Outputs and Outcomes: When Movement Does Not Necessarily Mean Progress

Nowadays, all those leading projects and initiatives only talk about outcomes. In this week episode, Ricardo reflects on the concept that outcomes are everything while outputs are irrelevant. For him, outputs and outcomes are equally important because outputs are the only way to produce outcomes. The problem is the disconnection between the outputs we product and the outcome we want to reach. We need to understand that many times a lot of movement, does not mean a lot of progress towards your strategic intent.

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Episode transcript

The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.

Ricardo (4s):
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the five minutes podcast. Today I like to talk about one topic that I'm sure people struggle with. And there is a lot of misconception is the concept of outputs and outcomes. And of course, what is happening today is that every single human being working on delivering projects on initiatives, on transformation, they only talk, you should not care about outputs. You should care about outcomes because outcomes are what really matter in what is really, really important for us. You should not micromanage and think about outputs. So I want to challenge that first.

Ricardo (44s):
I have no doubt that what really matter is outcome. The outcomes are everything. The outcomes are the end result of your organization, your business, or whatever you decide to do with your initiative or your project. However, it's impossible for you to reach an outcome by itself. Outcomes are created by outputs. So if you just say, Oh no, I don't need to care about outputs. What do you think? Do you think that the outcomes will just appear out of the blue? So they come from the outputs and this brings me to the key point of this episode.

Ricardo (1m 27s):
What do you need to be mindful? It's how you connect the right outputs with the right outcomes. And these is where the magic is. If you go for example, to traditional project planning and this they're very concerned about output, how do you produce on time on budget and develop that break by break? That will become a house. And at that time, when I started project manager, the project manager is very concerned about that piece. And if the house is to sell, to buy, to leave or to do whatever it doesn't matter. And now it's very important that you connect these values to, okay, we are building this house to deliver what benefit, what outcome, what result.

Ricardo (2m 13s):
For example, if you are doing a transformation in your organization, you will do the organization aiming a North star, aiming an outcome, but these transformation will be a result of 10, 20, 30, 40 different initiatives that will create the right outputs. For example, I need to replace, for example, my finance system, because I need a more robust finance system and why I need that. Because if I have a more robust, I will reduce my loss. And with that, I can reduce late payments by 20%. And these could mean X million dollars at the end of 2025, whatever.

Ricardo (2m 57s):
So these is exactly what are trying to understand here. So you cannot be unaware of the relevance of outputs outcomes and how to connect them. And one important thing that we see a lot when people only think about outcome and they just forget output, they start thinking that movement is progress. And let me tell you movement does not necessarily mean progress. You know, look, go horse, look, this no methodology, nothing. What do you do? You go to this place, you see people working like crazy, but at the end, what they are doing, they're dust shaking waters, but they're not fishing.

Ricardo (3m 38s):
You know, they're just shaking the waters, showing to everybody that they are busy, but at the end they don't produce. And if you don't produce outputs, you don't solve outcomes. For example, government has a goal of reducing child mortality. You don't reduce child mortality just by reducing child mortality, or can we to do there is a lot of outputs. I need to build hospitals. I need to create an education plan for young women. I'm not an expert on that, but I need to do different initiatives that will produce, for example, bads, that will produce awareness. That way result in a reduction of child mortality.

Ricardo (4m 19s):
So this is the idea it's like, for example, in a more holistic way, you say you want to be happy. So happiness for every single few that are listening. This podcast may have a different thing. So I need to understand, okay, what outputs will drive the happiness you want, maybe one output will be 1 million, but maybe you will get $1 million and you will not be happy. So it means you reach it, the output, but not the outcome. I'm not saying this is right or is just an example. You need to understand, sorry, the tricky and the secret here, and this is the secret sauce of every single roadmap is how you can create a cows.

Ricardo (4m 59s):
And the fact relationship between the output and outcome, both are incredibly relevant. You should not stop on the output. You should not think only on the outcome, but how they connect and they work together. This is what really makes the difference in the results of what you are doing. So look, I hope you enjoy this podcast and see you next week with another five minutes podcast.

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Outputs and Outcomes: When Movement Does Not Necessarily Mean Progress

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