Connect work directly to measurable outcomes
Move from shipping features to creating measurable business impact
Most teams measure success by launch dates, not impact.
They ship features and move on without understanding what happened.
They define success by deliverables rather than outcomes.
Once something ships, they rarely revisit results.
Breakthrough leaders connect every initiative to measurable business outcomes. They know exactly what impact their work created. They share learnings that influence the entire organization.
Build learning systems that validate breakthrough concepts through market feedback. Move beyond output metrics to outcome measurement and business impact.
Moving from activity metrics to impact measurement. Building systems that connect team work to company-level business outcomes and strategic priorities.
Use these questions to assess your current state and identify opportunities for growth:
What's the clearest evidence your team created real impact?
What metric matters most but isn't currently measured?
How do you share outcomes to influence others?
This skill develops through three levels of mastery: low (incremental), medium (emerging), and high (breakthrough). Below are the common patterns leaders experience at each stage:
You deliver consistently but lack visibility into outcomes.
Without evidence of impact, influence stays limited.
The next opportunity is connecting effort to measurable results.
You are linking actions to outcomes and reviewing learnings occasionally.
The next step is building a learning engine where measurement drives smarter bets.
You measure what matters.
Results are quantified and stories of impact influence strategy.
Your metrics connect your team's work directly to business value and organizational success.
Picture this scene: And yet… You’re staring at your dashboard, wondering if any of this actually moved the needle on breakthrough impact. When I created a new category in scholarly metrics at Plum Analytics, we faced a measurement problem most product leaders never encounter: How do you track progress toward something that’s never existed before? […]
Leadership where you least expect it This issue I wanted to explore is how we often become leaders when we least expect it. I start off with my coming-of-age story of being ripped from the keyboard and asked to lead for the first time. I also wanted to talk a bit about the areas in […]
Making incremental progress towards a long-term goal often goes without notice. However, building a pattern of consistently communicating about progress can both motivate your team as well as give others visibility into your team's successes. These short-term wins can anchor the change you are trying to work towards. A Simple Example of Capturing Short-Term Wins […]
Take the full assessment to see how you score across all 9 breakthrough skills.