#6 JooBee's newsletter

TL;DR

🎯 OKRs: No replacement for decision, communication or discipline

💡 ‘I’ is the missing letter in OKRs

❓ Your views on OKRs

OKRs: No replacement for decision, communication or discipline

To answer the question of whether OKRs are worth your effort and what benefits you can expect - let’s start by aligning our expectations with what OKRs CAN or CANNOT do.  

🧭 OKRs framework CAN create a shared understanding 

OKRs are a simple tool for providing clarity to teams, helping them align their efforts toward a common goal. 

However, it's important to understand that OKR cannot replace essential elements of effective management. 

🎯 OKRs CANNOT replace prioritisation decisions

An OKRs framework can provide clarity of goals to teams, but they don't define those goals. 

For instance, say we need to decide whether we want to: 

• Grow our current market or expand into new markets, or

• Focus on growing revenue from existing customers or through new customers, or

• Differentiate our product or differentiate our pricing, and so on.

The OKRs framework provides guidelines for prioritisation, but you must make decisions on what you will focus on (and equally what you WON’T) to guide your teams’ efforts in achieving those priorities. 

I recently had a conversation with a start-up leader who revealed that they have as many as 13 OKRs in a single quarter😱. Some of these Objectives even have up to 8 Key Results 😱. This serves as an example of how OKRs aren’t implemented in the intended manner. In such cases, start-ups treat OKRs as a tool to document a checklist of tasks to complete, rather than utilising them as a prioritisation tool.  

🗨️ OKRs CANNOT replace conversations that need to be had

Far too often, I've witnessed scenarios where teams are tasked with filling out Google Sheets or an OKRs system, jotting down their OKRs for the quarter. They diligently complete their actions, present OKRs to the business, and that’s the OKRs process completed.

But when the quarter unfolds, a familiar story unfolds:

🔗 Disconnected dependencies: Teams suddenly realise their work is intertwined and need each other to accomplish their OKRs.

⏱️ Lack of resource planning: Teams find themselves short on resources, leading to delayed deliveries.

📉 Output without impact: Despite a flurry of activity, the impact remains elusive due to the wrong measure of success.

OKRs serve as a guide, but the framework cannot replace the crucial conversations that you need to have. Discussions surrounding team dependencies, feasible scope, resource allocation, and more are indispensable. These conversations ensure everyone's on the same page, resolve conflicts, and chart the most promising path forward. Effective communication remains essential.

📆 OKRs CANNOT give you discipline or productive habits

To achieve your goals, a key requirement is a commitment to regular check-ins, reviews and the iterative refinement of your actions. These rituals help you to make steady progress towards your goal.

OKRs, for all their strengths, cannot gift you with discipline or cultivate productive habits. It’s up to you and your team to instil these practices, transforming them into ingrained habits that you consistently apply to drive focus towards your goals. 

The OKRs framework is just one piece of the puzzle in strategy execution

OKRs are a valuable framework for providing clarity and direction to teams and organisations. However, it's essential to recognise that they are just one piece of the puzzle. The success of OKRs requires a holistic approach that combines the power of the framework with effective decision-making, open communication, and a commitment to regular check-ins and refinement. When used in tandem with these essential elements, OKRs can become a dynamic force for driving progress and achieving meaningful outcomes for your business.

‘I’ is the missing letter in OKRs

Many times when I was working in start-ups, I heard people saying - “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do with OKRs.” 

I disagree. “Alignment enables autonomy” - says Jimmy Janlen (former Agile Coach at Spotify).

And the primary objective of OKRs? Create alignment. Let’s break this down. 

OKRs tell people what we want to ‘achieve’

OKRs do not tell people how to do their jobs. Instead, OKRs provide clarity of shared goals - to help teams align and coordinate efforts towards what we want to achieve.

These shared goals are expressed through OKRs, which follow this format:

Let’s illustrate an example of company-level OKRs:

👀 As you can see, at no point in this OKR framework does it tell people HOW to achieve the goals. OKRs provide direction, outlining where we want to get to at the end of the year. 

To illustrate this further using the comic below, the Objective is ‘we need to cross the river’ and the KR is ‘5 people safely reached the other side of the river.’

You need ‘I’ in OKRs to enable autonomy

When I work with founders and start-up leaders on strategy execution, I do not use OKRs, I use OKRIs. 

Initiatives: What will we do to get there?

Initiatives are the steps, the tactics, the projects, basically the actions you will take to achieve your Objective and the success of achieving those objectives is measured by the Key Results. 

Returning to the river-crossing example, when the team is clear on the Objective (cross the river) and the KR or measure of success (5 people safely reached the other side of the river), they have the autonomy to devise Initiatives to achieve the OKRs - whether it is building a bridge, digging a tunnel, constructing a boat or exploring endless possibilities.

In a business context example, when your Objective is to ‘enhance the customer onboarding experience’ and one of the Key Results is to ‘decrease onboarding time from 6 weeks to 3 weeks’, numerous Initiatives could contribute to achieving this goal. Your employees who closely engage with customers should be engaged in the discussion to identify these initiatives - such as hiring additional Customer Success Executives, automating onboarding processes, developing customer training programs, streamlining the sign-up process, and more. The key is prioritising initiatives that will have the greatest impact in reducing onboarding time within your business context.

The typical mistake in OKRs: Confusing ‘Initiatives’ & ‘Key Results’

The common mistake when implementing OKRs is confusing Initiatives with KRs. KRs, as a measure of success, are more likely to remain constant during the committed period, but the initiatives to achieve them should be flexible and changeable. If an initiative isn’t moving us closer to our goal, it should be agile and subject to regular review and adaptation. 

Therefore, I disagree with the idea that ‘OKRs tell people what to do.’ Instead, OKRs establish directional alignment of what we aim to achieve so that smart people have the clarity and autonomy to figure out how they will achieve it. 

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