How OKR Enables Teams to Self-Manage

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Christina Wodtke, an author, professor, and speaker who teaches techniques to create high performing teams, once outlined the three jobs of Product Management in her writing:

Image credit: Christina Wodtke

We found the three jobs above do not exclusively belong to Product Management. We believe they are applicable to other functions as well. Often these jobs come as a package when someone reached a managerial position in an organization; as a manager, team leader, or all the way up to C-level executive.

The three jobs can be explained as follows:

1. Business owner: understanding the consumers (internal and external), tracking the competition, breaking new grounds to find improvements in the current business process and/or identify new growth drivers.
2. Vision holder: reminding everyone why we’re doing what we’re doing, giving direction as to where we’re going and why it matters.
3. Team coordinator: providing clarity in terms of who’s doing what, building collective effort to reach the team goal, which in turn should support the company objective. The goal is to develop self-managed teams.

This balancing act is not easy. Based on our observations, the last job — team coordinator — can quickly become a quicksand, if not done properly.

One team lead opened up about her struggle with us recently. She was on the verge of giving up because she had put extra work and long hours to manage her team, but nothing seemed to be working. If anything, it was getting worse because she was close to burnout and she unintentionally neglected her other equally important responsibilities, such as strategic planning. Forget about balancing the three jobs; for her, surviving this one would already be a win!

Her story was not unique. We’ve heard a few similar ones.

Now, how do we prevent cases like that from happening? What is the one necessity to ensure teams can self-manage?

We believe communication can be the one necessity to help teams practice to self-manage.

“Communication helps employees to perform their jobs and responsibilities. It serves as a foundation for planning. All the essential information must be communicated to the managers who in-turn must communicate the plans so as to implement them. Organizing also requires effective communication with others about their job task. Similarly leaders as managers must communicate effectively with their subordinates so as to achieve the team goals.”
― Management Study Guide

Communication is often cited as one of, if not the most important pillar in an organization. As businesses rely on cross-company collaboration, they are placing heavier emphasis on interpersonal communication. One article said that “workplace communication encourages employees to experience an increase in morale, productivity and commitment if they are able to communicate up and down the communication chain in an organization”.

Communication, as it turns out, is the no.1 job skill lacking in today’s workforce — not software engineering — according to the report by LinkedIn.

Now, the million-dollar question is: how do we create and/or facilitate effective communication, one that helps to develop self-managed teams?

From our observation coaching many teams adopting OKR, we’ve seen how OKR really helps that creation or facilitation.

OKR as a Communication Channel

A team member that is participating in OKR is actually doing communication: internally and externally.

1. Internal communication or the communication that occurs within the team. During an OKR session, in which the team discuss and set their priorities for the week, she is communicating to her team what she wants to achieve for a certain period of time. This is done both verbally (because she needs to speak up and explain her OKR) and in writing (her OKR needs to be written down).
2. External communication. By writing down her OKR and making it accessible by anyone, she is communicating outside her immediate team; be it lateral (across teams), upward (to higher levels), or downward (to lower levels). This is done in writing, because once she writes down her OKR, it should be kept in a place that is accessible by everyone in the company. Remember, OKR will only work when there is transparency. This is how OKR helps everyone to work towards the same goal.

Types of communication in an organization.

What is the common thread between the 2 points above?

It is the ability to write.

The ability to write OKR well is essential because it’s your medium to communicate in the company. Your words might be limited to your team only, but your writing is not. Thus, it’s advisable to invest your time to learn how to write OKR properly. The more specific and concise your writing is, the better. You’ll never know when your CEO might be reading your OKR.

How OKR Enables Teams to Self-Manage

To support your team to self-manage via OKR, these 3 things must be present:

1. The very first element of OKR is the Objective. This is what must be accomplished. In other words, you are communicating your priority to the team. Your priority must support the team’s priority.
2. The Key Results represent the how. This is how you’re going to accomplish the Objective. Well-written Key Results often show preparation and can be a reflection of how one plans.
3. The last part is the why. Why is it important for you to secure 5 meetings this week with FMCG clients? Why does it have to be this week? What impact does it potentially bring to our team OKR? The why represents the rationale. It’s as important as the what and the how, if not more so. Unlike the what and the how that must be written as part of OKR, the why is often communicated verbally during OKR sessions.

By understanding OKR is a communication channel to deliver the what, how, and why, OKR enables teams to self-manage by:

1. Ensuring alignment for all team members. The work that team members does must support the team to achieve their objectives. They help to move the needle.
2. Creating multidirectional transparency. You’re clear what is expected from you, and what you can expect from others including your manager and peers. This seeds collaboration.
3. Providing an alternative to the way of working where things are mostly driven from the top, no input from below. With OKR, you set your own Objectives and Key Results, which should align with the team Objectives. Your Key Results represent your voice, your input. They trickle upwards.

When done properly, OKR helps leaders to add more hours to focus on their roles as business owner and vision holder by developing self-managed teams to support the shared company objectives.

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Want to find out more . . .

Check out our website to find out why we set up Product Narrative.

You can read past editions of Shared Narrative here: #13, #14, #15, #16,#17, #18, #19, #20, #21, #22, #23, #24, #25, #26

Have a great week!

-The Product Narrative Team

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