OKRs at a Not-For-Profit

I’ve previously written about why I like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and how they can be used to bring about Organisational Alignment when Establishing a Product Culture. I also spoke with There Be Giants, on the world’s first OKR podcast, about some of my lessons and tips when implementing them for the first time. Today, I wanted to go a bit deeper on the topic of implementing OKRs at a not-for-profit, specifically one that influences and advocates for change.

At my current organisation, Which?, we’re the UK’s consumer champion. Much of what we do is direct consumer impact; building products and services that consumers can interact with to solve very real world problems, such as providing reviews of kitchen appliances or seeking compensation for faulty goods. We also work with businesses to improve wider industry, supporting them through an endorsement scheme when they do a good job.

A really big part of what we do, though, is work to enact systemic change by influencing the government, policymakers, regulators and businesses, particularly when consumers are experiencing poor outcomes across a market — for example, paying more than they should have to, or being put at risk by unsafe products.

Working with OKRs in a not-for-profit influencing and advocacy space.

This is where things start to get a little tricker in relation to OKRs and is one nut the team and I definitely haven’t quite cracked… yet.

The challenge with writing OKRs in this arena is that many of the objectives require complex long-term change. Introducing a new law, for example, can take several years of lobbying before it is passed. The result is also ultimately beyond the organisation’s control; there is an external dependency to achieving it. This immediately breaks two of our rules for what a good OKR would ordinarily look like.

In order to create an organisation that is aligned around one framework, as it stands today, we accept that we’re going to break a few of our own rules. This is one of the things I like about OKRs though, they can be adapted, to a certain extent, to your own business or framework to ensure the best outcome for you. In our Advocacy team we set more key results than anywhere else. Many of them are binary lagging indicators so to try and remain on top of incremental change we make them nice and small, such as “5 businesses publicly commit to adopting our best practice guide”.

I’ve always really enjoyed the quote “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.” by Harry Day, a First World War fighter pilot. There is part of me that would like to massage our influencing and advocacy OKRs into a shape that’s closer to what we’re doing elsewhere in the organisation, though I have to question if that’s genuinely necessary. Our impact work is flying, making positive change on behalf of UK consumers in a material and trackable way — just check out our external impact report and our policy & reports website for more information. So maybe this is one of those rare occasions where it’s ok that everything doesn’t line up perfectly or quite follow the rules?

As an organisation we’re continually learning. Maybe you’ve found a better way to approach this space and if so I’d love to hear from you! So do comment or get in touch on LinkedIn.

If you want to read more of my thoughts, you can check out my series of leadership articles, OKR articles and squad articles.

All the thoughts are my own.