Analytic Lens

To support efficient delivery of strategy, narrative and partnership services to a wide range of clients, we often employ a number of distinct and somewhat non-traditional lenses. 

• Communication Links
• Alignment Tool
• Externalities
• Underutilized Assets
• Risk

Communication Links

When seen as set of links that all must stay connected for effective communications, the development of external communication narratives is understood to involve and benefit the entire organization.

Alignment Tool

We use this tool to understand where an organization is effectively leveraging aligned internal assets – or where it is squandering resources that are pulling at cross-purposes.  The tool evaluates functions and/or behaviors across two variables: definition and effectiveness. 

The image below is an excerpt from a recent client presentation.

Externalities

A concept from resource and environmental economics, externalities can be either negative or positive.  Negative externalities typically shift costs from one party to another, i.e. the cost of upstream industrial pollution to a downstream agricultural user.  Positive externalities generate a hidden benefit to a secondary party that may not be appropriately valued, i.e. private sector hiring of returning citizens reduces the costs of crime in a community.

Under-utilized assets

A core principle in the cradle-to-cradle, circular economy, and true-cost accounting initiatives, under-utilized assets are typically assets with multiple uses that are only being used for one purpose or are seen as liabilities rather than assets.  Think waste as a co-generation feedstock or school kitchens that operate well below capacity in communities needing more and better-quality food.

Idle School Buses (Google Image)

Risk

Well understood in certain sectors, insurance for example, the power of risk as a prism by which to measure opportunities and costs is not widely understood in other sectors, nonprofits and schools, for example.  Seen as the intersection of consequence and likelihood, depicted below, risk can be a powerful support tool for critical decision-making.