What Drives Your Team? and How to Recognize Input, Output or Outcomes Driven Teams?


I've been thinking a lot about how different teams approach their work. After some reflection, I realized it boils down to three main focuses: input-driven, output-driven, and outcome-driven.
Team's focus.excalidraw.png

Input-driven teams

These teams are all about following orders. Their mantra? "Tell me what to do, I don't care much anyway." It's a bit harsh, but let's be real.

Output-driven teams

Here's where things get a bit more interesting. These teams are focused on the work itself. They're the ones saying, "We are working on our roadmap, and we are interested in how we build it." They care about the process and the product they're creating.

Outcome-driven teams

These teams are all about results. Their approach? "We deliver frequently, but we also first one to check it's insights (adoption, conversations etc)." They're not just building stuff - they're making sure it actually works and people are using it.

So, what's the big difference? Input-driven teams just do what they're told. Output-driven teams care about what they're making. But outcome-driven teams? They're focused on the impact of their work.

Remember, mostly it's not just black & white - your team can be for example 80% output driven, 15% outcome driven, and 5% input driven.

Also! Ouputs are meant to drive the outcomes! [1]



  1. EX - Using leading indicators to increase iteration velocity and customer satisfaction ↩ī¸Ž