Author

Chris Dunlop

Jeff Bezos talks about the importance of focusing on inputs rather than outputs.

Senior leaders that are new to Amazon are often surprised by how little time we spend discussing actual financial results or debating projected financial outputs. To be clear, we take these financial outputs seriously, but we believe that focusing our energy on the controllable inputs to our business is the most effective way to maximise financial outputs over time.

Jeff Bezos

Sports people talk about it all the time.

In a business context it is a tricky thing to keep front and centre because typically revenue is such an important and dominating metric that it soaks up all of the conversation and focus.

I think an article like this is particularly important in a harder economic environment. There are a lot of things out of your control, but by focusing on the inputs you can control, you can still make progress.

Understanding Input vs. Output Metrics

Output Metrics (The Results):

• Revenue
• Profit margins
• Customer satisfaction scores
• Website traffic
• Conversion rates

Input Metrics (The Actions):

• Number of sales calls made
• Content pieces published
• Customer support tickets resolved
• Product features shipped
• Code commits pushed

A shift in focus

When I shifted my focus to input metrics, three things happened:

1. Reduced Anxiety: Instead of obsessing over things I couldn’t directly control, I focused on what I could actually influence.

2. Better Team Alignment: The team knew exactly what was expected of them. "Make more sales" became "Send 20 quality sales emails per day."

3. Being Kinder To Yourself: When you run a business, you have big goals and ambition and so when things don't go your way, you can be hard on yourself. By focusing on the inputs, you can be kinder to yourself because you know you are doing the right things.

Real-World Example: Our Content Strategy

Here's how this played out in our content marketing:

Old Approach (Output Focus):

• Goal: Increase social medial following
• Increase blog traffic by 20%
• Result: Constant stress about numbers we couldn’t directly influence. Particularly as we weren't giving a reason for people to follow us.

New Approach (Input Focus):

• Publish 4 articles per week
• Spend 5 hours per week learning and reading about high performance and leadership.
• Create 1 detailed case study per month

The funny thing? Once we focused on these input metrics, our blog traffic grew by 500% – more than 20 times our original goal.

Not only that, it's a lot more fun.

The Scientific Method for Business

Think of it like a scientific experiment:

• Input metrics are your independent variables (what you can control)
• Output metrics are your dependent variables (what happens as a result)

If you're convinced and want to make this shift, here's what worked for me:

1. List Your Current Metrics: Write down everything you're tracking

2. Categorise Them: Separate them into inputs and outputs

3. Work Backwards: For each output metric, ask "What actions directly influence this?"

4. Create Your Input Dashboard: Focus on metrics you can control daily or weekly

5. Set Clear Targets: Make them specific and achievable

It takes some time for your inputs to start flowing through to the outputs. The blog has taken 5 months to really take off, but the whole time I have felt empowered and have trusted the process.

Resource to help

I've made a GPT Prompt for you to help find your input metrics. What you do is go to the page, enter in what your current output goal is and then it will help you to find some input metrics that you can focus on.