Are You Creating Outcomes or Generating Outputs? (Oops Did I Think That Out Loud #31)

One of the most profound questions I heard recently was, “Is HR creating outcomes or just generating outputs?” That sounds like a redundant question, right? Is there a difference between outcomes and outputs for HR?

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After sitting on this one for a few weeks, I finally understood the question's depth. In this context, outputs are the immediate and predictable results of actions. Think of it as a “Do A and achieve B” scenario. On the other hand, outcomes are the results of complex and orchestrated activities architected to achieve a complex objective. Think of it as “Do A, if B, continue to D; if C, continue to E…eventually arrive at H through a series of orchestrated scenarios.”

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Putting this into the context of HR, it looks a lot like this:

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Notice how the Outputs are often focused on “What did you do?” while the outcomes are oriented towards “What did you achieve for the business?”

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We often discuss how HR needs to be at the table with the business. While business leaders can pull out a chair and invite their HR leaders to the table, it is the job of HR to keep themselves at the table and keep earning that seat daily. That can’t be done through a tally of activities that HR completed; it has to be done through providing value to the business. While I don’t think that is news to anyone, I do think HR professionals have yet to pivot from the mentality of “what tasks did I check off the list” (output) to one of “Is this thing I’m doing important for the business? How does it contribute to the business?” (outcome).

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So, how do you do it? Well, you can’t change everything in a day, but here are some changes you can implement in your daily activities to help you get out of the check-the-box kind of chaos and focus on what’s important:

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Section Your Day into Three Parts

Let’s be honest: the chaos never goes away in HR (someone somewhere is bound to do something out of the ordinary that is bound to land on your desk), so instead of avoiding it, I recommend splitting your day into three parts:

• Part 1: Budget 25% of your time in the morning to clear urgent fire drills from your desk. I think it would be best to do this in the mornings since email inboxes accumulate overnight. This is a done-and-move-on exercise. During this time block, I usually focus on things I can tackle in under 5 minutes or less. Anything over 5 minutes usually requires more thinking power and doesn’t have a quick answer.
• Part 2: Budget 25% of your time for the kind-of-tricky-but-there-is-an-answer tasks. This is for those tasks/questions that need roughly 15-25 minutes each to get through. They are not projects but need more research or compilation to complete. Depending on the urgency of these tasks, I sometimes tackle them as the second part of my day or towards the end of the day. It’s a personal preference.
• Part 3: This is the important stuff. Reserve 50% of your day to be obsessed with the outcome you want to achieve. Everyone gets into their flow state differently, so use the 50% of your day based on your preference (e.g., taking breaks before entering a deep think state, stretching, thinking while you do cardio, whatever works for you) with the goal that by the end of this part, you should be closer than when you started to the outcome you are looking to achieve.

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Be Single-Minded

One of the best coaching tips I ever got was that you should have one priority as a leader. You can have other priorities once you have finished the previous one. But at any given time, you should be solely focused on doing one thing and doing it well. Otherwise, you risk doing everything in mediocrity.

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My initial reaction to this was: well, clearly, the person has never worked in HR. If they had, they’d understand that the nature of HR is to have many priorities going simultaneously—we are the everywhere all at once kind of people! That’s our superpower!

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I realize now that what some of us may perceive to be our superpower is the exact thing that keeps us focused on outputs instead of outcomes. Here’s the thing: when your focus is on doing many things simultaneously, your goal is to complete these things as quickly as possible. While quality is essential, closure rate is more important. This leads to the “good enough” mentality, which ultimately feeds into the mediocrity equation. On the other hand, if you are solely focused on doing one thing single-mindedly, you can still do it quickly. Still, the degree of focus also allows you to look after the quality/outcome of your activity instead of just getting it done and moving on.

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So, as I am a living example of how you can’t live every coaching tip to its perfection, I do think there is merit in at least blocking 50% of your day to focus on the one thing you need to prioritize. Leave the chaos to the other 50%.

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Be Ruthless

This one goes out to those who work in HR and feel bad about saying “no.” I hear you, I see you, and I used to be you. Here’s the thing: there is a difference between being nice (saying yes to everything) and being kind (politely requesting support in prioritization). I had to learn the hard way that being nice and saying yes to everything that comes your way never ends with the best results, and often, you end up burning out long before everything is done.

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I’m not suggesting you bluntly say “no” to everything. I am suggesting that you should be ruthless in prioritizing your time and acknowledging that not everything can always be a priority. So, here are some response examples to try out next time when you need to prioritize:

• I can’t do X right now; I have some time [tomorrow/next week/month/quarter]. I’d be happy to look at it then and get back to you.
• Unfortunately, that is not a priority for the team now as we are working on X. Can you please help me understand the urgency behind the request and the problem you want to solve?
• I appreciate the urgency. We are also working on X, Y, and Z. Can we work together to reprioritize so I can meet your needs?

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Bottomline, here is how I think the HR equation works:

- To be at the table, we need to focus on outcomes

- To focus on outcomes, we need to be single-minded

- To be single-minded, we need to prioritize ruthlessly

- Therefore, ruthless prioritization could bring HR to the “table,” while multitasking is precisely what keeps HR from the “table.”