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Business Meaningfulness Evaluation v1

Now, is the time to evaluate a domain change. I’ve managed amazing products, primarily in the Assistive Technology domain. During my years in this domain, I’ve encountered the “impact” keyword (especially social impact) lots of times. I’ve developed an understanding and approach to these trending words, and I started to see sub-trends and their results. These terms are often used without representing any real understanding and have become nonsensical PR words.

Sometimes, I’ve seen these terms used as filler words in conversations; other times, they have the potential to drive change.

So, now after a few months of investigating opportunities, I have became open to evaluating job offers. During my evaluations, I remembered thinking about “impact” and “meaningfulness,” because my approach to evaluating domains is similar to evaluating business impact. These are the terms we often think about and criticize. Thus, I gained more insight into these terms and observed more.

What I consider meaningful and impactful might differ from person to person, but witnessing successful and world-changing executions has changed my definition of meaningful business.

What’s meaningful is subjected to subjective experiences, and the question of how meaningful is more confusing. Still, my evaluation is a mixture of both personal opinions and some fact.

Scoring Framework

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Business Meaningfulness Evaluation v1

I’m evaluating the offers with two sets; Evaluation for the Business and Evaluation for the Role.

1. Evaluation for the Business
   • Revenue: the biggest multiplier and validator of our work. (See below for more)
   • Category Multiplier: defines a business domain in its own dynamic while considering some universal criteria (it’s the multiplication of the aspects below)
     • Innovativeness
     • Environmental Costs
     • Impact on Person / Users
   • Rating of the Business in its Sector as %: A quick comparison and evaluation from public sources on the importance of this company in its sector.
   • Result: Business’s Score as IR score (Impact-Revenue)
2. Evaluation for the Position
   • Level of the Job: Strategic / Strategic-Tactical / Tactical / Operational-Tactical / Operational
   • Autonomy
   • Expected Increase in Expertise / Level during the Role
   • Result: Overall P-Score (Personal Score)

An Example

Imagining 3 of the proposal I received from different sectors, the category multipliers were as follows:

After evaluating the details of the positions, the role scores appeared as follows:

By following the framework’s calculations, we ended up with the table below.

1. Highest impact, but there is more risk and opportunity.
2. Lowest impact, but safest and financially best offer.
3. Mid-to-High impact, but the risk and opportunity is not great.

To evaluate #1, we should understand, firstly, whether their valuation is consistent or not. Because a business with a huge revenue potential also means, they have risk of losing their model’s current success. Scale 0 and 1 is really different, 1-to-scale is even more different. (The team and cultures required to be changed according to my experiences.) And the team-spirit and their execution skills would make a difference.

#2 is the less meaningful one, and the long-term existence wouldn’t make so much sense.

#3 has a medium impact score, and an acceptable risk / opportunity and can provide steady career progress.

So;

• #1 depends on the other aspects of the team / business.
• #2 is not serving the purpose of self-realization well.
• #3 seems a good fit, unless #1 shows great performance from other pillars.

Some Questions

“Why Revenue?”

Let’s quickly explore why:

• A business which serves more people is more meaningful
• Fewer people but more impact per person might be more meaningful, so the more people * impact per person combination is more meaningful.
• More user engagement time with the solution is more meaningful
• More user satisfaction is more meaningful, etc.

Meaningfulness = Revenue * Category Multiplier

Impact = Meaningfulness * Percentage of Realized Potential

Revenue appears to be the simple multiplier of our work. The more resources we have, the more resourceful we can be.

“Why I’m Using the Term of Meaningful?”

Meaningful is a risky word to use in professional life. It’s especially easy to convince, affect or manipulate people with it. It often makes people consult their emotions instead of logic. The best decisions are made by combining emotions and logic. But I haven’t seen the term meaningfulness used in a way that includes logic and evaluation of opportunities.

Whenever I describe my portfolio products to people, they tend to reply with “what a meaningful work”.

As an outsider it’s easy to reply like these, and as an insider it’s natural to underappreciate what you do. But as a team, if you assess your work’s meaningfulness like an outsider, you might overlook the logical aspects.

So, as a part of my role, I wanted to communicate the “aspects of meaning” of our work with my team. And I see that it was not just my teams’ topic worth discussing. Meaningfulness is just the starting point of expressing ourselves.

What we should seek in professional life could be opportunities to realize ourselves. So if a job serves this function, this is the maximum meaning you could get, at the same time, by being and executing in that team, your value should worth it. And this is the meaning of you according to your team.

“Am I Really Doing These Calculations?”

Actually yes, I do the math in my mind and multiplying some publicly available data like quarterly performance indicators, business revenues and comments on the Glassdoor-like platforms.

This publicly available Google Sheet serves as a demonstration for a general audience. I don’t always use that sheet, but when I’m confused or overwhelmed by criteria-sets, I consult it to sort the information I’ve gathered.

In my lead PM years, I’ve often stated the drawbacks of feature-scoring practices to my teams. Because it leads PMs to take less responsibility and hide their product-senses with some manager’s comments; take less accountability for their work. But with personal scoring, unless it turns you into a numerophile, you can benefit from it. You can always update the scale and change your opinions.