Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Allan Kelly
Read between
November 12 - November 23, 2022
Leaders should describe the ultimate goal, paint a picture and sketch out the future they want to make happen. Then let teams decide how they can make that future happen.
Rather than create a complex OKR-setting process to manage interdependencies, seek to remove dependencies. Enhance independence even at the cost of redundancy and duplication, strip away insulation layers and help connect teams with customers. In other words, increase cohesion and reduce coupling.
Don’t change or abandon OKRs during a quarter without a fight.
Do make it completely clear what the organization’s priorities are.
Goals bring focus, and focus is powerful. But focus also means blinkered vision, which carries dangers – but if we aren’t blinkered we may be overwhelmed. Software engineers might recognize this as abstraction.
When the acceptance tests are known, engineers have a wide degree of latitude in deciding how to meet their criteria.
OKRs are transient objects that serve to focus thinking and work. The real benefit is in the outcomes delivered.
Focus only happens when you have partial blindness: as with a camera lens, focusing on one thing means not focusing on others – it means some things move out of vision.
Doerr’s comparison of MBOs and OKRs MBOs Intel OKRs ‘What’ ‘What’ and ‘How’ Annual Quarterly or monthly Private and siloed Public and transparent Top-down Bottom-up or sideways (~50%) Tied to compensation Mostly divorced from compensation Risk-averse Aggressive and aspirational One should not pretend that the OKRs mechanism is without
While performing pre-work like this may appear rational and conscientious, it can be self-limiting. Looking at the work in advance may discourage people from taking on ambitious work or deliberately reducing the goal.
User stories are often said to be ‘a placeholder for a conversation’: a key result may need more than a conversation. Ideally that conversation is deferred until just before the work is done – just-in-time.
Having standalone results reduces risk, because failure to meet one result does not make another impossible. When key results are not standalone vertical slices, but rather depend on earlier work, failure produces a domino effect.
Writing standalone vertical slices that deliver value with few or no dependencies is itself a learned skill.
Of course you would like every key result to deliver benefit to the business, but sometimes you really don’t know what will happen.
In the same way that sprints have routine and ceremonies, so should OKRs. The OKR routine mimics the sprint routine – planning, regular refocus and retrospective. Both embody the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) model, often known as the Stewart or Deming cycle.
It is likely that there will be more ideas than are possible to accommodate. Techniques like dot voting can help whittle the list down to something achievable.
remember the agile principle of the last responsible moment.
Indeed, suggesting OKRs is seldom a problem. The problem is more one of deciding what not to do.
Work short-and-fat through OKRs rather than salami-slicing them to work long-and-thin.
An OKR-first approach effectively makes an objective, or just a key result, the sprint goal. Work flows from that goal.
The motto I’m advocating is: Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos. Does that mean that you shouldn’t plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate fires, so it has to shape a flexible organization that is capable of responding to unpredictable events. Andy Grove, CEO, Intel
While most of the team work in the ‘solution space’ – that is, building the solution to an opportunity – the PO works in the ‘problem space’, defining what the opportunity is.
Discussing and analyzing goals, culture and strategy elements can happen in isolation, but putting them to work involves more people and more decisions. Much of a manager’s work comes down to a myriad of day-to-day discussions, decisions and actions: it is in this that the culture gets lived, goals pursued and strategy elements implemented.
Leaders have a responsibility to provide the resources teams need to meet their goals, or to help them set goals within limited resources. Perhaps the most valuable resource leaders can give teams is their own time.
