Outcomes Over Output

because outcomes are things people do, they’re both observable and measurable.

These indicators have some important properties. First, they are measures of what people are doing—in other words, they measure behavior. Second, they predict the success that we’re seeking. In other words, they’re outcomes: our indicators are the customer behaviors that drive the business results we’re seeking.

you have to identify not just a single outcome (for example, the way a team might identify a problem and work on that one problem for a while) but instead you have to find a set or a system of related outcomes that taken together will create the result that you want.

This is how we can measure progress by using outcomes: insist that our teams plan in terms of outcomes, then ask repeatedly: “what new behaviors did your work create that are creating value for the business?”

You’re asked to increase revenue? Same process: create a customer journey map, then ask “what are the behaviors that lead to higher revenue and how can we go about encouraging those?”

To do that they broke the year into quarters, and began holding goal-setting meetings with the executive leadership. The idea was to understand and agree on the top three outcomes executives wanted to get to in the next quarter. “We have annual goals,” Hellweg said, “but we look at them each quarter to find the top three near-term goals.”

you express your Key

not simply find a new way to talk about it. So how

What are the user and customer behaviors that drive business results? (This is the outcome that we’re trying to create.) How can we get people to do more of those behaviors? (These are the features, policy changes, promotions, etc that we’ll do to try to create the outcomes.) How do we know that we’re right? (This uncovers the dynamics of the syste