Achieve:
Impact
Making a Difference and Moving the Needle
academy
Answers: Am I making a difference?
Making a difference and caring about the difference you make. This is about having an impact, understanding that impact, caring about that impact, and finding meaning and fulfillment from that impact.
lesson 1
Introduction
course objectives
- Connect the idea of Impact to specific examples of places, relationships or activities where you know you are making a meaningful contribution.
- Facilitate a change in your behavior where you proactively seek to make an impact in an area you feel you are less than perfect or prepared.
- Attribute “cognitive dissonance”—less than ideal situations—to your resistance at making an impact.
- Collaborate with friends or your team to create a powerful collective impact, even where individual impact might be modest.
Learning Objectives
Our Journey to Purpose becomes impactful as we make a difference along the way.
Impact is all about making a contribution to the world in a way that is meaningful to you.
personal assessments
a moment for reflection
Impact Pre-Assessment
The impact you choose to make is influenced by meaningful events you have experienced. Sometimes an impactful moment will change your perspective. It might open new opportunities, shape relationships, or set you on a course toward a new objective.
Pursuing Happiness
Impact helps us stay engaged in the moment and motivated
enough to keep moving, to keep growing, and to keep discovering.
lesson 2
Being Proactive
Impact at Seven
You don’t need to be rich, famous, or experienced to make a difference.
Impact focuses being engaged in the moment and finding what you do meaningful. We can all experience this in our own unique ways.
The Snowflake Perspective
Sometimes, we look at the seemingly perfect people around us and feel like we aren’t good enough to make an impact.
A change in perspective can help us come to the realization that it is our imperfections and differences that allow us to make our unique contribution to the world.
personal assessments
a moment for reflection
Less Than Perfect
Sometimes impact is not often or obvious. Caring for a loved one—a child, an older parent or friend, a pet or a rescue animal—doesn‘t always give immediate feedback on improvement or progress. If you’re always looking for immediate progress you may be disappointed, at least in the short term.
lesson 3
Fear and Other Obstacles
Heroic Yes
Each of us must choose to push past the doubt and fear and take a risk to make an impact.
Are you ready to make that choice?
personal assessments
a moment for reflection
Heroic Yes Exercise
The idea of the “hero” and a “call to adventure” permeates game design and historical writing. In your life’s story, you are the hero and life will call you to multiple adventures. The goal is not to go on every one but to pick the ones best suited to who you are and what you want to achieve, conquer or capture.
Cognitive Dissonance
It’s impossible to make a difference everywhere and all at once. You must decide where you want to make an impact.
What’s meaningful for one person may not be meaningful to you.
lesson 4
The One and the Many
Find Meaning
Not everything we do has obvious impact in and of itself. Picking up after your dog while talking it for a walk has a reason—but is the “impact” that obvious, especially when you’re turning the plastic bag inside out and stooping down once again?
Many jobs involve routine activities—month end or quarterly reports, washing out mop buckets, setting out signage and turning on the “open” sign—all of which matter but may not, unless carefully considered, rise to the level of Impact.
One of our team members worked for years in the automotive business, specifically in plants that stamp, grind, weld and assemble small assemblies that make up larger parts of the car you would recognize. One of those assemblies is a small gear that forms part of the attachment point between the back and bottom of a car seat, allowing you to adjust the pitch of the seat while holding the seat at the selected angle—even under the impact of a crash.
The tiniest mistake in building that part can have catastrophic consequences. The operator who is stamping out the part is producing hundreds every hour of often long and tedious days. As part of this rote work she is supposed to check for small metal “burrs” or pieces of metal that need to be ground off to make sure the part works as designed. The presence of a burr can interfere with the proper functioning of the piece, failing to properly lock the seat pitch at the right angle. Under the stress of a head on crash, that tiny, supposedly insignificant burr that escaped attention in the push to fill an entire bin with pieces can cause the seat to break at the point of contact, throwing the driver or passenger forcefully forward.
In this case, failing to see the “impact” of a repeated activity producing a tiny part can and has had very negative “impact” on people in the moment of “impact” with an immovable force—like a bridge pillar or another vehicle.
Finding impact in even mundane activities increases our engagement and allows us to find meaning in even the most everyday tasks.
Part of the Greater Whole
Maybe you feel like the impact you are making is small or unnoticed.
But even the simplest contribution can play a part in making a difference as part of a greater whole.
personal assessments
a moment for reflection
Impact Goal Exercise
Every one of us has unique talents that so many people could benefit from. Those around us can only help us put our talents to work if they know about them. What “hidden” talents are others unaware of? How will you let others know about these talents? Are you willing to try?
lesson 5
Conclusion
Impact Conclusion
We each impact the world in our own ways. We all have unique, incredible potential to contribute to the world and help others to do the same.
So, how will YOU make a difference?
Responses