When you’re trying to become more outcome focused, one of the big challenges is figuring out exactly which outcomes you should focus on. One technique is to find the leading indicators — things that customers and users do that predict a valuable result — the focus the work of your team on those leading indicators. For example: increased foot traffic to your retail store predicts an increase in sales. So how might you increase foot traffic?

A big part of my work is teaching. I lead workshops, usually 1-day, 2-day or 1-week workshops for designers, product managers, and technologists. …

In Outcomes Over Output, I’ve written about how teams can be more outcome-centric in their work. In this series, I’m answering reader questions. Recently, a reader contacted me with this question: Hi Joshua. Recently I’ve read your “Outcomes over Output” book and listened to your podcast appearances. Man, it just…

Earlier this week, I threw away about four pounds of mistakes. To console myself, I paraphrased in my head the wisdom of Nils Bohr: an expert is someone who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a narrow field. …

In Outcomes Over Output, I’ve written about how teams can be more outcome-centric in their work. A few questions keep coming up, so I thought I’d answer some of them here. This then is the first in a series of Q/A follow-ups to the book. In the Outcomes Over Output…

I teach teams how to integrate UX practices into Agile ways of working. One question that comes up in every class is this: “What about work that takes longer than one sprint? While most software developers find that the nature of writing code lends itself easily to the agile practice…

Congratulations! You’ve been asked to write some OKRs. Do you feel like you won a prize? Probably not. OKR, which stands for Objectives and Key Results, have become a popular planning tool for organizations. And, like any tool that becomes popular, it can be used well, or it can be…

You’ve heard the phrase Outcomes over Outputs. Now let’s put that idea to work. — This piece is a lightly edited excerpt from my new book Outcomes over Output. If you’d like to read more, you can find the book here. Good leaders ask their teams to deliver value. They want their teams to go beyond simply delivering stuff. Instead, they want teams to do…

Last month, Jeff Gothelf and I were at Barcelona’s annual Llum festival, an amazing event that features light installations stretching across Barcelona’s Poblenou neighborhood. Some of the installations were breathtaking. Others were downright baffling. Looking at one particularly confusing student work, Jeff turned to me and asked, “How did they…