What you can commission · 01 of 04

Impact Strategy & Operating Design

Theory of change, governance architecture, decision rights and the operating rhythms that turn evidence into a decision somebody owns.

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What it is

The design of how impact actually runs through your organisation: where decisions get made, who owns them, what evidence has to be in the room, and at what cadence. It usually includes a theory of change, but the theory of change is the smallest part of it. The larger part is the architecture underneath — the arrangements that determine whether the theory changes anything.

Duration: 8–16 weeks
Starts from: Readiness Scan, or a governance review
Who it is for: Funds, foundations, INGOs and delivery organisations with programmes running and evidence that is not landing
Delivered by: Whitney van Schyndel, with a research or facilitation specialist as scope requires

When you need it

The symptoms are consistent, and none of them look like a strategy problem at first:

You have evidence and it does not change decisions. Reports land, are appreciated, and nothing moves.
The same recommendation has appeared in three consecutive evaluations.
Impact is reviewed in a different forum from the one that holds budget authority.
Your impact lead is accountable for outcomes they have no authority to shape.
Nobody can name a decision that could not proceed without impact evidence.

If you recognise three or more of those, the constraint is not measurement. Buying more evidence will not release it.

What is in scope

Theory of change — built backwards from the decisions it must inform, not forwards from activities.
Governance architecture — which body decides what, and how impact review joins the forum that already holds financial and operational authority rather than sitting beside it.
Decision rights — what each body may actually do: note, advise, approve, halt, reallocate. Specified with the same precision you already apply to financial delegations.
Role ownership — a named accountability for the decision, distinct from the accountability for producing the evidence.
Operating rhythms — the cadence at which evidence meets decisions, matched to how fast the decisions actually move.
Enabling infrastructure — a specification for the systems and data required, sized to the decisions rather than to the report.

How it runs

Typically eight to sixteen weeks. Diagnostic first — usually starting from the Readiness Scan — then design worked with the people whose authority is affected, not presented to them. Design produced in isolation and handed over does not survive contact with the organisation, and we would rather not produce one.

What you receive

A theory of change built backwards from the decisions it must inform
A governance map: which body decides what, on what evidence, at what point
A decision-rights table — note, advise, approve, halt, reallocate — one page
Role accountabilities, separating ownership of the decision from ownership of the evidence
An operating calendar showing where evidence meets each decision
An infrastructure specification, sized to the decisions rather than the report
A sequenced implementation plan with owners and dates

What we need from you

An executive sponsor with authority to change a committee's mandate. Without this the engagement produces recommendations, not change.
Access to the people whose decision rights are affected — not only the impact team.
Existing governance papers, terms of reference and the last two years of impact reporting.
Roughly half a day a fortnight from the sponsor, and a day a week from an internal counterpart.

Where this has been done

The BUSY Group engagement is the worked example: an enterprise impact strategy and an eight-part system, with the governance specification that makes it operational. See the case studies.

The honest limit

This work is redistributive. It moves decision rights, and every right it moves comes from somebody who currently holds it. If the engagement is scoped as advice, or if the sponsor cannot actually change who decides what, you will get a good document and no change. We would rather say that at the scoping stage than discover it at month four.

Questions we get asked

How is this different from a theory of change?

A theory of change describes how you believe change happens. Operating design determines whether anyone acts on it. Most organisations already have a theory of change; very few have specified which body reviews progress against it, what that body may decide, and what evidence has to be in front of them. We usually build or rebuild the theory of change as part of this work, but it is one component of six, and on its own it changes very little.

Do we need to have finished measuring before we start?

No, and waiting is usually a mistake. Organisations that hold off on operating design until the measurement is right tend to wait indefinitely, because measurement is never finished. In practice the design tells you which measurement actually matters, which often means collecting less rather than more.

Who needs to be involved from our side?

Whoever can change who decides what. That is normally an executive sponsor with authority over governance, the impact lead, and a finance or operations counterpart. If the most senior person involved cannot alter a committee's mandate, the engagement will produce recommendations rather than change, and we would rather restructure the sponsorship than proceed on that basis.

How to start

Take the Readiness ScanTen minutes, free. It scores the five layers and usually tells us where to start before we speak.
A 45-minute scoping callWe test whether this is genuinely the service you need. Sometimes it is not, and we will say so.
A written scope and feeOne page: what is in, what is out, dates, deliverables and the decision each one serves.

The other three

All four run on the same underlying architecture — the Integrated Impact Operating Model, which we designed and published.