If you look at this idea a certain way, it's telling us that our concept of a product has changed -- it actually changed a long time ago, but old rationales persist. A product is no longer the thing itself -- it is the thing plus all the services, processes and procedures we attach. Geoffrey Moore and Regis McKenna before him called it "whole product."
For a long time, whole product was an idea that many businesses could ignore safely. That group is smaller today, but it still exists. The big turning point was the invention of the subscription, or selling a product as a service.
“Suddenly, it was a lot harder to push a product out the door, forget about it.”
Recruiting new customers in this scenario is expensive and can drain the coffers. So getting to outcomes and not simply output for them is critical. What's also critical is that customers get it, and they've been trained to expect subscription-like services from any vendor regardless of what's on offer.
Gothelf and Seiden's article introduces the idea of mission command -- something we might have thought of as taking initiative back in the day. The Prussian army, interestingly, spawned this alternative viewpoint, according to the article.
If you think the answer is to do more detailed planning, then go back to the fog of war -- it dashes plans with aplomb. Giving the individual latitude in achieving outcomes, therefore, is critical.
What's new is the emphasis it places on the individual to get things done in spite of AI, machine learning and other nifty new decision-support tools.
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Comment (3)
Andrea Anderson
Posted at 15:35 06 December 2016 reply
For me, it all comes down to better listening skills, which start with asking better questions. Open-ended questions about customers' likes, dislikes, and especially customers' feelings related to our products, are the things most likely to tell us how we're doing relative to out comes and not simply output.
Christian Clark
Posted at 15:35 06 December 2016 reply
For me, it all comes down to better listening skills, which start with asking better questions. Open-ended questions about customers' likes.
Bella Ellison
Posted at 15:35 06 December 2016 reply
The more I see a bifurcation happening. We use a lot of quantitative data to determine success in our output goals, but we need to do better with qualitative data to gauge success in outcomes. We still don't do enough with qualitative data