Radical Outcomes

Radical Outcomes Plot Summary

Introduction

In today's fast-paced business world, the gap between strategy and execution has never been wider. Organizations invest millions in initiatives that fail to deliver results, training programs that don't change behavior, and content that overwhelms rather than enables their teams. These "random acts" of creating stuff without clear purpose have become the norm, creating information overload that paralyzes rather than empowers. What if there was a better way? What if organizations could transform how they work together, focusing on measurable outcomes rather than just outputs? The journey to extraordinary results requires a fundamental shift in how we collaborate, design experiences, and lead teams. By focusing on business outcomes first, embracing a process-driven approach, and designing experiences with humans at the center, we can achieve what once seemed impossible - radical outcomes that transform organizations and create lasting impact.

Chapter 1: Embrace a Process-Driven Approach

The process behind achieving radical outcomes isn't magic - it's methodical and structured, yet allows for creativity and iteration. This process consists of six key stages: Envision, Environment, Architect, Design, Build, and Activate. Each stage builds upon the previous one, creating a framework that enables teams to create repeatable, scalable, and measurable experiences. Consider Olivia, a learning professional at Omen, Inc., faced with an impossible task. When Maya, a VP responsible for Aerospace and Defense division sales teams, gave Olivia just ten weeks to build an onboarding program for 300 new sellers, Olivia knew the old way of working wouldn't cut it. She was told explicitly that the usual content "had to be redone" because sellers weren't reaching quota and weren't staying in their roles long enough to make an impact on the company. Overwhelmed by this challenge, Olivia reached out to Juliana from Oxygen for guidance. Together, they implemented a process that would transform not just the onboarding program but the entire approach to enabling sales success. Instead of jumping straight to creating content, they first worked with stakeholders to envision specific business outcomes, understand the audience environment, architect a cohesive experience, design engaging components, build iteratively, and activate the program with continuous measurement. The structure of this process allowed Olivia's team to move with agility while staying focused on the outcomes - reduced time to quota and increased retention in role. By "going slow to move fast," they invested time in upfront alignment with stakeholders, determined what content already existed versus what needed to be created, and maintained a relentless focus on relevance to the audience. For your own initiatives, consider how adopting a similar process could transform your results. Start by documenting the stages from envisioning outcomes to activating solutions. Define clear handoffs between stages and establish checkpoints for feedback. Remember that this process isn't rigid - it expands or contracts depending on the scope and complexity of the outcome you're driving toward.

Chapter 2: Build Your Collaborative Ensemble

Extraordinary teams don't just work together - they create together, like a jazz ensemble improvising with structure and purpose. These collaborative ensembles share specific attributes that enable them to perform at levels far beyond what individuals could achieve alone. At Omen, Inc., Olivia witnessed this transformation firsthand. Four weeks after being called into Jack's office and hearing Maya's directive, she had assembled a team that operated with remarkable synergy. Designers and developers were in a rhythm, iterating within hours, reaching out for feedback from each other and occasionally from subject matter experts. There was a rapport among team members, a force of positivity as they covered for each other, checked in before meetings, and took breaks together. "It was like everyone was playing jazz," Olivia reflected, observing how different this was from the usual workplace dynamic where people multitasked behind laptops or retreated to their corners. The ensemble had developed a cohesive way of driving progress together, making it possible to achieve what once seemed impossible. What makes these collaborative ensembles effective? First, they have alignment behind a common goal or mission - in Olivia's case, creating a brand-new program from scratch in three months. Second, they have role clarity - each person understands their responsibilities and how they fit with others, while remaining flexible enough to cover for teammates when needed. Third, they establish interpersonal codes of conduct, including the ability to say "I don't know," practicing authenticity, maintaining transparency, asking for help, and using "Yes, and..." rather than "Yes, but..." in conversations. Perhaps most importantly, collaborative ensembles need a leader whose primary responsibility is managing the energy of the team. This leader creates psychological safety, what Amy Edmondson from Harvard calls "the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes." Leaders who manage team energy effectively model behaviors they expect, provide clear guidance, figure out solutions with people rather than for them, and show up with respect and discretion for each team member. To build your own collaborative ensemble, start by establishing a shared goal, clarifying roles using the RACI model (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed), creating explicit codes of conduct, and focusing on energy management across the team.

Chapter 3: Let Go of Outdated Knowledge

To achieve radical outcomes, we must first let go of what we think we know. Our brains, amazing as they are, don't like to work hard and tend to categorize information into different systems for different types of decisions - what Daniel Kahneman calls System 1 (intuitive, quick) and System 2 (analytical, thoughtful). When Olivia faced Maya's directive to create an entirely new onboarding program in just ten weeks, she had to confront this reality. She thought about the people who had created the previous program - no one had intentionally done bad work, yet somehow it didn't move the needle. As far as Olivia knew, most of the team had never spoken to a customer or heard a sales conversation. They took all the complexity - products, processes, information - and decided it was all important enough to cram into the program, without asking anyone who actually had a point of view about what a seller might need in their first 90 days. "I don't even know what I got for the investment made in what was created," Maya had said. "Why haven't we seen results? We're going to do this over and do it right." Olivia took a deep breath and told herself, "You don't have to have all the answers right now. We can figure this out." She recognized that to succeed, she would need to let go of old ways of working and be open to the possibility that other approaches could be more effective. This letting go is challenging because our System 1 thinking - which helps us master skills through repetition and habit - gets in the way when we need to adapt to change. When our workplaces undergo transformation, System 1 still tries to provide answers, decisions, and judgments based on how things have always been done, even when those approaches no longer fit our complex, shifting, digital reality. The journey to a new way of working begins with this crucial step: letting go of the belief that you must have all the answers. Instead, embrace a mindset of curiosity and openness to possibilities. This doesn't mean abandoning expertise or experience, but rather holding them lightly enough to allow new approaches to emerge. For your own transformation, start by identifying one area where you feel stuck in old patterns. Ask yourself: What assumptions am I making? What would happen if I approached this differently? Then experiment with small changes - try asking more questions instead of providing solutions, invite diverse perspectives, or test a new method on a small scale before committing to wholesale change.

Chapter 4: Focus on Business Outcomes First

What differentiates random acts of creating stuff from work that drives meaningful results? The answer lies in focusing on outcomes rather than outputs. An outcome is a driver - a behavior, skill, or capability - that produces a specific, measurable business result. An output is simply a tangible deliverable - a slide deck, storyboard, email, or video. When Olivia called Juliana after meeting with Jack and Maya, she was struggling to extract the desired outcome from all the directives and complaints. "So what they want to do is cut the ramp-up time for them to achieve quota," she finally determined after pushing Maya for clarity. "I had to really go back and forth with Maya to get that out of her. It wasn't actually clear." This disconnect between strategy and execution is common. Maya admitted, "This isn't the kind of information I usually discuss with Jack's people, it just didn't occur to me. His team usually comes to us and asks what courses we want, or we go to them when we just want to see what stuff they have." Olivia was the first person to ask questions about the results Maya was trying to drive. In their research, the Oxygen team found that high-performing organizations measure the impact of what they create and connect it to business outcomes, while most organizations measure less meaningful metrics like audience reactions or attendance. This explains why executives like Maya can't see what they're getting for their investment - the enablement teams aren't measuring what matters to the business. The missing link is the ability to stay focused on the business outcome - in this case, reducing time to quota and increasing retention in role. By starting with this outcome and working backward, Olivia could determine what was truly needed versus what was merely nice to have. When you know the clear, measurable outcome, you can explain the rationale for your team's actions and outputs to anyone who asks. To implement this approach in your organization, start every initiative by asking, "What's the business outcome we're driving toward?" If the answer isn't clear, keep asking until you find it. Document the outcome and share it widely with your team and stakeholders. Then for every decision about what to create, ask, "How does this move us toward our outcome?" If you can't connect an output to your desired result, question whether it should be created at all.

Chapter 5: Design Human-Centered Experiences

In today's age of experience, customers expect seamless interactions that deliver value easily and consistently. When Olivia had her coffee spilled at Coffee Place one morning, she paused to observe the system around her - how mobile orders were fulfilled, how staff coordinated, how customers moved through the space. "It's the experience," she realized. "We've been thinking about it all wrong." While consumer-facing businesses have embraced experience design, the workplace still delivers suboptimal learning experiences. When new hires join companies, they're often overwhelmed with information or left to figure things out on their own. Despite businesses spending over $140 billion annually on training and development, the experience fails to meet learners where they are. During a train delay, Olivia explained this insight to her colleague Nimit: "Think about the complexity that an account manager has to deal with...Remember Barry Rothenberg? He sent that photo showing his remote office and said, 'I don't care how it looks, just make sure it's useful to me, and that I can get it on my phone, otherwise I just won't use it.' He's the one who received 50 emails of required training. Fifty individual required trainings! He didn't know how to prioritize, assumed it wasn't all relevant, didn't have time to do it all, so what happened? He just didn't do any of it!" To create human-centered experiences that actually work, Olivia and her team focused on three key aspects: audience realities (their environment, constraints, and information-seeking behaviors), audience roles (their specific job responsibilities and how they're changing), and the time frame of their role (what's reasonable to expect at different stages of their journey). When these human objectives guide experience design, the result feels fundamentally different to the audience. Instead of overwhelm, they feel the experience was made for them. Instead of irrelevance, they find immediate value. Instead of complexity, they discover intuitive simplicity. To implement this approach, start by understanding your audience through observation and conversation. Ask to shadow them, join their meetings, or conduct interviews about their daily challenges. Map their typical workday to identify moments where your solution could integrate naturally. Then design your experience to meet them where they are - matching their environment, role needs, and stage of development. Test your designs with actual users before full implementation, and continually refine based on their feedback.

Summary

Achieving radical outcomes isn't about working harder within broken systems - it's about transforming how we work together. Throughout this journey, we've explored how process-driven approaches, collaborative ensembles, letting go of outdated knowledge, focusing on business outcomes, and designing human-centered experiences combine to create extraordinary teams that deliver tangible results. As Jeff Bezos wisely noted, "We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient." Similarly, your path to radical outcomes requires putting your audience first, embracing innovation in how you work, and having patience as you make incremental improvements that add up to transformational change. Start today by identifying one business outcome you want to improve, assembling a collaborative team to address it, and designing an experience that meets your audience where they are. The extraordinary results you achieve will make the journey worthwhile.

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Juliana Stancampiano

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