CAN we maximize impact while retaining true purpose?

Projects, and life as a whole, are oftentimes approached from one of two perspectives – one of which seeks to optimize for scale of impact and cater to the ‘what’ resulting from our actions, the other of which seeks to optimize for meaningfulness and cater to the ‘why’ behind our actions.

Getting on the same page – definitions

Micro-level engagement perspective – Viewing engagement via a micro-level perspective relates principally to your own immediate actions, surroundings, and the reason behind your actions. It involves tying your actions to values or passions in a qualitative manner.

Macro-level engagement perspective – When engaging with macro lens, small individual actions are often overlooked while trying to determine the end result or overarching impact of an initiative. It involves tying your actions to a quantifiable end result.

Thinking things through – dualism or mutualism?

Engaging with the world with a micro-level perspective alone ensures that your heart is in the right place and that you are personally exemplifying the change that you wish to see in the world. Engaging with the world through a macro-level perspective alone ensures that you are having the greatest impact that you can through your actions. However, when taken independently the former limits impact and the latter lacks heart and meaning.

Combining a focus on large-scale results while still ensuring that your own actions, regardless of how small, align with this overall initiative ensures that not only will you have a substantial impact but that you – or your project or company – will remain grounded in why you got involved in the first place.

Despite the simplicity of this concept, it is something that is easy to lose sight of in the day-to-day chaos that is life.

Some people naturally tend to embrace one of these mindsets over the other and must make an effort to balance themselves out with people who approach problems differently or by making a conscious effort to approach situations from the other perspective.

I naturally lean heavily towards approaching problems with a macro-level engagement perspective, becoming frustrated with activities that I do not see as making a substantial enough contribution to a quantifiable end goal, despite how well they may or may not align with the heart of an initiative. As such, whenever I engage in a new project, I have to check myself to ensure that the foundational pieces that ground a project – and ground myself – to its core purpose are in place before moving forward.

So what – what does this have to do with Cans for Kili?

The concept of blending these two perspectives together can be seen clearly through the different inputs of this project. A micro-level perspective is essential to the core of the project; it is seen through the individual actions of our team members as we collect cans on a daily basis and strive to truly embody the mindset behind the initiative, increasing recycling incrementally, one person at a time. However, if we stuck to this mindset alone, we would fall far short of the 1.2 million can goal. Bringing in a macro-perspective, we are able to extend our reach to other individuals – the summation of which results large impact – and corporations – who have a substantial impact independently.

If we erred too far on one side of this scale or the other, the outcome or meaning of the project would be drastically changed. With the former, we would have a meaningful project with a small tangible outcome whereas with the latter we may still have a large outcome, but the heart of the initiative would be lost.

Cheers,

The Consultant