The Impact Gaps Canvas is a tool to help change makers take a systems-led leadership approach to designing their offerings and their careers. It is used in a variety of ways: as mindset and tool for approaching social innovation, as a tool for educators to teach systems change concepts, and as part of Oxford’s Map the System competition, now running at 50+ universities and educational programs around the world. This tool came out of Daniela Papi-Thornton’s Tackling Heropreneurship research, funded by the Clore Social Leadership Programme.
It might seem like common sense, that anyone who wants to solve a problem would first strive to deeply understand the problem as well as the landscape of existing solution efforts before deciding on which action to take. Though it might be common sense, it’s not common practice. Many innovation programs focus on solutions before understanding problems while hackathons, start-up weekends, and other social business start-up boot camps often completely skip over the system level look at social problems.
The Impact Gaps Canvas can be used by anyone who wants to understand the landscape of a problem, the systems holding in it place, and paths to contribute to change. The questions on the left can help you understand and map out the challenge and the wider systems it relates to (who or what is impacted, what is holding the current status quo in place, who stands to be negatively impacted if the problem is solved, the history of the challenge, etc). You can use the questions on the right to help you map out the “solutions landscape” (what has already been tried, what has worked and what hasn’t, what future efforts are planned, etc). You might want to look at solution efforts from a local level (what efforts are being tried locally, and what resources are available that might be of use in shifting the system even if they do not currently self-identify as “solutions”) and from a global level (what similar or tangential efforts have been tried around the world and what lessons can be learned).
In the middle, are the “Impact Gaps”. You can explore these gaps from the 30,000 foot level (what is missing in the current landscape of solution efforts, what could connect up these efforts, what regulation might be needed, how can lessons be shared, etc) or explore the gaps in individual efforts more explicitly (where have individual efforts failed to effectively contribute to shifting the system, what parts of the model can be tweaked to add more impact for more people, etc).
In the end, you will identify some lessons learned that you can use to help you build your own solutions efforts or to focus your own career path (perhaps helping you identify organizations with which you want to work in order to best use your skills to impact change).
Reach out to Daniela is you would like to run an Impact Gaps Canvas workshop at your next event!
