Working Outcome-oriented Means A Different Way to Understand Progress
Organisations have long tracked progress through the completion of tasks and projects. When we are outcome-oriented progress is best understood with evidence.
Most people love projects. They have a start and an end and act as a container for all the work to get something done. There’s satisfaction in keeping track of all the work we identified and checking off tasks as these are completed and the closure of finishing the overall project. As something else that needs achieving is identified, there’s soon talk of this work as a new project. The cycle repeats, and the list of projects waiting gets longer.
Working Outcome-oriented Means Understanding Progress Differently
When we are working oriented to outcomes we think about progress differently. We look for evidence we are making progress toward achieving the result. This evidence is often a leading indicator that may be symptomatic of the outcome or conditions that must be true for the result to be possible.
It’s often a challenging transition because the traditional tracking of progress is often still in place when we begin on the path to working focused on outcomes.
Tracking progress by checking off tasks completed is a comforting safety blanket that can help impose order and control.
The challenge is that the green traffic lights on our project reports start to conflict directly with the evidence of progress we collect and review frequently. Interviews with users might tell us that the solutions we are providing them are missing the mark, and website traffic data might tell us that people are not using what we have provided them.
Yet the project dashboards might tell a different story. Additionally, project plans tend to be designed based on assumptions that may be actively being challenged. It’s possible for the approaches to coexist, but at the very least, an adjustment must be made.
Working Outcome-oriented Means Being Adaptive
First, and most importantly, think about work as experimentation both for the purpose of value creation and also for learning. Actively define what is to be measured or will be used as evidence for understanding what is working and what is not. Progress is evidence of achieving the value aspired for.
The next important element is an adaptive planning approach. Agile and lean practices, which presume adaptive planning, tend to be more compatible approaches, but any project management approach can coexist as long as adaption is embraced. Traditional project management adapts plans based on task completion and consideration of the critical path. Now, more important is adapting the plan to what we are constantly learning.
Have you gone through this transition? Did you find the shift difficult? Did it create friction? Was there reluctance to change from the familiar approaches to managing projects? Please share your experiences in the comments.