Outcomes Over Output

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?”

teams can demonstrate through these models that their work goes directly towards creating a business impact that leaders care about, conversations become much more grounded, and teams and leaders become much more aligned.

It’s a simple idea: you make a diagram that reads from left to right and describes what people are doing (their “journey”) when they interact with your product or service. So, for example,

how they might create that outcome.

outcomes are the changes in customer, user, employee behavior that lead to good things for your company, your organization, or whomever is the focus of your work.

But this is where the power of outcomes shows up: no digital system is ever really complete, and conversely, even very small slices of a new digital system can start generating value before the rest of the system is ready.

The problem with this approach is that features can be finished and delivered and “work perfectly” but stlll not deliver any value. Think

So how do you write better OKRs? One way is to think of Key Results as outcomes. If

Instead of the vague (impact-level) request to increase NPS, instead we had a much more actionable set of things to work on: