How to break through the process theater (Using outcome orientation)

Help me think through how this episode applies to my situation. Start by asking what I am trying to change. Separate the episode's claims from your suggestions, and say when the notes do not support a claim. Use the transcript to find passages, then check the audio before quoting. Transcript: https://yuvalyeret.com/podcast/episodes/how-to-break-through-the-process-theater-using-outcome-orientation/transcript.md ## Published episode notes Breaking Free from Agile Theater: Using Outcome Mapping to Drive Real Change In this episode of Scaling With Agility, Yuval explores the phenomenon of 'Agile Theater', where organizations go through the motions of Agile practices without achieving meaningful outcomes. Yuval introduces Outcome Mapping, a tool learned from Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden, to identify and address these superficial practices. He explains how to recognize 'Agile Theater' behaviors such as mechanically following processes without understanding their value. Yuval discusses the importance of focusing on real outcomes rather than vanity metrics and emphasizes the need for leadership to foster autonomy and trust in teams. He advocates for mapping current behaviors, understanding their drivers, and aligning them with desired impacts to break the cycle of ineffective practices. Through real-world examples, Yuval illustrates how organizations can transition from output-focused to outcome-focused approaches to achieve true agility. 00:00 Introduction to Agile Theater 00:28 Understanding Agile Theater Behaviors 02:45 Exploring OKRs and Their Impact 05:25 The Importance of Alignment and Autonomy 06:50 Building Trust and Empowerment 10:51 Addressing Agile Theater Challenges 14:51 Creating Positive Outcomes and Flywheels 16:24 Case Study: Frequent Releases The Scaling w/ Agility Newsletter - yuvalyeret.com/insightsYuval's Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuvalyeret/ Break Process Theater With Outcome Orientation – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/how-to-break-process-theater-using-outcome-orientation ## Transcript Automatic transcript of the published podcast audio. Recognition errors are possible. Speakers are unlabeled; do not attribute a passage to Yuval or a guest without checking the audio. Episode: https://yuvalyeret.com/scaling-ai-podcast/how-to-break-through-the-process-theater-using-outcome-orientation/ Source RSS GUID: substack:post:164489427 Source: published Riverside RSS audio enclosure Transcription: faster-whisper base.en, English ## Transcript [00:00:00] Do you ever have nightmares that your transformation is managed by the South Park underpend gnomes? [00:00:07] Picture this. You've invested in a framework, maybe you've rolled out agile, say, for OKRs, [00:00:14] and your teams are following that process. But despite all of the activity the promised business [00:00:20] impact just isn't showing up. Sound familiar? If so, you might be caught in what they call [00:00:28] process theater. That's the situation where everyone's performing the rituals, [00:00:33] but the outcomes you care about never materialize. Let's explore why this happens, [00:00:40] how to spot it, and what, and currently, how to use outcomes to move from process compliance to [00:00:47] really sustainable traction. So what does process theater look like? First, let's get [00:00:54] clear on the symptoms. It isn't about bad intentions. Most teams and leaders that are stuck in the [00:01:00] process theater genuinely want to improve. But what you'll see is the focus on the mechanics [00:01:06] over the meaning. Teams that spend most of their time and energy on following the process to say [00:01:12] we're doing it, nothing necessarily because they see the value. Actually, if you ask them, [00:01:18] a common symptom is that they don't see the value and they feel like they're following a theater, [00:01:26] and they feel worse and worse about it over time. Take OKRs as an example. [00:01:32] If your organization is measuring success by whether OKRs exist, not whether they're helpful, [00:01:38] you're in OKR theater. You're tracking the presence of objectives and pure results, [00:01:43] but nobody's using them to drive decisions or grade to alignment. It's activity [00:01:48] masturbating as progress. Why does process theater take root so often? It usually starts [00:01:56] with a reasonable goal. Maybe in the case of OKRs, leaders want more alignment or sharper focus, [00:02:03] but instead of connecting the dots between the process we're introducing and the intended impact, [00:02:09] more likely people jump straight into implementation. It's the classic underpennignals problem. [00:02:16] Step one, collect underpence, or in RK, surround stand-ups, write OKRs. [00:02:24] Step three, profit. In this case, achieve alignment. Or whatever was the original reason you decided [00:02:33] to go for OKRs or whatever is the transformation that you're focused on. [00:02:39] While nobody can explain Step two, you ask again and people go back to the activity and features. [00:02:46] That missing middle layer is the connective tissue. The actual behaviors and outcomes that bridge [00:02:53] process and impact. Without it, you often end up with a lot of motion, but not much movement, [00:03:00] not the impact that you're looking for. So let's talk about OKRs again. [00:03:07] The intent behind OKRs isn't just to document objectives and key results in the two. [00:03:11] It's to create alignment with autonomy, most of the time. That's what people are looking for. [00:03:17] You want people moving in the same strategic direction, but with the freedom to figure out [00:03:22] how to get there. It's the heart of agility, aligned and empowered teams. [00:03:28] But in order to get there, you need to define the behaviors you want to see. [00:03:33] Instead of teams writing OKRs because they were told to, you want teams to understand the strategic [00:03:38] context and can make decisions themselves. For leaders, it means providing clear intent, [00:03:45] direction and stepping out of the way, trusting teams to own the house. [00:03:51] So how do you build that trust? Leaders need to know what teams are working on. [00:03:56] When teams focus on a few key things and deliver tangible process, it builds trust. [00:04:02] That trust, in turn, leads to more empowerment and more decentralized decision-making. [00:04:07] Over time, you get a positive flywheel. More trust leads to more autonomy, which leads to [00:04:12] better outcomes, which builds even more trust, which then leads to more autonomy, and you can see how [00:04:18] the flywheel can flow faster and faster. But it doesn't happen automatically. In most organizations, [00:04:26] leaders are used to being involved in every decision. So once you map out the outcome, [00:04:31] the behavior that you want to see, the behavior that you want to change, [00:04:35] you can then define it as a key result in a change focused objective. [00:04:40] Here's one way this could look. If our objective is the majority of our innovative [00:04:46] knowledge work takes place in aligned and empowered teams that had the autonomy and ability to innovate [00:04:52] experiment, sense and respond by the end of the year, the key result that would lead to that [00:04:59] would indicate we're heading there, that would be the thing we focus on in order to create that result, [00:05:05] is leaders let their teams figure out what to build 80% of their time. [00:05:11] And you can stop here. You identify the behavior you want to see, [00:05:16] but sitting this is your okay, are you providing direction and flexibility, you're saying, I want [00:05:22] to see leaders letting their teams figure out what to build, but I'm not going to tell leaders [00:05:32] what, what do they need in order to get there, not going to tell teams what to do to get their [00:05:37] leaders to enable them to do that. The leaders and teams would work together on achieving [00:05:44] this objective, this key result, they will have to hypothesize, ship some changes to how they work, [00:05:51] sense whether they're working, respond by adjusting course, different techniques, different interventions [00:05:58] to try to move the needle towards this ball. Having said that, sometimes a bit more direction can be [00:06:05] useful. While you should avoid telling teams exactly what to do, you could provide the direction [00:06:12] that points to trust as a leading indicator or an enabler for empowerment and autonomy. [00:06:19] So how might that key result look like? You might use something like leaders, consider 80% of their [00:06:26] teams to be a colorful, predictable and trustworthy. What's important, by the way, is to provide that [00:06:35] connecting tissue to share with teams the reason we want to choose this key result is because we [00:06:42] consider it a leading indicator towards leaders letting their teams figure out what to build. [00:06:51] We're pointing to an assertion, an hypothesis, an assertion about the connection, the causality [00:06:57] between these two key results, a leading indicator and a logging indicator. So if you're a leader and [00:07:03] you sense process theater in your organization, here's what you might try. Start with mapping out the [00:07:12] specific behaviors that feel like that theater. What are people doing just to check a box? Walk [00:07:17] back from those behaviors. What's driving them? What's the impact? Can you identify a downward spiral [00:07:23] where these behaviors are causing other behaviors that are undesirable and over time? [00:07:32] Let's say in the case of our OPRs example, we're doing things that are making us less trustworthy. [00:07:41] The fact that we're less trustworthy will lead to us being trusted less and micromanaged more. [00:07:48] We should make us feel more like pawns rather than like players, which would lead to us not being [00:07:57] very accountable to our work and saying, yeah, somebody else is going to fix those things, [00:08:02] anyhow they don't trust us, which is going to lead to less and less trust more and more medley, [00:08:07] and eventually to leaders feeling like they have to be involved in everything and the [00:08:13] organization not really being scalable and not a fun place for people to thrive. So at this point, [00:08:20] you might want to reconnect with the original intent. What are the outcomes and impacts you were [00:08:27] after by introducing this practice, this framework, this intervention? You can use [00:08:34] outcome mapping to clarify the chain from the process that you're using to the desired impact [00:08:40] and look for where it is broken. Where is there a missing link, missing tissue, or where, you know, [00:08:50] a behavior is happening that is undesirable, that you would like to actually intervene. [00:08:57] Look for the intervention that will stop the downward spiral and ideally start turning the fly [00:09:04] wheel towards the outcomes and impact that you're seeking. And then you can set an objective and key [00:09:13] results or a set of key results around these behaviors and outcomes, not around the vanity metrics, [00:09:19] even these are harder to measure. I prefer measuring qualitative outcomes in an imperfect [00:09:26] way than measuring quantitative vanity in an accurate fashion. Over time, you can build a [00:09:32] capability to be more quantitative around outcome metrics. But if you have to choose, [00:09:40] that's what I've seen work better, to focus on the qualitative outcome earlier. And remember that [00:09:49] you're making an assertion, you're making a bet. You might rewrite about the intervention, [00:09:55] you might be wrong. And one of the key points here is to consider your key results and your [00:10:02] objectives continuously and see if you're able to make progress towards them. And if they even [00:10:09] make sense that despite the fact that teams are more accountable, predictable, and trustworthy, [00:10:17] that's still not leading to leaders empowering them. Maybe there's something else going on, [00:10:25] maybe you fixed one thing and now you need to tackle the next obstacle, the next constraint, [00:10:30] and maybe it was a wrong assertion to begin with that trust had anything to do with it. [00:10:38] The important thing is by focusing on what's the impact that you want to see, what's the [00:10:44] lagging outcome that you want to see and by setting leading indicators as well as the ability to [00:10:50] be adaptive around them to sense and respond around them, your building, your ability to develop [00:10:59] your organization to work through issues, rather than managing a project of implementing OKRs, [00:11:07] in this case. What you're doing is you're using OKRs thinking outcome orientation and [00:11:13] experimentation to build an adaptive organizational capability using an adaptive approach. [00:11:25] List thinking, outcome mapping, all of this is inspired by OKRs workshop, which I participated [00:11:33] in last week. I recently joined Sense and Response Learning, Jipton Josh's organization as a certified [00:11:40] training partner, and we'll be teaching the OKR Masterclass to help organizations leverage OKRs [00:11:47] to move their product development and transformation efforts from outputs to outcomes, from process [00:11:55] theater to an experimentation, adaptive capability. So if you're sick of process theater and the idea [00:12:02] of evolving to focus on outcomes sounds interesting, let's discuss. Thank you for listening in to [00:12:09] another episode of Scaling With Agility, I'm Yuval. ## Source boundary These are the published show notes from the podcast feed. They are a starting point for discussion, not a verbatim record of the conversation. The transcript is machine-generated and may contain errors or unlabeled speakers. Check the audio before quoting anyone.