From good intentions to measurable change: communicating value to drive action
A conversation with Cynthia Hansen on organisational change, measurable results and communication that gives people a reason to act.
We first met Cynthia Hansen during a discussion connected to our .foundations research. What struck us was her energy, but above all the determination with which she has challenged some of the established assumptions about how a foundation should work.
As Managing Director of the Innovation Foundation, empowered by the Adecco Group, Hansen has helped move the organisation away from a portfolio of inherited programmes and towards a Social Innovation Lab.
Her experience is relevant far beyond philanthropy. It raises questions that many organisations face: how do you define a role that is genuinely distinctive? How do you move from activities to measurable change? And how can communication help an organisation become recognised as necessary rather than merely well intentioned?
These questions are also central to .foundations, Lundquist’s research into how foundations build credibility through mission, impact and relationships. Our conversation with Hansen showed how closely these dimensions are connected.
Hansen’s experience offers practical lessons on how to create room for experimentation, involve leadership and the board and demonstrate the value of a new approach. It also shows why communication cannot be left until the end: it is what makes the value of change visible, gives different audiences a reason to engage and helps move an organisation from “nice-to-have” to “must-have”.
Cynthia Hansen
Managing Director of the Innovation Foundation, empowered by the Adecco Group. Under her leadership, the organisation has evolved into a Social Innovation Lab that develops, tests and scales solutions to barriers in the world of work.
L: Many foundations mainly fund or support projects designed by others. Yours works differently. In plain terms, what does the Innovation Foundation actually do, and what was missing?
CH: The first version of the Foundation was a programming foundation. We inherited several large global programmes from the Adecco Group, mainly focused on employee engagement or specific audiences such as young people and athletes. Many of them had originally come out of marketing. They had visibility and strong internal buy-in, but they were campaign-based and did not always have enough structure, strategy or rigour underneath them.
My first task was to assess what was working, what was not and what social value those programmes were creating. We professionalised the existing pieces, while I also asked for room to experiment with a different approach. For a period, the two tracks ran in parallel: improving the legacy programmes and testing what a more distinctive model could look like.
The real turning point came in 2020, when a new chairman joined. We presented the board with three options: continue with both models, focus only on the legacy programmes, or concentrate entirely on the Social Innovation Lab. After an external review, the board chose the Lab. In 2021 we received the mandate to carry out the full transformation, including the rebrand, governance changes and a new funding model.
The model we developed is closer to a venture studio for social challenges. Instead of starting with an organisation to fund or a solution that already exists, we begin with a problem related to the future of work. We use data and research to understand where exclusion is emerging, then work directly with the people affected to define the barriers more precisely. Dedicated Venture Teams turn those insights into prototypes, test them and develop the most promising ideas into usable products or services.
Our ambition is not simply to launch a solution. We want it to continue growing through local partners, but also to be adapted and adopted by other organisations, practitioners and foundations.
“If we started with a societal problem related to the future of work, then that would give us the mandate. From there, we could use the same tools and ideally come out with solutions that are not already out there in the world.”
At the core of the Foundation’s operations is a signature three-stage (Scan-Build-Scale) methodology designed to ensure solutions are grounded in evidence and scalable in the real world.
SCAN Analyse labour-market trends and data, then use field research. | BUILD Co-design, prototype and test solutions with the people concerned. | SCALE Adapt, transfer or spin off the solution so others can use it. |
L: A central principle of your model is designing with people, not for them. What changes when those directly affected have a real role in shaping the solution?
CH: Lived experience changes the quality of the solution. In Mexico City, we were working with young mothers who had often been told they had no professional skills, even though they were managing children, households, limited resources and complex daily responsibilities. We developed a campaign to provide better information about career paths and a digital tool that translates lived experience into skills and competencies for a CV.
During the design process, experts suggested mobile-based training. The young women told us that data was expensive and that they were afraid to use their phones on public transport because of theft. Those are not minor details. They determine whether a solution will actually work.
Co-creation is also about agency and choice. When the work is built with them, it is more likely to continue after our funding and staff leave.
“You have to have the right voices in the room for things to work.”
L: The Foundation is empowered by the Adecco Group, which gives you access to knowledge, people, networks and scale. At the same time, you need credibility with communities and local partners. How do you manage that balance?
CH: We made sure that our mission and values were aligned with the Adecco Group, but not identical. The Group works across employment, skills and HR for a very broad population. Our focus is narrower: underserved people who have difficulty entering or remaining in work.
The relationship gives us important assets. We can draw on expertise, networks and employees who join us as Fellows for one or two years. That creates a learning journey for the employees and brings useful knowledge into the Lab, while our core team remains small.
At the same time, there is a clear firewall. Our programmes cannot feed directly into the Group’s commercial pipeline or bottom line. The value for the company is different: reputation, employer value proposition, insights, material for reporting and a credible story to use in conversations with clients. In the early days, executives sometimes asked how a successful solution could be commercialised. Over time, the organisation learned to recognise the boundary and to explain where the Foundation creates value without turning social programmes into a commercial product.
L: If you had to convince a sceptical CEO or board to support a model like this, which argument would you avoid and what language actually makes the case?
CH: I would not rely only on the argument that it is a good thing to do. You have to speak the right language and put the case in business terms.
We compared examples of traditional philanthropic funding with the value created by one phase of our model. If you give a certain amount to an organisation, you can measure how many people were reached. If you invest the same amount in one of our projects, you also generate research, consultation, partnerships, storytelling, a tested solution and knowledge that can be used by others. The point was to show the board and executives the different layers of value and the higher social return.
We also showed the halo effect for the Group: the reputational value, the ability to contribute evidence to reporting, and the pride the work can create internally. But the change was not presented as an overnight break. I first asked for permission to professionalise the inherited programmes and experiment around the margins. We ran the two tracks in parallel. When a new chairman arrived, we were able to present clear options, commission an external review and make the decision with the board to focus entirely on the Social Innovation Lab. The rebrand, governance changes and funding model followed from that decision.
“You have to speak the right language and put it in business terms.”
L: How do you know a solution is working? Is there a metric that looks impressive but misses the real impact?
CH: We created our own impact-measurement framework because many existing frameworks were too superficial for what we needed. They often ask how many people were trained or how many people got a job. But being trained does not mean you used the training, and getting a job does not tell you whether you kept it or whether it was a decent job.
For our projects, the framework is deliberately simple: Reach, Engage, Convert. Reach means that someone saw a campaign or encountered the initiative. That can produce a large number, but it tells you very little by itself. Engage means that the person took an action: created a profile, used a tool, attended a workshop or signed up for training. Convert means a meaningful change in status. Someone might move from not looking for work to looking, from looking to applying, or from applying to getting a job. We still track employment, but we do not reduce the whole measure of change to that final step.
We also look at whether our research and methods influence decisions and behaviour in other organisations. That is harder to measure, but it matters because part of our mandate is to open-source what we learn and help others apply it.
L: Lundquist’s .foundations research looks at how foundations communicate their impact and responsibility. From your perspective, what is still missing in the way foundations communicate?
CH: Foundations often remain in the “nice-to-have” category: their work is appreciated, but not always understood as necessary. Communication can help change that by making three things clear: why the issue matters, what evidence shows that the approach works and what the audience is expected to do.
This does not mean choosing between stories and data. Stories make the problem tangible; evidence makes the response credible. Together, they should move people beyond sympathy towards understanding and action.
That is where foundations can learn from corporate communication: define the audience, clarify the value and design the message around the change you want to produce.
“Foundations stay in the “nice-to-have”, not the “must-have” category. It needs to be more data-driven and expressed in more concrete business language, because just “nice-to-have” is not enough.”
L: What is the hardest communication challenge for the Foundation today?
CH: The hardest part has been internal communication, not external communication. The more difficult challenge is reaching people across a company of around 40,000 employees in 60 countries. Senior executives or functional leaders may know what we do, but a branch manager in a local office may not.
That matters because the Foundation can be a source of pride and belonging. We now have more communications capacity and are planning a larger internal push to raise awareness across the Group.
The same message will not work for every audience. Employees respond strongly to human stories. Leadership is often interested in the value that comes back: a story that supports a client conversation, data that can feed into a report, or evidence of the company’s role as a responsible global actor. Partners need to understand the method, the evidence and why collaboration would be useful. The substance is consistent, but what is compelling depends on the audience.
Recently, the Foundation has integrated a strong marketing component into its communications team. The idea is to position the Foundation and its ‘Scan-Build-Scale’ model as a genuine product to be promoted in the social innovation market. This means going beyond simply disseminating information, creating an engaging narrative that acts as a magnet for the right partners and utilises innovative formats, such as social media carousels, to make the model scalable and recognisable.
“Storytelling is really important, but it needs to translate back to: I want you to do something.”
A Lundquist perspective
The Innovation Foundation’s experience shows why communication should not be left until the end.
Used strategically, it helps define the organisation’s role, build support for change, make impact understandable and engage the people needed to scale it. Communication is therefore not only about telling the story of projects. It is part of how change is negotiated, implemented and sustained.
This is also the point at the heart of .foundations: clarity of purpose, credible evidence and defined audiences are what allow communication to move from reporting activity to generating understanding and action.
