OKRs for Dummies 1.
What if we have OKRs as students
It is really interesting to see how many concepts are wrongly understood even when they are crystal clear and very straight forward. How could this still happen? If you learn something why you apply it wrong?
There are many examples out there in the Product Management profession. Agile is one of the biggest in my opinion. A concept created enough years ago to be rethought. Or at least improved.
There are Objective and Key Results hanging around for a while. Longer ago than Agile. Andy Grove documented them in his book “High output management”. In 1983. 36. Years. Ago.
Implementing the OKRs framework can be indeed challenging. And any company should do it at any stage. Its adoption depends on company’s needs. The implementation’s complexity might vary depending on the size of the company, of course.
So, let’s take a look into Objectives and Key Results. On his book John Doerr defined 4 OKRs’ superpowers. I will go shortly through them.
Focus and commit to priorities
There are some questions to be answered here:
- What is most important for the next three, 6, 12 months?
- What are our main priorities for the coming period?
- Where should people concentrate their efforts?
If you as individual don’t know what are the most important tasks you are working on, or should working on, why not to ask to your superior to search for vision and direction?
If you are a manager, you are responsible to define the path. You might define the objectives of your company/team.
One big mistake people do is writing down objectives that are not really important. If you are studying a degree you have certainly one most-important objective: get well graduated.
That is your north start. Your hairy goal. Now, how to define that you are well graduated? It could be something like this:
- KR 1: My notes are higher than 95%.
- KR 2: Have minimum 2 job opportunities defined.
These are your key results. They can, in this case, be a lot. But keep it short. Otherwise it will hard to make them all.
Now you should see this not only as a 4-years-long path but as a lot of short steps to make it there.
Break down the long-term goal
This can be quit hard to define from the beginning. This is why you should start asking for advice. But even when you ask for advice, none of them will make your path.
Define your short-term goals in accordance with your long-term vision. That will define your way to your North Star.
The same you should do with your company/team. But here it is slightly different. You know what is the best way to make the short-term goals because you should know your goals. If you don’t know them, it is time to start analysing data to make them.
Align and connect for teamwork
When I was studying there were always 2 or 3 projects that I had to make with some classmates. The best learnings from those times:
Keep everyone aligned and make everyone responsible of different Key Results. Otherwise will happen the typical situation where only one of the team pulled off the whole work.
When that happens who is the only one who really knows how the job was made? You know the answer. The others that did not take part on the creation of the outcome have only a general knowledge about the project. Nothing deep.
The same for a company. You need to align with everyone a project concerns to. Assign to accountable persons all the Key Results you have in your company/team/squad/tribe, etc…
So, the ones responsible will own the key results and will pull together to achieve the goal. There is nothing more motivating than that.
If you don’t do that, you will end with a team having more ownership than others, unbalanced work, delays, not met goals, etc.
Track of accountability
As individual or part of a team you should always revisit your objectives. You need to ask yourself if you should continue doing what are you doing or you should modify something on your planning and execution.
Is that class going fine? No? Then you better think if it is really important for your overall objective, if not, you need to make a decision there. Whether you should be studying harder there or you should consider to abandon it.
For a company is pretty much like that. You should define if you:
- Continue . Everything goes fine. This one rocks.
- Update. What could be done a bit different here to make it better? Should you free resources somewhere else for this to be better?
- Start. If there is a new born objective to be adopted, then do it. It might modify your end-objectives.
- Stop. Things are burning here. You should drop this one right now and may be adopt a new objective. Make sure everyone knows that.
(you should talk to your parents too about dropping a year in the university)
Stretch for amazing
In the time of university there is a lot going on. Parties, classes, workshops, more parties, sports, more classes, etc. And you want to do all that. You think you are s superhero. Everything done. At the same time. Same in companies with no structure.
Why are you studying topology right now when you should be coding that simulation project instead?
Just focus on what matters, otherwise fuzzy thinking will make all your main objectives to fail. You need to learn to differentiate your committed and aspirational objectives.
Committed objectives should be something like.
Objective: Increase notes by studying what matters
Key Results:
- Study 4 to 5 hours a day of the 3 main classes
- Get 90% of the notes in this semester of the 3 main classes.
(This depends of course on how you perceive yourself moving forward, maybe you need more, maybe less.
In a company environment sometimes we work on too many things and get lost quick.
Committed Objectives should be set at a company-level and are tied to the company’s metrics. In general these committed objectives are to be achieved in full (100%) within a set time (quarter e.g.).
Aspirational Objectives reflect a bigger-picture, higher-risk, more future-shaping ideas. They originate from any tier and aim to move the entire organisation. By definition they are challenging to achieve.
I wish I had known OKRs back at my student times. Seriously.
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