Finding Success Between Dreams and Deliverables
Social impact leaders are big dreamers. We have to be. When you're working to end hunger, transform education, or eliminate pollution, anything less than audacious goals feels like settling.
But when your mission is to change the world, how do you measure success? And how do you sustain yourself when it feels like we're swimming upstream against impossible odds?
The Success Pendulum
A mentor once told me something that changed how I think about impact work. I was leading Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives at several organizations and was feeling simultaneously overwhelmed by how much work I had to do and frustrated by the slow pace of change. "If your measure of success is eliminating racism in that organization," she said, "you're always going to fail."
This hits at the heart of what I call the "success pendulum" in social impact work. Focus on the big societal changes we yearn for, and every day can feel like failure. Focus on smaller, technical goals like dollars raised or event attendance, and the work starts to feel divorced from why we got into it in the first place. We have a tendency to swing from one end of the pendulum to the other.
Both extremes are demoralizing.
The Effort Trap
For high achievers in mission-driven work, this is exacerbated by the pattern of measuring success by how hard we're working rather than actual outcomes. When we care deeply about our organization's mission, it's natural to think that more hours, more meetings, more items checked off our to-do list equals more success.
Our investment of time and energy becomes the marker of our worth.
But being busy doesn't necessarily mean being successful. It just means being busy.
This is why having crystal-clear goals isn't just helpful, it's essential. When you know exactly what you're doing and why, you can complete the task and then stop. Revolutionary concept, right?
The AIM SMART Framework
You can't do everything. Certainly not while taking care of yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically. Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, we've all adjusted to having more and more on our plates. The expectations of social impact leaders keep growing exponentially.
To interrupt this pattern, we need to pause and ask: "How much of what I'm doing is actually in service of my real goals?"
Here's a framework that I use to help my clients with goal-setting and impact measurement:
Start with Future Vision: Imagine it's one year from now. What are 1-3 achievements that you would describe as wildly successful? Be specific.
Apply AIM Mapping: For each achievement, define three versions:
Achievable: The minimum viable success (your safety net)
Ideal: The gold standard outcome (your north star)
Middle: The realistic stretch goal (your target)
Create SMART Steps: Backwards map from your Middle goals. Each step should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.
Practice Strategic No: Here's the hardest part. When anything comes up that wasn't named as one of your big goals, don't take it on immediately. Pause. Check whether this new task connects to your pre-defined vision of success. If it doesn't, practice saying "not yet."
The Power of Aligned Action
This isn't about becoming rigid or missing opportunities, and you may want to adjust your goals and action steps as time goes on. It's about creating a baseline to refer back to, something that slows down our automatic "yes" response.
When our actions are tied to our goals, they take on meaning and value. When those actions are clearly defined, we're less likely to get lost in busy work and more able to hold boundaries without guilt.
If your tasks connect to your big goals and you're doing them consistently, then you know you're moving forward in ways that matter. Success doesn't have to be about hours worked or emails sent. And it doesn't have to be about solving systemic issues every single day.
You can log off, eat lunch, take a walk, knowing that you've done what you set out to do.
Redefining Success
The most sustainable social impact leaders I know have learned to find success in the space between their daily actions and their ultimate vision. They celebrate incremental progress while maintaining sight of transformational goals.
What would change in your work if you gave yourself permission to measure success this way?
Citations
“A Guide to Establishing Personal Development Goals for Work.” iPEC Coaching, 15 June 2022, https://www.ipeccoaching.com/blog/a-guide-to-establishing-personal-development-goals-for-work. Accessed 11 August 2025.