Outcomes Over Output
Rethinking How Product and Marketing Drive Customer Impact
A growing theme in product circles is the need to prioritize outcomes over output. Popularized by author Marty Cagan, this concept has evolved into a rallying cry for product leaders across the tech industry. For years, many product leaders have advanced their careers by showcasing their ability to churn through backlogs. However, this often comes at the expense of addressing a critical question: Are we building the right features?
At first glance, marketing might appear more data-driven, with a clearer tie to results. However, most marketing teams are also rooted in long to-do lists. Open a typical marketing plan, and you’ll likely see a detailed list of campaigns the team plans to execute. Rarely do these campaigns emphasize learning. Instead, there’s an unspoken mentality: "Why should I test when I already know what needs to be done? These things are clearly 'table stakes,' and if I don’t check these boxes, I risk being called out for missing something obvious."
This same mindset permeates product teams. Product management is often reduced to "getting things done"—working through a backlog and shipping features. The focus is on output rather than impact, and that’s a problem.
The Problem With Output-Driven Thinking
Why do so many teams prioritize output over outcomes? Often, it stems from insecurity. We fear being judged for not doing enough. A team that appears unproductive risks being seen as ineffective, while those that maintain a relentless pace of activity are often praised—even if the activity doesn’t move the needle.
In prior leadership roles, I’ve fallen into this trap myself. I’ve been impressed by people who seem like "output machines," delivering an incredible volume of work. But brute force execution only gets you so far. Sure, if you throw enough darts, you’ll hit the target occasionally. But this approach pales in comparison to a team that truly understands what drives outcomes and shifts its focus to the inputs that make the biggest impact.
It’s not that output doesn’t matter—doing nothing or very little will certainly stall progress. But output alone can create a false sense of success. You might execute a long list of tasks and see decent results. However, without understanding causation, you’ll likely waste resources on things that don’t actually matter. And this is where experimentation comes in.
Correlation vs. Causation
The issue with output-driven thinking is that it relies heavily on correlation. You do a lot of stuff, and if the numbers move in the right direction, you assume the activity caused the results. But causation—the holy grail of growth—is rarely proven through sheer volume. Instead, it’s proven through high-velocity experimentation.
This is why leaders like Jeff Bezos emphasize experimentation. As he famously said, "Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we run per year, per month, per week, per day." High-velocity experimentation allows teams to identify what truly drives outcomes, enabling them to focus on what matters and eliminate what doesn’t.
"Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we run per year, per month, per week, per day." Jeff Bezos, Founder and Former CEO of Amazon
To guide this focus, many teams use a North Star Metric (NSM)—a single, overarching metric that captures the product’s most significant impact on customer value. For example, for a delivery app, this might be completed orders; for a SaaS company, it might be active users. By defining an NSM, teams can align their experiments and activities with their ultimate goal: delivering measurable customer value.
However, not all experiments are created equal, and resources are limited. To ensure teams focus on the most promising opportunities, I developed the ICE scoring framework—Impact, Confidence, and Ease—as a practical tool for prioritizing experiments. By assessing each experiment based on its potential to drive meaningful impact, the team’s confidence in its success, and the ease of implementation, ICE scoring helps teams avoid getting bogged down in less impactful work.
When you focus on outcomes rather than output, define a clear North Star Metric, and prioritize initiatives with high ICE scores, you align your efforts with what truly matters. This shift not only cuts the noise but also ensures resources are allocated to the activities that have the greatest potential to drive customer value.
Growth Teams: The Glue That Holds It All Together
The rise of growth teams represents a positive shift toward outcome-driven thinking. Growth, after all, is an outcome. Marketing and product management, by contrast, are activities. While both are critical, they usually operate in silos without a growth team to bring them together.
A great example of this alignment in action comes from the early days at LogMeIn. At one point, we discovered that while both the product and marketing teams were working incredibly hard, our efforts were having limited impact on customers. This was clear in the data. Specifically, 95% of people who signed up for the product never actually used it. Recognizing the massive opportunity to improve customer impact, our CEO unified the efforts of the product and marketing teams to tackle this issue head-on. To ensure complete focus, he put a temporary freeze on the broader product development roadmap, allowing the product team to dedicate all their energy to increasing the sign-up-to-usage rate.
Through deep analysis and rapid experimentation over the course of three months, we were able to improve the rate from 5% to 50%. This breakthrough not only unlocked significant growth for the business but also enabled us to meaningfully impact far more customers. It was a powerful reminder that when cross-functional collaboration is centered on outcomes, rather than outputs, it can drive transformative results.
Growth teams are unique because they spend the majority of their time thinking about how all the moving parts—product, marketing, and operations—fit together. Their focus is on driving outcomes, not just completing tasks. Far from being a threat to marketing or product, growth teams complement these functions by ensuring that resources are aligned toward achieving meaningful results. For example, they help marketing teams that are constrained by products that have weak conversion and engagement or product teams that lack customer insights from marketing.
Does Output Matter?
So, does this mean output doesn’t matter? Not at all. Execution is critical once you’ve identified high-impact activities. The problem arises when teams execute for the sake of execution, without a clear understanding of what they’re trying to achieve.
The key is to hire people who excel at both understanding and executing proven impact drivers. Execution becomes far more powerful when it’s directed by insights from high-velocity experimentation. A team that balances experimentation with focused execution is unstoppable.
The Path Forward: Outcomes Over Output
Ultimately, our goal should be to drive outcomes that are rooted in customer impact. Whether you’re in marketing, product, or growth, the focus must be on results that matter—customer value, measurable impact, and causal relationships. A critical part of achieving this is identifying and aligning your efforts around a North Star Metric (NSM).
The NSM encapsulates your product's most significant impact on customer value. By defining and focusing on your NSM, teams can better measure true impact, ensuring their activities align with delivering meaningful customer outcomes. It’s a way to cut through the noise of output and tie every effort directly to value creation.
In a world where growth is an interdependent engine, outcomes over output is not just a strategy—it’s a mindset. By focusing on driving meaningful customer impact, aligning your team around your North Star Metric, using experimentation to uncover causation, and prioritizing initiatives with frameworks like ICE scoring, you’ll ensure your team is working on what truly matters. With this approach, you’ll build teams and companies that don’t just deliver activity—they deliver breakthroughs that redefine customer value and drive sustainable growth.
Hey Sean great article, thank you. Do you have a process for identifying your NSM?