Our goals and vision come to fruition when profits are realized sailing right alongside trust, partnership, and relationship. We strive for customer service and excellence, which are only truly measured by how the customer perceives the level of service or results. In the agile and burgeoning world of the corporate industry, many companies since their initial outset have confronted many issues. The range is too vast to epitomize. However, one can only imagine what it takes to be faced with callous challenges and figure out what to do next to better alleviate the circumstances and move toward a direction of diagnostic problem-solving.
Stephen Covey explains in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People2 that outputs always come last. In order to be successful, you need to start with the end in mind. This is all about vision. A project vision answers the question “why”—the essential starting point for inspiring action. A vision gives project participants a reason for contributing. It clarifies the project’s purpose, eliminates confusion, unifies the team, and inspires them to do their best.
We need to understand the difference between output and outcome. It is not just the semantic3 difference. We decided to have Outcomes Agility in our model because in the end it is all about the outcomes and impact that we create by our actions.
Outcomes are the benefit our customers receive from our work. This starts with truly understanding your customers’ needs—their challenges, issues, constraints, priorities, etc. We can do this by applying the Education Agility and walking in our customers’ shoes in their neighborhoods, businesses, and cultures. “For many people, focusing on outcomes instead of outputs4 requires a significant shift in culture and thinking. Defining outputs is easy, we’re all focused on doing things. Doing something releases dopamine in our brain and makes us feel good. Doing things to achieve a certain outcome is a lot more complicated, and now success is not measured anymore by the percentage completion of our output.”
Steve Denning5 makes the distinction between output and outcome clear in his emphasis on the outcome of delighting our customers instead of just making more useful things.
Being resourceful takes projects to its highest performance. This involves being participative, affiliative, and transformational to obtain the highest form of outcomes. Outcomes agility is then certainly equated to the Agile Manifesto: “Responding to Change Over Following a Plan.” The metamorphosis of a butterfly is what outcomes agility symbolizes. Without the radical transformational changes, the butterfly cannot emerge into its varied colors and patterns if it were to follow a prescribed plan.
Nevertheless, this can happen if individuals conquer cognitive dissonance where they do not simultaneously hold two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. Opportunities to gain more knowledge, may it be an entrepreneur or not, excelling in your short- and long-term goals, and pushing for more is the story behind every successful organization. Performance will be at its intended height and maybe more by keeping all of the above agilities in operation at the peak level and for nearly all entities. Whether it is for nonprofit or for profit this operational endowment if kept at a steady pace, any aspiration can be achieved.
The seven agilities are so closely attuned to cognitive dissonance. The reason is because this will reflect positivity on the overall performance of the company because it provides support and an understanding, especially in scenarios such as acquisitions and mergers. Sometimes evolving endowment within a business and training teams for improvement are idyllic methods to get the individuals ready for what is yet to come. It is frequently quicker and further operational to endorse from the internal rankings instead of exploring innovative endowment outside of the company.
Formal outcome studies that Daniel Amen6 does are synonymous to Outcomes Agility. He says you learn more when you look more, hard and with intent. In his psychiatry world, it is to look at an image of a brain to solve problems. In our model it is to look at oneself and the personal attributes that will enhance an organization and the teams that shape and construct the organization.
Finally if an organization aspires to go full blast to achieve and reach their intended shores with outcomes that surpass their intentions, outcomes agility is certainly the steering wheel that can be used as the tool.
There is no straight line between vision and outcomes as shown in Figure 7 below. We need to remember about additional ingredients like strategy formulation, execution, and continuous improvement to make our outcomes better.
Figure 7
Vision is supported by the Personal Agility Lighthouse (PALH™) model as an essential starting point for inspiring action.
Strategy formulation can be very well supported by the “Brightline Initiative’s 10 Guiding Principles.”
Combining the PALH™ model principles and the 10 guiding principles will help leaders shrink the costly and wasteful gap between strategy design and delivery.
“Practices can change, business models are disrupted, technology evolves, but principles do not change. They are the soul of strategy design and delivery.”7
Execution needs to be done through action and feedback in short cycles. Project Portfolio Management supported by Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR)8 and Objective and Key Result (OKR) can help leaders execute, measure, and deliver outcomes for customers. The QBR is a planning ceremony that links the business strategy with the quarterly planning. It is a continuous process often used by Spotify, ING, and other big and small companies.
OKR9 is a popular, best practice strategic planning process for setting, communicating, and tracking quarterly goals and results in organizations. OKRs are a simple way to create structure for companies, teams, and individuals. The secret sauce when it comes to OKRs is to make them very ambitious (vision and strategy driven). That way OKRs enable individuals and teams to focus on the bigger picture and to achieve more than they thought they would. OKRs encourage a result- and value-oriented culture by focusing on the main priorities. It also increases the autonomy level and boosts self-organization. What is the difference between KPIs and OKRs? KPIs are defined by a manager, OKRs are self-chosen and self-driven.
It is essential during the execution to have closed feedback loops to continuously improve our approach to better outcomes. Drawing similes from the Agile Manifesto,10 it has the concept of continuous improvement as one of its core principles: “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”
Continually reviewing our efforts and strategy execution generally encourages incremental improvement over time. Improvements are based on many small changes rather than the radical changes that might arise from large research and development initiatives.11
On quarterly basis we review the outcomes, we adopt and adapt to changes, we revise our vision, and continue with execution of strategy.
To have the outcomes agility honed, some of the remedies that can be employed are:
- Define your vision, define outcomes for your customers and business partners. Delight them.
- Move from long-term goals to a continuous-state-of-achieving.
- Seek feedback, benchmark yourself.
- Measure, measure, measure!
- Stretch your limits—believe in yourself.
Industry Applications by International Practitioners and Academia for Outcomes Agility
They say that you will never be happy if you are always striving for excellence. In my opinion as the head of my company, ‘having done something is better than something excellent which will never be done’. However, I think that it is impossible to achieve anything if we do not push ourselves to get the best out of ourselves. It is easy. Do you want to develop? Always be a step ahead of your comfort zone and keep improving. Clients will appreciate if the agency has its own quality check internally. The whole team can be engaged to improve the project only when the company culture is supporting and promoting these behaviors. For example, in my company I allow the proper time for the project delivery, not always agreeing with the deadlines given by clients enabling better outcomes.
Joanna Staniszewska CEO, You’ll Ltd.,
POLAND
Everything comes to an end, which could mean the beginning of something new and unknown. Outcomes Agility, can help our industry to be more enterprising, inspiring and push us to seek our limits, not settle for mundane bureaucratic work and salary. We know and believe that we can do better, it is a question that, both on a personal and group level, we should answer by giving the best we have and strive to continue growing together, supporting each other. The benefit is that almost everything we want to challenge has the potential to start a flywheel. Once it gets spinning, it can spin faster within more context control.
Rafael De La Rosa, Project-Portfolio Management Consultant,
PT. SMART tbk
INDONESIA / SPAIN
A recognition that unless you know what outcomes you seek, there is little point in seeking the outcomes! They also recognize just as the winds can change direction, so can the outcomes they seek. Having an outcomes agility through the portfolio of projects means sometimes the winds will be at your back, and at other times, are trying to knock you off your feet; but either way, accountability for staying on your feet, or being knocked to the ground, is always clear and undisputable.
Paul Hodgkins, Executive Director, Paul Hodgkins Project Consultancy,
UNITED KINGDOM
In the world of higher education, “outcomes” are a big deal. Ultimately, we want to make sure that students are learning what we think they need to learn in order to be successful in the real world. Outcomes can be as micro in the course level as well as macro at the university level. It becomes a guiding principle on what we need to teach our students and how we go about it. We assess at differing levels in order to determine whether a student is really “learning”. This is critical for determining transformational action steps needed in order to reach the outcome or goal.
Professor Linh Luong, Program Director of Master of Science in Project Management, University of SEATTLE
What is the roadmap for your data, and what is your end state? Nothing could be more critical than focusing on the outcome of the story you want to tell. Identifying and generating genuine and sustainable data insights requires leaders to clearly articulate goals, and an attitude of continuous improvement. These attitudes, and the engagement strategies required to sustain them, are pivotal for effective data transformation. Times like this, the old adage ‘if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there’ rings true. Clearly defining your organizational vision, roadmap, and targeted goals requires visionary leaders and inspired constituents.
Driving successful data transformation requires intentionality. The journey leans on leaders to master more than just a mastery of data and analytics. Driving change and transformation through data analytics require an agile mindset. Leveraging the seven agility dimensions offers the opportunity to effectuate and propagate change and maximize the impact of data and analytics.
Patrick N Connally, Director, Teradata, Philadelphia,
USA
Outcomes agility inspires you to constantly better yourself to excel to the next level and constantly strive for better outcomes in any venture. With the help of the PALH™ method, the people who invested in this project would have started with asking the right questions with the desired outcome in mind. Their desired outcome was to have an impact on the environment by collecting good recyclable plastic but they invested in equipment that separates different materials perfectly. The solution is to ask the right questions like; what problem does equipment X solve?
Makheni Zonneveld, Future Readiness Coach,
NETHERLANDS
In order to maximize the value creation for the customer, one must focus on outcomes and impact. For instance, measuring the business performance in terms of ability to innovate includes the trends of defects reported in software delivery. If the number of code review and functionality defects are decreasing sprint over sprint it shows better ability of the team to innovate. Similarly, reducing the technical debt over time will improve and bring excellence in the delivery. One of the important values of Scrum requires commitment by the team for achieving the Sprint goal as the Sprint events are time-boxed.
In essence organizational agility can be better achieved through honing personal agility using the Personal Agility Light House (PALH™) Model- “a segway through adaptability”, agile mindset, growth mindset, business agility, continuous delivery predictability, empiricism, business value delivery, thus achieving ultimate organizational performance.
Gaurav Dhooper (PAL-I®, PMI-ACP®, SAFe4®, CSM®, LSS-GB)
Program Manager, RPA & Agile Practitioner at Genpact,
INDIA