Towards a Better Definition of Outcomes - part two

A discussion with Matt Ji on the intricacies of the world and how to create a clear definition for outcomes.

The first episode of Odd Owtcomes season 2 initiated a conversation on "Empowering Outcomes," why they matter, what they mean, and how we can better understand and achieve them. 

The ambition was to map different facets of outcomes in action in different areas where outcome-based approaches make a difference in business impact. 

But laying the foundation and discovering a definition has proven difficult with so much uncharted territory. Matt Ji, the first guest for this season, has helped us explore an extremely complex territory of outcomes and some misconceptions around outcomes.

Matt is a natural out-of-the-box thinker, an advocate for deep analysis on a broad range of topics from AI to Chaos Theory. He has experience and knowledge in oil and gas, renewable energy, finance and technology.

So, once more, we decided to sit together again and continue with a few points from the previous discussion. This time, we decided to go for a written format - as complementary material to the podcast.

Check out the first episode of ODD Owtcomes here!

Daiana: Now that some time has passed, what would you say it is if we are to reflect again on the definition of outcomes?

Matt: I would say that the definition, the scaffold, is the future because it's all-encompassing. When we talk about a future at any particular point in time, that's what I would consider to be an outcome. How would you define it?

An outcome is the future or the state of that future.

Daiana: I think outcomes need causality. It may be a point in the future, but it has been determined by a chain of events. We live in a time-based framework. We see cause and effect as disconnected, whereas outcomes require us to think with a more unified approach to cause and effect. 

They are not the same, but they're almost two sides of the same coin. Forming an outcome requires you to flip the coin. But that makes me wonder about what is the opposite of an outcome. Is there anything like that?

Outcomes have a cause and require certain conditions under which they can emerge.

Matt: The opposite of the outcome is all the simulated things that could happen but never did. In this case, the generated simulated things are probabilistic but were not fated to happen. So one thing you can say: an outcome is something that happens. If you know what the outcome should be from the beginning, then everything that happens within this time frame that is NOT that outcome is probably something else you have to exclude. 

So, which particular probability mode do you have, and what subfunctions do you include to assess an outcome? Every single micro-interaction has a probability of generating and spiraling into different things. Then, you must run a fully probabilistic simulated approach to steer your outcomes in the right direction. This is the reason why people are so infatuated with simulations. This is where our companies pursue something better than intuitive decision-making, and they are willing to spend a lot to achieve that.

The pre-outcome concept would probably be intention or attention. Your intention or goal creates the outcome; of course, there are other things around them, too, because there's so much left to chance when you engage. Your probabilistic mode can make you assume that for every engagement you deal with, like for a user experience, you can say 60% of users will accept, and 40% will say no.

Probabilistically, there's a slight compromise with the intention framework, which is one reason why buy-ins are not necessarily long-lasting enough. What ends up happening is your kind of tune that probabilistic model. As soon as there's any sign of pain, everything will immediately collapse, and it will just feel like a 100% rejection of the user experience. 

Suddenly, this transgresses against "my strategic objectives, my ego." And so, the probabilistic determinism works against you in many of these micro-interactions. This is where you have to be really attuned to the alignment problem - making sure that the micro games don't necessarily have a probabilistic outcome; rather, it has to impress them in a way where it reveals a higher self. Everybody wants actually, in every interaction, to emerge as the higher self. 

Daiana: I understand the value of looking at one's probabilistic mode. Not doing it would be reckless. The environment might be set in a certain way. You might have intention but not power over it. You have to work with certain existing conditions and then place your conditions on top. The outcome has that probability of emerging or not because you're kind of always balancing what already is with what you're trying to do. But the type of outcomes we were trying to get to has us accept that there is this probability that they might or not occur, but we also approach things to allow us this creative thinking.

We approach things to build towards an outcome without a rigid expectations (like, by week four, we must have "x" outcome accomplished). Our idea is to focus and create all of these conditions and walk through them. You're implementing the outcome before it's emerged as a full outcome. You're creating bits of that outcome as you're moving toward it.

The outcome won't happen just because you made room for it but also because you moved toward it. Outcomes are "there" as much as they are "here."

But you really need to think through how you set this type of outcome, which requires some higher self-dimension where the risk and bravery blend you talked about in the episode could serve as a foundation. 

Matt: The interesting thing about bravery is that it isn't the absence of fear. Fear must be fully felt to have true merit bravery because bravery without fear is just recklessness. I think when you are sensitive to the risks, and you've decided to kind of take the risk anyways, that's more of a leap of faith, and that's a very commendable, brave notion. Faith is kind of the hardest thing to achieve, which is that you kind of have to go against your better judgment of reason because you know when things are on the line, right, when the job is at stake, nobody decides to forego the safe choices being come, right?

Mistakes actually kind of open new portals, and then that's how intuition gets built within the organization – like heightened organization intuition. You can see all the right things and get people on board, but your decision-making is based upon this raw emotion of irrationality. So, it's really about creating a kind of inner alignment. You know, it's all gut feelings right from leadership top down. And this is this actually creates an immense amount of flow but also a lot of stress as well when things don't go well.

Daiana: In the podcast, you use a really interesting metaphor.

"An outcome-driven person is someone who can provide the client with a way to look at the problem by classifying how you want to build up a Jenga tower of nuances."

But when I think of a Jenga tower, you take pieces underneath to build on top and ensure that you still maintain the equilibrium, but at some point, it's bound to go down. That's the end of the game. There may be winners, but they win because they are not the ones who caused it to fall apart. How do you even help organizations adopt an outcome-based approach if they may not understand this nuanced approach and they're driven by a risk-averse mindset that freezes them? 

Matt:  I think what you can do for an organization broadly is to kind of diagnose certain feelings that you have when you are part of the culture. Building intuition in an organization you're consulting or working with requires understanding their intuition. So basically, understanding their metaphors, the "language" they speak, this type of meta language, and the culture. Take shame, for example:

Shame is one of the reasons why Girardin's scapegoat just kind of always exists in humans. Society is that "if somebody is low, they're shameful, and you blame them." Everybody feels shame. People at the top at the highest level sometimes feel the most shame. We typically think of hierarchies where the bottom feels shame, but the top feels even sometimes; it's almost like an inverted pyramid in some sense because of the amount of responsibility.

But empathy is one of those transformative things where if everybody places blame on a scapegoat and it's an innocent person, then when this innocence gets revealed, all of a sudden, there is an awakening. Shame is a low-level emotion, but at the top is enlightenment, and there are love, rationality, and others somewhere between. Trying to raise it one bar at a time just to see what happens, where people's comfort level gives up, is a powerful exercise to begin seeing nuances. 

Daiana Zavate: We do a lot of work with intuition because we internalize things. We can see, but it's not easy to externalize intuition so ideas can be further shared. This is, after all, the interplay between human minds and the environment.

This ability to juggle ideas between intuition and rationality is where we create definitions. At least, that's how I think because most definitions are shared realities, which we come to accept because there's a balance point we can all pivot around. 

So I'm just thinking about bringing rationality and intuition to this moment to put ourselves in the right mindset to define at least the prerequisites for approaching outcomes.

Matt: Pre-definition has to be a meaning, not a flawless textbook definition, but meaning with some substance. Taking a definition of the word doesn't come with a "body" of significance. It's just a scaffold that you take and admire. It's empty inside since there's no volume, so the meaning must be constructed to fill the definition. But you have to have meaning to imbue it and bless that definition with some type of property that cannot be really described.

If you don't use the language of mathematics, then you're using the language of metaphors. But metaphors are constrained based upon a shared understanding of things; you don't have scientific terms like amino acids, proteins, and then cells, and so on, or do not address scientific minds; you have to use a metaphor. 

For example, linear thinking can be described through one: You take a string right, and the goal is to turn that string into a ball. A ball of yarn, if it's wrapped up in a very intricate, neat way, then it's actually a smaller volume because it's more organized. You pack in a lot more information, and it's kind of self-holding. But if you just take the entire unfurled yarn and kind of squeeze it together, you can still get a ball. But it would just kind of come apart by itself. It doesn't have the thing that holds it together, and it'll actually be a larger ball.

This is where to put it into the analogy of the world economy; we've just wanted a larger ball. We don't want an organized, nice ball of yarn that is self-contained and highly organized. For some reason, we want like just a bigger ball because that's our metric. For many organizations, the bigger number is better; that's why they care more about the short term, overlooking the effects on customer trust.

Mathematics gives you this type of precision of zooming in and out, but it's hard to access. One of those things that help is company wikis. 

They are kind of "extuition" in a sense, but nobody reads them because it requires a time investment, and they're not motivated to because it's not compulsory. But they end up not developing a rational framework and not gaining some intuition, so all they will do is just critique it and say the wiki is useless, and so any project that could benefit from that dies. Still, it has no advocates or defenders because it doesn't have a life alone. It doesn't exist with it; it doesn't open; it doesn't exist coherently and harmoniously within the organization.

Rationality is actually the hard work of thinking with pen and paper. Rationality is pain. But to have that high-quality intuition, you have to experience pain. This is something that Western culture is trying to protect itself.

I think the highest form of intuition right is not based upon rationality or intuition alone. Still, it can plane-walk and understand the strengths and weaknesses of each, and basically, it's more metacognition between the two.

Daiana: I think we have explored some major topics, and it's becoming increasingly more meaningful as we keep having conversations about how important it is to zoom in and out with a blend of risk and bravery, intuition and rationality to achieve a deeper understanding of the future you are trying to create and the outcomes you bring into the world. 

Our conversation will probably continue as we deepen our understanding. We have explored some other topics and ideas from Socrates to Edmund Burke, but, unfortunately, some bits have been edited out to keep the length at bay. But if you want to hear more or be part of it, don't hesitate to get in touch! 

For more episodes, check out ODD Owtcomes here!