When Measuring Effort Isn't Enough

How Outcome-Based Work Changes Everything

I don’t actually care how many hours my team works.

The only time I care about time is when I need to get ahold of someone. For that, I’m explicit in my guidance: different platforms mean different levels of urgency. A Teams message can wait. A text? I want an answer within a couple hours. A phone call means I need you now. And if you’re not going to be available for whatever reason, I want it on your calendar so I can call someone else. Clear rules help all of us prioritize.

Outside of that? I don’t care when the work gets done.

Hours worked don’t tell me whether anything meaningful is happening. They don’t tell me if problems are being solved, decisions are being made, or value is being created. They only tell me who’s sitting at a desk—and someone can be sitting at a desk for a lot of reasons other than actually getting work done.

That realization changed how I think about managing work. And it’s why measuring effort is the wrong operating model for modern performance, regardless of whether you’re working in person or flexibly or whatever. In person work isn’t a reason to not invest in good performance management.

Let’s decode it. 🚀

Hourly vs. Outcome Based Work

Think back to college or even high school. Yes, you had to have a certain number of hours of instruction or course credits, but otherwise, there wasn’t a lot of demand on where you actually did your work. Did people care where you studied? Or when?

No. They just cared that you studied and you got appropriate outcomes when producing reports or taking exams.

Where and how you worked mattered a whole lot less than what you got done.

The same should be true of work anywhere. But somehow, we’ve gotten the idea that performance management should revolve around the assumption that effort equals value and we should compensate accordingly.

We look at:

• Who’s working the longest hours.

• Who’s always available.

• Who responds the fastest.

• Who’s visible, present, and busy.

We attest all the time that we care about productivity but instead, we design systems around busyness. Time-in-seat, time-on-task, and responsiveness have all become proxies for performance. Even in knowledge work, when outputs are cognitive, creative, and relational, we still default to measuring effort because it’s easy to see.

I won’t say that effort isn’t important. Effort contributes to learning and development and is a necessary part of work, but measuring it alone is wrong. And it’s hard to measure when our work is increasingly digital, distributed, and non-linear.

If we want work that actually works—work that is flexible, human, high-performing, and sustainable—we have to redesign our operating model for performance. That starts by shifting focus from effort to outcomes.

Why Do We Care About Hours?

Like many things, we measured hours because it once made sense to measure hours.

When work was physical, linear, and observable, time was a reasonable proxy for output. More hours generally meant more production. Work happened in one place, during one shift, under direct supervision.

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As a reminder, don’t throw out legacy just because it’s old. It’s worth understanding why we did it in the first place, and I have a good framework to do that:

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So how has our situation changed?

We have a better understanding of work. Today, we understand that work, whether it’s cognitive or physical, is:

• Episodic rather than linear.

• Collaborative rather than individual.

• Asynchronous rather than sequential.

Unless you’re in a very mechanical factory setting where things are done with mechanical precision, time tells us very little about value.

Two people can spend the same eight hours “working” and produce radically different outcomes. One insight, decision, or design choice can outweigh weeks of visible activity. Conversely, long hours often signal confusion, poor prioritization, or broken processes, not commitment.

Effort-based metrics survive not because they work—but because they’re familiar and because they’re easy.

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Want some metrics you should use besides hours? Here are ten talent metrics that really matter:

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So, it’s the wrong measure. What could go wrong?

Ah, that is the question.

When organizations reward effort instead of outcomes, they create predictable pathologies—and they start optimizing for what’s measured.

• People stay in the office or online longer than necessary.

• People respond instantly instead of thoughtfully.

• People attend meetings to be seen instead of producing work.

• People focus on appearing busy instead of being effective.

This all leads to performative productivity, work that’s designed to be seen but not actually get anything done.

It also quietly penalizes your deep thinkers, your asynchronous workers, your caregivers, your people in different time zones, and those who work in bursts rather than steady visible output.

So How Do We Manage by Outcomes?

People make the mistake of thinking of outcome-based work as hands-off or anything goes. It isn’t. And it doesn’t have to be done outside of an office. It doesn’t mean you lower your standards or remove accountability, and you don’t just let people disappear.

It means you shift the locus of control from activity to results, and you provide clarity and guidance in four key areas:

1. Clear Outcomes

People must know what success looks like.

• What problem are we solving?

• What decision needs to be made?

• What deliverable matters?

• What impact are we trying to achieve?

If leaders can’t articulate outcomes, they default to measuring effort.

2. Defined Constraints

Outcome-based work still has boundaries:

• timelines

• quality standards

• ethical guardrails

• resource limits

• dependencies

Freedom exists within constraints, not in the absence of them.

3. Decision Rights

Who decides how the work gets done? Who can adapt the approach when conditions change?

Outcome-based models require leaders to give up control over process while retaining responsibility for results.

4. Feedback Loops

Managing by outcomes requires frequent, lightweight feedback—not annual reviews or post-mortems.

• Are we moving in the right direction?

• What’s working?

• What’s blocked?

• What needs adjustment?

• And, my personal favorite, what can I do to help you succeed?*

This is where many organizations stumble. They replace effort metrics with outcomes but fail to build the feedback infrastructure that makes outcomes visible.

*Hat tip to my boss, Dan Shrimpton, for this one. I’ve watched him time and time again give someone a task and then ask what he can do to help enable them to complete it, and it’s awesome to hear your boss do that.

So…Why Is This Hard?

If outcome-based work is so powerful, why is it so hard to adopt?

There’s a psychological comfort aspect to effort metrics. They create something easily measurable and therefore controllable, and that simplicity also reduces ambiguity, simplifies supervision, and allows leaders to point to exactly one visible thing that they’re basing a performance decision on.

Regardless of whether it’s the wrong thing.

Managing by outcomes, on the other hand, is full of uncertainty. It requires trust. Trusting professionals to make good decisions, to complete work in a variety of different ways, tolerating periods of invisible progress. Industry’s whiplash return to the office demonstrated how little we as a working society are willing to trust workers. Instead of punishing those who abused the system and instating better metrics, our trust was broken, so we declared the system a failure.

Many current leaders and managers were promoted precisely because they were high-effort performers themselves. Letting go of effort as a signal can feel like we’re discounting or undermining the behaviors that made them successful.

I’ve lectured on this a lot, so pardon the lecture—but leadership is not about imposing your own path on other people. It’s about designing conditions for your people to succeed on their paths.

Outcome-Based Work Enables Flexibility

So, wait. Why do we want flexibility again? Does this mean remote work?

Sort of, but it’s less about remote work and more about drawing broader constraints about when and how work gets done to enable your employees to work optimally. That way, when outside factors impact those constraints, you’re not stuck.

A snowstorm hits, people can work from home.

You get called away for something, people aren’t waiting for you to dictate each step of the way.

You’re having a tough time wrapping your head around a topic, you can go for a run and come back to it after that idea hits.

Outcome-based work resolves the tension between leaders who want to trust their workforce and know that work is being done, and employees who might worry that their work is not being seen.

Organizations that successfully shift to outcome-based work see consistent patterns:

• Higher trust between leaders and teams.

• More honest conversations about priorities.

• Reduced burnout as pointless work is surfaced.

• Better use of talent as people work to strengths.

• Greater adaptability in the face of change.

Perhaps most importantly, they stop rewarding the appearance of work and start rewarding its substance. And it’s hard to argue that that isn’t better for everyone.

And if this is hard for your organization, if people end up reverting to hours, availability, and visibility, it’s not because outcome-based work doesn’t work. It’s more likely because the outcomes aren’t clearly defined, leaders don’t have a mechanism to enforce them, systems haven’t been designed to surface results, and your leaders need practice.

Measuring effort is easy. Managing an outcome-based system requires actual leadership.

Effort Is Still Important…

But only when it’s connected to purpose.

Learning new skills, stretching into unfamiliar roles, mentoring others, taking on difficult assignments, or volunteering for work that builds future capability all require real effort.

That’s the kind of effort leaders should notice and reward—not sheer endurance, but investment in personal growth, in contribution to the organization, in outcomes that matter.

When leaders reward effort aligned to impact, they reinforce the behaviors that actually move the organization forward. When they reward effort for its own sake, they get busywork, burnout, and very little progress.

If we want work that works in 2026 and beyond, we must design our business operating models for performance—and prioritize outcomes, enable flexibility, and respect how humans actually do their best work.