The Impact Gaps Canvas is a tool to help leaders take a systems-led approach to designing their offerings and their careers. It is used in a variety of ways: as a framework 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 offerings invite leaders to create solutions before understanding problems leading to shallow solutions, or innovations that only generate incremental change without contributing to systems change.
The Impact Gaps Canvas can be used by anyone who wants to understand the landscape of a problem, understand the systems holding that problem in place, and the potential paths to contribute to change. The questions on the left of the Canvas 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? What is 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).
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 policies, structures, or practices might be changed to shift the system towards different results? What would it take to change power dynamics and what would that look like? What lessons could 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 a lot of potential deeper questions, plus some lessons learned that you can use to help you build your own contribution efforts.
Reach out to Daniela is you would like to run an Impact Gaps Canvas workshop in your company, team, or at your next event!
