HoSS Open Lecture: Being judged by the people you serve
How can organizations measure progress when meaningful change takes years and results are difficult to predict? Join us for a lecture, organized by the House of Sustainable Society (HoSS), on how listening to the people an organization serves can become a powerful tool for measuring impact, learning, and improving its work.
How do you know whether your work is making a difference when the changes you hope to achieve take years and depend on factors beyond your control?
Many organizations end up counting the things that are easy to count, even when they're not what matters most.
About the lecture
At this HoSS Open Lecture, Andreas Ulfsax from the Swedish development organization Individuell Människohjälp (IM) will present an alternative approach. Working in five countries, IM has developed a Progress Tracker that allows the people it serves to describe changes in their own lives and assess the organization's work.
Rather than simply reporting results after a project ends, IM uses this feedback to learn, adapt, and improve its work along the way.
In the lecture, "Being judged by the people you serve: listening as a management tool," Andreas will discuss how this approach works in practice, what it enables, and what challenges arise when organisations place listening at the center of their work.
Professor Lukas Goretzki from the Stockholm School of Economics will also share insights from a research project examining impact measurement at the intersection of accountability and learning.
Practical details
The lecture will take place in room Torsten at the Stockholm School of Economics from 08:00 to 09:00, with breakfast served from 07:30.
We welcome researchers, students, and practitioners interested in impact measurement, organisational learning, and new approaches to understanding progress in complex environments.
With support from
This event is made possible with support from Mistra (the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research), the Kamprad Family Foundation, and Fortnox.
