Outputs are variables, not victories

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At a Glance

• Most teams still measure success by shipping features

• The real test: did customer behavior change?

• Products, campaigns, even AI tools are just variables

• Humility is key—most ideas won’t work at first

• Strong opinions, loosely held, lead to real outcomes

Hey folks,

I see it all the time. A boss says, “Build me a pen.” A team ships the pen. Box checked.

But when customers don’t use it—or use it wrong—we scratch our heads.

Did we solve the problem? Did we change behavior? Or did we just ship another output?

– Jeff

Outputs vs. Outcomes

Anything you make: a product, a policy, a campaign, is an output. But success comes from outcomes: what people actually do differently once that output exists.

That’s why in our OKR work, the goal is the behavior change. The outputs are just our best guesses on what will be valuable to our customers.

Think of:

• A feature: “add AI” means nothing if it doesn’t save customers time.

• A better login screen doesn’t matter if people never come back after signing up.

A mattress store: a calm atmosphere or 50 product choices are only valuable if they get more people lying down and buying.

A Quick Scenario

In one workshop, to get customers to lie down and try out the mattresses for sale, Norwegian design students suggested putting mattress specs on the ceiling so customers had to lie down to read them. Brilliant idea.

But if shoppers never looked up? Or just asked staff instead? Then it didn’t drive the behavior—and it failed.

That’s the uncomfortable truth: even clever ideas can flop. Which is why outputs must be treated as variables, not victories.

This shift feels subtle, but it changes everything.

When you treat outputs as the finish line, you stop learning once something ships. When you treat them as variables, you give yourself permission to test, adapt, and swap in new approaches until you see the behavior you want.

It’s also humbling. Most ideas—even the brilliant ones—won’t work exactly as intended. That’s not failure, that’s feedback. The faster you cycle through outputs, the faster you find what actually moves the needle for customers.

Key Guidelines

• Define the future state in terms of customer success

• Look for observable behaviors, not vanity metrics

• Swap or adjust outputs until one drives the right behavior

• Stay humble: most ideas won’t work the first time

The Bottom Line

The job isn’t to ship features. The job is to make customers successful in a way that supports your business. To do that, you keep learning until customer behavior proves you’ve created value.

If that resonates, join me, Josh Seiden, and Rich Visotcky on October 23 for a free webinar on:

OKRs, Nudges & the Science of Behavior Change

We’ll dig into how small nudges shape big outcomes and how to design OKRs that actually move people, not just track activity.

It’s one of the most powerful shifts I’ve seen in my years of coaching teams.

Register here.

Upcoming Workshops from Sense & Respond Learning

Process Discovery for Transformation Teams(in English)

October 27 – November 17

This hands-on course teaches transformation teams how to apply Product Discovery principles to organizational change. You’ll learn how to uncover blockers, test change hypotheses, and design experiments that reduce risk and drive meaningful adoption — before you roll out sweeping changes.

Lean Product Management (in Spanish)

October 28 – November 18

Learn how to work with strategy, outcomes, and product discovery in short cycles. This workshop is designed for PMs, team leaders, and developers who want to apply a product mindset focused on real results for both the user and the business.

As always if I can help you or your company in any way please don’t hesitate to reach out. Just hit reply on this email and let me know how I can help.

How Canva, Perplexity and Notion turn feedback chaos into actionable customer intelligence

Support tickets, reviews, and survey responses pile up faster than you can read.

Enterpret unifies all feedback, auto-tags themes, and ties insights to revenue, CSAT, and NPS, helping product teams find high-impact opportunities.

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→ Notion: generated monthly user insights reports 70% faster.

Stop manually tagging feedback in spreadsheets. Keep all customer interactions in one hub and turn them into clear priorities that drive roadmap, retention, and revenue.

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