Influence at Work, Part 3: Showcasing impact’s ROI

Influence at Work is a 3-part series of articles exploring what it takes for impact executives to gain and use internal influence – that precious currency required to be successful in any organization. Part 3 concludes with how demonstrating ROI can compound influence over time.

In parts 1 and 2 of Influence at Work, I focused on the value unlocked by impact leaders when they reflect business characteristics in how they think and operate. That will get folks quite far in building up a supply of professional capital — i.e., influence — but there’s a third and final leg of the stool that needs as much attention: proving what you’re doing is working.

To wit, your influence is compounded over time if you can show — and sell — ROI to the business.

Here’s what that requires in practice:

Beef up your analytics capabilities

I touched on the importance of building a team around business-relevant skills in part 2, but it’s worth a double click on analytics. Here I’m talking about the ability to design studies, interrogate data, and make airtight claims about the value your work is creating for the business.

Many impact teams weren’t built with this skill in the foreground – program evaluation and impact reporting, yes, but not internal ROI analytics. If your team doesn’t have this capability today, your two paths are to hire for it or borrow it. Both are viable.

Tactics to consider:

Audit your current team’s analytical skills. Where are the gaps? Can existing team members develop them through training?
When you have open roles, write job descriptions that explicitly require quantitative or analytical competencies. Former finance, strategy, or data professionals who’ve moved into impact roles can be effective at translating between the two worlds.
When hiring isn’t feasible, borrow. Identify a data or analytics partner inside the business – someone in people analytics, finance, market research, or a business intelligence function – who can serve as a collaborator on your internal ROI work. Position the ask as a mutual benefit: good measurement of impact programs yields proof points that the business itself can use.
Consider the role of external validators. Third-party evaluation can introduce credibility that internal analysis alone can’t fully provide. Build a relationship with an academic partner, a research organization, or an evaluation firm that can bring an independent perspective to your data.

Commit to the structured study of primary ROI data

Honestly, measuring the true business ROI of impact work is really tough. That’s why so many for so long have looked to the big secondary studies from research firms or consultancies to back up their claims that employee volunteerism generally improves retention, or that consumers are generally willing to pay a price premium for sustainable products, and so on. To be clear, these studies are great, and they’re worth citing. But they’re not really a replacement for knowing your own specific ROI.

As shared value approaches to impact take deeper root – and as impact teams look for ways to ensure their continued relevancy – they need to focus on primary data collection, good question design, and structured analyses that survive scrutiny.

Tactics to consider:

Develop a testable hypothesis. Start by identifying the specific business priority you’re trying to demonstrate impact against: employee retention, consumer trust, market access, etc. Then build a logic model that works backward to the core underlying impact work (e.g., by doing X, we accomplish Y, which is worth Z to the business).
Seek out your sources of primary data. Deputize someone on your team to figure out what data exists, how it is captured, who owns it, and what opportunities are available to study it for impact purposes. Chances are decently good that employee engagement scores, talent retention data, and customer research are within reach for your team already.
Analyze the data to test your hypothesis. Generally you’re going to be exploring the correlation or causal relationship between business outcomes (e.g., annual talent retention rates) and impact inputs (e.g., employee volunteer participation).
Know the limits of your claims. There are four degrees by which you can measure and articulate business value, in ascending order of their strength: program outputs, correlated outcomes, causal outcomes, and financial value. All four degrees have merit, but only when framed appropriately. Your audience will know when correlation is not causation, so be transparent about what your analysis can and can’t prove.
Document your methodology. You may not always need to “show your work” with every audience, report, or presentation, but you’ll never regret documenting your approach and your math when it’s called for.

Care deeply about your deck and how you deliver it

As much as we all hope for our numbers to speak for themselves, that’s a gamble most shouldn’t take. At the end of the day, selling ROI – making your case for attention, investment, and prioritization – is just as essential as measuring it. I recently spoke with a couple of long-serving corporate impact executives who told me that the presentation deck as a craft deserves outsized attention: the narrative arc, the visual clarity, the economy and precision of language.

Tactics to consider:

Lead with business implications and avoid the temptation to describe everything you do programmatically.
Design a deck to be voiced over rather than read in depth. We often ask slides to do too much – to be the backdrop of our presentations and the detailed readout all at once. In some cases, you need two different documents to perform those two different tasks. Keep slides lean if you can – one main idea conveyed per slide, minimal text, strong visual hierarchy of information. And if needed, use an appendix for detail.
Tailor your framing to the specific executive or audience. A CFO cares about financial exposure and return. A CHRO cares about talent outcomes. A CMO cares about brand and consumer trust. The underlying story can be consistent but the framing should accommodate their unique perspective.
Practice delivering it out loud. Your goal is not to memorize, but to build fluency – to be able to move fluidly between the deck and the room, respond to questions while staying on message, and project confidence.
Develop a ‘30-second version’ of every presentation you give. You may not always need it, but when you do you’ll be glad to have put in the extra work. If nothing else, it forces you to clarify your thinking to its purest form.

Don’t shy away from clarifying the stakes

Impact leaders might hesitate to connect their work explicitly to business risk or competitive exposure out of concern they’d seem alarmist, or that they’d imply their function exists primarily to manage downside. That caution may be misplaced, particularly in a moment where any number of dynamics – from a swinging political pendulum to growing AI backlash – could put impact in a difference-making position for the company.

Leaders are often well-served to call it how they see it and, in the right conditions, will benefit from sharper articulation of what the company stands to gain or lose based on its level of commitment to social goals. One impact leader recently relayed an anecdote that underscores this point: she went into a meeting with c-level execs and asked, “how would you feel if we were no longer seen as an industry leader on [our priority]?” The question, pointed and provocative, piqued attention in the right ways and accelerated a conversation about putting more resources into the work.

Tactics to consider:

Frame impact gaps as potential business risks. Urgency rooted in competitive exposure and reputational risk often lands most squarely with business leaders. In particular, if your company is materially behind peers on a workforce, community, or consumer trust dimension, say so using competitive data.
Connect ROI to investment decisions explicitly. When making the case for new resources or program continuation, be clear about what the business stands to gain and what it risks by not investing. Sometimes a well-framed cost of inaction argument is more persuasive than a benefit projection.
Scenario plan with your team. Look down the road at potential short and mid-range shifts in your company’s context that could change the relative value of impact to the business, and discuss how you can put your work in an optimal position ahead of those eventualities. Relevant shifts could relate to your industry, the political environment, consumer or public sentiment, and other dynamics.

That’s a wrap on Influence at Work (revisit part 1 and part 2), but not on NationSwell’s investment in supporting leaders in our community with this most essential aspect of their success. Many thanks for the brilliant NationSwell members and Strategic Advisors who lent me their experience and insights for this mini-series. For anyone with questions, comments, or need, please shoot me an email at [email protected].