Before we assign important work, we should ask:
- What are we trying to make true?
- Why does this matter?
- What does done mean?
- How will we know it worked?
- Who owns the next step?
Clear goals prevent wasted effort.
Why this matters
Most wasted work in a company comes from one of two failures: the goal was vague, or the goal was clear in one person’s head and unclear in everyone else’s. Vague goals create activity. Clear outcomes create progress.
A goal stated as a task (“write the report”) gives the person a thing to do but not a thing to make true. A goal stated as an outcome (“leaders can see open and blocked orders by Friday at noon so they can act before delays grow”) gives the person both a target and a way to know they hit it.
What it looks like in practice
A team kicks off a quarterly project to improve cross-business reporting. Before anyone writes code or schedules a meeting, the owner sits down and answers the five questions above in writing, using the Outcome Brief:
- What are we trying to make true? Friday operations reviews finish in under 30 minutes.
- Why does this matters? Three of our businesses currently rebuild similar reports manually each week.
- What does done mean? A single weekly digest the leadership team can read in 10 minutes.
- How will we know it worked? Four weeks in a row, the Friday review starts at 9:00 and ends by 9:30.
- Who owns the next step? [Name]. The next step is interviewing three reviewers about what they actually use.
That is not a complete plan. That is the starting end — the answer the team comes back to every time the project drifts.
What it looks like when violated
The most common failure: leadership says yes to a project that has not been defined this way, and the team self-organizes around the most concrete thing they can find — usually a deliverable like the report itself — instead of the outcome that report is meant to produce. Three weeks in, someone notices that the report is being built but no one knows what decision it will inform. The team is busy. The work is wasted.
A second common failure: the goal is defined as “improve X” with no measure. The team works for a quarter. At the review, leadership asks “did we improve it?” and the answer is “we did some things.” Without a measure named at the start, the answer is always yes and always no.
How to apply it this week
- For any work you assign that will take more than a few days: write a one-paragraph Outcome Brief before assigning it.
- For any work you accept: ask the assigner the five questions above before saying yes. If they cannot answer, the work is not ready to start.
- For any goal that ends with the words “improve” or “optimize”: add a measure before the sentence ends.