Recipes For Change
(Thanks for reading, I’ve recently created a better version of this article here)
Everyone agrees that change is inevitable, and they mostly agree that change is needed.
But when it comes to what should change, who should change it and how we’ll know if the change has been good, suddenly we diverge.
And when it comes to social and environmental change, the stakes are high.
People’s jobs, lives and planet are on the line.
They aren’t trivial changes like getting a new haircut – they deserve good ideas and need to be tested before they’re accepted.
Welcome to the world of impact models.
An impact model is essentially a “recipe for change” – a set of circumstances, ingredients and methodologies that are designed to deliver a great result.
The challenges facing us are broad and vague, whereas recipes need to be clearly defined, e.g. “How might we reduce the rates of youth homelessness?” is a big issue, without one particular “recipe” for a solution.
There would be twenty valid ways of approaching the challenge, ranging from waterproof tents, training programs, affordable housing, better mental health support, a reduction in access to illicit drugs, changes in social attitudes and stigmas, etc.
And while each of these might sound nice at first, we need to understand the thought process all the way to the end in order to assess if it’s truly a good idea.
In other words, we need to read the whole recipe.
The best way to think about recipes is through the analogy of cooking – it’s not a perfect analogy but it’s pretty good.
A recipe is a set of instructions and measurements for achieving a particular result; if you use these components in these ways, you’ll get this great outcome.
e.g. your niece wants an Elmo birthday cake, so you find a recipe that explains how to create the sheet cake, the icing and the stencil to make it look like this particular red monster.
You’ll know it’s done the job when your niece either beams or bursts into tears.
And like Elmo cakes, there will be a lot of people on the internet with strong opinions who will review this recipe.
Their reviews might give you confidence that it’s a winning formula, or suggestions on how it can be modified, or serve as a warning so you can avoid disaster.
It’s worth checking though – did the reviewer actually follow the recipe they’re critiquing?
All too often you see reviews that start out with “This recipe is terrible…” but a few lines later casually mention “Oh I was in a rush so I cooked the cake for shorter on a higher temperature, I swapped the flour for almond meal, and I had no red food colouring so I used green instead”.
Um, hang on, you made Oscar The Grouch, and no wonder it didn’t work!
Good recipes are special – they get handed down from one generation to another, they’re easily shared and they can be improved over time.
But we also know that tastes change over time, and what was once a hit recipe in the 1970’s might seem unappetising today, let alone to your future grandchildren.
That’s why recipes need to be constantly revisited and reformulated; what works in one context doesn’t necessarily translate into another context.
There might be different ingredients available, different amounts of time available, different technology and equipment at hand, assumed knowledge and skills, and different tastes.
For example, I have a brilliant method for cooking a grilled cheese sandwich, it’s a 9.5/10.
It all started because my friends and I have a weekly dinner where we take turns cooking, and we sometimes set a theme for our cooking roster.
In this case it was “Food inspired by a movie” – the week before I was on, my friend made the “Boeuf Bourguignon” from the movie Julie & Julia.
I love the movie Chef and the Netflix series “The Chef Show”, and decided to learn how to make the fancy grilled cheese sandwich Jon Favreau makes for his son.
It was incredible, everyone loved it.
But there are a few catches.
Firstly, I spent a surprising amount of money – fancy bread, fancy butter, four different types of cheese.
Secondly, I went to a specialty market to find those cheeses, and even then I had to use substitutes because the ones used in the movie aren’t actually common here in Australia (e.g. white cheddar).
Thirdly, it was time intensive; making fourteen grilled cheese sandwiches to feed eight people is not easy, both in terms of prep and cooking.
Anyway, here’s why I tell you this story – I learned a lot from this recipe about what makes a good grilled cheese, but my results are dependent on some crucial circumstances.
What happens if;
· Someone is gluten intolerant?
· Someone is lactose intolerant?
· Someone is on a strict diet?
· I had to cater for 40 people instead of eight?
· We were camping and had no power?
· We were in a remote area with one shop?
· We had a tight budget?
· We were in a hurry?
For some of these, the solutions are straightforward, but for others the magic would be taken right out of the meal.
Change one too many elements and the whole thing stops working.
I reckon I could make it work while camping, or with cheaper cheese or gluten free bread, but catering for 40 or making them healthy would make me want to choose a different meal instead.
The same goes for impact models – the person in charge needs to have a strong understanding of when and why their recipe works.
That lets them see options for modifying some details without undermining the whole project, as well as knowing when to be stubborn or change tack entirely.
e.g. your employment program can be adapted to suit a different type of participant, but not if the training component is heavily reduced or if participants show a reduced work ethic.
It might be easily translated into new languages, but might not translate into some cultural contexts.
It might work in partnership with another organisation, so long as it keeps a similar budget and timeline.
Too many changes and it becomes compromised, and the whole thing flops like a vegan grilled cheese.
Recipes can come from anywhere – you might have invented something from scratch, stumbled across a combination by accident, learned some concepts from a book or TV show, learned to cook from your family, or re-created something delicious you ate overseas.
You’ll probably try a few variations before writing out “the recipe”, changing quantities or cook times to see what gets the best result.
It will take a number of attempts to discover not just what works, but to truly understand why it works too – that helps you decide what changes might become improvements and what changes might become disappointments.
But the biggest clue that it’s a winner is that people who see it or experience it ask for the recipe – that shows you that people want to re-create it and share it with others.
Some recipes get better gradually, through constant iteration and refinement over a long time.
But what we also see is the “Game Changer”.
I usually hate this term because it’s used badly by marketers, but I think this is the right context.
A game changer is a new idea, opportunity or technology that removes an old barrier or outdated assumption.
They take something that was previously too hard, too obscure or too niche and make it accessible.
So for the world of cooking, some game changers would include:
· Rice cookers
· Microwaves
· Airfryers
· Dishwashers
· Gluten Free aisles in supermarkets
· Online recipes
· Cooking shows, especially Masterchef
· Instagram
· Pinterest
· YouTube
· Year-round produce availability
For the world of impact models, some game changers would include:
· Smartphones
· Mobile Apps
· Shopify
· YouTube
· Changes to legislation
· Venture capital
· Better measurement and evaluation tools
· Easier access to good quality data
· Transparency and accountability mechanisms (i.e. Twitter exposés)
· Reductions in racism*
· Reductions in sexism*
· Changes in who gets to design new solutions and who gets a seat at the table*
*decent improvements but we have a long way to go
These game changers mean that we have options today that were unthinkable 30-50 years ago.
That also suggests that we’ll soon have options available that were unthinkable a few years ago.
Therefore, our recipes will need to change.
For your social enterprise, your version of a recipe is your Logic Model.
This describes the inputs you use, the activities you perform, the outputs you create, the outcomes you experience, and then much further down the track the impact you made.
That’s the value chain from start to finish – from raw materials all the way through to positive or negative change.
Logic models are great because they help you show your thought process, which invites good questions and interesting ideas, while also removing assumptions.
Let’s look at each element in more detail:
Inputs
What does someone need to buy or bring to the table in order for this change to take place?
What resources are required?
Whose voices need to be present?
Which elements are hardest to replace or substitute?
Activities
What needs to happen to these inputs?
What work needs to get done?
How long do things take?
What are the milestones or turning points?
How do we know when the work is done?
Outputs
What are we left with once the work is done?
What have the inputs become?
Are there other ways we could have obtained these outputs?
What are we hoping happens next?
How much of these outputs have we got?
Outcomes
What happened next?
What became of those outputs?
And then what happened?
How did these changes make a difference?
Were there any unintended side effects or consequences?
Impacts
What’s the bigger picture?
What did this work contribute towards?
What long term results can we observe or measure?
How will we know that our work has actually make a difference?
Where things get tricky is with unnamed assumptions.
We make assumptions about the inputs that will be available, about how familiar these ideas and processes will be, about how well this change will be received, about what substitutes will be accepted.
A great example of this is with clean cookstove initiatives, which give out low emissions cookstoves instead of kerosene.
When an agency distributes these clean cookstoves, they assume that families will stop using the old toxic stoves.
Instead, the family now uses two cookstoves – great for dinner, but now creating more fumes than ever before.
There’s a hidden step in the recipe that needs to be made explicit: they want to SWAP these cookstoves for the old ones, rather than giving them out as a freebie.
That’s essential to the behaviour change, and so it needs to be spelled out in the recipe.
Assumptions often hide in the gap between Outputs and Outcomes.
Outputs are the tangible things you create or deliver, whereas outcomes are the end results of the work.
e.g. an output might be printing 5,000 training manuals, but how many of those actually get read?
And of the copies that get read, how many of the ideas in the manual are implemented?
And of the ideas that are implemented, how many actually work?
Outputs are a great source of “Vanity metrics” – numbers that sound great but don’t mean very much.
Your social media campaign might have received a lot of views, but did those turn into any sort of engagement?
Hard to tell – platforms can give instant feedback on the outputs of a campaign, but you’ll have to be patient and read between the lines to see if any of those views lead to a sale or a change down the road.
A key feature of a good recipe is its repeatability – can someone else follow the instructions and end up with a similar result?
One of the funny places this pops up is in “Millennials buying property” articles, which all have headlines like “How this 22-year-old managed to buy her second home”.
The promise is “Here’s the recipe for how 22-year-olds can become property owners”.
You can scan the article waiting for the lie.
Sure enough, every time, they casually mention “Oh the 22-year-old also happened to receive a $500,000 inheritance” or “was able to stay living with their parents with no expenses” or “received a one-time gift that enabled them to put down a 30% deposit”.
Infuriating.
It’s the equivalent of me writing an article called “Try my $10 lobster and truffle roll”, then at step 5 cheekily adds in “simply take the leftover lobster and truffles you have lying around in your fridge and add them to the pan”.
You should either admit it’s not a recipe, or declare the lucky circumstances that are required to pull it off.
In order to understand your own methodologies and approach, it’s helpful to ask “what do I believe to be true that other people don’t?”.
This helps you identify what core beliefs might differ from conventional wisdom, explaining how you’re able to achieve something that hasn’t been done at a large scale already.
In the world of cooking, this might be:
· That good food takes time
· That people should shop at local markets
· That people should take delight in their cooking
· An awareness of unlikely flavour pairings
· Access to traditional knowledge, like Nonna’s famous ragu recipe.
In the world of impact models, this might be:
· Refusing to compete on price
· Taking longer to train staff
· Insisting on using certain types of suppliers
· Committing to positive environmental standards
· Refusing to engage in unethical practices, even when they are lucrative
· Not always giving the customer what they think they want
What this does is help us avoid making claims that are too good to be true.
For example, there’s a good show on Netflix called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by chef Samin Nosrat, named after her famous cookbook.
It’s really interesting, explaining how these four pillars are at the heart of all good cooking, and how you can use them to make better food at home.
But if you watch the show, you’ll see that it all comes down to one fundamental idea, which I describe as “Hey, if you spend 3x more time on your food, it will taste much better”.
That’s a believable promise – it makes sense.
But it’s not for everyone.
For a busy single parent, it’s borderline irrelevant.
They’d be better off watching Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals, which has a totally different value proposition and different recipes.
Your recipe for change won’t be for everyone, it will suit certain people in certain circumstances at certain times.
That’s not a weakness, it’s a strength.
It allows you to make promises under particular conditions, and prevents you from committing yourself to targets and expectations that are not possible to meet.
Here are the four things I recommend you do first:
1. Write out your recipe for change as it stands today.
You can use a Logic Model, you can draw it out as a storyboard or customer journey map, or even write it out as a literal recipe.
2. Define some of the “Yes-ifs”.
What would you be able to change or accommodate without ruining the magic?
Who could you happily partner with?
3. Choose your next experiments.
What tests would be interesting to run next?
Could you try a new version of the product or service?
Could you draft some new menu items that complement what you do today?
Is there a bulk version or smaller version that could do nearly as good of a job?
Could you tackle the problem from another angle?
4. Read other people’s recipes.
What ingredients do they use?
What activities do they perform?
What are their outputs, and how do they lead to good outcomes?
How do they measure their results?
How do they know if it’s working?
How do they show their strengths?
Designing new recipes should be interesting and rewarding.
It’s hard work and it’s important not to trivialise why we’re here, but we also need to be honest about what works and what doesn’t.
We need chefs who are curious, chefs who share their work, and chefs who are willing to try new things in order to create new recipes.
