System-level change rarely moves along a single track. Policy reform, financial pressure, business practice, public narratives and worker voice can advance at different speeds. Progress in one area may reinforce another, while a stalled relationship can hold back the wider system.

This creates a familiar problem for Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) specialists. Indicators are often organised by programme or grant, while the change being pursued sits across institutions, markets and relationships.

The Laudes Foundation approach to measuring and learning with rubrics offers an interesting response. Its rubrics create connected layers through which practitioners can examine the quality of an intervention, the changes appearing around it and the longer-term direction of the system.

A stratified view of change

Laudes Foundation has developed 21 rubrics across four categories. Category A examines processes such as design, implementation, adaptation and organisational capacity. Category B looks at early and later changes, including stakeholder-informed policy, investor pressure, progressive business practice, worker voice and changing narratives. Category C focuses on outcomes among policymakers, financial actors, businesses, workers and producers. Category D describes longer-term impact across policy, finance, industry and power.

This stratification gives impact teams more than a list of indicators. It offers a way to ask how change at one level relates to movement at another.

A programme may be well designed and well implemented while showing little evidence of wider institutional change. In another case, an outcome may be visible, but the programme’s contribution remains uncertain. Keeping these levels distinct helps practitioners describe both situations more honestly.

Interconnections make the framework useful

The strongest reading of the Laudes approach is as an interconnected map rather than a set of separate scorecards. A change in investor behaviour may place pressure on businesses. Stronger worker and producer voice may influence policy implementation. A more capable partner network may improve the quality of evidence, coordination and advocacy across several initiatives.

These links matter for system-level interventions because no single organisation controls the full pathway. Funders, programme teams, businesses, public institutions and affected groups each influence different parts of the system. Rubrics can make the assumed connections visible. They give teams a shared structure for asking whether those connections are appearing, where they remain weak and which assumptions need to be revisited.

The framework therefore becomes most useful when ratings are discussed alongside the relationships between them. A cluster of rubric assessments can show where activity is concentrated, where progress is disconnected and where additional support or coordination may be needed.

Evidence still carries the argument

Laudes asks partners to select a small number of relevant rubrics and assess them repeatedly over time. Each rubric uses a five-point scale running from harmful to thrivable, supported by quantitative and qualitative evidence.

The scoring creates consistency, but the evidence gives the rating meaning.

Two programmes may receive the same score for different reasons. One may have strong policy engagement but limited inclusion. Another may show broad participation but weak institutional uptake. Recording the evidence, disagreements and contextual differences prevents the rating from becoming a substitute for analysis.

This is especially important when rubrics are applied across African countries, sectors or institutions. The meaning of progress depends on the system boundary, the actors involved and the starting conditions. A rating should support comparison and learning without flattening those differences.

Contribution also requires care. Movement across connected rubrics can strengthen an explanation of how an intervention relates to system change. It does not, by itself, establish that one programme caused the change.

Using rubrics as a learning architecture

Impact specialists can use stratified rubrics to organise learning across a portfolio or group of connected initiatives.

A practical starting point is to define the system boundary and identify the actors whose behaviour must change. Teams can then select rubrics across more than one level, agree what evidence would justify each rating and record the assumed connections between them.

The review process should examine four questions:

  • What has changed within each selected rubric?
  • Which evidence supports that assessment?
  • How are changes across the rubrics influencing one another?
  • What does the emerging pattern suggest should change in programme strategy?

Repeated assessments can then build a structured account of movement over time. The resulting picture is richer than a single outcome score and more manageable than an unbounded narrative of systems change.

A clearer map of system-level change

Interconnected and stratified rubrics present a promising way to map system-level change. They can connect programme quality, intermediate shifts and longer-term outcomes while preserving space for evidence, interpretation and uncertainty.

Their value lies in helping practitioners see patterns across interventions, test the logic connecting different levels of change and adapt when the system responds differently from expected.

Used well, rubrics can provide a shared language without suggesting that complex change follows a neat sequence. They offer impact specialists a disciplined way to describe what is changing, how different changes relate and where the next intervention may be needed. Find out more.