Social Impact for 2025: The Untold Secret Every Leader Needs to Hear

We’ve all had one of those days.

You oversleep, spill coffee on yourself, and miss the train by seconds. The meeting you’ve been prepping all week? Missed. By the time you finally drag yourself home, there’s a parking ticket on your car and the world feels like it’s conspiring against you.

You pause at the front door, bracing yourself for what’s inside. Then you hear it. The Scream.

Not just any scream. The kind that stops you in your tracks and makes your neighbours give you the side eye through their curtains. Your toddler is mid meltdown. Is it hunger? Fatigue? Or the catastrophic realisation that their favourite blue plate isn’t on the table?

You freeze, keys in hand, wishing you’d read that ironically titled parenting book your mum gave you for Christmas: “The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read.” But you didn’t, life got in the way.

Here’s the thing, that screaming toddler? It’s your organisation’s social impact.

Like a toddler, your impact doesn’t wait for a convenient moment to demand your attention. The question is whether you’ll manage it or if you'll let it manage you.

What Happens When You Ignore Impact?

Let’s face it, ignoring a screaming toddler doesn’t make the noise stop. It only makes it worse.

The same is true for your organisation’s social impact. Every decision your business makes, how you treat customers, engage with communities, or manage partnerships all creates ripples. Those ripples shape how others perceive you, for better or worse.

Take Uber. In its early days, the company ignored its screaming toddler, in this case dissatisfied drivers. The ripples of discontent turned into tidal waves. Globally, Uber faced a $271 million class-action settlement in Australia for undercutting the livelihoods of drivers.

When Travis Kalanick, then-CEO of Uber, was caught on video arguing with a driver about wages, the company’s strained relationships became painfully public. His successor, Dara Khosrowshahi, acknowledged the need for change, saying 

“What got us here is not what’s going to get us to the next level.”

The lesson is simple, ignoring your toddler doesn’t stop the tantrum. It just creates a bigger mess to clean up later.

Why Acting Now Matters: The Power of Plasticity

Let’s return to the toddler. You step inside and face the meltdown. You calmly teach your toddler that screaming doesn’t work. It’s tough in the moment, but you’re setting the stage for calmer days ahead.

This is plasticity at work. Plasticity is the idea that behaviours, systems, and relationships are easier to shape in their early stages. For organisations, this means taking control of your social impact early, before patterns become entrenched and harder to change.

For example, when Microsoft launched its AI for Good initiative, it didn’t wait until the AI landscape was fully matured or defined. Instead, it acted early, committing $165 million to projects that use AI to tackle societal challenges, like improving healthcare and addressing humanitarian crises. By acting while the field was still malleable, Microsoft positioned itself as a leader in ethical AI, building trust and credibility that would have been harder to achieve later.

Plasticity allows organisations to set the tone early, shaping trust, influence, and outcomes before the environment becomes rigid. The earlier you act, the more room you have to shape your social impact.

The Myth of the Perfect Time

Standing outside the door, you think, I’ll deal with the screaming later when I am less tiered. But by the time you act, the toddler’s tantrum isn’t just a one off. It’s a habit. Many organisations fall into this trap, waiting for a “perfect time” to address their social impact. But waiting rarely helps.

During the Great Recession, most companies cut back on social responsibility. But Unilever took the opposite approach, doubling down on its Sustainable Living Plan. The payoff? Brands tied to the plan, such as Dove and Ben & Jerry’s, that drove 70% of Unilever’s turnover growth during tough economic times.

Waiting might feel like a way to save energy, but it often results in missed opportunities and bigger problems down the line.

What’s Behind the Door?

Now imagine you walk into that room. The screaming is deafening, and you don’t even know where to start. Is it their missing special blue plate? The snack? Or something deeper?

When it comes to your organisation’s social impact, the first step is understanding what’s behind the door. What’s causing the chaos? What are the opportunities? Where are things falling apart?

An evaluation is like a parenting manual for your business. It helps you identify What’s working. What’s not. Where you can make the biggest difference.

Take Airbnb’s Open Homes programme as an example. By evaluating community needs, Airbnb created an initiative that provided free housing for disaster victims and refugees. Not only did this help thousands of people, but it also reinforced Airbnb’s reputation as a caring and community-focused brand.

Without clarity, you’re guessing. With clarity, at least you know what you’re parenting. 

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Now imagine you decide not to deal with the tantrum at all. You ignore it, hoping the screaming will stop on its own. But what happens? The noise escalates, your neighbours start judging, and your toddler learns that tantrums get attention.

When it comes to social impact, ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away. Here’s what happens instead:

1. Damaged Trust: When organizations disengage, communities notice. Amazon's cancellation of its HQ2 project in New York resulted in the loss of an estimated 25,000 jobs and $27.5 billion in projected city and state revenue over 25 years, significantly damaging its public image.

2. Escalating Problems: Small issues can escalate into costly crises. In 2019, Boeing's inadequate response to early 737 MAX safety concerns led to two fatal crashes, resulting in over $20 billion in losses and a significant decline in public trust. 

3. Missed Opportunities: Proactive impact fosters trust and loyalty. Tesco's Community Food Connection redistributed surplus food to charities, addressing food insecurity and building strong, lasting relationships with local communities.

4. Repetitional Damage: Silence or inaction is often seen as complicity. Boohoo's failure to address supply chain labor abuses led to widespread boycotts, causing its share price to decline and resulting in market value losses of £1.5 billion. 

   
   

The longer you wait, the harder it becomes to regain control. Think about it, you have a lot more influence on the behaviour of your screaming toddler, then you have on a 15 year-old, but that 15 year-old is more receptive than a 21 year-old, whose behaviour in turn is easier to change than that of a 35 year-old. 

The point being that even though starting yesterday would have been more effective than starting today, starting today means more control over tomorrow. 

Take Control of the Chaos

Your toddler’s tantrum isn’t going to fix itself. Neither is your organisation’s social impact. The sooner you act, the sooner you regain control and the less costly the cleanup will be.

The good news? You don’t have to figure it out alone. An evaluation helps you understand what’s happening, giving you the tools to take meaningful action.

If you reference this post when you reach out, we’ll give you 10% off your first evaluation. Because while chaos might be inevitable, managing it doesn’t have to be.