Outcomes and operative phrases
Why vague language wrecks outcomes, and how to transform fuzzy objectives into an actionable strategy
Most outcome statements are pretty useless. It’s no wonder actually working with them is so hard. If you’ve struggled with outcomes you’ve probably heard some variation of the below.
“Inspire customers with a valuable experience and delightful products.”
“Ensure the purchasing experience is trusted, intuitive, and frictionless.”
“Make finding the right products easy and fun.”
For people who aren’t used to clear outcome statements, it might not be obvious that despite sounding strategic, these outcomes are all fluff. If your teams are actually expected to operate from outcomes, they need to understand what those statements mean clearly enough to make tradeoffs, advocate for what they need, and connect work to strategy without second-guessing it. Outcomes that aren’t fully understood aren’t good enough to steer by.
The “outcomes vs outputs” distinction is one you’ve probably come across, but it’s often misunderstood. Just because outcomes are more abstract than outputs doesn’t mean they can’t be concrete. This assumption is the trap I’ve seen in nearly every “outcome-driven” organization: a fuzzy outcome gets written, a detailed plan gets built in its name, and teams start executing. Then the outcome is forgotten and never gets clarified, because there’s already a plan, right?
That’s an outcome mirage. A fuzzy outcome plus a specific plan kills autonomy while giving the illusion of it. No one can say what success is beyond executing to plan.
Clarity must be built
While leading the product practice at a large retail technology org, I had a chance to try a different approach. The org had been through the usual transformation: outputs to outcomes, project to product, delivery to discovery. Everyone spoke the right language but the impact hadn’t materialized. Teams were building a lot, but not tying it back to a coherent outcome.
We brought in DoubleLoop, a platform purpose-built to make strategy usable instead of aspirational. Unlike tools that live downstream of outcomes (roadmaps, project trackers, dashboards), DoubleLoop sits upstream, helping leaders and teams translate fuzzy vision into structured drivers, signals, and metrics that guide day-to-day work. Through that partnership we noticed something striking. The teams delivering the fewest outcomes weren’t confused about the work, they were confused about how the work connected to the goal. They had tactics, but no usable strategy. Not because they hadn’t been given one, but because the strategy hadn’t been clarified in a way they could use.
DoubleLoop’s scaffolds gave us a way to reverse-engineer clarity without having to rewrite vague goals. Outcome trees allowed teams to map from ambiguous phrases down to specific levers and measures they could influence.We didn’t publish templates. We started at the top.
Our thinking was if teams are expected to deliver outcomes, then leaders have to know how to define outcomes that actually mean something. That takes practice and ownership. It can’t be phoned in. It has to be built by them, not bestowed.
So we asked SVPs to articulate their domain’s outcomes. And what we got were well-meaning but vague statements like “We help customers shop seamlessly digitally and in-store.”
At this point, we had a choice: try to rewrite the outcome with the SVPs, or leave it as-is and teach their teams how to pull clarity from it. We chose the latter and stumbled across something I think is pretty powerful.
Operative phrases are your way in
An operative phrase is a directional word, like ‘fast’, or ‘delightful’, or ‘trusted’, that signals intent but hides the specifics. It’s where we were able to focus teams to start unpacking things. No matter how generic the outcome, we found that operative phrases gave teams something to start with.
For example, from the above outcome we pulled out two operative phrases: “seamless” and “digital and in-store.” Each phrase acts as a signal to flag attention and help focus for the groups and relevant teams below. Who owns the online experience? Who owns in-store? What does “seamlessly” mean, specifically? Is that different for the two contexts?
Helping teams ask these questions was about making strategy usable, not just wordsmithing. Operative phrases gave teams a way into the strategy instead of just nodding along.
An example of cascading clarity with operative phrases.
One of the clearest examples came from a platform team. Their group’s outcome, “network connection is reliable, available, and strong so the company can operate”, was a good start. But it wasn’t translating and the team kept disagreeing on priorities.
So we asked them to reflect on what “reliable”, “available”, and “strong” mean in their context and which was most important for their team, then we entered it into DoubleLoop’s AI builder, which parsed the operative phrases and proposed a structured outcome tree within minutes.
Top node (Outcome): Reliable delivery of value to internal teams
Middle nodes (Drivers): System uptime, time to recovery, incident volume, platform usability
Base layer (Signals & Metrics): 99.9% uptime, average recovery <15 min, P95 support response time, usability survey scores
Suddenly, their vague outcome became a usable map. The team could see how different priorities would affect their goals, how they were already tracking, and where they had gaps. And more importantly, they built it so they felt more ownership.
Because the team built it themselves, with just enough scaffolding, they understood and trusted what it meant. Suddenly, their vague outcome became a usable map. The team could see how different priorities would affect their goals, how they were already tracking, and where they had gaps.
Language, leverage, and operation
Zooming out again, once leaders and teams identified their operative phrases they could build outcome trees that meant something. And by inviting everyone to view the map they were creating living strategy artifacts linked to data and updated as reality changed.
This is what working with outcomes really looks like. It’s not the same muscle as defining outputs or drafting action plans. Those come later. First, you have to do the work to make strategy legible. That means defining your drivers and signals. What levers do we control? What signs tell us we’re making progress? How will we know when we’re stuck?
Only then will you be able to use outcomes effectively. Teams need shared language to spot over-investment, argue for under-measured risks, and have those conversations without defensiveness before tying plans to intent and aligning roadmaps to leverage points.
This is where most outcome rollouts fall flat and they get written off. Outcomes are supposed to create shared focus and real autonomy. But when you skip the clarity part you end up with hollow objectives and vague key results. You get:
“Delight our customers”
“Drive platform reliability”
“Improve business outcomes”
No one’s going to argue with these, but no team could succeed with criteria so vague.
How to use operative phrases in the wild
One thing I took away from using operative phrases is that you don’t need to be a part of a transformation initiative to make it a habit. Anyone can do this and it works in so many situations. You don’t need a workshop. Just curiosity and the nerve to ask.
Listen for vague alignment. When you hear a statement like, “drive value,” “support the business,” “improve the experience,” or “ensure reliability,” don’t just nod.
Extract the operative phrases. Look for the squishy adjectives, verbs and abstract nouns that aren’t objective.
Cascade them into action. For each phrase, ask: How is this relevant to what I own? What’s observable? What’s measurable? What’s misunderstood? Even one level deeper can make a huge difference.
Most teams don’t fail from a lack of ambition. They fail from a lack of shared meaning.
So the next time someone hands you a vision statement that sounds good but doesn’t help you move, don’t nod. Ask what it means. That’s where clarity starts and the moment strategy starts to become operational. Whether it’s on a whiteboard or in a platform like DoubleLoop, the real work is making the abstract specific. Clarity isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the foundation of real autonomy.
Very real life problems 😔