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THe 9 factors of impact

written by SAI

filed under CAREER | LIFESTYLE

published JANUARY 15, 2024

TLDR

Impacting others is a crucial way to derive fulfillment
The 9 factors of impact are
- Field (which)
- Customer (who)
- Transformation (what)
- Quality (how)
- Quantity (how many)
- Latency (when)
- Proximity (how close)
- Responsibility (who’s responsible)
- Self-Impact (how you are impacted yourself)

example statements

“I want to help others and impact them positively but I don’t know how.”
“I want to make a positive impact in my community.”
“I want to be a good person.”
“How do I feel fulfilled?”

If these are things that you’ve said to yourself or others, keep reading.

I believe that pretty much everyone wants to help other people in some way. It’s a question of ‘how’ that makes them feel purposeless and lost.

I too have been on this journey. As I did the exercise that I wrote about in my Desire Tree newsletter, I found that two of the deepest desires I have are freedom and fulfillment. As I further broke down what fulfillment meant to me, I realized part of the definition was impacting others. But I asked myself what does ‘impact’ really mean? That’s when I went down a rabbit hole and discovered what impact means to me. Let me share my thoughts on what impact is and how it can be of service to you in your life.

9 factors of impact

Impact has these 9 factors:

Field (which)
Customer (who)
Transformation (what)
Quality (how)
Quantity (how many)
Latency (when)
Proximity (how close)
Responsibility (who’s responsible)
Self-Impact (how you’re impacted yourself)

Let's break them down one by one.

what i am proposing

1) Field (Which?)

The first is the area / field / industry of how you’re impacting others. I’d bet that this is the one that most people try to narrow down first. I don’t think that’s a bad place to start. It answers the ‘which’ question. Which field do you want to be in?

If you’re working right now, think of it like this. Which field do you want to have an impact in? If it’s real estate, it’s finding individuals, families, and businesses the right property to make their home or make an investment. If it’s accounting, it’s making sure individuals and businesses have their financials and taxes in order. If it’s medicine, it’s making sure people are living healthy lives.

2) Customer (Who?)

Second, related to the field is the specific impactee. Who is being impacted? Who do you want to impact? This is the beneficiary of your impact in the world around you. It answers ‘who’.

For me right now, it’s those going through a quarter-life crisis. Previously, when I was working at 2ULaundry and LaundroLab, it was 1) people who didn’t have the time but had the money to outsource laundry because they wanted to spend it doing things they actually liked, 2) laundromat customers who desired for a better in-store experience, and 3) franchise partners who wanted to grow their financial assets and make an impact in the community.

Sai, what’s the difference between which and who? Good question. Let’s take the examples of real estate, accounting, and medicine from above. ‘Which’ is the broader category. ‘Who’ narrows it down more specifically.

For example, you have a plethora of options within medicine. You could go the full med school doctor route (and even within that there are so many specialties), you could go the medical device side, you could go the administrative side at a hospital, you can go the healthcare consulting side, you could go the reporting and journalism side on medical topics, you could go the medical volunteering abroad route, you could go the healthcare policy side within government. The point being that the specific end customer is different in each of these.

What I didn’t realize when I graduated college is how many types of customers there actually are within a field, or even within a company. There are so many options that we’ve probably never even heard of that are careers because they help a very specific customer out. And the thing is, us humans are always coming up with more problems for ourselves (the curse and blessing of the human experience) so there will be even new problems that don’t even exist yet that we’ll have to solve.

3) Transformation (What?)

Third, we have the transformation. It’s the ‘what.’ What is the actual impact on that customer? What is the transformation taking place?

In the medical example, there could be several positions that have the same customer that’s impacted. But there’s a different impact that each role may have. An administrative person could be checking in a patient for surgery. The anesthesiologist could be administering the anesthesia for that same surgery patient. The surgeon would be the primary one operating on that same patient.

So which part of the team do you want to be? The team goal is the same — the person lives a healthier life — but your individual impact differs across each of these positions.

4) Quality (How?)

Fourth, we have the quality of the impact. ‘How’. How much transformation is taking place? To what extent and depth is the impact? Is there short-term value or long-term value to the end customer? Or perhaps both.

Are you impacting someone’s day and that’s it? Or are you with this person day in and day out impacting them for months? In the same surgery patient example, you could also be a physical therapist. The hospital team would have had a big impact on that specific surgery day. The physical therapist would have an impact for weeks or months for that same patient.

5) Quantity (How many?)

The fifth factor of impact is the quantity. ‘How many.’ How many people are impacted by the work you do? Do you feel fulfilled when you’ve impacted just one person’s life in a deep, meaningful way? Or do you feel more fulfilled when you see a large number of people that are impacted?

There is no right or wrong answer. We need both types of people in this world. Those who have the mass appeal of impacting millions of people in some way. And then those who work in small groups or 1x1 who make an immeasurable difference in someone’s life very acutely.

6) Latency (When?)

The sixth factor of impact is latency. ‘When’. When is the impact happening? Is it realized now or later? What is the time delay of the impact?

For example, in my job at 2ULaundry, there was a virtually immediate impact to attract new 2ULaundry customers when executing digital marketing activities — Facebook ads, Google ads. We pay for ads, customers sign up, and leverage the service all within a week. But when it came to longer term assets being built and the return on investment for franchise partners when they spend $100,000s and $1,000,000s, that has a longer horizon. With it taking 12-18 months to just open a store, not to mention the ramp up portion to get to a breakeven point and then make monthly profits, that takes much longer.

7) Proximity (How Close?)

The seventh factor of impact is proximity. ‘How close’. How close are you to the impact? Are you directly making the impact or are you enabling others to make the end-customer impact? Or are you even 2 degrees removed from the end customer?

If you’re in consulting, like I was for 1-2 years, then you may be working with a client to make their strategy, tech, people, or processes more efficient or effective. That in turn improves the client’s ability to achieve their goals. And if that client itself enables some other company to do their job, then you’re two levels removed.

The point being how far do you have to go from yourself to the end customer being impacted.

Track how many levels you are away from the end customer being impacted. Do you prefer to be closer to the impact or more behind the scenes? This can help gauge the type of impact you set yourself up to have.

Some people want that spotlight and some want to be in the background. Do you want to be one of the main characters on stage in the spotlight or feel more fulfilled when you’re physically maneuvering where the spotlight goes? (Or any of the other dozens of roles in that analogy)

8) Responsibility (Who’s Responsible?)

What’s the eighth impact factor? Responsibility. ‘Who’s responsible.’ Who is responsible for the impact? Is it your sole impact or are you part of a larger group that provides this impact?

The best example here is in team sports. In the NBA, lot of players’ dreams are to not only win the championship but be ‘the guy’ on the championship winning team. The “bus driver”, in Charles Barkley’s words. They want to get the majority of the credit if the team does well (and they’ll probably get the majority of the blame if the team doesn’t do well, so it’s a double-edged sword).

I acknowledge very few things in life have just one person as the only person that’s responsible for the impact. There are many people and factors that assist them in making that impact. But there definitely is a spectrum, that could be a factor in deciding which career to go into.

9) Self-Impact

Finally, we’ve reached the ninth, and arguably the most important, factor of impact: self-impact. How are you impacted by the impact you provide to others? When deciding how to help others, how do you want to be impacted?

For example, I have had to put on a therapist-style hat in some coaching sessions, which leads me to be more empathetic. I wouldn’t have said that was a quality I had a few years ago, but that’s something that has grown by virtue of being put in these situations.

I wouldn’t have considered myself a marketing expert 4+ years ago before I started my job at 2ULaundry. But now, I feel much more comfortable putting on a brand and marketing lens across several areas like direct to consumer and franchising.

A question you can ask yourself is ‘what do I want to be an expert in?’ What do I want to know the in’s and out’s of fully? Which field do I want people to think of me when they think of that field? For example, if the topic of Quarter Life Crisis comes up, I want one of their first thoughts to be “Sai’s an expert in that.”

Let’s go with the premise that it could take 10,000 hours to become a true master at something. If you have your standard 40 hour work week * 50 weeks / year (giving 2 weeks of vacation time a year), that equals 2,000 hours a year. So theoretically, you should become a master at something if you’ve done that job for about 5 years (10,000 / 2,000 hours per year). Which is not unreasonably long in the grand scheme of things.

The point being what do you want to dedicate yourself to for potentially that amount of time that you have that impact on yourself?

“Cool”, what can I do now that I know the 9 factors of impact?

How are you impacted by the impact you provide to others? When deciding how to help others, how do you want to be impacted?

what can i do?

If you know that you want to help people in some way in your career but don’t know where to start, this can be a helpful framework to get you going.

Which field(s) do you want to make an impact?
Who is the end customer that you want to impact?
What is the transformation you want to have on that end customer?
To what extent and depth is the impact?
How many people do you want to impact?
When does the impact happen?
How close are you to the impact?
Who is responsible for the impact?
How do you want to be impacted by impacting others?

It’s unrealistic to expect that you’re going to have the answers to all of these questions starting out in your career. Action trumps pretty much everything else in terms of finding answers. But as you get more experience, you’ll have the tangible answers for that current job. You may like some aspects of it, you may not like others. Then you come back to this framework to narrow in the job search or your next venture. It’s a constant process.

I’d love to hear from you.

Which of these 9 factors of impact do you love in your current role(s)?

Which of these 9 factors of impact do you wish you could change today in your current role(s)?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sai is a Life Coach for Young Adults seeking to Live their Quarter Life on Easy Mode!

LEARN MORE ABOUT SAI