What our clients say about Product Narrative
Creating values based on what we believe in is hard.
We’re fortunate if we had that chance.
Delivering those values to people around us (family, friends, or clients) is even harder.
We’re fortunate if we had that chance.
Receiving Thanks from those individuals because of the values we delivered is priceless.
We’re fortunate if we had that chance.
Product Narrative is fortunate to have those chances.
Below are a few testimonials — from a CEO to an intern — kindly given to Product Narrative for delivering OKR mentoring and coaching.
1. Erwin Tanudjaja, CEO, Midtrans / GOJEK
(source: LinkedIn recommendation, 2019)
As a tech startup, Midtrans has been and will always be a company who values leadership and believes in the process. It was our pleasure and honor to work closely with Product Narrative as our (OKR — Objectives and Key Results) coach.
I believe, we are all personally touched by the care and empathy given by Product Narrative team, starting from those real-time feedbacks and practice delegation; to individual contributors to exercise outcome-based planning (instead of task-based) and managed prioritization.
Mulyadi’s deep knowledge background — including throughout his previous multiple senior management roles has really proven to be the “sparks of joy”, plus the delivered materials were highly practical and authentic as well.
I would highly recommend Product Narrative to any organization which is ready to unlock the benefits of adopting OKR, including to our internal group companies within GO-JEK.
2. Hadikusuma Wahab, SVP of Product Management, Vidio
(sent via Telegram, personal, 2020)
… After using OKR for less than 3 months, I sent much fewer Telegram messages to remind my team about our weekly priorities.
I feel a real sense of delegation. And my team feels more ownership because they came up with their own Key Results every week. They no longer tell me about their to-do list, but it’s about the results they’d expect to deliver. And they align those KRs with other teammates, not only to me.
3. Shirley Suhenda, CEO and Coach (ICF PCC), Principia Learning Labs
(source: LinkedIn recommendation, 2019)
Product Narrative offers a unique perspective in training and coaching Principia Learning Lab team to adopt OKR. The fact that they made themselves present and directly guide my team during OKR Setup and Review sessions, every week for 12 weeks, has allowed a swift understanding and application of the OKR concept.
The first iteration of OKR adoption in Principia lead my team to achieve 73% of the targeted goals.
Principia is a long-time practitioner of 4DX since 2010. Two (2) particular items stood out during our adaptation of OKR, contrasted to 4DX. First is the detailing — in writing — about the “how to” achieve our weekly goals. This detailing was done by each participant of the weekly cadence meeting. This had, in turn, facilitated useful conversations between the team members. Everybody understood exactly the goals (Objectives) and outcomes (Key Results) each person committed to: each week, including the past weeks.
Second, OKR requires my team to think about the ‘why’ behind their weekly commitment. In a way, this encouraged my team to reflect on whether what they’re doing is really important. This reflection exercise didn’t come easy at first; I’d even say my team wasn’t comfortable initially. But, the consistent nudge from Product Narrative allowed them to self-discover the importance of this practice.
Product Narrative’s unique approach that supports self-discovery for the participants resembles an important skill a good coach must have. I know this because I am a coaching practitioner too.
Thank you Product Narrative team!
4. Brandon Anthony, Marketing Intern, Midtrans / GOJEK
(sent via WA, personal, 2020)
… I just wanted to say that I truly enjoyed the weekly OKR meetings we had since last September [2019]; I definitely drew a lot of valuable lessons and insights from both you [Mulyadi] and Ignas that I’m sure will shortly pay off moving forward in my career.
5. Product Manager, financial technology company (stealth)
(sent via Slack, company-wide channel, 2020)
I initially was not sure I’d subscribe to OKR.
People who have been working together with me for a while also know that I am not a big fan of spending considerable time to do planning and orchestrate the communication around it.
It sounded like a losing investment of my already limited time.
However, after leading 3 OKR cadences with my team (aka squad), which consists of a large number of people from multiple disciplines, I started to witness real benefits starting to emerge.
I am much more in the know (thus, appreciative) of what each of my squad member is committed in achieving*. Including if they needed my help.
*This is very different from tracking their daily to-do items, which I believe is not useful for any parties involved.
My squad members can now coordinate better among themselves — without much of my involvement — because each of their key results is openly shared and discussed regularly, every 2 weeks. This OKR transparent nature sends a clear signal about accountability.
In addition, the amount of time to maintain our OKR is decreasing as the team is more familiar with it. This is a small investment compared to the needed and useful benefits we harvested.
As a Product Manager, there is something about individual OKR that I particularly like. It serves as a flag post, guarding my focus on what’s really important — apart from other 500 also-important items — to achieve in this 2-week chunk. Speaking in a Product lingo, I am practicing “ruthless prioritization” not only against the backlog of Engineering but also of my own.
For the Product Narrative team, thank you for assisting us in writing clear key results. It’s always easy but we’re getting there!
Interested to learn about the benefits our clients witnessed after they properly adopted OKR (between 8–12 weeks)? Let’s check out the following articles:
Want to learn more about creating OKR, narratives, product management, and people operations? Our newsletter curates bite-sized information about these topics and delivers it straight to your inbox. Subscribe now.
