‘If you’re not tracking it, it is probably not getting done’

I want to tell you a story of how I learnt my lesson of effective campaigning.

The year was 2014, my first year of working as an employee as I had just finished my college and started work at Make A Difference (MAD), a non profit that works towards providing better outcomes for children in shelter homes by mobilizing young leaders across 23 cities in India.

I had been involved in a volunteering as a teacher and then a part time capacity in service to the PR & Communications function before I decided to take up the role of the Director of the same in 2014. My responsibilities now include ensuring quality MAD communications to all its stakeholders, growing MAD Campaigns at a steady pace and solidify MAD’s presence on the web focused on Impact Driven story telling.

Generally, the way I functioned before was brash, fast and easily excited by ideas. A screw it let’s do it, attitude. While that is a great space to be in during the campaign design phase, if it not backed up with systems that provide in depth data on your progress, you are setting yourself up for failure.

And I had it happen to me so many times that first year, when I would be mid way through a campaign with seemingly amazing strategies at play, but I was creating little or no measurable value.

And that was where I learnt my lesson for tracking and monitoring with a frequency that allowed you to change and iterate on the go.

I adopted the agile way of functioning.

I was first introduced to the agile methodology of working by this amazing video which featured one of my favorite design firms, Ideo.

I remember that campaign very clearly. It was the first time that we had officially decided to float a review form for all of our 3500 volunteers to fill. It was and still is a great tool for any leadership to know how enthusiastic and passionate their community is. And so we were really excited for all of the people in MAD to fill it up and really tell us how they feel about volunteering with Make A Difference? How much do they feel a part of a family? And whether they feel that they are actually making any difference in a child’s life.

The data from this ‘Happiness Index’, as we internally called it, was going to be super valuable for us to design better systems and practices with in the organization to help us support our volunteers better so that they can be in a better space to impact the 4500 children we work with.

As a team we had put a lot of thought in creative strategies to create a compelling call to action for all volunteers: To fill out the survey.

We had created a 360 Communications Strategy aimed at our volunteers which was of a younger age demography (19 to 27 years of age), we had a quirky tag line that caught people’s attention (The famous catch phrase by one of the ‘F.R.I.E.N.D.S’, Joey: How You Doin’?), we had a compelling message, collateral the works. And being the young excitable campaigner that I was, I could not wait to put all of this from the white board into action.

So without further delay, I did.

Our target was to ensure that 80% of volunteers across 23 cities in India actually fill up the form within the next seven days. And I knew I could do it.

What ensued, was a huge failure. Ten days into the campaign and the national average was teetering around 40% completion. I felt terrible.

But what happened next is responsible for most of the growth personally and all the campaigns I have looked after. Here are my learnings from the same.

1. Track: Your Impact and Your Strategy Performance

It was an eye opening experience when I started doing this. Yes, tracking your impact number is important, but you also need to track your Strategy performance data. Internally, we call them Macro and Micro Indicators respectively.

Macro Indicators are your final goals. Your final value that your project or campaign hopes to change in a quantified manner. It could be online sales, if you are an e-commerce website. It could be website hits, if your website is a we resource. It is sign ups if you are a gym owner. What your company or team was built to do. In my case, that was the number of sign ups that we had in a stipulated period of time.

Micro Indicators are the success parameters of the Strategies you are employing to meet your goals. So if your goal is online sales, website visits are your micro indicators. If your goal is to increase website hits, your google ad campaign numbers are your micro indicators. If your goal is gym membership, the number of people who call you through your promotion telephone number is your micro indicator.

Quick disclaimer here, a macro indicator could have literally hundreds of micro indicators. Because that is how it works. I can say that if my goal is to increase online sales, I can consider both app downloads and website hits as micro indicators. It is valid.

But as a Project Manager, you need to take a call on what priority do you believe your Strategies are stacked. (Generally done by creating a Return on Investment portfolio for your Strategies). You may just be tracking only one Strategy performance data because it is your largest value creator, OR, you may have five Strategies each providing data on the success (or lack thereof)) of their respective performances.

2. Make Tracking a Systemic Feature In Your Team

Great. You now know what you are going to track when starting a project. Your micro indicators are set. But that in itself is not enough. Because no amount of data, no matter how powerful and on point it is, is valuable if no one looks at it enough.

Clarifying my stance here, it is not enough to create visibility systems on performances of your Strategies, I am saying it needs to be the centerpiece of your operation.

1. Create your Goals and set your overarching target: Macro Indicator.
2. Finalize and prioritize your Strategies and the data you collect. If it is over a period of time, have milestones for target number increase over a period of time.
3. Have quick team meetings to track actual vs ideal data points of both macro and micro indicator to either double down on your strategies or pivot.

One tool which hundreds of Scrums across the world love is burn down charts. A tool built to provide just how much your Strategy is working. It comes from a deep belief of tracking effort not output. Because then you are never in a space where you stick with an idea just because ‘people think its good’, but you are open to changing tracks radically because your data says so.

This is data driven decision making if used well.

The following is a simplistic version of a burn down chart (it tracks the final goal, a fundraising initiative)

3. Build a Team That is Brave Enough to Iterate Fast

Now, I know that it has become on of those annoying words in the professional world, but Iteration is critical in an agile methodology of working. Everyone loves saying that they are pro feedback and pro failure, but it is another thing to really back it up with action. I believe I am still on the path and its been quite a while that I have worked or led teams that are agile over years. Growth is a mindset. And it cannot be hacked.

And that is why building a team that is okay with its efforts being tracked (since that is what Strategies are) on a daily basis, being able to maintain composure and team cohesiveness on the face of targets during execution and in the end being brave enough to say ‘Its not working, let’s go back to the white board’ is very crucial.

Keeping your design team and execution team in sync and bonded is crucial. And that is why I believe, Agile, or data driven working is a culture and not a methodology. As leaders and project/product managers we need to realize that yes, data driven style of working is productive, effective and efficient. But what is even more powerful is when you realize that you are a human, creating value for human kind by empowering and managing a team of humans.

You cannot afford to ignore that. And I believe this needs to be said because when you are chasing to meet a target on a sheet, just know that that statistic is human. That realization in itself is enough to course correct any errors you may make as a leader.

It is a journey. A long one. To be truly at your best. But some reading material helps you get started.