Move. Azzarello Patty
we must get it accomplished no matter what our level of resources – even if we need to move resources from the work to add new functionality. (Outcome proposal)
● We will work with marketing and sales to improve our conversion rate in the part of our pipeline that is with customers not currently affected by the platform issue. (Outcome proposal)
Note the difference between situation and outcome conversation.
Outcome discussions can be long and painful too, but the big difference is that they are going somewhere. Outcome conversation is productive conversation. It leads to action.
Outcome vs. Next
There are many other benefits to moving from situation conversations to outcome conversations. One of the other great things about outcome-oriented conversations is that they can be used to resolve disputes. When you are talking about a situation and what to do next, “next” is a concept fraught with opinion and emotion. It might involve someone giving something up or stopping something. It might involve doing or learning something new. “Next” has all the personal investment of the present wrapped up in it. So to get people to agree about what to do next if a clear outcome is not defined, there could be a million possible choices, all laden with personal investment, experience, insight, opinion, and emotion.
But instead you can pick a point in the future and say, “Let's describe that point. Let's agree on that point in the future.” Suddenly everyone's focus is shifted away from their invested and urgent personal space, and it is placed on a goal that is in the distance. It breaks the emotional stranglehold of something that threatens to change right now.
The other benefit is that if you can agree on what the point in the future looks like, it reduces the set of possible next steps from a million to several. There are far fewer choices of what to do next to serve a well-defined outcome. You can have a much more focused and productive debate.
Describe What It Looks Like When It Is Working
To force the conversation to be about concrete outcomes can be a difficult skill to master. But it is worth the effort. It's the only way to move decisively forward.
If your group is having trouble with this, here is something you can try. When I'm working with a team that can't seem to get their minds around which outcome to focus on, I ask them to simply describe what it looks like when it is working. If the desired outcome were working the way you needed it to be, what would you see? What would be happening? What would people be saying and doing? What would employees, customers, partners, analysts, and media be saying? What would they be experiencing?
Once you start describing what the concrete desired outcome looks like when it is working, you will be able to land the plane. For example, I was working with a team who needed to execute a successful product migration from an old version to a new version. They naturally started talking about the situation, the complexity, the expense, the possibility of customer attrition....But when I encouraged them to start describing desired outcomes, one person said, “We'd have enough customers successfully using the new version by February 1.” Then others added these descriptions: “There would be a combination of existing and new customers successfully using the new version”; “Existing small and mid-size customers would be motivated and volunteer to migrate on their own”; “Our largest customers would be confident to migrate because they felt guided and supported by us to make sure their migration was successful.”
By focusing on describing what it would look like if it were working, they were able to define outcomes that were concrete enough to suggest the specific necessary actions. This is another wonderful thing about outcome conversation. When you get concrete in your language about outcomes, the action plan just falls out in a very clear way. In this example, the team quickly got to a list of actions to create a self-migration program for small and mid-size customers, a personally delivered program for large customers, and a marketing campaign for new customers.
Trap: Avoiding Action – “But It Doesn't Solve the Whole Problem”
One of the other mistakes I see teams making is that when they work on big problems, even if they focus on describing outcomes, the outcomes are too big – and then they decide it's impossible.
Here is an example of such a desired outcome: We need to do a better job running meetings in our organization. What would it look like if it were working? All meetings would start and finish on time and have a clear purpose and desired outcomes defined, the right people would be in attendance, and we'd document decisions and actions.
Then they start to think about all the reasons why this won't work in certain organizations or geographies, or that there is not enough sponsorship, or that there are too many different kinds of meetings to make a new process work.
Then one brave soul will stand up and say something like, “Why don't we start by improving our quarterly business review meetings? Let's describe what those would look like if they were working better.”
Then someone else will shoot that down and say, “But that doesn't solve the whole problem,” or “that doesn't solve the biggest part of the problem.”
Resist this type of reasoning.
Solve the smaller, concrete problem. Then pick another small concrete problem and solve that one next.
Don't let the reasoning of “but this doesn't solve the whole problem” stop you from making progress on a valuable, smaller, concrete problem.
This destructive immune response happens for a few reasons. People can convince themselves that if the big problem is impossible, then it's okay not to try. Why waste time on something that is impossible? But the real issue is fear of actually doing something. Once you commit to defining a specific, concrete problem that can be solved, then it becomes clear what you need to do – and you need to do it.
There is a lot of avoidance of doing that happens in business, because it's easier to pretend to add value by just talking about the complexity of the big problem and sounding smart, and stating all the reasons why it can't be done.
Concrete, specific outcomes drive action. Always beware of people who are experts at avoiding action.
Drive Forward Momentum by Getting Concrete and Specific
What is the difference between an outcome that helps drive action, and an end goal (also an outcome) that does not drive action? The answer is scope and concreteness. Where a big, inspiring end goal is too high-level and vague to drive action, a more tightly defined, concrete, specific outcome will make your action plan very clear.
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