Research, practice and public opinion offer a recurring set of principles that can help us think bigger about what it means to have ready youth, resourceful families and communities, responsible leaders. But are we really compelled to act on this knowledge?

Principles are not just suggestions about ways to improve our efforts. They are instructions for doing business differently. Moving these principles consistently into practice requires establishing a new system of checks and balances to counter learned habits that keep us doing the same things even when they aren’t working just because they are safe.

The Big Picture Approach encourages leaders to start with developing common language that can be translated not only into vision and goal statements, but also into planning frameworks that provide a new youth-centered way of looking at information. Once they have learned this new way of thinking, they are able to take it into the basic steps of action planning – taking aim, taking stock, targeting action and tracking progress – but in a big picture way.

In addition to looking at youth outcomes and community supports, the framework challenges leaders to assess their own change efforts – are they and their partners employing the full range of strategies necessary to really make a difference? What strategies are missing? And what stakeholders?

One way to move this common language into practical frameworks is to take the categories two at a time and make them into a “dashboard.” The “developmental dashboard” shown here starts by applying two basic principles – young people need supports from when they are little until they are big (invest early and often) and they need supports across a full range of developmental areas (support the whole child) – and turns them into a simple age by outcomes grid. The example below is used to ask the question, “How well are young people doing?” The cells can be filled in with public perceptions or hard data. Communities and states have used the dashboard process to define and select indicators of child well-being, developing report cards that track progress against their Big Picture Goals.

Big Picture assessments are important, not only because they help identify the red cells, but because they map progress in all areas. It is important to pick a few things for all stakeholders to focus on (e.g., academic success for high school students, physical health of preschoolers, parent education and supports for families). But consider what happens if leaders throw away the rest of the picture. A few red cells may move to yellow. But without monitoring, in that same time period, yellows may shift to red and greens may shift to yellow. The net result: limited overall change. The challenge is to make overall improvements in the “Big Picture.” This is why it is important to focus on the forest and the trees.

These frames, or lenses, help leaders not simply zoom in to focus on one problem at a time, but also zoom out and keep the full picture in focus. They help bring precision to our collective passion to change the odds for youth.