Why Most Improvement Efforts Stall...and What Actually Fixes It

Outcome by Design™

Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth. Most large-scale transformation efforts fail.

McKinsey has reported for years that roughly 70% of transformations don’t achieve their intended outcomes. PMI’s research shows that a meaningful percentage of projects still miss their original goals and business intent, even in organizations that consider themselves mature.

That’s not because leaders don’t care, and it’s not because teams aren’t working hard.

It’s because most organizations are trying to improve pieces of a system that was never designed to produce consistent outcomes in the first place.

The Real Problem Isn’t Execution

Walk into almost any organization and you’ll find:

• Agile teams working hard

• Improvement initiatives underway

• Governance structures in place

• Customer metrics being tracked

• Leadership pushing for results

On paper, everything looks reasonable.

But here’s what’s usually happening beneath the surface:

• Strategy is defined separately from delivery.

• Improvement runs as a side initiative.

• Incentives reward local performance, not system performance.

• Governance slows flow without meaning to.

No one designed those misalignments on purpose. But they exist and they compound, and when that happens, outcomes become unpredictable.

This Is a Design Issue, Not a Performance Issue

Most organizations don’t fail because people execute poorly. They struggle because the way work flows, improves, and is governed was never intentionally designed as a coherent system.

When strategy, delivery, improvement, and leadership behaviors are designed separately, you get:

• Fragmented execution

• Initiative fatigue

• Inconsistent results

• Heroics instead of systems

And no amount of pushing harder fixes that.

What Outcome by Design™ Actually Does

Outcome by Design™ isn’t another program layered on top of what you already have.

It’s a proprietary operating system built on a simple premise: If you want predictable outcomes, you have to design the system that produces them.

That means aligning:

• Strategy to daily execution

• Delivery to value flow

• Improvement to live operations

• Leadership incentives to system performance

When those elements reinforce each other, results stabilize. Improvement sticks.

Delivery becomes more predictable. Leaders stop fighting friction they unintentionally created.

“Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.” 

                                                                               W. Edwards Deming

The Bottom Line

You don’t need more initiatives, you need a system intentionally designed to produce the outcomes you expect.

Most organizations try to optimize parts. Outcome by Design™ optimizes the system.

And that changes everything!