A client who had been with me in a Results Chain modeling class – recently told me of her challenge getting her internal client to agree on the definition of an outcome. Even though the main focus of everything on the model was toward an increase in a key metric, he refused to define the outcome as “…increased”. He simply wanted to state it as something “to be monitored”. (But he still wanted to see the root initiative take place.)

His fear was apparently – that by stating the outcome as we normally would in a Results Chain – he would be personally committing to that outcome, and he would be held accountable for it! (He was in a public sector organization.)