I love this! This gives voice to this silent tension that teams have with leadership. Executives need to admit that inputs metrics are a necessary evil for operating the team. They enable tighter feedback loops (to give a nod to your second section). But teams need to take responsibility for bridging their input metrics to output metrics -- and filters / guardrails can align the incentive pathways.
And a side note: I hadn't heard of output/input described as uncontrollable/controllable before. You definitely have something there in making the distinction, but I always thought output metrics were just the single thing you were trying to push for (e.g. "Making money" in the example). Is that consistent with this?
And another side note: thanks for the shout-out. Too kind.
Ah, the term "controllable" I got directly from "Working Backwards". The exact term mentioned in the book is "Controllable input metric" - which is, when I give second thought about it, sort of implied there is "non-controllable input" metric. Quite interesting.
The "uncontrollable" part is my term, simply the opposite of the first term.
I love this! This gives voice to this silent tension that teams have with leadership. Executives need to admit that inputs metrics are a necessary evil for operating the team. They enable tighter feedback loops (to give a nod to your second section). But teams need to take responsibility for bridging their input metrics to output metrics -- and filters / guardrails can align the incentive pathways.
And a side note: I hadn't heard of output/input described as uncontrollable/controllable before. You definitely have something there in making the distinction, but I always thought output metrics were just the single thing you were trying to push for (e.g. "Making money" in the example). Is that consistent with this?
And another side note: thanks for the shout-out. Too kind.
Thank you for this really kind comment, Robert!
Ah, the term "controllable" I got directly from "Working Backwards". The exact term mentioned in the book is "Controllable input metric" - which is, when I give second thought about it, sort of implied there is "non-controllable input" metric. Quite interesting.
The "uncontrollable" part is my term, simply the opposite of the first term.