The Outcomes Fixation: Why Measuring Results Alone Can Undermine Success
“Success is a result, not a goal.” — Gustave Flaubert
Several years ago, I was asked to present an award to a call centre employee who had achieved the highest customer satisfaction scores for 12 consecutive months. After handing over the award at her desk, I stayed behind to learn her secret. What was she doing differently from everyone else?
Her answer surprised me. She revealed that although her performance was measured on customer satisfaction, she rarely checked those scores. During our conversation, I noticed a handwritten checklist taped to her monitor and asked about it.
"These are the questions I make sure to ask every customer," she explained. Working in debt collection, her list included questions about whether the customer maintained a budget, whether they had reached out to support services, and whether there were life circumstances she should consider. She diligently asked these questions on every single call.
This consistency and thoroughness clearly delivered extraordinary customer satisfaction. But the key insight was that she focused on the inputs (asking the right questions) with confidence that the outcome would take care of itself.
"Well, I can't really control whether the customer scores me a 5 or a 10," she told me, "but I can make sure I ask all the right questions."
Meanwhile, other agents obsessively monitored their scores and directly asked customers to rate them positively—yet achieved mediocre results. Their fixation on outcomes wasn't improving them.
This experience illuminates a common phenomenon in business transformation: our obsession with outcomes often means we neglect to measure and reward the inputs required to achieve those outcomes.
The Outcome Obsession
Our fixation with outcomes isn't surprising. Contemporary business culture celebrates goal-setting and results, often suggesting that focusing on process is old-fashioned or inefficient. We've been trained to keep our eyes on the prize—revenue growth, market share, customer satisfaction, or ROI.
After all, outcomes are:
Easier to measure: Quantifying results is typically more straightforward than tracking behaviours or processes
Directly tied to business value: They represent what ultimately matters to shareholders
Clear indicators of success or failure: They provide seemingly unambiguous feedback
Modern business thinking encourages us to focus on outcomes over process to find the fastest path to the destination. This approach has merit—it can spark innovation and prevent bureaucratic inertia. But taken to the extreme, it has created a belief that we can somehow bypass the work itself.
This outcome fixation manifests in transformation efforts when we obsess over metrics like program completion dates, cost reduction targets or far-off milestones.
While these are certainly important to track, they tell only part of the story. Like my award-winning call centre agent discovered, focusing exclusively on the score misses the critical daily actions that actually drive success.
The Input-Output Balance
The most successful transformations maintain a balance between outcome measures and input measures. Leaders need visibility into both where they're going and how they're getting there.
Jim Collins introduced this concept in "Good to Great," describing how the best companies focus not just on what they want to achieve but on building the fundamental capabilities and processes required for sustained excellence.
Perhaps the most famous proponent of this approach is Jeff Bezos, who ingrained the "working backwards" method at Amazon. Rather than starting with what's possible or easy, Amazon begins with the desired customer experience and works backward to determine what needs to be built. His story of how he thinks about influencing the stock price (outcome) via a controllable input is a powerful illustration of this thinking:
“Say somebody came up to me and said, “Jeff, I want your job to be to drive up the Amazon stock price, and just manage that directly.” Many companies actually try to do this. They go out and try to “sell” the stock. That’s a silly approach, that’s not sustainable. It’s much better to say, “What are the inputs to a higher stock price?” OK, well, free cash flow and return on invested capital are inputs to a higher stock price. Let’s keep working backwards. What are the inputs to free cash flow? And you keep working backwards until you get to something that’s controllable. A controllable input for free cash flow would be something like lower cost structure.
Then you back up from there and say, if we can improve our picking efficiency in our fulfilment centres and reduce defects — reducing defects at the root is one of the best ways to lower cost structure — that starts to be a job you would accept.
If you’re a reasonable person, you would say, “I have no idea how to drive up the stock price. I can’t manage that directly. It’s not a controllable input.” But I can make picking algorithms more efficient, and that will reduce cost structure.”
The Benefits of Input Focus
Shifting some attention from outcomes to inputs offers several powerful advantages:
It focuses on what we can control
We can't directly control whether a customer gives us a high satisfaction score, but we can control whether we ask the right questions and provide thorough service. Similarly, transformation leaders can't directly control whether their initiatives deliver the projected ROI, but they can ensure their teams follow proven methodologies, maintain data quality, and engage stakeholders effectively.
This shift is empowering. Rather than feeling helpless when outcomes aren't immediately materialising, teams focus on executing the inputs they know will eventually lead to success.
It builds momentum through incremental progress
Input measures create opportunities to celebrate progress along the journey, not just at the destination. This recognition of incremental achievements maintains momentum and prevents the disillusionment that often occurs when outcomes take time to materialise.
It prevents short-term thinking
Pure outcome focus can drive harmful behaviours. Sales teams focused solely on quarterly targets might sacrifice long-term customer relationships. Similarly, transformation teams measured only on project completion dates might cut corners on quality or change management.
Tracking inputs helps ensure the organization builds sustainable capabilities, not just short-term results.
It enables early course correction
If outcomes are your only measures, you might not recognise failure until it's too late. Input measures provide early warning signs when processes aren't being followed or when critical activities are being neglected.
How to Strike the Balance
For transformation leaders seeking to apply these insights, here are three practical steps:
1. Establish balanced metrics
For every transformation initiative, define and measure both:
Outcome metrics: What ultimate business value are we trying to create?
Input metrics: What specific activities, behaviours, or processes will drive those outcomes?
Make these measures visible to everyone involved in the transformation. Just as my call centre agent had her checklist visible during every interaction, your teams should have clear visibility into the inputs that matter.
2. Identify the critical few inputs
Not all inputs are equally important. Through analysis and experimentation, identify the vital few activities that truly drive outcomes. Focus measurement and management attention on these.
At one organization I worked with, we discovered that the single most important predictor of successful system implementation wasn't budget or timeline adherence—it was the number of hours key users spent in hands-on testing during development. We made this input a primary measure of progress, with dramatic results.
3. Create feedback loops between inputs and outcomes
The relationship between inputs and outcomes isn't static. Regularly analyse which inputs are actually driving the desired outcomes and adjust accordingly.
For example, a retailer I advised found that their initial assumption about what drove online conversion rates was wrong. They had focused on page load speed, but data revealed that product description completeness was far more predictive of purchase. They quickly shifted their input measures to focus on content quality.
Finding Your Input-Outcome Balance
The lesson from my call centre agent applies across all transformation efforts: excellence comes not from obsessing over outcomes but from identifying and consistently executing the right inputs.
This doesn't mean ignoring outcomes—they remain the ultimate measure of success. But by balancing your attention between outcomes and the inputs that drive them, you create a more empowered, resilient approach to transformation.
In your current transformation efforts, ask yourself: Are you measuring only where you're going, or also how you'll get there?
Until next Friday, keep failing forward!
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