WHY OUTCOME FOCUS IS NOT AS GOOD AS YOU THINK
“We assess outcomes, not processes.”
“We assess outcomes, not processes.”
“Results are what matters.”
Phrases like these get thrown around a lot. In the personal growth and self-help industry, but especially in ambitious companies with even more ambitious managers.
I’ve been an ambitious manager in an ambitious and very successful startup for several years — and I used the “outcome is king” mantra a lot.
But I never felt 100% comfortable with it. Now I know why.
OUTCOMES AND LUCK
Sure, outcomes are what ultimately matters. In fact, it’s the only thing that ultimately matters.
That is why we all want to reliably produce good outcomes. Be that in our businesses, careers or personal lives — with financial goals, work projects, or our own health and fitness.
But is only looking at the final result the best way to assess the quality of the work (of the person) that we rely on to produce good results again and again? I don’t think so.
Luck is real. Bad luck is real. Randomness is real. Serendipity is real. In every single instant, randomness can play a huge role in whether or not we achieve the desired outcome.
If we look at only the outcome, we don’t know if this is based on a process, a system, or a style of decision making that we can trust to produce good outcomes again in the future.
INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS
Imagine the following: Manager M praises Employee E for the great result he achieved with the performance marketing campaign. Little does M know, that E just rolled a dice to determine which of the available six targeting sets he wanted to bet his advertising money on. Both have no clue that very early in the campaign, the advertising platform secretly changed its algorithm to (luckily) favor the video format E chose to use.
Now, can we say that E did good work and should be hired again to do the job because she got results? Of course not.
But M can only come to this conclusion if she actually looks at the process of E and not just judges his work by the outcome.
Over time, good outcomes tend to follow good decisions and good processes. If a process never achieves good results, it is, by definition, not good. But, only because any process achieves a good result, this doesn’t mean it is good, i.e. will achieve good results in the future.
In other words, a good process will not always produce good results and good results will not always stem from good processes.
However, if we want to reliably produce good outcomes, we MUST identify processes that will likely get us there. And judging past results, or worse, a single result, is only part of the story. The simpler part. The part that can be measured in ones and zeros. Evaluating and assessing processes, decision-making systems and ways of thinking is much harder. It’s messy. And it bears the risk of being wrong.
That’s exactly why I believe that dodging the part of thoroughly looking at the process and only focusing on the result is intellectually lazy.
Sure, you will eventually find out which process is best by only looking at results. But only if you have enough results so that luck and bad luck cancel each other out, and such that the quality of the process or decision making is the only thing that remains as a determining variable.
That is rarely the case though. In reality, we usually judge based on single instances (both in professional and private settings). And that is where a sole focus on results does not tell us as much as we would like.
OUTCOME ORIENTATION AND PROCESS IGNORANCE
Now, I totally get that often “outcome orientation” is supposed to mean that we shouldn’t fall in love with the process as an end in itself. I 100% agree. A process is a means to an end. It’s pure motion that will lead nowhere if it’s not headed correctly.
That said, “outcome orientation” should not translate into “process ignorance”. Any given process (or the ability of a worker for that matter) should not be dismissed just because it did not yield a certain outcome.
It’s not that simple. Managers pretending it was are not doing their job.
Ray Dalio writes in his book “Principles”, that he is less interested in the opinions of people than in their reasoning behind those opinions. Why?
Because it will tell him much more about if these people are capable of making good judgments and decisions than it would if he just based his assessment on their opinions (which can be right or wrong or good or bad for many reasons).
Ray got it. Be like Ray.
! CALL TO ACTION !
It’s my mission to share with you all of the information, perspectives, resources, tools, and tactics that can inspire, help, and guide you to become a better pilot of your own life.
I am neither a guru nor a life coach because I am only learning and experimenting myself. But I am a collector of good ideas, a packager of information and a communicator of inspiring insights that you can immediately apply in your own life.
Would you like to receive the most insightful, inspiring and motivating books, podcasts, documentaries, movies Youtube channels, ideas, tools, and tactics helping you to become a better pilot and creating the life you truly want to live?
Take 14 seconds and subscribe to my new resources- and ideas-journey.
I promise there will be zero spam and only kick-ass content.
Signup
The most insightful email journey you will ever subscribe to!mailchi.mp