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Last week I gave you a primer on OKR’s. That is, if you remember last week. The great blur of 2020. It’s officially a phenomenon.
This week I will offer a few tips and tricks to making OKR’s (Objectives and Key Results) work for you: whether personally or professionally. Or, for bonus points, both.
Most people that I have gone through the process with are immediately fooled by it’s apparent simplicity. It’s not as simple as it looks, though the output will look exceedingly obvious. OKR’s are the product of stripping back the busyness and complexity of your business. When you are done, there will be a few simple and radiant goals you know you MUST achieve. Rather than the fifty, minimum, things you are currently hyperventilating over achieving.
As Winston Churchill (probably) famously said "If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter." Simplicity takes time. And thoughtfulness.
The most powerful way to determine your business OKR’s is to have your executive team involved in crafting them. For starters, this is an excellent team activity and will result in excellent alignment of focus. It will also allow you to bring the team onboard early to craft goals that eventually they will need to own. This is the right approach, just know it will take more time: for the team to grasp the concept and for you to collectively wrangle the vision. It’s worth it - it’s just a little maddening. So go into these sessions calmly, knowing it will not be a one-and-done exercise.
I advise that all exec’s read John Doerr’s book, Measure What Matters. I like having a session just on the book alone. Bookclub style. It will allow your team to get on the same page before you dive in.
If you are doing them personally, I suggest you start by writing out the things you want from your life. Then try to think of the 3 statements that best describe your ultimate state. Likely it’s not about fitting the skinny jeans, per se, and it’s more about feeling great in your body. As someone that struggles with inflammation this has been a learning for me. I might fit the jeans but I don’t always feel good in them. So this question forces you to think a little bigger about what you really want. The same advice applies to your business. It is likely not about the financial goal. We typically feel way more excited about market share, repeat customers and being seen as innovators in our domain. All those things will lead to profitability. Be careful with what you think you need to measure!
Other great pieces of advice are:
OKR’s, once agreed, become a social contract. I love this observation. Social contract across a team and also a contract with yourself. The 30 day personal reviews of OKR’s and the 90 day group reviews add a huge power up to this. Delivering transparency and also - more important to me - calibration as you learn what is driving you to your objectives and what is not!
OKR’s are NOT performance measures. OKR’s are stretch goals, moonshots. You are striving to get further than you think possible with OKR’s. This is how you will eventually get to market leadership. They critically rely on a level of “acceptable failure” and inherent risk. If this is how you determine bonus and incentive awards at the end of the year, you will bake conservatism into your organization. I could write a whole post on this, let me know if you want to know more.
One of my favorite pieces of feedback was from a team that assess their weekly tasks against whether their planned activities are in line with their OKR’s. This is genius. Half because it codifies your OKR goals through repetition but also because this follows ALL the rules around focus. Cal Newport would give this a thumbs up.
“Process is more important than Outcomes”. Also genius. The process will lead to the outcomes. This is smart, smart, smart. Very Atomic Habits!