Who does what by how much?
Summary
More than ever, we’re tasked with building ways for humans to interact more efficiently with one another, with services, with machines, and now with AI. As the toolset grows as quickly as the challenges we need to solve, how do we know we’re building the right things in the most valuable way? In this practical talk, Jeff will bring together the world of product and service design to focus on the humans in the mix and how to ensure that everything we create has a meaningful, positive impact on them.
Key Insights
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The core value equation in designing services is who does what by how much, focusing on measurable changes in human behavior as outcomes.
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Historically, learning loops to validate product value took 6-12 months, but modern digital services like Amazon enable deployment every second, allowing rapid feedback.
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Managing towards output—the delivery of products or features—often undermines true customer value and slows organizational agility.
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Effective OKRs focus on qualitative objectives describing the desired future customer state without prescribing solutions or features.
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Key results must be outcome-based metrics measuring actual behavior change rather than output milestones.
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All teams, including HR, finance, and legal, can and should use outcome-driven OKRs by focusing on how their outputs change human behavior.
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Product discovery processes like design thinking and lean UX are essential for teams to identify the right solutions in an outcome-driven OKR framework.
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AI-powered customer experiences introduce unpredictability in inputs and outputs, increasing the complexity of designing effective systems around human behavior.
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Successful OKRs require both top-down strategic alignment and bottom-up team goal setting, with negotiation to ensure cohesion.
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Changing incentive systems from rewarding output delivery to rewarding learning, evidence-based decision making, and customer centricity is crucial for OKR adoption.
Notable Quotes
"We can’t predict the future; all we can do is make the best guesses based on what we know right now."
"Amazon deploys new code into production into the hands of customers once every second."
"Managing towards outputs means someone has decided what the solution is going to be and told you to make that thing."
"Our goal ultimately is not to deploy a static solution but to make sure humans in the system achieve their goals successfully as often as possible."
"Objectives are qualitative, inspirational statements about the future we want to create for our customers without mentioning any solutions."
"Key results must be measures of human behavior and outcomes, not output metrics like 'launch this service'."
"Everyone has a customer — whether external users, third-party vendors, or internal colleagues; those humans consuming your product are your customers."
"If you don’t tell teams what to make, they need a product discovery process to decide what to build."
"Changing course based on evidence of actual human behavior is what agility really means."
"For OKRs to work, incentives have to focus on learning, customer centricity, and evidence-based decision making, not just delivery."
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