An impact cascade
December 2023
By Cláudia Pedra, Stone Soup Managing Partner
Can a consultancy company create an impact cascade? We theorised that it could. 14 years into that process and covering very two difficult years, we now present Stone Soup Consulting’s newest Honesty Report 2021-22, in which we explain if we did.
These years are fresh in our memory for sure. Every organisation was changing at a hallucinating rate, trying to cope with internal disarray, external constraints, and an overabundance of physical and mental health challenges. The world started recovering from the pandemic – Stone Soup community included – but the challenges still seemed unsurmountable. Nonetheless, and despite all the negativity of that period, the world still revolved, and many organisations adapted quickly and did an amazing job to help all the people that were especially vulnerable. They showed their resilience, their overall commitment to their missions and ploughed through the challenges, one solution at a time.
Stone Soup Consulting’s role was to help those organisations develop and increase their positive impact in their communities. A tall ask, while dealing ourselves with the overwhelming situation of being in a pandemic. But our teams seemed to rise to the occasion, as we see in our report, with 85% of organisations attributing increased impact because of our work with them, and 70% even saying that we created a positive impact on their beneficiaries. It is an impact cascade, that brings us happiness, showing that our Theory of Change is being materialised and we are indeed increasing positive impact. 93% of our clients also spoke about the responsiveness of our teams, showing that the Stone Soup consultancy style, based on active listening, customised solutions, and flexibility, worked well. Also overjoying to see that Stone Soup has contributed to the professional and personal growth of the wonderful members of our community and we have done so, by sharing knowledge, training, but also developing networks and relationships. They use words such as “proud” and “excited” to qualify their work with us, which is clearly a measure of success. And they have reported a sense of belonging to a community. Something we have always strived to have.
But as the authors say in this report, an Honesty Report is not a list of praises. Indeed, there are still many things that need improvement. Although we have done our best to create a tight-net community, remote work always has its toll. People are relational beings, and seeing most colleagues through a computer screen, does not help to easily create connections. In a company that strives to promote diversity and inclusion, we also need to deal with our own internal challenges. Understanding how to build long lasting professional relationships between people of different ages, cultures and that can live thousands of kilometres a part. How to improve our knowledge management and the way we share it, so that learning opportunities can be increased and consultancy teams or not reinventing the wheel every time there is a new project. Understanding how to support better the ones that feel “anxious” and “frustrated”.
It is clear also from the feedback of our clients that we are still over-complexifying. Maybe too eager to present the perfect solution, we are not always able to find the most appropriate one for the organisation we are working for and continue suggesting intricated processes and procedures. It seems that sometimes we are also lacking innovation and not able to translate into the consultancy new trends and creativity that could bring about change. We also must improve how we put social and environmental concerns at the forefront in projects and the intersections between complex social and environmental issues. There is also room for improving our own environmental track record and we have a long way towards net-zero emissions in 2030. And lastly, we also must work better on the sustainability of our impact, as we still see that some of the impacts are wearing out too soon. As we tell our clients: the issue is not so much that you intend to have negative effects is more what you can do to change based on knowing you are producing them. That is a question for the next cycle of the Honesty Report, where we will tell you if we managed to change according to the feedback we received now.
A last word about the ecosystem. No organisation should stand alone and certainly not a company that aims at increasing positive societal impact, so the way we mobilize our partners and influence that ecosystem is key. That is why for years we have been actively participating in important movements, groups and events that can create collective action for system change. We will not (especially not in an Honesty Report) overclaim our impact in that change, but we can highlight how it is strategic for us, especially in core issues like promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace or ethical consultancy.
Confirming a bias, that we also explain in the report, I will end by saying that consultancy is the best job in the world. Where else can you start the day by training nature conservation organisations in Southeast Asia on fundraising, switch to Africa to do systemic observation of local development practices in underprivileged communities and finish off the day with an energetic debate on good practices for companies in Europe? We love our jobs at Stone Soup because of that and it shows.
There is a long road in front of us, but we continue determined, sometimes going out of the beaten track, to find the best solutions for our clients. We invite you to once again follow that journey, by reading our Honesty Report 2021-2022.
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