Everyday I am lucky enough to sit beside some brilliant people, and the following comes from one of them, Helen Greig. During a recent workshop with a client, she posed the question:
What can The Simpsons teach us about impact measurement?
The answer was surprising.
In Season 2, Episode 15 (Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?). Homer Simpson is asked by his half-brother, Herb, to design a car for the “average American”.
Homer’s solution?
A car with bubble domes, tail fins, multiple horns, shag carpeting, and enough added features to make it completely unusable.
The car, “The Homer”, is so overcomplicated and expensive that it bankrupts the company. It’s funny because it’s absurd but it’s also uncomfortably close to how impact measurement often gets designed.
We start with a simple question, “are we making a meaningful difference?”
Then we add:
- 47 outcomes
- 112 indicators
- multiple reporting templates
- separate funder requirements
- complex dashboards
- qualitative tools nobody has time to analyse
- baseline, midpoint and endpoint measures for things that barely change in years
Before long, we’ve built “The Homer” of impact measurement.
Impressive to look at.
Expensive to maintain.
Almost impossible to use.
The problem isn’t measurement itself. The problem is complication without discipline. Good impact measurement should help people make better decisions. It should create learning, accountability and focus. If the system is so complex that frontline teams avoid it, managers can’t interpret it, and boards only see it once a year in a glossy report, it probably isn’t helping.
The best systems are usually simpler than people expect:
- clear purpose
- a small number of meaningful outcomes
- indicators people actually understand
- proportionate data collection
- space for context and learning
- reporting that supports decisions, not just compliance
The lesson from Homer is not “don’t listen to users”, it’s that listening without synthesis creates clutter.
Impact measurement needs design judgement. Not every feature belongs in the final model. Not every stakeholder request should become a metric. Not every thing that can be measured should be measured.
Sometimes the most valuable question is, “What can we remove?” because if we’re not careful, we don’t build a useful impact framework, we build a car with three horns and a soundproof bubble dome.