Results Count: A Leadership Development Approach for Large-Scale Social Change

The Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion has a new name for its unique approach and tools for lead­er­ship devel­op­ment: Results Count™.

More than 20 years ago, the Casey Foun­da­tion rec­og­nized that with­out strong lead­er­ship, invest­ments in pro­grams and sys­tem reform ini­tia­tives were insuf­fi­cient to accel­er­ate mea­sur­able and last­ing improve­ments in child and fam­i­ly well-being.

Since launch­ing its sig­na­ture lead­er­ship pro­gram ― Chil­dren and Fam­i­ly Fel­low­ship® ― in 1993, Casey has cre­at­ed a com­pre­hen­sive port­fo­lio of tools and pro­grams that pro­vides lead­ers with cus­tomized skills to accel­er­ate impor­tant results relat­ed to child and fam­i­ly well-being.

Casey’s Results Count approach blends five com­pe­ten­cies, two foun­da­tion­al skills and two foun­da­tion­al frame­works ― the ​“5−2−2” for short. Each Results Count pro­gram is designed in part­ner­ship with par­tic­i­pants to reflect iden­ti­fied results, avail­able resources and spe­cif­ic needs.

The five core com­pe­ten­cies that Results Count pro­grams equip lead­ers with are:

1. Be results based and data dri­ven, hon­ing their abil­i­ty to take aligned actions to advance a pop­u­la­tion-lev­el results agenda;
2. Act on dis­par­i­ties to address equi­table oppor­tu­ni­ties, rec­og­niz­ing that race, class and cul­ture affect out­comes and oppor­tu­ni­ties for vul­ner­a­ble children;
3. Use them­selves as an instru­ment of change, believ­ing that indi­vid­ual lead­ers are capa­ble of exert­ing influ­ence across sys­tems and sec­tors to move mul­ti­ple stake­hold­er groups and serve as cat­a­lysts for pos­i­tive change;
4. Hone adap­tive lead­er­ship skills, under­stand­ing that deep sys­tem reform and com­plex com­mu­ni­ty change hap­pens only when lead­ers can employ skills to impact key stake­hold­ers’ val­ues, beliefs and habits; and
5. Col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers, under­stand­ing that the capac­i­ty to build group con­sen­sus enables lead­ers to align their actions and admin­is­ter resources strate­gi­cal­ly in ser­vice of advanc­ing results.

The two foun­da­tion­al frame­works that these core com­pe­ten­cies oper­ate with­in are: 

1. The The­o­ry of Aligned Con­tri­bu­tions con­tends that mea­sur­able pop­u­la­tion lev­el change is more like­ly to occur when lead­ers are work­ing togeth­er to align actions that con­tribute to a clear­ly iden­ti­fied result; and
2. The Per­son-Role-Sys­tem frame­work holds that lead­er­ship is influ­enced by a person’s indi­vid­ual pref­er­ences and style and per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ences, as well as the role he or she plays in for­mal and infor­mal systems.

The two foun­da­tion­al skills of Results Count are:

1. Results-Based Account­abil­i­ty™, an approach used to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between pop­u­la­tion and pro­gram lev­el results, to use data to devel­op impact­ful strate­gies, and to estab­lish ways of track­ing whether the work is con­tribut­ing to the achieve­ment of results; and
2. Results Based Facil­i­ta­tion, which helps lead­ers design, lead and con­tribute in meet­ings that effec­tive­ly move groups from talk to action and hold par­tic­i­pants account­able for advanc­ing the work.

In places from Seat­tle to Atlanta, Results Count is help­ing lead­ers move togeth­er from vision to action to results, whether they are work­ing to end hunger, improve children’s health or reduce reliance on out-of-home place­ments for youth in trou­ble with the law.

Learn more about Results Count