Could my purpose be the same that my outcome?

J

justodaverio15

0
Hello,
I am a newly GTD user. I'm from Argentina and I'm reading it in english. I'm a little stuck with the difference between purpose and outcome. I give you my example and I will appreciate you if you resolve it better. I manage a blog and I have a webinar there being promoted. I want to have about 10 people per week who ask for instruction to listen to the webinar. So the project is to "change the design of my blog", my purpose is to achieve that about a 5% from the people who visit my blog, asks for instructions. In my principles I just put some things like check my blog everyday, write something, read how to improve etc. and when I came to outcomes, is the same as in the purpose: to reach a 5% of people who ask for instructions... I'm just stuck, thank you very much!
 
The successful outcome would be "my blog has a new design".

However, it sounds more like the true successful outcome is: "improved conversion rate of my blog by 5%". So, if we start with that outcome, the purpose of the project would be somthing else, the why of the equation. Maybe: "make the webinar economically viable" or whatever is behind your numbers of "10 people per week".

Having said all this, I am a little bit reluctant to let you go just yet. You seem to set yourself up for failure. I could be wrong though. But. Somewhere DA said to not set up games you can loose. The thing is, what if you convert 12 visitors per week? Ho valuable are these fixed-numbers goals really?

Back to your concrete case. You want to have 10 new subs per week, for how long? Your business is not a static thing like that. Over the years your webinar will loose or gain value, normally loose. You have to better plan the whole life-cycle of your product, I guess. And not be stuck in a short-sighted numbers game. IMHO, of course.
 
I second that advice. And I am also quite skeptical to artificial numbers (you may need such guesstimates for planning purposes sometimes; but they need to be taken with a large grain of salt).

As for outcomes etc I might add an almost "ridiculously clear" example of not setting yourself up for losing: Compare "Participate in the Lotto" with "Win the Lotto jackpot". Of course you are hoping for the latter, but the former is the farthest you can "guarantee". Same with the blog. You can get it up, revamp it, market it, improve the marketing and the options ... but the final decision to actually convert is somone else's; out of your hands.
 
I think that your reply is perfect, thank you, thank you very much, I could not be better reading it. However, there are some things that I want to discuss if you can and have time.
First, it doesn't matter how much visitors I could have because the in the plan I made, the next process is that a 5% of people has to ask for instructions for webinar. In fact I have an average of 800 visitors to my page, so in my plan the stage of bringing people I think is complete (through social media).
However, as only 1 or 2 people asks for instructions for connecting webinar, I create the project (thanks GTD) to get a better design of my blog, so that people just ask for them.
The main goal is hat 1 person buy the product per webinar. For example: 800 people visited my page, 40 people asks for instructions; a 20% of this number attend the webinar, that's 8; and then, 1 person buy the product. That's my set goal and this webinar are held about three times a week. This plan is in my reference material, just for seeing it and compare my statistics.
So, visitors are a good point of the plan, the problem is in the people who ask for instructions. That's "why" I want to change the design of blog. That's why I said that my purpose is "to reach about a 5% of my visitors, to be new subs". And the 10 new subscription per month is an exaple number, the real number would be that the 5 % of the visitors of my blog really become subs; and about time, I want to maintain that percetage as much as I can. I mean, once I get that number of new subs weekly, the design of my blog would be good and I just have to maintain that design and upload that kind of content that let me reach that number of new subs. What do you think? Maybe the project have to be rename to "reach about a 5% of my visitors, to be new subs" and the purpose could be "to advance in the plan I've made" and so no. The outcome could be "my blog has a new design" and brainstorm as many ideas. Maybe...

Sorry for my language, I hope that you could understand me, and I so so so enthusiastic about using GTD, it's just that I'm stuck with this project, hope you could help me!
 
Folke said:
I second that advice. And I am also quite skeptical to artificial numbers (you may need such guesstimates for planning purposes sometimes; but they need to be taken with a large grain of salt).

As for outcomes etc I might add an almost "ridiculously clear" example of not setting yourself up for losing: Compare "Participate in the Lotto" with "Win the Lotto jackpot". Of course you are hoping for the latter, but the former is the farthest you can "guarantee". Same with the blog. You can get it up, revamp it, market it, improve the marketing and the options ... but the final decision to actually convert is somone else's; out of your hands.
Click to expand...
Ahh, that's the point, than you. I have to revise it. I have sent all the information of my project upthere, I mean that's my boos plan, and he said that I should get better my blog design. And I just want to use GTD with this project of better performing my blog desing. Anyway, this help me a lot, because my outcome is "Win the Lottery" really, also the goal itself. To buy the product or not, it's out of my hands... Maybe my boss is just wrong. Is it something in GTd to create that plan? And how should my project in GTD being in this conditions? What should be "change desing of project"? In fact, I think is a project, I'm just wonder about it now.
 
Thank you for your kind words!

To buy the product or not, it's out of my hands... Maybe my boss is just wrong.
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Judging from what you write, your boss sounds dangerously clueless. But I could be wrong, since I don't have the details.

First, let me tell you this: a design does not do much about conversion. It does some, but what is much more important is the copy, you know, the text on the page.

Second, your numbers sound odd. If you have traffic that converts with 5% than I want to see what you did to get that sort of traffic. You must have hit a goldmine on accident. The whole scenario sounds incomplete to me.

If you want, you can contact me privately and we can see if we can work something out in terms of "marketing."

GTD, well it sounds like you have a marketing plan. A document where all these numbers are coming from. This document is just reference. The thing itself could be a 20,000 ft Area of Responsibility called "Markting Plan". And then you create as much projects as you need to get all the necessary work done. Try to create small projects, at least at the beginning of your GTD.

As far as I can tell your current project really is just "implement new blog design fast enough for boss to be happy". Everything else is outside of your control.

Chances are, your boss doesn't tell you the whole picture. Which is not to be meant to criticize either you or your boss. But my impression is you should let your boss do his job, you focus on your job.
 
To repeat what I think Cpu_Modern was getting at, I think you could set it up roughly as follows:

Goal: Establish a profitable webinar business

Area: When the goal has been firmly enough established you might want to demote it by one level, from goal to area, such that it then is just one of many areas in your business sphere of areas.

Project: Revamp blog to attract potential webinar participants.

Project: Prepare webinar infrastructure (equipment, content etc)

As for all the funnel calculations etc I think you can leave all that in the support material for your reference. It might affect how expensive cloud services etc you need to sign up for, but otherwise it has very little influence on the direct execution of the projects.
 
I feel that there is may be an issue between the immediate purpose and the final outcome.

Your immediate purpose is to improve your site in a way that increases your conversion rate. (I hope that's the right term; it's a convenient one so I'm going to use it. :))

And that is to support your goal of increasing your conversion rate to five percent.

But is that really the final goal? Or is the final goal just to increase profit?

If you need to demonstrate a five percent conversion rate for some specific reason--say, you want it on your resume for a job, or a company won't partner with you unless you have that rate--OK, that's a goal.

But if the goal is just to increase profit, then I think that narrowing your focus to conversion rate, and then narrowing that focus to increasing conversion through the site design, may be premature.

If you could get four times as many sales, would it really bother you that that happened through getting ten times as many visitors? If you could double the profit per sale, would it really bother you that you got that profit from a 2.5 percent conversion rate instead of a five percent conversion rate?
 
Gardener said:
I feel that there is may be an issue between the immediate purpose and the final outcome.

Your immediate purpose is to improve your site in a way that increases your conversion rate. (I hope that's the right term; it's a convenient one so I'm going to use it. :))

And that is to support your goal of increasing your conversion rate to five percent.

But is that really the final goal? Or is the final goal just to increase profit?

If you need to demonstrate a five percent conversion rate for some specific reason--say, you want it on your resume for a job, or a company won't partner with you unless you have that rate--OK, that's a goal.

But if the goal is just to increase profit, then I think that narrowing your focus to conversion rate, and then narrowing that focus to increasing conversion through the site design, may be premature.

If you could get four times as many sales, would it really bother you that that happened through getting ten times as many visitors? If you could double the profit per sale, would it really bother you that you got that profit from a 2.5 percent conversion rate instead of a five percent conversion rate?
Click to expand...

Yes, the next phase of the plan is that some people connect to the webinars. I mean, the plan was made accepting the mistakes that even if people see your blog, maybe not everyone are insterested in the product. So 5% is an estimation of whom ask for instructions for connecting webinars, understand? Then, among them just a little number of people will connect to webinar, got it?. And after that, 1 people buy the real product, THAT is the final goal.
Of course, what you've said is really really true. I mean, the attachment to a "number" is ambiguous if the outcome (1 person- or as you say 4- finally buy the product) is succesfull.
Anyway, I'm loosing a part. I didn't know about goals and all that. I'm reading the book that is in this page, and I didn't understand the example of my project according to the 5 phases of Natural planning model. I'm also reading the document about applying GTD into gmail (I have a lot work from it-in fact, what do you do with that emails that google send letting you know that some people shared an element to you? do you store in a reference folder? Because this item is already stored in the drive as a reference...) so, I sent this question. But, if I would know about goals, and all the stuff, it could be easier to handle with this project. Where is that? 50.000 feet, etc.?
 
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