A generation on, what will be remembered of the impact project you are leading today?
The people involved? The metrics tracked? The outcomes achieved?
How would these questions be answered seven generations from now?
That’s the question asked by the Seven Generations Principle, a value of the Haudenosaunee people, an indigenous nation in what is now North America.
Of course, we’d like to think a successful impact initiative would continue to be felt seven generations on, but taking stock from this perspective requires a rethinking of the role of leaders and decision-makers that seek to create lasting impact.
Recognising that their contribution is not about short-term gains, individual outcomes, or recognition, but about building a system that outlasts them. For generations to come.
This is what impact innovation leadership looks like: collaboration rather than power accumulation, nurturing an organism rather than feeding egos and gaining from interdependence while striving towards clear objectives.
Our current system
The current arrangement of corporate incentives is clear.
Increase shareholder value and the rewards flow in terms of bonuses, uplifted portfolio value and short-term incentives and recognition.
This structure is very effective in achieving the outcomes it is set up for: a 2025 EY study found that broadly:
“corporations get the performance that executives are incentivised to deliver”.
But these incentives are not calibrated for achieving positive social or environmental impact in the present, let alone seven generations of impact into the future.
So how do we reset the system?
From a competitive to collective mindset
Successful impact innovation programs rarely adhere to short term cycles. Instead these processes spin out over lifetimes, sometimes multiple generations.
Taking this trajectory into account requires shifting from a competitive to a collective mindset.
Not only does this mean involving multiple partners during the program’s implementation, but handing over to the next team that will take up the baton.
As of 2022, the median CEO at a large US company will stay in the chair for 4.8 years, down from 6 in 2013. Tenures are even shorter further down the pecking order.
With impact initiatives requiring time as much as funding, and five years being a reasonably short timeframe to see a return, corporate innovation leaders need to build initiatives that will outlast any individual executive or internal benefactor.
This comes through establishing a programme logic that is tied to the underlying business drivers as much as it is to the task at hand, without overlooking the value that comes with having skin in the game: just as leaders move on, so do programme participants move onwards, and upwards.
Social innovation requires patience, but it also requires results
While retaining the seven generation perspective, acknowledging the realities of working within corporate environments means working with multiple horizons at once.
For leaders, this requires conceptualising projects both for the long term, but also in the one, three and five year cycles. Setting short, medium and long term goals allows the project to generate internal stakeholder buy-in without losing sight of the ultimate trajectory.
In programme design, this can be seen in shifting from a project to portfolio logic, such as aligning time-bound accelerators or outcomes-based grants to ongoing programme structures, such as peer-to-peer knowledge and community building.
The human in the loop
Working over longer timelines can embed impact and contribute to systemic change, but for the humans involved it can be an exhausting and draining slog.
For leaders to address burnout – already heightened across the impact sector – this requires a strategy aligned with the task at hand.
Part of this comes from adopting a collaborative rather than competitive approach, but this can further be strengthened through meaningful partnerships and transparency.
Creating meaningful partnerships can drive inspiration and engender trust, while spreading risk instead of concentrating it creates the space for open and honest conversations. Not all initiatives and projects will succeed, and being realistic rather than overselling the potential can prevent disappointment in future.
Rethinking impact for the long durée
Rethinking impact as lasting across multiple generations requires a clear mindset reset for leaders.
Taking activities towards collective, yet driven, and human, yet ambitious, framework, creates a platform for leaders to navigate the demand of corporate social innovation, establishing a culture that outlasts individual initiatives.
Embedding these within a system is no easy task – but essential for achieving the systemic change we are driving towards.
