Answering Question Zero: What is success and how do we measure it?

Herman Leonard, a professor at Harvard Business School, has a concept called Question Zero. This asks “What exactly are we trying to accomplish?” The idea being if you can’t answer Question Zero, then don’t bother with questions 1 through 99!

For social ventures and non-profits this can be a difficult question to answer simply and communicate succinctly. Especially challenging is the need to manage, measure and balance financial success, mission or community impact and ongoing organizational sustainability.

I have been writing and speaking about this topic for a while – at Social Venture Institute at Hollyhock and Social Tech Training in Toronto, with the Demonstrating Value Project – and most recently at the Vancouver Net Tuesday event in November.

Over the years  I have developed some techniques, and incorporated the best I have found, to help non-profit, social enterprises and social purpose businesses answer this question. Ironically, through another series of questions! Questions like:

• What kind of story are you trying to tell?
• Who is the audience?
• Are you speaking the right language for that audience?
• Are you measuring your mission or your activities?
• Do you have the right balance between time and space in your measures?

Over the next few posts I will be going into more detail on each of these questions. For now I’m very grateful to Guacira Naves from Online Strategy for posting a video recording of the presentation here. Many, many thanks Guacira!

Part 1: http://onlinestrategy.ca/2009/11/05/vancouver-net-tuesday-november-2009/
Part 2: http://onlinestrategy.ca/2009/11/06/vancouver-net-tuesday-november-2009-part-ii/
Part 3: http://onlinestrategy.ca/2009/11/06/vancouver-net-tuesday-november-2009-–-part-iii/
Part4: http://onlinestrategy.ca/2009/11/09/final-video-segment-steve-williams-at-net-tuesday-vancouver/