Course 1 · Lesson 1 of 5

What is an outcome

Consider a rental car sitting in a yard with a flat battery. Nothing about that car is finished. The paperwork says it is available. The tyres say it is available. The battery says it will not start. Somebody is responsible for cars leaving the yard in a state a customer will accept, and that responsibility does not appear anywhere in the paperwork.

The definition

An outcome is a finished state in the world that somebody is responsible for reaching.

Three parts of that sentence carry the weight. It is a state, so it can be true. It is finished, so there is a moment when it is reached and somebody can point at it. And somebody is responsible, so it does not depend on luck, or on a system, or on nobody in particular.

Compare that with the wording most people use for their own work. "Managing the fleet." "Looking after the client relationships." "Handling the renewals." None of those can be finished. A person can do them for thirty years and never reach a moment where the thing is done. They are descriptions of activity, and activity is very hard to hand over, to check, or to argue with.

Why the difference is worth the trouble

A state can be verified. "Every car in the yard starts first time" can be checked by a person with a key and five minutes. "Managing the fleet well" cannot be checked by anybody, which means the only feedback available is the day it goes wrong.

A state can be handed over. Anything that can be stated precisely enough can be carried by somebody else, or by machinery, because there is a criterion for success. Vague activity cannot be handed over. It can only be done personally, forever.

It usually has to be true again

Some outcomes happen once. A bridge is built, and then it is built. Most business outcomes are not like that. The tax return is filed in January, and then it is filed again the following January. The licence is renewed, and then it is renewed again. The tenancy is renewed, and then the one after that.

This is the part people miss. An outcome is not a mountain you climb and leave. It is a condition you hold up, and the holding is the work.

Five tests for a real outcome

It can be true. Somebody could say, on a given day, whether it is true now.
It is checkable, even if the checking needs an expert. A person with the right knowledge can confirm it.
A person is answerable for it. Not a department, not a system. A name.
It repeats, or it is meant to. Ask what would make it true again next year.
It does not describe the interface. If the sentence names a spreadsheet, a portal or an inbox, it is describing machinery.

A reminder worth keeping: being answerable for an outcome is not the same as doing the work. The person who owns a landlord's forty tenancies is not the person unblocking a drain at eleven at night. They are the person who has to answer for whether the tenancies are renewed.

Where naming stops being enough

Naming an outcome does not finish it. A dentist can write "the practice passes its inspection" on a card and attach it to the wall, and the inspection will still fail if the sterilisation records are missing. The name is the beginning of a description, not a substitute for one. The lessons that follow are about the rest of the description.

Try it

Take a sheet of paper. Think about the last three working days.

For each day, write one sentence: what had to be true by the end of it?
Cross out anything that names a tool, a document or a place.
Circle the sentences that would have to be true again next month or next year.

Five minutes. Most people finish with two or three circled sentences, and one of them is usually something nobody has ever written down before.