How to commit to an outcome and have it measured

An outcome is what you expect a decision to produce, committed in advance and measured when the time comes. It is what turns a decision log into a track record.

Why commit in advance?

Because judging a decision afterwards is almost worthless. Everybody can construct a story in which what happened is what they expected.

Writing down "this order should give us eight weeks of cover through the launch and sell 70% of it by the end of October" before the order ships is a real test. Reading the result later is a fact rather than a memory.

That is the whole discipline. It is uncomfortable, which is why it works.

How do you attach one?

From your own decision, attach an outcome to it. You can also detach one.

Attaching is limited to the person who wrote the decision, since a commitment somebody else made on your behalf is not a commitment.

Outcomes attach to purchase orders today, which is why the track record is effectively a record of purchasing calls.

What gets measured?

The commitment, against what actually happened, when the date arrives. Tideswell does the measuring on a schedule rather than waiting for somebody to remember.

The result is a verdict: met, missed, pending, couldn't measure, or cancelled.

What does "couldn't measure" mean?

That the data needed to judge it was not there, so no verdict was possible.

It is deliberately not counted as a miss. A verdict nobody could compute says something about your records rather than about the decision, and scoring it as a failure would make the track record meaningless.

That is the same rule you meet everywhere in Tideswell: a blank means "could not read", and it is never quietly turned into a zero.

What is a hit rate?

Met divided by closed, shown on the track record.

When nothing could be judged it reads as a dash rather than 0%, for the reason above.

Read it alongside the count. A hit rate over four closed commitments is an anecdote, and one over forty is a pattern.

What can you group a track record by?

Supplier, person or team, showing how many commitments closed, how many were met, missed or could not be measured, and the hit rate.

Each answers something different.

By supplier tells you whose orders keep working out, which is a different question from who delivers on time, per How to record new terms and check a delivery record.

By person tells you whose calls to trust on a close decision. Use it gently: it is a learning tool rather than a performance review, and the sample sizes are small.

By team rolls it up. Somebody who belongs to two departments counts in both rows, and the screen says so rather than hiding it.

Does a met outcome mean the decision caused it?

No, and Tideswell will not say it did.

It reports what was decided and what was measured side by side and refuses to join them. A drop that sold through in a warm October is not proof the buyer was right.

What it gives you is the pair of facts. The judgement is still yours, and having the pair is what most brands have never had at all.

Where do you read them all?

The Track record tab beside the decision log. See How to read the decision log and check a track record.