Input vs. Output Goals

By Lon W. Schiffbauer, BA, MBA, PhD, SPHR

If you know me at all, you know that I love setting and accomplishing goals. It’s how I run just about every facet of my life, and for the most part, it has taken my career and interests in some pretty awesome directions. So it should come as no surprise that I read a lot of personal productivity books, and something I’ve noticed over the years is this false dichotomy in the literature, and that is whether we should set input or output goals.

Now you might be saying, what are input and output goals?

When you think of a goal, odds are you’re thinking of an output goal. These are goals that explicitly state a desired outcome, like lose 40 pounds or earn a college degree. Think of it as an end-state destination. And because of that, output goals tend to see success through lagging indicators—how success is measure after the work has been done. Whether you successfully lost those 40 pounds or earned a college degree.

By contrast, input goals focus on the actual work we do to reach our end-state—the work, plus the systems and processes we put in place to help get the work done. In the case of weight loss, this would look like scheduling time and going to the gym three times a week. If we’re working on a college degree, input goals could include taking 15 credit hours this semester and completing all the assignments each week. Input goals tend to focus on leading indicators—measuring performance that is predictive of future success. If you go to the gym three times a week (a leading indicator), this is predictive of eventual weight loss (the lagging indicator).

So, which is better? Neither. We need both. For example, not many of us are going to get in our car and start driving without first knowing where we’re going and why. Likewise, no one is going to dispute that simply saying “I’m going to New York” and then sitting on the couch is going to get us there.

When setting goals, you need to have a clear understanding of what the desired outcome is—the output—and what systems, processes, and resources you need to make that goal happen—the inputs. This seems pretty intuitive, but that hasn’t stopped the literature from bifurcating the process and touting one aspect over the other. Let me show you what I mean:

In his book, The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey (2008) asserts that leaders should focus on the outcome more so than the methods for achieving that outcome. As he puts it, you cannot hold people responsible for results if you supervise their methods. Now he does go on to say that a leader should set clear expectations, provide the necessary resources, and ensure accountability and consequences. Nevertheless, even with all this in place, the North Star is always the outcome—the desired results. Tell employees what you expect, not how you expect them to do it. This is very much in line with the practice of setting S.M.A.R.T. objectives; goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound as described by George Doran (1981) and often included as a core tenet of Peter Drucker’s (1954) practice of Management By Objectives, or MBOs.

On the other hand, we have books like Atomic Habits by James Clear (2018) which emphasize inputs—the systems we should follow to be successful—rather than the outputs—the desired results. Clear’s assertion is that if you put in place the right systems and habits, success will be an almost foregone conclusion, whether you explicitly state what success looks like or not.

A key distinction between input and output, leading and lagging, comes down to the notion of control. Input goals and their accompanying leading indicators are far more within our control that output goals and lagging indicators. For example, I may have a goal to sell $10,000 worth of merchandise—and output goal and lagging indicators—but ultimately, I can’t control whether anyone buys my stuff. On the other hand, I can control what type of merchandise I offer, the selection, and how I market and promote my stuff.

Furthermore, input goals automate performance (or at least reduce the cognitive load) and helps ensure that our time and resources are sufficiently mustered to reach our objectives. But without a clear outcome goal, we wouldn’t know what systems or processes to put in place to direct our daily activities.

In the end I’m not proposing that Covey or Clear would disagree with one another or even consider their approaches as mutually exclusive. Each is placing the emphasis on different syllables in an effort to differentiate and express the value of their particular domain. There’s nothing wrong with this, and indeed can serve to crystalize some valuable principles for us. That said, I feel there’s a risk of inadvertently introducing the false notion that one aspect is better than the other. This would work against our overall objectives. The best thing we can do is understand the role each type of goal plays and how they support one another.

Speaking for myself, I have found great success in setting clear output goals which I then support with finely-detailed input goals. In these cases though the output goal—the SMART goal—ran the show. This year though I’ve decided to the switch the flip and put greater emphasis on my input goals. This means that rather than putting a lot of detail in how much I want to grow Nutshell Brainery, how many subscribers and views I want, and how much money I want to make—lagging indicators I can’t really control—I’m focusing instead on the small daily things I can control, like publishing a video everyday and dedicating specific time blocks to working on writing, shooting, and recording.

Of course I know what my ultimate output goal is so I can point my inputs in the right direction, but here in a year or so we’ll see if this amended strategy works for me. Stay tuned.

References

Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones. Avery.

Covey, S. M. R. (2008). The speed of trust: The one thing that changes everything. Simon & Schuster.

Doran, G. T. (1981). There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives. Management Review. 70(11): 35–36.

Drucker, P. (1954). The Practice of Management. Harper.

Lon is an Associate Professor of Business Management at Salt Lake Community College and holds an MBA, a PhD, and is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). In addition to his academic background, Lon spent close to 30 years working and consulting for such companies as FedEx, Intel, eBay, and PayPal, as well as a variety of small to mid-sized companies around the world.