Enough by Design · Chapter Nine

How to Know It Worked

Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306

Chapter Nine of Enough by Design: Scarcity, Abundance and the Art of Living Well.

Abstract

The most useful measurement in this book costs nothing and takes two minutes. It is a sentence written down before a change is made, saying what the change is expected to do, how that will be seen, and by when. Most organisations skip it. They make a change, wait, look at whatever figures happen to be to hand, and decide whether the change worked. Almost always they decide that it did. The reason is not dishonesty. It is that a person who has invested effort in a change, and who chooses after the fact which figures to look at, will find figures that agree with them. This is so ordinary that it is easy to miss, and it is the reason the earlier chapters of this book, from chapter 4 on, have asked for a prediction to be written first.

Read the PDFRead the whole bookdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989359

Cite this chapter

Santa Anna, A. (2026). How to Know It Worked. In Enough by Design. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989359

@incollection{santaanna2026enough9,
  author    = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
  title     = {How to Know It Worked},
  booktitle = {Enough by Design},
  chapter   = {9},
  publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
  year      = {2026},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23989359},
  url       = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/enough-by-design/09-how-to-know-it-worked/}
}

References

  1. Goodhart, C. A. E. (1975). Problems of monetary management: The U.K. experience. Papers in Monetary Economics, Vol. I. Sydney: Reserve Bank of Australia. Paraphrased here, not quoted; the paper concerns monetary targets and makes no claim about organisations. No DOI is registered for it.
  2. Campbell, D. T. (1979). Assessing the impact of planned social change. Evaluation and Program Planning, 2(1), 67–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/0149-7189(79)90048-X

Every chapter of Enough by Design

  1. Chapter OneThe Year on the Letterdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989349
  2. Chapter TwoA Letter to the Grandchildrendoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989350
  3. Chapter ThreeWhere Abundance Overreachesdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989351
  4. Chapter FourWhat a Person Is Able to Bedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989352
  5. Chapter FiveThe Balance Sheet Cannot Seedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989353
  6. Chapter SixOpening the Librarydoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989354
  7. Chapter SevenThe Hours Keynes Promiseddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989355
  8. Chapter EightThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989358
  9. Chapter NineHow to Know It Workeddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989359
  10. Chapter TenThe Hard Conversationsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989360
  11. Chapter ElevenEnough at Homedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989363
  12. Chapter TwelveThe Art of Life Itselfdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989364
  13. AppendixThe Workbookdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989367

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The licence

Free to read, share, quote, translate and teach, non-commercially, for ever, under the Luminous Library Licence 1.0. Every other right is the Author’s. Deposited on Zenodo in the Luminous Prosperity community.