Measuring Social Impact In CSR

By now, the "95% failure rate" of GenAI financial returns (ref MIT's Project NANDA) is part of all consulting decks. The report blames the incorrect approach as the primary reason, rather than model maturity, etc. The key is to understand what #ROI metrics are used to determine the financial returns. I asked #Copilot on this, and here's what it told me: --- Here are three examples of ROI frameworks that enterprises are using to evaluate and scale GenAI adoption effectively: 1. Business Outcome-Based ROI Framework (Gartner) Summary: Gartner recommends aligning GenAI initiatives with measurable business outcomes such as cost reduction, revenue growth, or productivity gains. For example, a retail company using GenAI for automated product descriptions tracked a 22% increase in conversion rates and a 15% reduction in content creation costs. The framework emphasizes setting baseline metrics before deployment and tracking improvements post-implementation. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dER7cTeF 2. Time-to-Value and Efficiency Metrics (BCG) Summary: Boston Consulting Group suggests using time-to-value (TTV) and operational efficiency as key ROI indicators. In one case, a logistics firm used GenAI to optimize routing, reducing delivery times by 18% and fuel costs by 12%. BCG’s framework includes pre/post comparisons, automation impact, and employee productivity metrics to quantify GenAI’s contribution. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/da2zcSfW 3. Model Performance vs. Business KPIs (McKinsey) Summary: McKinsey advocates for linking GenAI model performance directly to business KPIs. For instance, a financial services firm used GenAI for customer support automation and tracked resolution time, customer satisfaction scores, and call deflection rates. The framework includes continuous monitoring of model accuracy, relevance, and business impact. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dA6zEGuS 🔑 Key Message Summary Effective GenAI ROI frameworks combine technical performance metrics with business impact indicators. Leading approaches include tracking cost savings, productivity gains, time-to-value, and alignment with strategic KPIs. Enterprises that define success upfront and monitor outcomes continuously are more likely to scale GenAI successfully. --- The direction taken seems to be well-intentioned. However, the measure of success is not quite what might lead to real solid business outcomes! Individual productivity improvements are just that! They don't scale across the organization unless "vertically scaled" top-to-down an entire process delivering bottomline improvements, which then need to be further "horizontally scaled" end-to-end across the entire value chain of the firm to deliver topline value! My forthcoming book on Cognitive Chasm provides actionable guidance to practitioners on this.

As they say, you manage what you measure. So, what DO you measure? This simple framework helps create some clarity and make choices on what to measure and why. Every person and every organization wants results. This makes measuring and managing results a key aspect of business. Unfortunately, we’ve often seen it done wrong: too many, too few, too confusing, irrelevant, unmeasurable, or otherwise ineffective ways of measuring used to manage results. This is not surprising given the rich lexicon available to talk about measures: KPIs, targets, results, outputs, outcomes, measures, objectives, indicators, and so on, and so forth. To create some clarity (also for myself…), I’ve summarized what I think are the four main types of result that you want to measure and manage, and have put them together in a simple framework showing their relationship. The four types are: Effort-Based Measures Measuring whether sufficient and the right resources have been used to achieve what is intended → Key question: have we correctly spent the hours and budget? Activity-Based Measures Measuring whether people have done the right things at the right time to achieve what is intended → Key question: have we done what it takes to get the job done? Output-Based Measures:  Measuring whether the right deliverables have been created to achieve what is intended → Key question: did we generate the output we wanted? Outcome-Based Measures:  Measuring whether the right and intended effect and impact have been achieved → Key question: did we achieve the effect that we wanted? All four can be used in parallel and none of them is better than the other. They simply serve different purposes and are therefore used for different reasons. Therefore, to effectively manage results, you probably need a balanced set containing all four types of measure. How do you manage and measure results? #kpi  #impact  #managementdevelopment [Featured in The Strategic Leadership Playbook. Originally published in June, 2023] More of this? For 63 more tools like this, plus step-by-step instructions for using them, get The Strategic Leadership Playbook. See link in the comment below.

🚀 Unlocking Public Value with Non-Traditional Data: New Use Cases, Emerging Trends 🤔From mobile phone records to social media posts, satellite imagery to grocery shopping data—Non-Traditional Data (NTD) is rapidly expanding how we understand and respond to today’s public challenges. 👉 In our latest curation, we spotlight how these often privately held, passively generated datasets are driving impact across domains like: 💳 Financial Inclusion 🏥 Public Health & Well-being 🏙️ Urban Mobility & Planning 📉 Economic & Labor Dynamics 🌐 Digital Behavior & Communication 🧭 Socioeconomic Inequality 📲 Data Systems & Governance 🔍 What’s new? We’re seeing more interdisciplinary research, hybrid use with traditional data, and stronger attention to ethics and impact. 👇A few standout examples: ➡️ In South Africa, grocery shopping data helped assess creditworthiness for 8M individuals without formal credit history. ➡️ In NYC, researchers used Google Street View + AI to challenge assumptions about urban health interventions. ➡️ In Chile, mobile phone data revealed stark inequalities in wildfire evacuation patterns. ➡️ A team in the US used Reddit and NLP to track how insomnia treatments are perceived over time. ➡️ Global wastewater surveillance via aircraft is proving a scalable early-warning system for pandemics. 📚 Check out the full set of curated cases and reflections here (with ✍️ Adam Zable) 👉 https://lnkd.in/eUDkqyQi #DataForGood #NonTraditionalData #PublicInterestTech #DataGovernance #DigitalInnovation #SocialLicense #DataStewardship #AIForPublicValue

ESG Criteria Framework 🌍 Using ESG as a lens for decision making helps companies structure how sustainability considerations are integrated into strategy and operations. It connects environmental, social, and governance priorities with the way risks and opportunities are managed. The Environmental dimension focuses on how organizations manage their interaction with natural systems. It looks at efficiency, emissions reduction, and minimizing ecological impacts across the value chain. Metrics such as greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy share, water recycling rates, waste diversion, and biodiversity indicators provide measurable insights into environmental performance. Decision makers can ask whether targets are aligned with science based approaches, whether energy sourcing is low carbon, and whether biodiversity impacts are assessed and managed. These questions link sustainability to business planning. Actions such as upgrading facilities for energy efficiency, adopting circular product design, and collaborating on ecosystem restoration make environmental priorities operational. The Social dimension evaluates how companies manage relationships with employees, customers, suppliers, and communities. It emphasizes fairness, safety, inclusion, and wider societal contribution. Metrics including diversity ratios, pay equity, training hours, safety records, and customer trust scores give visibility into how people are impacted by corporate activity. Questions include whether hiring and promotion practices are equitable, whether safety systems are effective, and how the company contributes to community well being. These guide decisions with a social perspective. Actions range from structured DEI initiatives and expanded safety programs to leadership training and measurable community investment plans. The Governance dimension covers the structures and practices that ensure accountability, transparency, and ethical decision making. It provides the foundation for integrating sustainability into oversight and risk management. Metrics such as board diversity, ESG risk integration, disclosure assurance, and shareholder participation help assess governance alignment with long term objectives. Actions include embedding ESG oversight at board level, conducting independent ethics audits, integrating ESG into enterprise risk management, and strengthening shareholder engagement. By combining metrics, guiding questions, and concrete actions, this framework illustrates how companies can apply ESG as a decision making tool to advance sustainability in a structured and practical way. #sustainability #business #sustainable #esg

🚀 Are CSOs ready to move beyond compliance and revolutionize corporate sustainability? Based on interviews with 31 CSOs, this BSR report explores how CSOs can evolve to make sustainability integral to their companies' core strategies and drive real, transformative impact. 👩💻 Here are some key insights: 🌱 Three Potential Paths for CSOs: The report identifies three evolving roles for CSOs: The Steady Manager, who ensures compliance and manages risks; The Integrated Strategist, who weaves sustainability into the corporate strategy; and The Transformative Change Agent, who drives fundamental change and reimagines the business model to place sustainability at its core. Each of these paths reflects different levels of ambition and influence, providing a roadmap for CSOs depending on their company’s readiness for change. 🌟 The Transformational Role: CSOs have the opportunity to lead organizations through major shifts, not just through incremental improvements. They can inspire a transformation that reshapes the company's mission, values, and business model, embedding sustainability at the core of decision-making. By doing so, they can cultivate resilience, foster innovation, and drive long-term value creation, turning sustainability into a competitive advantage that redefines success in the marketplace. ⚖️ Balancing Compliance and Vision: With their growing influence, CSOs face the challenge of balancing the need for compliance with the drive for visionary change. Compliance is foundational, but regulations should be used as a platform for ambitious initiatives. CSOs must leverage these frameworks to push beyond the minimum standards, ensuring that sustainability is not just about meeting obligations but about driving meaningful and strategic transformation. 📌 Based on the report, here are 3 key steps organizations can take to establish and support the CSO role effectively: 1. 🌍 Clearly Define the Role: Establish clear CSO responsibilities—compliance, strategic integration, or transformational change—to align expectations and drive sustainability. 2. 📊 Embed the CSO in Strategy: Make the CSO central to corporate strategy, integrating sustainability across all aspects of the business and ensuring their influence in key decisions. 3. 🚀 Grant Strategic Authority: Give CSOs a seat at the executive table to ensure sustainability is part of long-term planning, driving business resilience and growth. What do you think—are CSOs ready to become transformative agents of change, or will the focus on compliance limit the role's potential? I'd love to hear your views on what the next decade might look like for corporate sustainability leaders. 👉 Access the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eTJ9inPC #SustainabilityLeadership #CSO #CorporateSustainability #ESGIntegration

The One Metric I Trust Most on LinkedIn Over three years on LinkedIn, I’ve tracked every community metric I could: week to week, month to month, year over year. I’ve analyzed trends, looked for forward vs. lagging indicators, and tried to understand what truly drives growth. At first, I focused on top-line metrics - like impressions. Then engagements. But the best predictor of long-term success - the one metric I now trust most - is something few people even check: Members Reached (formerly Unique Impressions). If you go into your post analytics, LinkedIn shows you not just impressions but how many unique people saw your content. And I’ve found that growth in this number is the strongest signal that I’m on the right path. Why? Engagements fluctuate. A viral post, a trending topic, or a high-emotion moment can skew the numbers. Many people who value my content don’t engage. Senior professionals, in particular, often prefer to observe rather than publicly interact. Some folks just, increasingly, value anonymity and will discuss seeing my posts but never engage. Members Reached can’t be hidden. Unlike engagements, which depend on visible likes or comments, this metric quietly tracks how many real people are seeing what you share. Metrics should never drive your content - you should create what matters to you. But if you’re looking for a true measure of reach and impact, start paying attention to Members Reached. For me, it’s been the clearest predictor of whether the community will grow - or not - down the road.

Sustainalytics recently identified 34 biodiversity funds with $3.7 billion under management but only 1 including private equity. One approach could help estimate private companies' biodiversity impacts & facilitate their inclusion into biodiversity funds.   While the research misses other funds we know of at BioInt, it is true that measuring the biodiversity contribution of private companies is difficult. This is also the reality for listed companies but off-the-shelf databases at least provide some measures of their biodiversity-related risks.     CDC Biodiversité recently described an approach it applied to private companies. What can we learn from it?     💡 Main steps to assess, commit & transform 1️⃣ Screen the relevant company universe exclusively with financial data. If feasible, add up to 20 industry-specific indicators (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, location) to conduct an Advanced screening.   2️⃣ Conduct a deep-dive (up to 100 indicators) only on the companies screened as highest impacts. Such a Simplified Biodiversity Footprint Assessment (BFA) should cover not only ecosystem condition but also species extinction risk & an analysis of interfaces with priority locations. Risks & opportunities should also be assessed qualitatively (e.g. through scenario analysis or a materiality matrix).   3️⃣ Based on the results, engage with companies to reduce their biodiversity impacts (commit and transform).   4️⃣ Push companies to improve their data for future monitoring.   5️⃣ Ideally after up to 4 years, conduct a full-scale BFA, repeat steps 3 & 4.     🔎 Perimeter of application   There is a trade-off between a measurement's accuracy & the resources it requires. A biodiversity-oriented private market asset manager & its holdings cannot spend a fortune in time & money on biodiversity assessments.   While standardisation increases & technologies improve, driving down costs, measurement should be applied only to some companies. 4 criteria should drive decisions, as illustrated on the chart:   ➡ Maturity of the company: some data points need to be provided, so people in charge of sustainability reporting, purchases and physical asset management need to be somehow available. Many datapoints are common with a carbon footprint so if one has been conducted, it significantly helps.   ➡ Estimated impact: self explanatory.   ➡ Sectoral specificities: the chart lists sectors with more advanced methodologies for footprint assessment. Others, such as fishing & aquaculture, transport infrastructure, waste management, etc. cause impacts which are currently poorly studied or assessed (e.g. on marine biodiversity or fragmentation) and should thus be avoided.   ➡ Complexity of the activity: a company limited to one industry means less datapoints & efforts, as does a simple value chain.     💬 Asset owners are stepping up their demands for biodiversity, are asset managers up to speed (and using approaches like the one described here)?

📊 You Don’t Need Perfect Numbers to Prove Your Impact in Interviews. I hear it all the time: "But I don’t have exact metrics..." "It wasn’t tracked..." "It was a team effort—I’m not sure what my piece added..." Here’s the truth: you don’t need to have the perfect data to tell a strong STAR or CAR story. You just need to demonstrate impact in a way that’s clear, confident, and credible. Here are ways to talk about results—even without exact numbers 👇 ✅ Use Before-and-After Comparisons Tell us what changed because of your work. "Before, our onboarding process took over 3 weeks. After redesigning our training materials, new hires were getting up to speed in under 10 days." Even without percentages, the outcome is clear and compelling. ✅ Lean on Qualitative Feedback Impact isn’t always about hard numbers. "After I introduced weekly alignment sessions, cross-team tension dropped significantly—and our VP even mentioned it in a town hall as a turning point." Feedback from managers, clients, or users adds credibility and shows influence. ✅ Highlight Team-Level Wins (With Context) Even if the results were shared, you can still show your part in the success. "Our team increased NPS by 18 points over 6 months. I led the voice-of-customer workstream that identified the key friction points and recommended solutions." That’s STAR/CAR in action: Situation → Task → Action → Shared Result. ✅ Use Estimates Thoughtfully If you can’t share exact metrics, you can still offer thoughtful, conservative estimates. "We reduced manual work by approximately 30–40% by automating the reporting pipeline, saving the team several hours each week." The key is to be transparent, not vague or inflated. 💡 Remember: Interviewers aren’t just looking for data. They’re looking for someone who understands impact, can connect the dots, and communicates results clearly—even in imperfect situations. 📣 STAR/CAR stories don’t need to be flawless. They just need to show that you know what success looks like—and that you can deliver it. 💬 What’s your go-to way to show results when metrics aren’t available? Let’s crowdsource below 👇 👉 Found this helpful? Repost to help others tell stronger stories—even without perfect data.

❌ Forget Reach. ✔️ Think Engagement.   I no longer take much notice of impression counts on my LinkedIn™ posts. Instead, I focus on engagement – the number of people who have reacted to, commented on or reposted my posts.   Why?   Because the number of feeds my posts are dropped into gives me little useful information.   But the engagement rate does. It tells me what percentage of those who saw my posts responded in some way, took some kind of action.   And that’s where the gold is!   🔷 Those numbers – and the people behind them – tell me who is interested in the information I’m sharing. 🔷 Those people might make good additions to my network if they’re not already part of it. 🔷 They might make ideal ‘associates’ as I heard Mark Williams describe it in an interview with Tony Restell last week. (An example of an associate is my relationship with Gina Balarin (CPM FAMI FCIM), the CEO’s Voice. We share the similar target customers but provide different services. Supporting each other widens both our circles of influence.) 🔷 They might be potential clients. 🔷 They could even become colleagues and close friends.   In the past 3 months engagement on my content has risen significantly. (The formula for this is the total number of reactions, reposts and comments on a post divided by the number of impressions.)   The increase over the previous 90 days is 32.2%. Meanwhile impressions are up a miserly 1.6% (no surprise there).   The content formats achieving the highest engagement are LinkedIn events and video posts.     But what unequivocally does best are posts involving others. Posts ABOUT others always do well. Posts TAGGING others in the text do well if those others respond.   Here’s an example of the impact that external interaction on content can have: our recent LinkedIn live with the Queen of Livestreaming, Gillian Whitney generated a 49.1% engagement rate. Why? Because after the event Gillian responded personally to every single comment. There are now well over 200 comments.  (Don’t forget events stay in our Activity section so remain visible long after other posts might have disappeared.)   Engagement rate is now our most important metric and one we’ll be keeping a close eye on for its potential to provide an ongoing source of interested and responsive additions to our network. Because this is where the gold is!   🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷   Looking to upgrade your LinkedIn knowledge? Check out linkability[.]biz for dozens of hours of content on how to leverage LinkedIn to achieve your professional goals.   Got something to add? 🔷 COMMENT 🔷 Would others find it useful? 🔷 REPOST 🔷 Want to see more like this? 🔷 🔔 🔷 Plan to refer back to this? 🔷 SAVE 🔷 Think I know my stuff? 🔷 ENDORSE 🔷   📌📌📌 Tip of the day – keeping your own set of post metrics (a simple spreadsheet is all you need) allows you to compare individual posts more closely than you can from your profile analytics.  

Building ESG: Uncover Your Industry's ESG Materiality Sweet Spot _______________________________________ In today's ESG-focused world, companies can't afford a one-size-fits-all approach to sustainability. Materiality assessments are the secret weapon for identifying the environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G) issues that truly matter to your industry and stakeholders. So, how do you pinpoint the right issues for your materiality assessment? Here's a roadmap to guide you: 1. Industry Intel: Dive into industry reports and frameworks: The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) offer industry-specific guidance to get you started. * Benchmark against ESG leaders: See what sustainability issues are top-of-mind for your industry's frontrunners. 2. Stakeholder Engagement: Survey your stakeholders: Customers, investors, employees, and communities all have a voice. Understanding their priorities is crucial. * Host workshops and focus groups: Facilitate in-depth discussions to unearth key concerns and opportunities. 3. Data Deep Dive: Analyze your internal data: Look at energy consumption, waste generation, employee demographics, and diversity metrics. These offer valuable insights. * Track relevant external data: Monitor industry trends, regulatory changes, and emerging social issues that might impact your business. Common ESG Materiality Issues (by Factor): * Environmental: Climate change, resource depletion, pollution, waste management, and circular economy. * Social: Labor practices, human rights, diversity, equity, and inclusion, community engagement, and product safety. * Governance: Ethics, board composition, executive compensation, transparency, and risk management. Remember, materiality is a two-way street. It's not just about the impact your business has on the world, but also how the world impacts your business. What are some key ESG materiality issues you're seeing in your industry? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below! Please feel free to share (Disclaimer: Views are personal, should not be related to organisations view) #buildingEsg #circulareconomy #sustainablefinance #sustainabilityreporting #esgreporting #esgstrategy #esgrisk #climaterisk #climatechangeaction #climaterisks #india #emissions #esgratings #esg #cop27 #greenertogether