Output is what the scrum team produced. Features, releases, story points, items moved to Done. Outcome is what changed for a user or for the organisation as a result. The two are related but not proportional, and the gap between them is where most product effort disappears.
The relationship
Output is necessary and not sufficient. Nothing changes without something being built, and plenty gets built without anything changing. Output is entirely under the team's control, which is exactly why it is the tempting thing to measure. Outcome depends on people outside the team deciding to behave differently, which is why it is the honest thing to measure.
A useful chain runs output, then adoption, then behaviour change, then business result. Each arrow can fail. Reporting only on the first link tells you the team was busy.
Three actions that increase outcome while reducing output
Order by the outcome, then cut. For each item near the top, name the behaviour it is supposed to change. Then find the smallest version that could plausibly change it. Most items shrink considerably under that question, and some disappear.
Say no in the open. A backlog that only ever grows is a backlog nobody is deciding about. Removing items that no longer serve the Product Goal is a product owner action with an immediate effect on outcome per unit of output, because it stops work being spread across candidates that were never going to matter.
Validate before building rather than after. The cheapest feature is the one discovery showed nobody wanted. Moving evidence earlier reduces output directly.
Release smaller and watch. Each release that goes out and gets observed produces information that shortens the next one. Batching six months of work removes every opportunity to learn in between.
What to do about being measured on output
Most organisations count output because it is countable. The move that works is not to refuse the count but to attach the outcome to it. Report the feature and the behaviour it changed side by side, every time. After a few cycles the conversation moves on its own, because the cases where the first number moved and the second did not become impossible to ignore.