Efficiency

It helps to distinguish between Output and Outcome efficiencies:

🌼 Output efficiencies keeps the same outputs but uncovers how to produce it faster and cheaper.

🌸 Outcome efficiencies identifies what produces the desired business and customer outcomes, then produces more of what brings value and less of what doesn't.

Outcomes focused efficiency includes three areas of focus:

🐰 The insights
🦊 The strategy
🐹 The measurements

🐰 The Insights
One of the main reasons we're not making these efficiency gains is because we simply can't see them. Because we're not asking the right questions.

The data we choose means the difference between what we can see and what we can’t. It influences our language creativity and imagination. If our data only shows us how we produce outputs we won't be able to see efficiency gains available to us by removing some outputs entirely.

🦊 B. Strategy
If we don't know where we're going everything will do the job. A strategy is a tool to help the organization set and act on a clear direction.

What does Outcomes thinking argue: People show up in situations hoping to achieve something, being willing to do things to achieve it. Often they need help which is when they reach out to companies for support (that is when people become customers). As they work towards what they are trying to achieve they unlock value to both themselves and the business.

An outcomes focused strategy includes:
🥇 The customer needs that align to our business needs
🏅 What behaviours unlock those needs
🥕 What value we can offer to support the customer
🎖️ Which capabilities we can combine and how we can manage them in order to deliver that value.

A good strategy points out what to stop doing. There are plenty of efficiency improvements in good strategy.

🐹 C. Measurements that matter
Are we focusing on measuring how we produce things or how those things produce value?

Measuring the latter is simple. Simply ask and measure:

🍿 Are we able to get to the right people with the right type of experience at the right price?
🍰 Is the experience itself valuable to the customer?
🍹 Is that value leading to the behaviour that we're hoping to help the customer?
🥑 Is the behavior leading to the desired business value?

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Finding and delivering efficiencies is challenging. But approaching it through the right approach to insights, strategy and measurement, with an output and an outcomes lens can offer added leverage.