Working with initiatives that are trying to tackle some of the most difficult problems society faces can be challenging. As we have already discussed, when working with people – whether empowering, educating, inspiring, supporting or collaborating with them – initiatives often have a sense of what they are trying to do, and sometimes one or more outcome they are working towards. These outcomes might come from funders, the organisational mission, the Sustainable Development Goals or national frameworks, and, as we said in Chapter 4, it is easy to get caught in a tangle of outcomes.

A meaningful connection between activities and outcomes is often vague or unexplored – but this magic ‘how’ change happens is essential for driving programmes and for understanding their impact.

Outcome or impact maps are the core of the approach in this book, as the building block for setting out, understanding, learning about and evidencing change. This is one type of ‘theory of change’ approach which is common for understanding change in complex systems. We believe that process- driven theories of change are most effective for public services, and in this chapter we set out our version of this – outcome or impact mapping – and illustrate how it can be used at different levels.

This chapter discusses:

• • thinking about whether and how something makes a difference: an introduction to theories of change and outcome mapping;

• • the key components of an outcome or impact maps;

• • what is different about this approach;

• • the role of pathways in understanding change;

• • outcome mapping at different levels: project, programme, organisation or partnership;

• • bringing an outcome or impact map to life with risks and assumptions.

This chapter builds on the concepts introduced earlier in this book – especially Chapter 4 on working with outcomes and clarifying your contribution – but also with the challenge of making services more fit for the complex world of delivery. We hope this chapter will give you a very practical way of developing a vision for the change you are working towards and opening up how you think that change will happen.