Avoid These Common Anti-Patterns

When setting product outcomes, avoid these common anti-patterns. Anti-patterns are common patterns that should be avoided.

Pursuing too many outcomes at once. Most of us are overly optimistic about what we can achieve in a short period of time. No matter how hard we work, our companies will always ask more of us. Put these two together, and we often see product trios pursuing multiple outcomes at once. What happens when we do this is that we spread ourselves too thin. We make incremental progress (at best) on some of our outcomes but rarely have a big impact on any of our outcomes. Most teams will have more of an impact by focusing on one outcome at a time.

Ping-ponging from one outcome to another. Because many businesses have developed fire-fighting cultures—where every customer complaint is treated like a crisis—it’s common for product trios to ping-pong from one outcome to the next, quarter to quarter. However, you’ve already learned that it takes time to learn how to impact a new outcome. When we ping-pong from outcome to outcome, we never reap the benefits of this learning curve. Instead, set an outcome for your team, and focus on it for a few quarters. You’ll be amazed at how much impact you have in the second and third quarters after you’ve had some time to learn and explore.

Setting individual outcomes instead of product-trio outcomes. Because product managers, designers, and software engineers typically report up, to their respective departments, it’s not uncommon for a product trio to get pulled in three different directions, with each member tasked with a different goal. Perhaps the product manager is tasked with a business outcome, the designer is tasked with a usability outcome, and the engineer is tasked with a technical-performance outcome. This is most common at companies that tie outcomes to compensation. However, it has a detrimental effect. The goal is for the product trio to collaborate to achieve product outcomes that drive business outcomes. This isn’t possible if each member is focused on their own goal. Instead of setting individual outcomes, set team outcomes.

Choosing an output as an outcome. Shifting to an outcome mindset is harder than it looks. We spend most of our time talking about outputs. So, it’s not surprising that we tend to confuse the two. Even when teams intend to choose an outcome, they often fall into the trap of selecting an output. I see teams set their outcome as “Launch an Android app” instead of “Increase mobile engagement” or “Get to feature parity on the new tech stack” instead of “Transition customer to the new tech stack.” A good place to start is to make sure your outcome represents a number even if you aren’t sure yet how to measure it. But even then, outputs can creep in. I worked with a team that helped students choose university courses who set their outcome as “Increase the number of course reviews on our platform.” When I asked them what the impact of more reviews was, they answered, “More students would see courses with reviews.” That’s not necessarily true. The team could have increased the number of reviews on their platform, but if they all clustered around a small number of courses, or if they were all on courses that students didn’t view, they wouldn’t have an impact. A better outcome is “Increase the number of course views that include reviews.” To shift your outcome from less of an output to more of an outcome, question the impact it will have.

Focusing on one outcome to the detriment of all else. Like we saw in the Wells Fargo story, focusing on one metric at the cost of all else can quickly derail a team and company. In addition to your primary outcome, a team needs to monitor health metrics to ensure they aren’t causing detrimental effects elsewhere. For example, customer-acquisition goals are often paired with customer-satisfaction metrics to ensure that we aren’t acquiring unhappy customers. To be clear, this doesn’t mean one team is focused on both acquisition and satisfaction at the same time. It means their goal is to increase acquisition without negatively impacting satisfaction.