Processes, Outputs and Outcomes

The appropriate focus of the reorganization is on designing processes that produce the right outcomes. The specialty areas of the functional and service departments and related individuals provide high levels of expertise and through this review we want to align these skills with the goals of the organization rather than the function or service. A greater awareness of the whole leads to a healthier organizational social system and greater opportunity for employees to move into new areas.
Before proceeding further, there needs to be some defining of the terms being used. Government programs undertake a number of activities that produce a variety of results. Programs deliver two kinds of results: outputs, the direct products and services produced by government activities, such as an speeding tickets or some requested information; and outcomes, the consequences (both intended and not) of those outputs on our society. Outputs are results that managers can largely control, while the outcomes that managers are trying to accomplish are influenced by factors outside their programs.
Policy outcomes (sometimes called long-term, final, or ultimate outcomes) are the end results sought, such as general improvement in the well-being of residents, the economy, or the environment. Between the outputs and the policy outcomes, there is a sequence of immediate and intermediate outcomes that are expected to lead to a desired result but are not ends in themselves, such as changes in the actions of program clients. Immediate outcomes are more easily linked to the activities of a program than are end outcomes.
Outcomes define the purpose of the City's existence. They drive the manager’s planning and controlling of the delivery of services to the community. An Outcome is the ultimate result you are trying to achieve through your goods or service delivery. It is the degree of accomplishment and it focuses on the critical end product, rather than process, of high level of accountability for achieving that stated purpose. Most of the conflicting expectations are the result of process rather than outcome. Most processes are the result of planning decisions related to the system capacity.
There are basically two definitions of the capacity of a system which produces a product or services. One is that the capacity is equal to the maximum quantity of output which the system can produce, considering only physical limitations on production. This definition of capacity focuses solely on maximizing the output, and ignores other factors which may make achievement of such an output unlikely. This concept of capacity is often termed ultimate capacity.
The other basic definition of capacity recognizes that the cost may be far too large at the ultimate capacity for such a level of output to be practically or economically attainable. This suggests the other basic definition of capacity: the maximum output at which cost does not exceed a maximum acceptable value. This concept is termed economic capacity in economics literature and practical capacity in the engineering literature. The term cost is deliberately left vague, for the specific measure used varies with the situation, in some cases being average cost, in others marginal cost, etc.
Another variation of the economic capacity issue is designing the process that reunifies the functions and specialties within departments and/or services into the production of the immediate and intermediate outcomes that when combined with the other functions and specialties generates the desired policy outcome. Each function or specialty may achieve maximum or economic capacity and the city may not achieve the desired outcome. The goal is to have the communication and information systems in place to have immediate and intermediate outcomes lead to a desired result.
The designing of a process normally looks at setting expectations for performance which normally involves setting expectations for outputs. Outputs are well understood since they represent the direct result of activities. They are usually quite visible and measurable, and functions and specialties can comfortably be held accountable for them because they control them.
For management to design a process focusing on outcomes, the situation is quite different. The process for outcomes, be they immediate, intermediate, or end outcomes, is usually not as well understood as for outputs. The linkages between various levels of outcomes may not be well known and the measurement of the outcomes themselves may be quite a challenge. By definition, functions and specialties do not control outcomes but rather seek to influence their occurrence by carrying out certain activities and delivering certain outputs. As a result, they are much less comfortable with being accountable for outcomes because they do not control them.