Envision your impact

So, what impact do you think your research might be able to generate? If you are working on applied, real-world issues in your research, this question might be obvious. Sadly, for most of us, it is far from obvious.

We've developed these questions to walk you through a process that should start to identify the potential impacts that could arise from your research. Work through them one at a time, jotting down your thoughts as you go, your answers save automatically.

We'll discuss how you can avoid negative impacts in the next step. For now, please list as many benefits as possible for each of the groups you identified in question 6. We'll show you how to do this more systematically using a 3i analysis in the next step, but for now, we want you to quickly get a feel for who might benefit from your research.

There are no rights or wrongs here. A goal may be important for you for purely personal reasons. For example, you might prioritize an impact goal that is likely to help you score highly when your research gets assessed and will help you get a promotion. Or you might want to choose the goal that you believe will make the biggest difference to the issues and people you care most about.

The first thing you are trying to do here is to get really specific and focused on what you want to achieve. It is often surprising how opportunities suddenly appear that help you achieve a goal when you bring that goal very clearly into focus. This is probably due to nothing more than the fact that you notice things that can help you achieve that goal, which you would have otherwise missed. When you have a clear vision of where you are going, you can cut out much of the noise that has been holding you back and causing confusion. You start to see clearly what you need to do.

There will be other goals, but by singling out the one that is your highest priority, you are inadvertently flushing out some of the deeper motives behind your pursuit of impact, which will enable you to harness a deep source of motivation to achieve your aspirations for impact.

To make this easier, you can review the benefits you listed in the previous section, group similar benefits and turn them into impact goals. Ask yourself, "What is the good I can do?" or "What are the benefits I can provide?" If you are struggling, close your eyes and imagine yourself a few years in the future, looking at the most inspiring impact you can imagine from your research. What can you see? If there is a person standing in front of you, what are they saying about the value or meaning of your work to them?

You should now have everything you need to make a SMART impact goal: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. To explain what that means here, contrast these two impact objectives:

The second thing we want you to do is to work out what is really important to you personally about generating impact. The chances are that if you really analyze why it is that you have chosen this particular impact goal, you will find that it links in some way to your personal priorities, values or your identity as a researcher. Perhaps you need that promotion so you can move to a larger house because you want to have children, and it is those family values driving your desire to engage with the impact agenda. Perhaps it is simply ego; you want a legacy you can be proud of. Increasingly, many of us are motivated by institutional imperatives to generate impact, which in turn generates funding, improves rankings and benefits our employers. If these are the kinds of values motivating you, you need to pay very careful attention to risk identification in the next step.

The reality is that all of us have complex and mixed motives for most of the things we do, but if personal benefit is a big motivator, there is a danger that you may end up inadvertently creating negative unintended consequences in your attempts to generate impact. You would probably never think this consciously, but you may be 'using' external groups to achieve your own goals, and as a result, these people may well feel used.

Of course, our motives are usually mixed in everything we do, and ego and other personal benefits are usually part of that mix. We need to strike a healthy balance, and ensure we are not primarily driven by extrinsic, instrumental motives. Being clear about our motives can really strengthen our motivation to generate impact, and helps us pick ourselves up again when things go wrong, as they inevitably will at some point. If you want to think more about this, check out our live workshop *The productive researcher*.

The problem with the sorts of goals many of us are trying to reach is that they are often a long way off, in some cases, a very, very long way off. We probably all have experience with long-term goals; they have a habit of not coming to fruition. Things change; we change. Other things become more important.

So, in addition to whatever your ultimate impact goal might be, we want to bring your focus closer to home. Try to come up with specific goals that are no more than six months in the future but are still closely linked to your ultimate goal. These will be staging posts on your journey to impact, keeping you motivated, providing feedback, and keeping you on track. If you can, imagine yourself having just reached that staging post and see what it looks and feels like in your mind's eye.

Two ways to set your milestones

Apart from being a useful exercise for building your CV, this can be enriching and revealing, especially if you do it with someone who knows you well. Beyond the obvious (areas of expertise, methods and equipment you can use), it can help you identify things that might not be so obvious. Do you enjoy photography or art in your spare time? Might you take some of that creative flair into your impact work to add value to someone else?

When you start to really look for places where these skills can add value, it is often surprising how many opportunities present themselves. There may be an NGO or business working in a similar area with similar goals that could really benefit from your expertise. By adding value to others and giving in this targeted way, you open the door to powerful new relationships and collaborative possibilities.

If you are really struggling to come up with a specific impact goal, simply looking for ways to add value to what you have got can often be the first step towards tangible impact. By forming relationships with others outside the academy, we often make mental connections between our research and the contexts in which these organizations operate, connections that would not have been possible if we had not reached out.