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Tuesday 2¢ – Outcomes and Outputs

Have you heard enough of this topic? Do I have anything new to add? Only one way to find out…


I use a page in Notion to jot down ideas for this and other writing, which I think proper writers and researchers call scratch notes. The ideas come from posts I read and podcasts I listen to, and I have the app on my phone to jot something down while walking.

Then, my process for writing this (and someone once asked me about it) is to go through that, pull out some ideas, toss in some profanity, and VOILA—2¢.

This week’s topic crops up quite a lot in these notes, but when I sat down to write about it, firstly, I wondered if we’d heard enough of it and if this might be a bit f’in’ dull, and then I thought… well… why do I write this weekly column?

What better way to find out what you think than to write this?

What better way to find out if I have anything interesting and unique to say about this than to try writing it?

The process of learning by writing is the outcome, not the output.

Finding out what you think of this topic, even if it’s just a like, is also an outcome.

If it was about output, I could cut and paste some perfectly average shit from ChatGPT; although it struggles with profanity, it might pass as me on a dull Tuesday. But I am not sure if that would achieve a particularly satisfactory outcome.

I’m not going to repeat my previous post about AI cheating us out of this creative journey (Should AI Take Your Journey); this isn’t about AI; this is about being clear about why you are doing something and not because, in my case, I’ve been doing the same thing for years.

What’s the outcome?

Outcomes and outputs resonate hard with marketers.

In many lines of work, output is the measure of success.

I don’t just mean the good folks who actually make stuff; even some knowledge work, like accountancy, is about doing a very fixed thing when required, like a financial forecast, a tax return, or calculating EBITDA.

The output is pretty much the outcome.

However, the outcome of our marketing, which I believe to be creating ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust), is less directly connected to the outputs. Yes, we need to do the things, but it’s not a 1:1 correlation.

We could run and run and run as fast as we can on our marketing hamster wheel, spraying out all the outputs, but that won’t guarantee being effective at achieving our outcomes.

And, of course, the popular lament of every marketer is that everyone has an opinion, which is normally a suggested output; they did this at my last company, more webinars, videos, more posts on tikface, or implementing this doohickey or tool.

Or, as I am going to try and get into every post I write now – more cowbell (thank you Cathy McKnight, PMP ).

For example in a couple of weeks, we will see a bunch of Black Friday campaigns from B2B vendors who have no right to be in this conversation, simply for the purposes of output, not outcome. What is the worst time to jostle for attention in anyone’s inbox?

Yet, it’s done for the output, more of an internal tick in the box on a Trello or Asana board than moving the needle on the outcome of creating ART.

Those are my thoughts for now….

Did I achieve my outcome with this output?


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