Ideas are easy; execution is everything.
John gives many examples of companies that have found success with OKRs. He shares many stories where companies struggled and failed to implement OKRs in the past. (Sidenote: My current company has struggled to implement OKRs in the past until we collectively read this book).
Table of Contents
What does OKRs stand for?
OKR = Objectives and Key Results
A typical OKR is comprised of a single Objective with 3-4 key results that are metrics driven and time-bound. It should be obvious if you’ve reached them or not.
Objectives are the “Whats”.
Key Results are the “Hows”.
Adding OKRs to your company
Implementing OKRs in your company will vary on the stage of your company. John includes several strategies for approaching it differently that you can discuss with your team.
It doesn’t matter how you go about it but you need to have the OKRs for the company first. As soon as you’ve designed the company OKRs, you send it down to the team level. Each team works together to build their OKRs that feed into the Company’s OKRs. Teams will need to communicate with each other as they will need help to succeed and reach their goals. After team OKRs, each employee will create their own personal OKRs.
Each employee in the department owns three to five business objectives per quarter, along with one or two personal ones.
“My objectives are directly a key result of my manager’s OKR, which ties directly to the top-level EBS objective, which ties to the company’s OKR.” Objectives roll down and up.
Effective OKRs are specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. You’ll get better over time. You may sandbag or set unrealistic goals your first couple of quarters.
OKRs need to be accessible by the entire company. They should ambitious and clear in one sentence with a date/deadline. Employees thrive when they can see how their work aligns to the company’s overall goals. People need to understand WHY.
“Innovation means saying no to one thousand things.” – Steve Jobs
“Put more wood behind fewer arrows” – Larry Page
“You’re not going to get the system just right the first time around. It’s not going to be perfect the second or third time, either. But don’t get discouraged. Persevere. You need to adapt it and make it your own.” – David Chen
Scoring OKRs
You should review your OKRs as a team weekly with thorough monthly status/write-ups that are circulated in the company.
Each team should sit down together to score their team’s OKRs at the halfway point of the quarter. You’ll do this again at the end of the quarter.
Scoring
- 0.7 – 1.0 = green (we delivered)
- 0.4 – 0.6 = yellow (we made progress, but fell short of completion)
- 0.0 – 0.3 = red (we failed to make real progress)
Most companies will fail at an average rate of 40% (p. 135).
Also, OKRs are not tied to compensation! They can be discussed in one-on-ones but should not be the focus of the one-on-one unless the team member brings it up to you.
Reviewing OKRs
John has included a timeline of implementing and scoring OKRs in Measure What Matters. The timeline has been useful for my team, it’s also important when you pulish the OKRs you also publish the timeline.
Example OKRs
