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by
John Doerr
“The art of management,” Grove wrote, “lies in the capacity to select from the many activities of seemingly comparable significance the one or two or three that provide leverage well beyond the others and concentrate on them.”
we failed because I was arrogant. We spent lots of time meeting potential investors and working up intricate website schematics, and no time learning about teachers’ problems.
We weren’t yet focused on what counted.
We learned the three watchwords for entrepreneurs:
Solve a problem Build a simple product Talk to your users
you can only do one big thing at a time really well, and so you better know what that one thing is.
That’s a classic “delight” feature, but was it worth the engineering time to make it a top-line priority? Would it move the needle for user engagement?
When our answer was no, we decided to shelve it—a
“These are my three buckets, and what am I doing today to move the company forward?”
One of my first OKRs was to offload the financial tasks and focus on product and strategy, our big-picture objectives.
My OKRs smoothed the transition and made it stick. They kept me from backsliding or micromanaging.
In implementing OKRs, leaders must publicly commit to their objectives and stay steadfast.
Remember though, your commitment is not necessarily to the KRs but rather to the objective and the outcome
We thought we knew what the market needed, but we didn’t yet understand our customers well enough to effectively advocate for the product.
I’d learned of a government request-for-proposals to build the first-ever database for all Medicaid members:
No small task. A big hairy audacious goal and a team committed from top leadership and influencing employees to manage the outcome using okrs. Very successful.
You need to build your goal muscle gradually, incrementally. As I know too well from my own private wellness OKR to run a marathon: Doing too much too soon will definitely end in pain.
With hindsight, I would have started with our leadership team of five. For structured goal setting to prosper, as our company learned the hard way, executives need to commit to the process.
To inspire true commitment, leaders must practice what they teach. They must model the behavior they expect of others.
It showed everyone that I, too, was accountable.
We also added two key results to measure our commitment to professional development:
One hundred percent of Nunas score their individual Q3 OKRs within the first week of Q4
A key result to track okr usage in the company...when implementing okrs, you need to track adoption and usage as well (feedback and reviews are important too). Set the objective for the company and track key results of employee and teams usage, effectiveness with okrs
Instead of reacting to external events on the fly, we’re acting purposefully on our plans for each quarter. Our deadlines are stricter, yet they also feel more attainable. We’re committed to doing what we’ve said we will do.
Persevere. You need to adapt it and make it your own.” Commitment feeds on itself. Stay the course with OKRs, as I know firsthand, and you will reap amazing benefits.
Most of all, we want it to play a big role in improving the nation’s health care. It’s a daunting commitment.
The hairier the mission, the more important your OKRs.
We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
Research shows that public goals are more likely to be attained than goals held in private.
Transparency seeds collaboration. Say Employee A is struggling to reach a quarterly objective. Because she has publicly tracked her progress, colleagues can see she needs help. They jump in, posting comments and offering support.
This doesn't necessarily happen automatically. It needs to be built into the culture from day one
By clearing a line of sight to everyone’s objectives, OKRs expose redundant efforts and save time and money.
One underrated virtue of OKRs is that they can be tracked—and then revised or adapted as circumstances dictate.
Without frequent status updates, goals slide into irrelevance; the gap between plan and reality widens by the day.
Daniel Pink, the author of Drive, agrees: “The single greatest motivator is
‘making progress in one’s work.’
regular check-ins—preferably weekly—are essential to prevent slippage.
“Without an action plan, the executive becomes a prisoner of events. And without check-ins to reexamine the plan as events unfold, the executive has no way of knowing which events really matter and which are only noise.”
people who recorded their goals and sent weekly progress reports to a friend attained 43 percent more of their objectives than those who merely thought about goals without sharing them.
Effect of accountability, especially at work where the consequences can be dramatic
Continue: If a green zone (“on track”) goal isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
Update: Modify a yellow zone (“needs attention”) key result or objective to respond to changes in the workflow or external environment.
Start: Launch a new OKR mid-cycle, whenever the need arises.
Stop: When a red zone (“at risk”) goal has outlived its usefulness, the best solution may be to drop it.*
One proviso: When an objective gets dropped before the end of the OKR interval, it’s important to notify everyone depending on it.
Then comes reflection: What did I learn that I didn’t foresee at the beginning of the quarter? And: How will I apply this lesson in the future?
In both one-on-ones and team meetings, these wrap-ups consist of three parts: objective scoring, subjective self-assessment, and reflection.
A low score forces reassessment: Is the objective still worth pursuing? If so, what can we change to achieve it?
Because of problems with the polysilicon, the target had to be pushed to October.
Includes post mortem presumably detailed elsewhere on why this failed
which computes to 0.9, another green.
Again very quantitative key results are easy to grade
Altogether, we averaged 62.5 percent
Total objective grade is geometric average of key results grades.
If a department so much as approached 100 percent, it was presumed to be setting its sights too low—and there would be hell to pay.
The goal is to stretch! Operations should be 100% but new okrs should push the limits
But if a dozen of your calls lasted several hours apiece and resulted in eight new customers, you might give yourself a perfect
Here is quality key result that counters the quantity key result. You're grading both. If your results were 50 calls with 20% conversion then 35/50 for quantity and 8/7 or perfect for quality (could also be a fixed quality of 10 converted for score of 0.8 as well)
Should the key result have prioritized new customers, rather than calls?)
Again, track quantity and the counter quality key results. Inputs and outputs are best set
