This is the first article in the series: Cracking the Code: From Output to Impact. It explores how organizations get trapped on a hamster wheel, confusing the constant delivery with the illusion of progress. We'll unpack how a company's culture - specifically what it rewards - builds the self-reinforcing loop that keeps the hamster wheel spinning.
Note: Short on time? This article is also available as an AI-generated podcast. Enjoy!
The Hamster Wheel
While many articles blame the rise of agility for today's "feature factory" mindset, the truth is that the extensive focus on output over impact is a long-standing challenge. This issue has plagued traditional companies for years, long before they ever considered a scrum sprint. Agile frameworks have simply made this dysfunction more obvious; transforming promises of great performance gains and frequent deliveries, achieved by companies like Google, AWS, or Spotify, into a hamster wheel of meeting marathons and endless sprints focused obsessively on velocity.
This is a common reality, and its consequence is a workforce so consumed by the motion of delivery that they lose the capacity to ask if their work actually makes a difference. I'm always reminded of this picture:
This relentless focus on speed creates a powerful cultural feedback loop. Leadership and teams celebrate the successful launch of a feature - the output - and the unspoken motto becomes ruthlessly simple: ship more, faster.
But this isn't a spiral into chaos; it's a system working exactly as intended. If your organization is producing a high volume of activity over impact, it’s because the system was designed for it.
“A system is perfectly optimized for the results it gets.” - W. Edwards Deming
Unfortunately, It’s a trap. Escaping the activity trap starts with a single, powerful question: If our system is perfectly optimized to get the results it's getting, what specific metric, or behavior is most responsible for prioritizing output over impact?
The Implicit Trade - When Plans become Goals
Striving for genuine impact is an uncertain, long-term undertaking. It requires exploring options, piloting ideas, and accepting that some bets won't pay off. To leaders, this can feel like an unacceptable risk of "sunk costs" - money wasted on efforts that don't produce immediate, visible results.
This inherent ambiguity creates a dangerous perception problem. While teams are exploring and learning, the visible output of new features can slow down. From a leadership perspective, it can feel like the wheels are spinning with no forward motion. This perceived stagnation naturally creates tension. Leaders begin to question if their funding is placed correctly.
This uncertainty triggers a predictable chain reaction. It starts with leadership asking, “When will [user problem] be solved?” But because the problem can’t be solved with a simple plan- it requires exploration - the only truthful answers are vague. This perceived lack of clarity fuels the need for control, which crystallizes into a new directive: “We need a clear plan that shows us how this pays off.” To satisfy this demand for certainty, the ambiguous goal is translated into a concrete series of deliverables, creating a tangible roadmap from A to B.
Suddenly, the new state feels better:
- Small increments are easier to predict.
- Teams hit their delivery timelines more often.
- Leadership has clarity on what will be delivered and when.
At first glance, this looks like a win. But in solving the predictability problem, we've created a more dangerous one: the plan became the goal. Delivering the plan is now synonymous with success. The down-spiral silently expands its full force until we eventually recognize that the plan we created a year ago did not create the desired impact. The external world has changed, and the requirements we specified no longer (or never really) resonated with our customers. Maybe the signs were there but we’ve been busy fulfilling a plan. The tragic insight is that a team can do great work, deliver the plan on time, and meet the budget, only to find that the output produced does not make a difference at all. In that sense, they succeeded at the plan, but failed the customer.
Choose Your Game
The silent down-spiral begins here, but the root of the issue is deeper. This isn't to say that making a plan is a bad thing. On the contrary, a great plan disambiguates options and focuses a team's attention on the most valuable next goal. The critical question isn't if you should plan, but how you should plan based on the game your organization is designed to win.
Game 1: The Delivery Game. In this game of predictability, the requirements are fixed. The goal is to deliver a pre-defined scope on time and on budget. Think of building a bridge from a perfect blueprint: success is finishing the bridge. Whether anyone actually uses it is irrelevant to winning the game. This is the world of fixed price contracts and waterfall plans.
Game 2: The Impact Game. In this game of exploration, the goal is to solve an ambiguous problem. Success is measured by the positive change you create. The goal isn't "build a bridge," but maybe to "reduce traffic congestion" or “to get on the other side”. Building a bridge is just one possible solution, worth exploring. This is the game of product development and often T&M contracts.
The crisis begins when an organization claims to be playing the Impact Game but uses the rules, measurements, and rewards of the Delivery Game, and vice versa.
The Organizational Echo Chamber
What you reward is what you get. If you consistently celebrate launches, bonus teams for on-time delivery, and promote employees for plan fulfilment, you are creating a culture that will always prioritize output. As soon as the pattern of "more features, faster" is the perceived path to the top, that's the behavior you will get. At this point, no one thinks about impact anymore.
Your company can have the most inspiring values and the best aspirations, what the culture rewards is what matters.
“Tell me how you measure me, and I will tell you how I will behave.” - Eliyahu M. Goldratt
If your results are high output but low impact, it is because your organization has been optimized for the ability to deliver faster, not better. The first step to escaping the hamster wheel is a conscious leadership realization and decision about the game one needs to win.
In the next article, we will introduce a mental model - 'Critical Value Chain' - model for measuring and leading in the Impact Game.