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Outcomes Over Output - Book Notes

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Outcomes Over Output: Why customer behavior is the key metric for business Success, By Josh Seiden

Definitions:

  • Outcome: A change in human behaviour that drives business results
  • Output: Features / things that are done and work as specified
    • This does not necessarily mean they deliver value
    • Successful feature results in desirable outcome

The Program Logic Model looks like this:

Resources -> Activities -> Outputs -> Outcomes -> Impact

Looking at this, it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking that once you deliver the outputs, the outcomes will happen. But really, you should evaluate yourself against the Outcome, to assess progress.

Run experiments to check that the hypothesized outputs do indeed create the desired outcomes.

Planning should be based on outcomes, not output:

  • If you build roadmaps around features, you are preemptively assuming those features will lead to outcomes (they probably won’t)
  • Instead, plan for the problems to solve or outcomes to deliver.
  • Can further break down into smaller outcomes, which when taken together delivers business results. Example: Customer Journey Maps.

To help shift thinking from “feature-based” to “outcomes-based”, ask those questions to your colleagues:

  • “What are you worried about?”
  • “What business problems are you having trouble with?”

Outcomes are abstract, while outputs are concrete. People tend to prefer outputs because they can see it. This is a difficult chasm to close.

To transform (big word, but really, like “change” or “adapt” would be ok too) your organization to be outcomes-based is as simple as 1-2-3:

  1. Colleagues are your customers
    • idk what he’s on about. this seems obvious to me.
  2. Everything is an outcome
    • The way your organization works needs to change in order to successfully adapt the outcomes-based model.
    • This includes changes in leadership behaviours
  3. Everything is an experiment
    • Changing people’s behaviour is hard, so don’t be afraid to try different things and ways to get buy-in (big word used here is “action-oriented”)

Once people in your org starts thinking in terms of outcomes, you can start declaring success. Because at that point, the leadership can focus solely on the problems and the results. The solution should work themselves out because your people are all thinking in terms of outcomes.