Use systems thinking to find specific and measurable outcomes

We’re constantly being told to focus on outcomes. This is not easy nor actionable for many practitioners. In this article series I explain 5 mind-tricks that consistently get your brain and your team thinking outcomes. The mind-tricks are both proven and easy to teach forward.??

The first articles introduced a simple backward-working method and using storytelling to frame outcome orientation.??

Tony?Ulwick?(creator?fo?the jobs-to-be-done method) has urged us to "Be the researcher of the job and the outcome of the customer".?The milkshake story introduced in article 2 started to imply that there are multiple jobs intermixed and that the context of the job matters.?Ulwick?has said he became fascinated by the opportunity of applying science into understanding the job of the customer. That we could "scientifically" research the job.

This one is especially for the scrum masters, agile coaches, and systems thinkers out there.??

Seeing the system?

World is a complex reality. The detail of our life is infinite. There's millions of?phenomena?happening and intertwining around us all the time. Somehow we still make sense of it all. Our brains are constantly perceiving and interpreting things. But most interesting thing for us now is that we have wants and that we make decisions.?These create the context of customers' outcomes.

In order to make sense of the world and thoughts of the customers, we need to talk to them and we need to observe them. We collect information about our customers.?We – as creators of customer outcomes - perceive parts and our viewpoints sometimes overlap. Oftentimes we as innovators see differing parts of the same reality. We also look at the same reality and see different things.???

Systems thinking is?s a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts.?Causal loop mapping is my go-to method for getting groups started with that.??

Understanding customer satisfaction?

Take for instance "customer satisfaction". That is a broad concept which often gets tossed around as something that we want as outcome: "Make the customer happy". This raises immediately the question "How could that be done?"??

?We can apply systems thinking and causal loop mapping decomposing abstract and composite customer outcomes. We?break it down.?

?At this point, I need to make a quick intro to causal loop mapping and the visual language around it. Feel free to skip this if you are a seasoned systems thinker. Then we return to the way of mapping out how to make a customer happy.??

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?Causal loop mapping draws nodes and connections depicted. You can use a paper or a whiteboard. You can do this yourself or in a group.??

• The nodes represent events and things we can observe in the world. These are called the?variables.?As an example we can observe and subjectively measure "hunger".?We can similarly measure "time since last meal".
• The connections between nodes (the variables) represent causal connections between the variables. As an example: time since last meal causes hunger. It can be said that "as one variable grows -> the other variable?grows as well".?

?With systems thinking and causal loop mapping, you build a shared view of "how the world works". You build common understanding in a visual way. We choose the pertinent variables which you can observe and study. We build a hypothesis of how and why good customer outcomes are created.??

?Back to the fluffy concept of customer satisfaction.??

I deliberately chose the variable hunger in the example above as that is part of the famous milkshake story which is told to introduce jobs-to-be-done thinking which I consider the best way to get started with outcomes.??

There were 2 jobs in the milkshake that the customers "hired" milkshake to do in the early morning. 1) To keep the hunger away until lunch and 2) to keep the customer satisfied during a long morning drive to work. It turned out the milkshake did these 2 jobs very nicely and much better than the alternatives.?

We can now visually map as a group the connections of that story. The consumption of the milkshake keeps the hunger away.

The consumption of the milkshake also gives the customer one more thing to do while driving. Thus it keep the boredom away. Both of these work towards general happiness in life – at least as much as we can observe in the short term.??

We create common understanding. We create a causal model of "how the world" works for the customer. The visual format of the diagram helps us see how the system works. You can do this "as-is" or for the future. When you create it for the future, you have a clear set of hypothesis to test.?When you do the model "as-is" then you can use that as input to customer research.?

You should be now notice how consistently peoples' brains start to create new options for to affect the world. People are also very good at offering additional factors that affect phenomena such as "hunger" or "boredom". That is: you can use causal loop diagraming for divergence.??

Mapping to understand the context of the job?

?Causal loop mapping can be used to discover and discuss the context of the job. My quick sketch of the milkshake story quickly starts to discover things which create a richer setting where people start to have "want" for a milkshake. This starts to create a richer picture of the circumstances and even the "sweetspot" of your service.?

Based on this reasoning, we can predict there's going to be differences in outcomes for people based on their residence and office locations.

Mapping forward to understand the journey ahead all the way to business modelling?

The examples this far have shown how to create a model of the world where the customers' outcome happens. You can also use systems thinking to project forward. In the best case you stumble upon the very foundations of your business model.??

The classic customer journey goes through stages of awareness of need/want, seeking for solutions, choosing between options, purchase, use, and buying more. There's variation in the labels and phases used but the ultimate goal in all cases is to have a happy customer who in the best case becomes a repeat customer and how tells friends of the great service. We can visually map this also.??

Few useful questions?to build the picture forward

1) What causes the customer to remember the good outcomes of the service – especially at the time it would be time for repurchase??

2) How good does the outcome need to be that the customer tells his friend about the service??

The challenge becomes making these variables well enough defined that you can observe and measure them.??

Notice how these forward-working variables make the system a loop. There's a trigger or a need that causes customers to pull in the service into their life. The service creates an outcome. The outcome directly or indirectly?validates and enforces the trigger. This has now become a system that is self-enforcing and growing.?Sometimes a bit of advertising is needed to get the "flywheel" going.??

You've arrived at business modelling having gone this far with the mapping of "how the world works". Enrich the model with quantities such as numbers of customers and prices of services. You have the basics of the upside of quantitative model of your business at hand.??