Improve Business Benefits delivery with 3 Magic Questions

Have you ever led or been involved in a project or a strategy which didn’t deliver all/some of the benefits that were expected? I think most project/programme managers and business stakeholders would say ‘yes’ to that question. Now I know there are many reasons for this and I don’t have the silver bullet, but there are some central pillars of product development that can be backported into established project methodology to help focus on benefits.

It’s common for a business need to be defined as ‘delivery of ANO system’ and the focus is then on the time/budget/scope of that system. The outcomes being sought are quickly lost, if they were ever really defined, and are not part of the decision making during the project lifecycle. The customer is forgotten. People and processes are forgotten.  So to help improve benefits delivery, why don’t we turn the problem 180 degrees and use the desired outcomes as our guide all the way through the project.

Time for a Definition (as Professor Brian Cox says in The Infinite Monkey Cage!)

Josh Seiden is an award-winning leader in the Product domain and he defines ‘outcome’ as ‘a change in human behaviour that drives business results’. What does he mean by ‘human’? Well it might be a user, a customer, an internal team, a journalist – anyone we can observe and then undertake an action off the back of that observation and monitor the effect of the action.

We often use the terms goal and objective when defining a project; these are not the same as ‘outcomes’. An outcome is not something big and unwieldy such as ‘increase retention' or ‘grow our customer base’ which so many of us will have seen – or indeed written - in classic business cases. The goal to ‘increase retention' for example, is the sum of a series of factors requiring input from various sources. That’s why business benefits tracking of a project to ‘grow our customer base’ becomes hard – the number of moving parts is too great to be clear on the attribution when we measure the data months after the business case was written. The Project Manager has moved on, other events have occurred that impact the customer base, the business stakeholder accountable for the benefits realisation scratches their head and the CFO gets frustrated at lack of benefits despite the cost. Sound familiar? 

How Might We Apply Product Thinking to Projects and to Business Strategy?

To define the desired business benefits, let’s start with different questions at the outset. Rather than focus on high level objectives or on outputs such as ‘a robust system to manage our inventory to grow the business’, focus on desired outcomes such as; ’increase in customers adding an accessory item to the basket’ or for the internal admin team ‘easier to add/delete inventory items’. Just thinking about these simple example outcomes for a moment, it becomes clear that these will flip the project on it's head to focus on business processes and the end to end customer journey to contribute to reduction in costs and increase in sales. The inventory management system becomes an output that is part of the enabler to the business results. Now we can work to transform to drive business results, rather than simply deliver a ‘thing’ without the benefits that stakeholders expected.

To focus on outcomes, define the human behaviours you are looking to change in the context of the problem or opportunity you are facing. This approach can be used in strategic planning sessions across the whole business - could be useful right now - or can be used for a particular problem or opportunity, such as ‘we need a new inventory management system’ or ‘we need to reduce our cost to serve’ or ‘we want to improve our NPS score.’ All of these examples would in many businesses be run as projects with a focus on output deliverables such as a new PIM, buying a dialler, setting up a customer committee. I have seen all of these scenarios and sadly all failed to deliver real business benefits, despite project management, RAID logs, RAG reports, money being spent and plenty of meetings!

Use Three Magic Questions to Define Outcomes

People sometimes find outcomes difficult to articulate, even Product Managers, so I really like the 3 magic questions approach from Josh Seiden.

Magic Question 1: What are the user/customer/stakeholder behaviours that drive business results? It is important to check if we know statements are true or if it is a hypothesis to test.

Run sessions or hold 121 interviews. Get a good range of inputs across functions and speak to the Exec, senior managers and subject matter experts who are closest to the day to day running. Prompt on the range of human groups to consider internally and externally eg existing customer, new customer, investor, journalist. Ask Execs what they are worried about rather than what they want. Probe under initial comments to get beyond the surface – ‘so what makes you say that’ and ‘say some more’. You might even find that stakeholders across the business have different views on what drives business results!

Magic Question 2: How do we get people to do this/do more of this?

Run workshops across the business seeking ideas on how the team or individual might contribute to the outcomes. Phrase the question as a ‘how might we’, diverge generating lots of ideas, then converge onto a small set of tangible actionable areas. Not only does this give you quality ideas, it engages people in a set of common business outcomes that can even be put in people’s personal objectives, driving up engagement scores and key performance indicators.

Magic Question 3: How will we know we are right?

Define your metrics up front and be able to monitor through delivery not just as business benefits after delivery. Communicate, communicate and communicate that you are monitoring outcomes and that the outputs may change along the way to deliver the desired outcomes. Define lead and lag indicators – so the lag indicator might be an increase in average basket value and you know that a lead indicator for this is reading product reviews. If you focus on and measure the lead indicator, you can be more assured of the lag indicator when rolled out. Seems obvious doesn’t it but how many projects monitor these lag indicators and adjust accordingly?

Avoid using outputs, time and budget as your only key indicators of project success and gates. I have seen this lead to projects that should have been stopped or could have been adjusted to deliver strong business results if they had used the lens of outcomes rather than stick to the original outputs.

In Summary

From experience in transformation over 20 years, I believe project delivery would benefit from embedding product ‘outcome’ thinking within the methodology. Embed outcomes in the project methodology - in your communication, plan, decision making and reporting. Be prepared to call out the need for a change in output to drive the desired outcomes.

Outcome focus provides a more holistic view to delivering transformation across the operating model. It turns the project upside down to focus on customers and your people, providing a clearer line of sight between the investment and business results. That has to be a good thing right?

Post Script: Outcomes over Outputs in your Personal Life

Outcome thinking can also help in your personal life. At the start of lockdown I was reflecting on applying outcomes rather than outputs to my day to keep positive. I manage my spare time by assigning time to themes rather than tasks; mixing up creative, learning, chores, exercise, calling friends etc, with the purpose of feeling better mentally and physically. It’s helping massively. So week 2 of lockdown I made scones. Scones were the output – but I could have bought scones, so it wasn’t about the scone per se. It was the outcome I was seeking – the outcome of satisfaction and joy at being able to master a task last performed 30 years ago. Last week I made face masks. Again the output was practical no denying, but the outcome was just as important – a sense of pride in remembering how to thread a bobbin on my sewing machine and confidence to now make some cushion covers.

Social media is currently awash with people having a go at something for the positive outcome rather than worrying about the output. Grayson Perry’s Art Club takes that premise – encouraging us to focus on the outcome of positive mental well-being from just having a go, rather than worry about whether the art is any good. I have seen people take up running during lockdown and of course there is the infamous Joe Wicks. All about outcomes not outputs and that is great for our physical and mental health.

About the Author

Jacqui Rigby (PhD) has more than 20 years’ experience in transformation in product, marketing and business development roles. She has worked in sectors as wide as legal, insurance, retail, financial, travel, pharmaceuticals and funerals. For the past 6 years she has provided specialist senior interim skills, bringing together teams across the business to drive change using both product and project approaches.