Every week when we catch up as a group, our discussions keep coming back to a single, frustrating realisation: our public services are incredibly good at staying busy, but we are struggling to move the needle on the things that actually matter.
Whether it’s health inequality, the climate emergency, or the strength of our local economy, we seem to be stuck in a loop. We launch transformation programmes, we publish playbooks, and we tick off project milestones. On paper, everything looks like a success. But for people on the street, the experience rarely changes.
We’ve fallen into the trap of focusing on outputs rather than outcomes.
The illusion of progress
An output is easy to measure. Did we build the app? Did we publish the strategy? Did we launch the portal? These are vanity metrics. They make for excellent announcements because they provide an illusion of control and progress. You can point at a thing and say: Look, we did it.
But an output is just a means to an end.
Consider the recent announcement that Welsh Government funding has delivered nearly 100,000 extra NHS appointments. On a spreadsheet, 100,000 appointments looks like a system at peak performance. But an appointment is an output - it is an activity.
If those 100,000 appointments don’t lead to more people being diagnosed earlier, receiving treatment faster, or ultimately living longer, healthier lives (the outcomes), then we haven’t improved health. We’ve just become very efficient at managing a queue.
We celebrate the volume of work and forget to check if the work actually solved the problem.
Why we default to outputs
This isn’t happening because of a lack of talent or ambition; it’s because our systems are designed for it:
- The funding cycle: Most public sector funding is tied to a “project” with a start and end date. It is much easier to get a budget signed off for “100,000 extra appointments” than it is for “increasing healthy life expectancy.” One is a thing you can buy; the other is a goal you have to work toward.
- Trust: Focusing on outputs allows leaders to manage via a checklist. Trusting a team to pursue an outcome requires a level of comfort with uncertainty that our current governance models often don’t allow.
- Staying busy: In a complex environment, staying busy is often used as a shield against criticism. We have become too focused on producing the things - shipping guidance documents, playbooks and knowledge hubs into a vacuum.
In Wales, we are particularly fond of discussion as a proxy for delivery. We default to creating new boards, advisory groups, and committees. We feel like we’re making progress because the group has met, the minutes have been published, and the ‘right’ people were in the room.
But a committee is just another output. If the board meets for a year but the underlying social or economic problem doesn’t change, then the progress was an illusion.
We celebrate the launch, the team is disbanded, the funding dries up, and we leave behind “digital ruins” - tools that no longer meet the needs of a changing world because no one was ever tasked with the outcome of making people’s lives easier.
A new definition of success
If we want real change, we have to change how we set up, describe, and prioritise our work. If we aren’t working toward outcomes, we’re just spending money on stuff without knowing if it works.
Wales doesn’t need more outputs, more things or more committees. We need a public sector that is empowered to solve problems. We need to stop measuring success by how much we’ve spent or delivered and start measuring it by the actual difference we’ve made to the lives of the people of Wales.
The project model is broken. It’s time to start focusing on the results.