Thinking About Impact

Are you thinking about impact, and are you doing so the right way?

There are times when you don’t want to make a heavy impact; skydiving and driving on a highway come to mind as good examples. But most of the time, especially in our careers, we do want to make an impact. As an Engineering leader at Facebook, I’ve learned the importance of defining and creating impact, and want to share my perspective with you here.

You’re probably wondering — what is impact? Well, I’m so glad you asked! Impact is outcome-focused. It’s not a feeling. It’s not in direct correlation with output, as motion is not synonymous with progress. The impact is defined by tangible, recognizable outcomes related to business objectives. 

As it turns out, a lot of people work without impact, an intentional focus on measuring their impact, or understanding of how it models against their company’s goals and calibration cycles.

While effort is important, it is not sufficient.

I’ve been working at Facebook for almost five years now; every six months, I’ve participated in performance review cycles, both delivering and receiving that focus on calibrating impact. This has allowed me to observe which factors cause people to progress (or not) within the organization. Let’s talk about these factors and the deviations from average growth pace and how it fits into the bigger picture.

Defining Impact at Facebook

At Facebook, impact can feel like a bit of a confusing variable because we use and misuse the word so much internally and literally have it posted on every wall.

But over the years, it’s been tethered to an important word: Outcome. Let’s stick to this definition from above: 

Impact is a tangible, recognizable outcome related to business objectives.

Facebook is a mission-driven company and wants “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” A worthy pursuit.

To drive this mission forward, our teams at Facebook create goals. To achieve these goals, we outline tactics, or actionable steps to accomplish specific goals. Therefore, the impact can be measured by how effectively these tactics move the needle for the mission. These problems don’t need to be technical, but anything that moves the org closer to achieving its mission. 

However, making the most significant possible impact requires focusing on the most important problems. It sounds simple, but most do a poor job in connecting these lines and waste a lot of time. Let’s examine how companies can identify and pursue these tactics in order to drive and reward the behavior it wants.

Models, Calibrations, and Career Progression

Speaking broadly, companies need to land a performance evaluation model to measure impact. These consist of uniform rules that drive behavior, direct outcomes, and reflect the ever-changing needs of the organization. It is important to recognize and understand the model you have in your company and the model you are operating in.

At Facebook, there is a six-month rating system, promotion, and bonus schedule. The goal of these reviews is to deliver fair, efficient, and consistent feedback that is based on a meritocratic model and reflects our growing needs. Frequent review cycles (a larger discussion in itself) encourages entrepreneurship and risk-taking by giving more ownership over outcomes. Every six months, I can reset how I want to spend my time.

Since it is a relatively large company, this one-size-fits-all model maintains fairness and efficiency in review cycles. It’s not a perfect system, but is a good approximation of one. It does well to streamline incentives and behavior through approximations; all employees are on the same playing field, with the same rules, but aren’t stack ranked against one another.

Perhaps most importantly, it allows your impact portfolio to be weighed against your needs, and needs of your team. But I’ll be getting into that later (so follow along!). 

Consider this scaled model of Tesla roadster. It does a good job in telling you how this car looks from different angles but it does not tell you if it fits in your garage or how it feels to drive one. 

What is important to understand is that models do not have to be consistent over time and it can fall off the edges of normal distribution. In other words, models have bugs.

Here are some examples I have seen:

• Business context changes over time. This means the definition of what is the “biggest problem to solve” will evolve. Several years ago, my team rewarded operational work a lot more than building new software, as we needed to develop that muscle in order to lift operational excellence in the org. Now we think of operations as normal expectations from our engineers.

• Peer group changes over time. Given that we cannot sort through large number of people efficiently, we need to cluster similar outcomes that will ultimately decide the reward. If your impact lies on an edge, which cluster you end up depends on your peer group.

• Models change over time. At my previous job, our performance review system changed multiple times. It does not mean they were wrong. They wore out or evolved as per the learnings or business objectives.

So, make sure you understand the model you are working in.

I often see two personas: the individual who does the work for themselves, and the one who optimizes work to calibrate toward the model. The employee who gets the farthest sits in the middle of these extremes. And people who do well in the long term are mostly thinking about the bigger picture and problems to solve instead of their reviews!

The Bigger Picture

We’ve talked about impact and models, so let’s bring it together in a way that is helpful.

While growth within your company’s modeled parameters helps you advance your career on paper, it is real-world growth outside of models that really defines who you are. 

In other words, impact is outcomes that are useful for the business. And the models we use to calibrate impact are worth understanding, but not worth making your primary focus. They are your guardrails. And when in doubt, common sense and discussion with others in your org are great ways to hone in on the outcomes (impact) you want, and the outcomes (impact) that are less important.

While skydiving may not be the best place to make an impact, the sky’s the limit for when you commit to growth that makes an impact on your life as a whole.

So… to recap.

• A lot of people work without impact, don’t.

• Others think about it transactionally, think of the big picture.

• Impact is a tangible, recognizable outcome related to business objectives.

• Making the most significant possible impact requires focusing on the most important problems.

• Think about the impact you want; how it models against your company’s calibration cycles. Understand the model and its limitations.

• For leaders, if your model isn’t producing good outcomes, evaluate if your strategy or the model needs to be updated.

Have an impactful month!