Shared Outcomes

In our last post, we talked about how reviewing outcomes helps us handle changes to individual roles by making sure all the work is accounted for. At the end of that post, we mentioned the concept of shared outcomes. In our discussions so far, we’ve focused mostly on the idea that individual roles each have unique outcomes. For a large part, that’s true. People in most critical roles do have their own set of unique outcomes. Consistently producing those outcomes with excellence leads to job excellence.

But increasingly there are job situations, such as in sales, where small teams of people filling different roles share responsibility to produce key outcomes. One example might be a client-focused account team with the shared outcome of producing an “aligned and informed client.” Everyone on the team shares the responsibility of consistently producing that outcome.

Some people think that sharing might make the outcomes approach more confusing. But we’ve seen just the opposite. For small teams, this method is clarifying.

The team lead typically owns the outcome, just like he or she is responsible for the overall performance of the team. Each team member, in addition to his or her individual outcomes, also shares the production of that common outcome. In our example, everyone is continually focusing on doing his or her part to improve alignment with the client. Of course, that requires a bit of additional coordination and communication between team members. But that’s exactly what excellent performance demands and what top team leads expect.

Questions to ponder:

• Do your teams have shared outcomes? Are the team members clear on which outcomes they share and which they own individually?