Google’s OKR method and Work.com

Five fixes to get them playing nicely together 

I love working at my current organisation. There are so many things which they have got right. One is the focus on clea objectives and key results — they happen to use work.com to support scaling of the system.

Work.com claim that it is “inspired” by Google’s Objective Key Results (OKR) model that in turn is adapted from Intel. To learn more I recently watched a great 1hr youtube video that described exactly how it worked at Google.

I was more than a little shocked to find out that using Work.com, is, in many ways counterproductive to their original intent. In fact, it breaks some fundamental principles that they articulate.

So, on the off-chance that the work.com are reading my posts, I thought I’d give them some helpful hints that would make the application more consistent with Google’s OKR method.

1. Encourage bottom up objective setting

In Google approximately 50% of the objectives actually come from the individual upwards. They are negotiated with their manager and do not necessarily always align with the top-down objectives.

In many ways, individuals are left to figure out exactly how they should support their top-down objectives.

In Work.com it seems the intent is to support top-down goals. It is focused on cascading from the top. This is contrary to the “inspiration” and “self initiative” that led to Gmail being born at Google.

2. Shift to key results scores rather than “task” progress

In work.com a key result is treated as a task and progress is measured as % complete by a specific due date. It almost seems like Microsoft project by other means.

For Google a key result is a means to the objective and the score is is almost a proxy for how successful the method was that was used to achieve the objective. A score is between 0 and 1. For google getting 0.7 is good.

In work.com if you marked down 80% you are shown as as “behind” if the due date has passed. You aim for 100%. There is not the same concept of a objective finishing.

3. Separate objective setting from performance evaluations

Google goes to a significant length to stress their OKR system is not about performance evaluation, promotions and bonuses. In fact they appear to believe, co-mingling it with performance management would lead to counter-productive outcomes.

For Google OKR is about helping their staff gather data on what is and isn’t working in their day to day activities — much like they run their web properties. They have to be free to set aspirational objectives and fail without being penalised.

In Google a 0.4 on an objective does not necessarily mean a bad performance appraisal — in fact it may be a valuable data was gained by the firm and benefit the individual.

4. Encourage objectives that are intentionally uncomfortable

Whenever goals are tied to performance appraisals and 100% is the goal, staff will quite fairly ensure that their goals are conservative and achievable.

At Google an objective is meant to be quite uncomfortable. It is meant to inspire. However, if you don’t achieve the objective you don’t necessarily get a whack — but you do need to explain what you learnt and how you are going to adapt in the next quarter.

Key results are quantifiable stepping stones that are intended to have an impact towards meeting the objective. These should be a best guess hypothesis on realistic ways to get to the aspirational objective.

5. Get rid of the noisy social gamification

Google don’t publicly share the software and specific process they use for their OCR method. They apparently see it as a competitive advantage.

Work.com wraps their goal setting and key results in enterprise gamification and chat features that leverage Salesforce.com chatter technology. Whilst kudos, thanks and congratulations are nice — they are not the hard data that drove Google’s adoption of the OKR method.

If work.com is really interested in supporting OKR they would focus more on sharing data and the lessons behind the scores that staff were assigning themselves. Leave the thanks, congratulations and kudos to yammer and all the other social tools that companies have their choice of these days.