What counts?

Colleagues,
 
Yesterday we talked about the importance of identifying the specific outcomes of an initiative. We asked, what does success look like?
 
We used my volunteer tomatoes as an analogy for looking at purpose and outcome in order to evaluate whether or not something is (or was) worth the effort. Let us return again to those tomatoes.

When we talk about a measurable outcome, that doesn’t mean it must be measurable in numeric terms. It would be easy to define success as harvesting 20 pounds of tomatoes, and that is valid if my purpose was to have excess tomatoes for using in the winter.

 Here are a couple on non-numeric outcomes:

1. Did I learn some important things about growing tomatoes? It would be hard to quantify ahead of time exactly how much learning would define success, but I could come up with something. Did I learn enough that future crops are likely to be more bountiful if I can put what I learned into practice?
2. Did I enjoy being out in that part of the garden? Gardening isn’t only about production. If I consistently enjoyed working on those bushes, could that be a measure of success?
3. Did I have tasty fresh tomatoes to put on my salad for most of the summer? Our cherry tomatoes usually ripen earlier and last longer than the larger ones, so extending our season is a valid measure of success. Can we be more exacting? Sure. We could say we wanted to extend the fresh tomato season by four weeks.

 
The important point is that we need to clearly define success, although it doesn’t have to be a hard and fast number. 
 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick