Mechanisms Exist to Support Outcomes
Frameworks and processes are internal costs. Outcomes create external value. This essay reframes mechanisms as servants of clarity, not substitutes for it.
Editor’s Note: This essay articulates a central Cultivated principle: mechanisms are internal and costly, outcomes are external and valuable. It situates process, frameworks, and operating models as servants of purpose and value — not ends in themselves.
Mechanisms Exist to Support Outcomes
We are drawn to mechanisms.
Frameworks. Tools.
Methods. Routines.
Processes. Systems.
We copy the routines of writers, the protocols of athletes, the ceremonies of high-performing teams.
We argue about agile versus waterfall, OKRs versus KPIs, centralisation versus decentralisation.
Mechanisms feel tangible.
Outcomes feel abstract.
But mechanisms are not the point.
In business, outcomes are external.
Customers paying for something.
Value realised outside the organisation.
Mechanisms are internal.
They are ways of organising effort, attention, and decision-making.
They are cost.
This distinction matters more than most leaders admit.
Myself, and partners, spend much of our work helping organisations clarify outcomes before they debate mechanisms.
Not because mechanisms are unimportant
— but because mechanisms without outcomes are expensive window dressing.
The trap is simple:
people often do not know what they are trying to achieve.
They cannot trace their work to external value. So discussions spiral into frameworks, operating models, and governance. Meetings proliferate. Slides multiply. Opinions harden.
Every mechanism debate adds cost when outcomes remain unclear.
Mechanisms exist to support outcomes. Not the other way around.
Decide what matters.
Trace the value outside the organisation.
Name the obstacles.
Only then do mechanisms earn their place.
This is where consultants often stumble too.
They bring a preferred way of working before understanding what a client is trying to achieve. The result is sometimes elegance without relevance, or busy work with more cost.
Clarity precedes method.
In daily work, the same principle applies.
Notice how much energy goes into discussing how rather than why and to what end.
Notice how often choices remain open in the name of optionality, when decisions require closure.
A decision is not a menu.
Clarity comes from narrowing.
Outcomes first.
Mechanisms second.
Learning always.
This order is not fashionable, but it is foundational.
This piece forms part of Cultivated’s wider body of work on how ideas become valuable, and how better work is built.
To explore further:
→ Library — a curated collection of long-form essays
→ Ideas — developing thoughts and shorter writing
→ Learn — practical guides and tools from across the work
→ Work with us — thoughtful partnership for teams and organisations
