose? In other words, how do social and community enterprise assess their success or failure?
In the Social Audit Network (SAN), we have been grappling with some of these key questions. Social accounting and audit is the framework used by SAN. In supporting social and community enterprises to keep track of successes and failures, we believe enterprises should be clear about what they do, how they do it and who is affected; collect qualitative and quantitative information; report on successes and failures; and get the report verified through a ‘social audit’ process.
The framework is flexible and should include evidencing data on outputs and outcomes, the different views and reported outcomes from all stakeholders, costs and reported benefits and targets. The subsequent reporting brings together quantitative and qualitative information – including an internal report on the organisation’s approach and ethos. It then discloses this independently audited information and invites the wider society to assess its success or failure.
Adopting the framework is not rocket science. We think that it is a sensible approach to showing others an organisation’s progress (how it proves itself) and this then relays back into how it can improve as an effective organisation. The verified report highlights and recommends new directions, changes, improvements; and all this can be fed into planning for the future.
By its nature, the recommended structure for a ‘social report’ encourages a range of data from different sources and goes beyond Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – and such like. Indeed, a note of caution should be attached to ‘targets’ and KPIs. We have found that targets are really useful if they are presented alongside other information. But if they become the ‘report’, the focus moves away from overall improvements in quality to changing the actions to fulfil the target.
In essence, regular social reporting is crucially important – particularly for organisations whose social and community benefits are its raison d’etre. Through this reporting, they can assess the degree of success (or failure) they are having in different areas of their work.
The success parameters applied by an organisation are multi-perspective and set by the organisation – but crucially these parameters are then tested by subjecting the social report to an independent audit
Subsequent systematic social reporting can then track the progress of an organisation, and in looking critically at that story people in the wider society, can assess themselves on the success or failure of that social enterprise.
So, going back to the wider anecdotes at the start of this blog… Success can be defined in different ways depending on values, the experience and the understanding of those trying to assess ‘success’.
Lastly, and perhaps as an addendum, we should not perhaps ignore the importance of failure. I leave you with a quote from Kenneth Boulding (1910 – 1993), a British economist, educator, peace activist, poet, religious mystic, devoted Quaker, systems scientist, and interdisciplinary philosopher who wrote:
“Nothing fails like success because we don’t learn from it. We only learn from failure.”
Mmm…
Postscript: In 2005 John Pearce wrote Learning from Failure which focussed on four social enterprises that had failed. He wrote about why and how they failed and the lessons to be learnt from their experience. It was published by Co-active which I believe no longer exists. If you would like a copy, write to alan.kay20@gmail.com.
Alan Kay – Social Audit Network (SAN)
Social Audit Network SAN 