Engagement is about achieving change – in people’s awareness, attitudes, understandings and behaviours.

These changes in turn translate into impacts in the broader political and biophysical landscape. When developing an engagement project’s objectives – its outputs, practises, desired outcomes and efficiencies – firstly translate them into performance indicators which can express the engagement’s intended change impacts.

Indicators are both qualitative and quantitative in nature and express a change in the state or condition of things or people. So collect original baseline measures of these indicators where you can. By setting an ‘ideal’ – a target or performance indicator -and measuring it against the original ‘baseline’ – you can compare the before and after condition. In this way indicators effectively signpost your engagement’s impact or success.

OUTPUTS – the products or activity associated with the engagement.
Success indicators – numbers of things done or produced through the engagement …information products produced, events held or contacts made.

PROCESS – those best practise, ‘critical success’ factors which are within your project management control. The how, with whom, when and where of the engagement process. Reach, accessibility, representative inclusion, understanding, value, timeliness and responsiveness of the engagement.
Success indicators – quality of the engagement e.g. …inclusion (e.g. all impacted where informed), reach (e.g. 80% of all targeted stakeholders participated) …value (perception of stakeholders of the worth of the process).

INTENDED OUTCOMES – occur in the short, mid or long term and have impact at varying scales in a change system…e.g. better understanding of issues and stakeholder needs, long term partnership-building, policy influence and change, improved relationship quality (reputation), better service delivery or cost-effective and equitable resource usage.
Success indicators – what happened as a result of the engagement …e.g. 16 new  policy recommendations, 5 new inter-sectoral partnerships created, improved reputation with corporate stakeholders, demonstrable improvement in knowledge amongst participants.

EFFICIENCIES – that the financial, human and other resource inputs delivered the outputs at a reasonable cost, reached the desired audience in an appropriate way, and achieved the desired outcomes.
Success indicators – the financial, human and other resource use effectiveness of delivering a product, activity or outcome e.g. for the time the professionally-paid people spent to promote, organise, cater for and deliver a seminar at an expensive venue, did you get a cost-effective ‘bang for your buck’ in terms of targeted reach, stakeholder attendance, change in participant understanding and awareness … and the desired strategic engagement outcomes for the mid and long terms?

What makes a good indicator?
It is…

• Accurately and reliably representative of what it indicates.
• Understandable…what it means is demonstrable and clear.
• Measurable …there is a before and after quantity or quality.
• Collectable, collate-able and interpretable …in a timely  manner.

And most  importantly,

• Changes in it’s value will express trends which trigger real world political or practical adaptations in response to its change !

 Adapt Strategic Communications…strategic engagement planning and facilitation, www.adaptstrategic.com.au