Focus on the Output

This post is a follow up to last week's article on goals. The most common response to that article was, "I can't measure non-business related goals." Of course you can. They may be correlational, and you may have to do a little more work, but you can measure soft goals.

The key is to focus on the output rather than the input.  

If you remember my article on Finding Nirvana Through Asynchrony, I talked about how companies that operate in a genuinely asynchronous manner allow people to work in a mode and context optimized for their productivity and prioritize a culture of trust and autonomy. When you have a culture of autonomy, you focus on the output and not the input.  

What does it mean to focus on the output? Rather than metrics that focus on what a person does -- lines of code, documents produced, bugs filed, etc. -- focus on the result of the effort.  

• Are products and features shipping on time with high quality?  
• Is customer satisfaction up?  
• Are sprints being completed as committed?  
• Are disruptions managed with minimal impact?  

Yes, these metrics may be the result of multiple efforts and not attributable to a single person. Does it matter? If you have a culture that values personal development and autonomy, all that should matter is the final result.  

You can measure soft goals if you focus on the output.