Loved your insights and 100% agree that we should be thinking in terms of KPIs that measure impact as opposed to measuring time spent.
There are some challenges as there are two things to keep in mind:
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These metrics, while true in all settings, come from traditional work environments where the reward isn’t directly tied to impact. That means that although one might be strict in measuring, they are safe in knowing that not meeting expected KPIs won’t affect their return on time invested.
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Critical Milestones towards a mission are proactively set by the proposer, but the success or failure in having the target impact can only be seen retroactively. That leads to a situation where two things can happen:
a) A proposer sets a relatively easy-to-achieve milestone not to lose their grant, or
b) A proposer sets a harder-to-achieve milestone to justify their proposed budget, which jeopardizes their ability to actually receive the grant at the end of the mission.
If you take a look at some of the proposals shared in Discourse already, you’ll see that people requesting a grant for their time is a common occurrence. E.g:
Is the problem that all the aforementioned mission proposals, and by extension, the people submitting them, don’t understand what it means to measure impact over time spent working?
The challenge, in my opinion, lies in developing a framework that accounts both for time spent working, but also for the impact generated. That is the distinction I make between Missions and RPGF. Missions reward people for putting in the work and making an effort, while RPGF measures impact. That’s why I also agree with Lavande. This is something to be considered for RPGF, not Missions.
I believe we shouldn’t get the Missions to conform with the “Impact=Profit” rule because it creates a lack of alignment.