Forecasts and Reports

Businesses need forecasts. And they need reports. Before and after.
Same with budgets. Projections and then balance sheets.
What’s coming and what happened.
Basic stuff here, I know.

But what if we’re not dealing with markets and accounts and production and inventory and other various concrete, easily-measurable components of a business?

What if we’re dealing with emotional health, for example?

It’s one thing to project the number of cases or tonnage or items we’ll deliver in 2020, track numbers, and then report on our findings. It’s quite another thing to know if the well we dug or the tool we delivered increased gender equality, community cohesion, or hope in the future.

But it can be done. It has to be done, if we know we’re headed in the right direction.

Step 1: Ask.

Who do you serve? Ask them what changes, improves, evolves, grows when X is delivered. You’ll be surprised. Then do the hard work of tying deliverables to what they reported.

If you don’t do this, you’re burying your head in the sand. If you do, you’re on the right track to forecasting and reporting on real change.