How to create a dynamic outcome

What is the benefit of a dynamic outcome and how to make an outcome dynamic on waymaker.io

Learning outcomes:

• What is a dynamic outcome
• What is the benefit of dynamic outcomes
• How to make outcomes dynamic
• How do you know when an outcome is dynamic
• Step-by-step instructions

 

What is a dynamic outcome?

Dynamic outcomes create automation around progress and confidence updates. Dynamic outcomes form parent-child relationships. A parent can have many children, but a child can only have 1 parent. But, a parent can also be a child. This creates a hierarchy of automated outcomes.

 

The automation around progress and confidence updates results in the parent outcome's progress and confidence being directly related to it's children's progress and confidence. 

 

When a child outcome's progress and/or confidence is updated, the parent outcome's progress and/or condfidence is also updated. And if that parent outcome is also a child of another outcome, then its parent's progress and/or confidence is also updated.

 

What is the benefit of dynamic outcomes?

Dynamic outcomes, particularly in the context of parent-child relationships offer several benefits that enhance goal tracking, monitoring, and overall effectiveness. They provide a structured, transparent, and interconnected approach to goal management. They improve goal alignment, accountability, and progress tracking, enabling organisations and teams to achieve their goals efficiently.

 

An example for using dynamic goals is in a sales team that have a sales target to meet. The head of sales is accountable for the team achieving the sales target but the sales team are responsible for delivering against the target.

 

In this example, the sales leader may have an objective to achieve sales of 5200 units this year. Each member of the team owns an outcome to deliver their share of that target. Lets say there are 2 sales people, each with a target of 2600. The sales leader's goal might look something like below:

Whereas the sales team member's goals may look something more like this:

 

How to make outcomes dynamic

To create dynamic outcomes, there first must be a relationship between the outcomes' goals. In the goal editor click the add relationship button and type the name of a goal with the outcomes that need to be connected. In this case, the sales leader has created relationships with their team members' goals.

Now its time to connect the outcomes. The team member can now create a relationship between the 2 outcomes dependent on the parent outcome tracking the same metric. For example, if the child outcome is tracking the % metric, when searching for parent outcomes to connect with, only outcomes that are also tracking the % metric will appear.

 

When you see the parent outcome title you want to connect with, click it. In this case achieve sales of 5200 units is the outcome we want to connect to. By clicking the outcome title the dynamic outcome connection is created.

 

How do you know when an outcome is the parent of a dynamic outcome relationship?

In the outcome editor, when an outcome is the parent in a dynamic relationship, the list of child outcomes appear under relationships. The progress and confidence inputs are disabled as the updates are automated, and the dynamic label displays in line with the inputs to confirm the outcome is dynamic. 

 

Step-by-step instructions

1. Create relationships between the goals that relate to the outcomes that will be dynamic.
2. Ensure the outcomes that will hold the dynamic result both track the same metric and that the target values make sense
3. Create a dynamic relationship between outcomes by adding a parent to the child outcome.