How to use outcomes to avoid scope creep
Your key outcome is a decision filter.
Have you ever led a big project and felt overwhelmed by additional requests?
A “quick” one-pager for a potential donor
A small, customized deliverable for an influential partner
Additional components to an event you’re already hosting
The people making these requests usually mean well. But the immediate consequence of taking on every additional request is that you’re slowly confusing everyone and draining their energy as your team navigates new goals while feeling under-resourced.
And in the long term, this is how scope creep harms your work. It steals focus from the impact you promised your community. It also weakens your accountability to protect your staff from burnout.
Key outcomes are decision filters
We’ve talked about defining key outcomes before. Key outcomes aren’t just for reporting. Your key outcome is your decision filter. When a new request comes in, ask: How does this get us closer to hitting our key outcome? If the connection is not crystal clear, pass.
Practice using your key outcome to filter scope creep
Imagine you run a program that teaches high school students college readiness. Your key outcome: Raise students’ confidence to navigate college by 30% by the end of the program.
Their biggest knowledge gaps are financial aid, choosing a major, and getting internships. You designed sessions around those topics. A survey you conducted shows that most students will not live on campus.
You get a Slack message from your executive director (or Teams, if that’s your thing):
“Our contact at the Community Education Foundation asked if we cover dorm life in the program. They said they see a lot of students struggle in the dorms the first year and think this could be valuable for our students. They said they want to try to get us funding for next year. Could we add an event on dorm living — maybe bring in alumni for a panel? Can you fit it in?”
It’s a well-intentioned request. But you just made a huge pivot to accommodate the loss of a federal grant you were counting on this year. Three people were laid off. No one got raises this year. Morale is bad. Adding an event that doesn’t match this cohort’s needs would put more pressure on your team. And it’s not clear how serious this person is about supporting your work.
Take a breath, and follow these three steps.
Re-center your key outcome.
Your target is a 30% confidence boost on navigating financial and professional issues, not dorm life.
Re-up the data.
Remind your executive director that this year’s students said their top needs are financial aid, degree planning, and internships. Ask your executive director to help you understand how this request will advance your key outcome. If you’re still not convinced, proceed to the next step.
Offer a clear, respectful “no,” and make it clear what would be required to meet this request.
“Thank you for this request. Our student survey this year showed that very few students planned on living on campus. Since this topic is not of interest to most of our students and will not immediately affect our key outcome, I recommend we pass on a dorm-life event this cycle. If you’d like us to add it, we need flexibility on the timeline by two months, an additional $5,000 event budget, and 160 additional hours in staff capacity.
We are happy to revisit this topic for next year’s programming if dorming is a top interest.”
Why this matters
Using outcomes to say “no” respects your staff’s time. It also sharpens your program’s focus and keeps you accountable to the impact you promised.
Share this with a colleague who is being drained by too many requests, and remind them that doing right by your community means saying no.
Would you like a short tool to help your team define key outcomes and apply this filter? Reply ‘YES’ if so.
-Dr. Danielle Lemi, PhD
Founder & Principal of Kapwa Sol Insights