How Can We Measure an Organisation’s Kingdom Impact?
by James Waters
Five years ago, I quit my job to explore whether it was possible to measure the Kingdom of God coming through businesses and non-profits all over the world. My background was researching and helping the largest secular development organisations understand if they were being effective. I had seen how measuring complex aspects of human social and economic well-being, and organisations’ processes could move from seemingly impossible, to practical and standardised. And yet the concept of measuring ‘spiritual impact’ remained elusive.
Five years later, after hundreds of conversations, dozens of metrics reviewed, multiple assessment tools developed and organisations analysed, I am convinced it is not only possible, but critical.
Several years ago, BAM Global identified three Big Hair Audience Goals (BHAGs) for the BAM movement at large. In order to know if we are making progress according to the first BHAG: ‘Solve global issues with innovative BAM solutions’ — we need to know if BAM organisations within the movement are having an impact! The recent State of the BAM Movement Report we published in partnership with BAM Global indicated that indeed, many companies are tackling social and spiritual issues, but we want to have evidence of that impact.
Likewise, we want to be good stewards of the resources God has entrusted to us. In my opinion, that looks like knowing the impact of our organisations or investments, so that we can a) help address the needs of those we are serving or working alongside more accurately, b) improve the processes of our organisations so we are more effective, and c) celebrate what God is doing with all our stakeholders.
But how can this be done? How can a Kingdom business leader move from anecdote about their spiritual and social impact, to actual evidence? And how can we become leaders who truly understand our Kingdom impact?[1]
The ‘How’ of Kingdom Impact Measurement
There are many ways to measure Kingdom Impact, but there are three key principles that I have learned from approaching this challenge to date:
1. Think about your culture, your people, and your resources
Businesses tend to divide by function. There are the departments of production, purchasing, marketing, human resources, accounting, and research and development. But when we are considering the social and spiritual impact of a company, it is more useful to look at the areas through which the Kingdom of God may manifest.
Jesus talked about and demonstrated the Kingdom in a number of different ways:
He clearly gave us guidance for how we should conduct ourselves, and the qualities of the Kingdom of God. These include doing justly, loving mercy and walking humbly (Micah 6:8); and the righteousness, peace and joy that should be evident in an environment or ‘culture’ that reflects the Kingdom (Romans 14:17).
Similarly, there are some clear principles for how we should treat our fellow ‘man’. We have a duty of care to those we interact with (Exodus 22:21, Leviticus 19:33), are commanded to love one another (Romans 13:10), and to do good to those around us (Galatians 6:10). We are to “make disciples” (Matthew 28:19-20), as well as to protect the poor and vulnerable (Psalm 82:3-4, Isaiah 1:17 as 2 of nearly 100 passages). Jesus comes to give “life to the full” (John 10:10), and ‘shalom’ to mankind[2] that looks like flourishing materially, relationally, personally and spiritually.
Meanwhile God commanded us to steward the assets we are given (Matthew 25), gave us clear direction on generosity (Malachi 3:10-12, Acts 20:35), and commanded us to ‘tend and care’ for creation, appointing us as stewards of it (Genesis 1:28)
Having considered the ways in which the Kingdom of God is described throughout Scripture, I reviewed over 25 different spiritual impact frameworks or tools. Combining these insights, I believe there are three key ‘dimensions’ through which social and spiritual impact occurs in a company: its culture and governance, its people, and its resources.
Practically, culture includes a company’s vision and values, the modelled practices towards its people, and the working conditions. From a Kingdom perspective, this looks like how employees see and experience Kingdom values modelled.
People refers to the social and spiritual well-being of all individuals in the organisation (as well as potential influence on clients and suppliers etc). Practically, this is demonstrated through their attitudes and behaviours.
And resources refers to the stewardship of financial, material and environmental resources.
To measure Kingdom impact, we need to think about culture, people, and resources.
2. Ask the right people the right questions
Second, we need to ask the right people the right questions. Evidence has shown that the values a CEO holds are critical for the direction and success of a company – 60% of a company’s market value is attributed to its reputation, and nearly half of that can be attributed to the CEO’s reputation[3].
But companies are about more than just the CEO, and success is about more than profit. Companies influence many different types of individual, principally those who work within it, but also external stakeholders such as suppliers, clients, customers and/or local community. Each of these sets of individuals can be thought of as part of the ‘value chain’ of potential positive and/or negative social and spiritual impact that a company can have. Is the leadership team aligned on the intentional practices to model culture? Do employees experience the values that you talk about in your board room? Are employees growing not just in their engagement with work, but their personal sense of calling and character? Do they feel encouraged spiritually working there? What was the experience of the supplier as they engaged with your procurement team?
All of these questions are answerable and indeed we are now delivering insights to companies about them! In order to do this, we brought together some of the most well respected frameworks from the movements of Business as Mission, redemptive entrepreneurship and faith-driven business that define ‘Kingdom business’. One of these was this ‘Framework for entrepreneurs’ featured on the BAM blog.
Pulling out the most salient concepts, we designed a robust assessment of ten key ‘building blocks’ of a Kingdom company that cuts across culture and well-being – and critically, captures leaders’ perceptions as well as employees’. This has allowed companies all over the world to understand how their people are doing, what is the impact of working there, and whether leadership has a right perception of how Kingdom culture and values are experienced.
Lastly, we have experimented with the best questions to ask leaders in order to capture company generosity, environmental impact, and potential impact in the community.
Through the experience of the last year implementing this tool, we have learned the value of asking hard questions (e.g. ‘do you feel threatened by leadership?’), carefully asking about faith (using filtering questions so this is possible even in the most sensitive contexts), and showing leadership blind spots that are to the detriment of organisational culture and likely to inhibit spiritual impact.
We are excited by the progress but there is certainly more work to be done! Measuring employee engagement used to be deemed so complex that it remained an academic argument. Now robust measures exist, such as the ‘Gallup 12’, that business people agree on and use to improve their organisations. Research based on 30 million employees has shown that companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share[4]. What insights are we missing out on in terms of spiritual impact by not measuring the social, spiritual and relational well-being of those in our companies?
3. Integrate into your strategic plan
Finally, ‘data’ is only useful when it’s used! So, a critical aspect of measuring Kingdom impact in a company or organisation is having a plan for how it will be integrated into company operations and management. From reviewing spiritual integration plans and practices of various organisations, we found three key aspects to this.
Firstly, the information needs to be useful and interesting to wider stakeholders. The CEO and board may be interested in financial performance, but do they care about employee health?
Secondly, there needs to be a mechanism by which information can inform operations. This might be a theory of change or impact strategy through which the leadership understands how the company values will affect client satisfaction and exposure to the gospel. Or it might be a strategic plan that includes simple social and spiritual impact objectives, against which progress can be monitored. Either way, there are points of discussion where information on Kingdom impact can change the way operations are run, resources are allocated, or people are treated.
Thirdly, we need to think about not just what we believe, neither just what we do, but what do our stakeholders experience? In the same way as it is not enough to just think that taking care of the poor is important, we want to move from just thinking that the spiritual health of our employees is important, to actually measuring actions and their experiences. We call this the ‘values’, ‘actions’ and ‘fruit’ of a company.
There are some great examples where these principles have been applied. The company Zappos cultivated a culture of happiness through measuring and aiming for ‘profits, passion and purpose’. Non-profits like HOPE International use tools such as ‘Mission True’ to ensure they are not deviating from their vision and mission. And organisations like IBEC help businesses to integrate a ‘Spiritual impact plan’ into their daily operations.
Excitingly, we have started to see examples of people taking action from their Kingdom impact assessments too. There was an impact fund who immediately addressed their lack of an environment management plan. There was a company whose factory staff experienced a greatly different culture to head office staff, and they shifted how they looked after them. Another organisation’s team felt spiritually encouraged, appreciated Biblical devotions in the workplace, but many felt threatened by leadership. Upon receiving these results, the leadership began intentionally engaging with their team to address this.
In summary, I believe that the Business as Mission movement has taken great strides in articulating its vision and values, has clearly spread across the world and is addressing many social and spiritual issues, but evidence of Kingdom impact is still lacking. We are excited by various initiatives in this space, and believe that as we build this evidence, companies will be able to share lessons, equip others and celebrate what God is doing.
[1] I define ‘Kingdom impact’ here as the environmental, social and spiritual impact that comes through the holistic operations of an organisation. The emphasis is on social and spiritual, given that environmental and economic are more easily answered by tools and questions already developed.
This article was originally presented at The Christian Economic Forum 2019. It is posted here with consent from CEF, and a 2022 update from the author, James Waters.
>>Download State of the Movement Report Here
James Waters is the Director of the Kingdom Impact Framework at Eido Research – a project designed to help Kingdom organisations measure and understand their social and spiritual impact. Previously he worked as an international development consultant and completed a PhD on the resilience of slum-dwellers in Uganda. James is passionate about community transformation and Kingdom business done well, and documenting that impact to give glory to God. He is currently loving the challenge of growing the Kingdom Impact Framework, working with funds, accelerators, businesses and non-profits all over the world. Meanwhile he is delighted to be a new father and enjoys helping to lead prayer movements in Europe.
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