How would you measure the impact of a vision?

At every given moment, there are billions of creatures moving from where they are to a destination, to satisfy one or more of their safety, food or belonging needs. This is also true for us humans, we move, almost every day, from our comfort zone to other destinations hoping to make them also a comfort zone whether this new destination is work or a second home.

Strategic and national visions are great examples of this yearning for a collective movement towards making socio-economic progress a new comfort zone from an older, less effective way of doing things. Progress in Oman Vision 2040’s 12 national priorities is an impressive case in point as within 3 years it succeeded in setting 50 government agency plans in motion, monitored by 50 vision offices, 59 international benchmarks, 679 Key Performance Indicators or KPIs, 245 sub KPIs, in addition to 6 national programs. At the citizen level, a closer look at this positive movement towards the 12 national priorities, and 6 national programs show that there is only one way in which we will judge the Vision? It’s impact.

National priorities

To visualise how significant is setting one rhythm for more the 50 public interest plans, imagine steering ships at sea, at the same time. Now imagine synchronising the following 12 priorities that include learning, education, research and national capabilities, health, identity, social security, economic leadership, financial sustainability, labor market, investment, governance, natural resources, Judiciary, and governance. One major risk that faces the impact here is inter-agency engagement and coordination becomes a comfort zone on its own that prevents the real-life impact measurement of priorities in the life of average people. For example, with every relevant agency setting its own economic and financial plans and KPIs how will it feel the impact of continually rising cost of living on the weathering group of people with middle income?

6 national programs

Along with the 12 national priorities the vision has 6 national programs covering: net zero goals, employment, digital transformation, investment promotion, financial sustainability, and economic diversification. The implementation risk here is also vision implementation becoming a number’s game that digitises services, with little care for listening to people’s opinion about how all of these programs are impacting their quality of life.

Impact

While internal, or interagency alignment is crucial for starting a vision, movement out of the comfort zone for public interest is even more crucial in making a real impact. Just as billions of animals around the world move out of their comfort zone to co-create a new comfort zone every day for their needs, I believe that vision implementers need to move forward, together and with even more confidence, all around world benchmarks to turn visions like Oman Vision 2040 into real impact. This could be in the form of an up 6-month international fellowship for vision implementers that can serve as a reminder that what really matters then of visions is its impact on our quality of life.