Bill Gelbaugh

A five-part series: 1. Introducing Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), 2. Preparing for the OKR Journey, 3. Crafting Great OKRs, 4. Driving OKR Alignment, and 5. Managing Effectively with OKRs.

Summarized by Bill Gelbaugh from: Objectives and Key Results by Paul R. Niven and Ben Lamorte, with additional material from Measure What Matters, Lattice OKR 101 and Perdoo.

THE PLANNING PHASE

Ready to get started with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)?  Part one of our blog series discussed why your company might want to adopt OKRs.  Our second post is all about planning.  As with any new venture, a little preparation goes a long way in ensuring successful implementation.   It is also vital to note implementation is a journey, not an event.  This guide is written to help home builders, trade contractors, suppliers, architects, engineers, and others in the housing industry adapt OKRs to your company’s culture.  We are all unique, and most of us do not have a Silicon Valley mindset, so adaptation is key.  There are some basic questions though that every company should begin with to get started on the right path:   

Who is Going to Champion OKRs?
There must be a sponsoring executive (and team) who feels passionate about and committed to your company’s OKR strategy roll-out. It’s important to understand that no initiative will survive without first having this executive sponsorship.

What is the Most Critical First Step?
A critical first step is to have your team buy into and support any OKR program. Then comes a deeper dive into the OKR framework, philosophy, goals, and vocabulary. Note: you should have a deep enough understanding to review OKRs with your team by the end of this series.

What Matters Most?
OKRs should always solve specific critical business issues you face now. OKRs demand that you isolate the most fundamental priorities and dedicate your focus to that limited subset of variables involved in running any company.

How Will We Create Transparency?
OKRs should ideally be transparent throughout the organization, meaning everyone can see what others measure and provide feedback and input. This transparency fuels collaboration, alignment, and ultimately the execution of strategy.

How Will We Live our OKRs?
The real power of the OKR system is figuring out how to live OKRs every day as a team. OKRs are best achieved if they are baked into the company’s daily, weekly, and quarterly cadence, from initial planning, to status updates, to company dashboards.

THE DEVELOPMENT PHASE

Once you have answered these questions, here are the concrete steps you’ll take to create your first OKR or set of OKRs and review initial results. Your development plan will, of course, depend on where you decide to start initiating your OKRs. For this discussion, we’ll assume you’re going to begin with a set of OKRs at the corporate level only. 

Develop or confirm the mission, vision, and strategy: Your OKRs should be translated from your annual strategy, drive the achievement of your vision, and be in alignment with your overall mission. These are critical enablers of success and, as such, should be solidly in place before you begin.

Create your corporate-level objective(s) and key results: There are several options for this step: using a small team, gathering input from employees through surveys that will later be used in a workshop, or conducting executive interviews, or simply drafting objectives during a leadership workshop.

Present OKRs to the company: We suggest using multiple media here: Share electronically, post to your intranet, and most importantly, communicate in person (perhaps at an all-hands meeting) so that you can facilitate a dialog surrounding the OKRs you chose and why.

Provide OKRs education: We’ve previously noted the seductive simplicity of OKRs, and that ease of understanding will often prompt organizations to skip this vital step. However, consider this education with a capital E, during which you’ll not only provide fundamentals on the model but share why you’re choosing to use OKRs now, success stories from other firms, and what people can expect during the journey.

Plan to monitor OKRs: You don’t “set and forget” OKRs; you must monitor them with an OKR Scorecard using a quarterly, monthly, and weekly schedule (or whatever cadence you choose).

Report results at the end of the quarter: Score your OKRs and communicate the entire organization’s results. As with everything discussed above, we’ll return to this topic with much more information later in this series.

THE STRATEGY ALIGNMENT PHASE

OKRs should never be created in a vacuum but must reflect the company’s purpose, desired long-term goals, and plan to defend market space successfully. In other words, they should translate your mission, vision, and strategy into action.

Consider your mission to be the compass by which you guide your organization.

Unlike visions and strategies that may be achieved over time, you never really fulfill your mission. It acts as a beacon for your work, constantly pursued but never quite reached. Consider your mission to be the compass by which you guide your organization. Having a clear mission and aligning OKRs—monthly, quarterly, and yearly—helps ensure that work performed in the short term meets the long-term purpose of the organization.

Long-Term Vision
A powerful company mission determines your core purpose as an organization. Based on the mission, you now require a statement that defines more specifically where we want to go in the future. The vision statement does just that, signifying the critical transition from the unwavering mission to the spirited and dynamic world of strategy.

Without a clear and compelling vision to guide all employees’ actions, you may wind up with a workforce lacking direction.

A vision statement provides a word picture of what the organization intends ultimately to become—5, 10, or 15 years in the future. This statement should not be abstract—it should contain as concrete a picture of the desired state as possible and provide the basis for formulating annual strategies and OKRs. Without a clear and compelling vision to guide all employees’ actions, you may wind up with a workforce lacking direction and thus unable to profit from any strategy or OKRs you create no matter how well-conceived.

Annual Strategy
An annual strategy is critical to your OKRs as it provides the initial context for creation.

All OKRs should be directly translated from your strategy—your game plan for successfully creating or defending aggressively contested market space.

One huge benefit of OKRs is the power of, “NO.”  A core strategy supplies boundaries, helping you determine what not to do when faced with a sea of opportunities, which is every bit as important as deciding what to do. It also enables you to choose viable options, remain focused, align your entire organization, and make necessary commitments to execute. Your strategy development should answer the questions: What are our preferred markets? Who are our optimal customers? What are their most critical needs?  By answering these questions, you will be able to set OKRs that move your company forward in a meaningful way. 

Ready to get started developing your OKRs?  With your company having a clear picture of your most critical objectives, and how you will successfully adapt OKRs to fit your corporate culture, you are now ready to act!  Our next post is all about crafting great OKRs. 

Next up… CRAFTING GREAT OKRS! 

Understanding why you would want to adopt OKRs

A five-part series: 1. Introducing OKRs, 2. Preparing for the OKR Journey, 3. Crafting Great OKRs, 4. Driving OKR Alignment, and 5. Managing Effectively with OKRs 

Summarized by Bill Gelbaugh from Objectives and Key Results by Paul R. Niven and Ben Lamorte. With additional material from Measure What Matters, Lattice OKR 101 and Perdoo. 

Why a series of blog posts about Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs? After all, aren’t OKRs just a goal-setting methodology? Well, yes, kind of, but more than that, they are a strategy-to-execution tool. When Silicon Valley startups discovered OKRs were behind the meteoric rise of companies such as Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and Amazon, a plethora of companies decided to adopt OKRs, hoping to catch even a fraction of that success. 

This first post will share how the best companies use OKRs to create focus, alignment, contribution, and velocity. To capture the magic of OKRs, we will start by covering the basics; the OKR framework, the philosophy behind OKRs, the four goals of OKRs, and the incredible benefits your organization may be missing out on by not adopting OKRs.

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Good questions inform. Great questions transform.
—Ken Coleman

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LET’S START WITH A QUESTION – FOUR, TECHNICALLY!

During our OKR journey here at Outhouse, we have discovered four great questions that help us set successful OKRs:

What do we want most to achieve?
What is the right Objective for our current goals and challenges?

How do we want to measure success?
What measurements would best show our progress and success?

What initiatives would get us there?
Are we working on the right Initiatives to achieve this Objective?

What is the most efficient way to accomplish this?
Are we getting these initiatives completed as efficiently as possible?

Is your Objective to create a thriving business? What do you mean by thriving? Is it growing your user base? By how much? Might it be climbing revenues? By how much? Retention? For how long? Combining an aspirational objective, quantitative results, and focused initiatives creates inspiring, measurable, and achievable goals. 

A great goal is a powerful tool; however, it’s not enough. A leader needs a way to ensure that their organization lives that goal. The real power of the OKR system is figuring out how to live that goal every day as a team. OKRs are best achieved if they are baked into the daily, weekly, and quarterly cadence of a company, from planning meetings and status updates to celebrating accomplishments along the way. 

Ready to begin implementing OKRs at your company?  Let’s get started with the basics!

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FRAMEWORK 

OKRs are built around three elements: 

Objective: Where do we want to go? 

Key Results: What are the results we need to get there?

Initiatives: What do we need to do to achieve those results? 

The Objective is the goal of the company, team, or individual. Key Results are the measurable results needed to accomplish the Objective. Initiatives are the tasks you need to perform to achieve your results (i.e., the “to-do list”). This framework is repeated from the top of the organization on down. Starting with an overall company Objective, each group or team sets their OKRs, and individual employees often have OKRs as well. This cascading interplay of goals is what keeps a group of people aligned. 

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PHILOSOPHY 

OKRs have a unique belief system around set goals that distinguishes them from other goal-setting methodologies. 

Ambitious
Objectives are meant to be inspiring, set just beyond the threshold of what seems possible. Achieving less than 100% is not considered a sign of failure. The goal is to achieve as much as possible.

Measurable
Key Results are tied to tangible milestones and outcomes.

Transparent
OKRs are viewable across the organization, from the CEO down to the Intern.

This unique approach to goal setting was developed by Andy Grove at Intel and passed down to John Doerr, who brought the company strategy to Google. Today, thousands of organizations from Spotify to the United States Navy use OKRs as one of their main management tools. 

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Today, thousands of organizations from Spotify to the United States Navy use OKRs as one of their main management tools.

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GOALS 

Developing a focused strategy and making certain everyone is rowing in the same direction and are contributing play key roles in OKR goal setting.  Another prominent feature is organization-wide transparency.

Focusing efforts
OKRs are not, and should never be, considered a master checklist of tasks that need to be completed. They are designed to be far more strategic. The model aims to identify the most critical business objectives and to gauge accountability through quantitative key results. Strategy pundits are fond of noting that strategy is as much about what not to do as it is about what to do. So it is with OKRs. You must be disciplined in determining what makes the final cut. 

Ensuring employees work together
OKRs must be structured and used to maximize employees working together in focused collaboration and alignment. One of the ways this is facilitated is through the inherent transparency of OKRs, which are shared widely so that everyone, from top to bottom, can see objectives and key results throughout the organization. 

Making measurable contributions
Key results are typically (and almost exclusively) quantitative in nature. Whenever possible, we want to avoid subjectivity and note with precision how the business is advancing based on the achievement of our OKRs. 

Driving the company forward
The ultimate arbiter of success is the achievement of your goals.  

BENEFITS 

A popular saying is, “the simpler, the better,” and that is the key to the tremendous benefits that come from implementing OKRs.

OKRs Are Easy to Understand – Increasing Buy-in and Use 
Consider OKRs the “In-N-Out of managing your performance.” One of the most significant benefits of the framework is its sheer simplicity, and that begins with the taxonomy—of just three elements: objectives, key results, and initiatives. Other approaches to managing performance and executing strategy tend to be awash in jargon. This can confuse employees already under siege from missions, visions, core values, KPIs, etc.  

OKRs Demand You Focus on What Matters Most
OKRs demand that you isolate the most fundamental priorities and dedicate your focus to that limited subset of potential variables involved in running the company. OKRs are a great way to help everyone understand what’s important and how you’re going to measure what’s important. It’s essentially a great way to communicate strategy, measure strategy, and accomplish strategy. By putting a spotlight on your absolute priorities, you’re winning on two fronts: Identifying what matters most, and by default, providing yourself with the appropriate ammunition to say no to the many initiatives that, while tempting, are not in line with your goals. 

OKRs Shorter Cadence Fosters Agility and Change-Readiness
While there is room for customization with every implementation, most OKR practitioners will set goals quarterly. This frequent establishment of priorities is vital. As the pace of change within and outside businesses accelerates, new information must be captured, analyzed, and transformed into knowledge that can be used to innovate and potentially alter the strategy or business plan. Doing so is immensely difficult if you’re only setting annual goals. 

OKRs Transparency Promotes Cross-Function Alignment
An effective OKR program works on several levels: There are corporate-level objectives and key results in place. Departments or business units have OKRs, and individuals may have OKRs. The composition of OKRs at each level is not confined to their provincial interests. On the contrary, a well-developed set of OKRs should include objectives and key results that foster (and demonstrate) collaboration with other teams on whom they rely, or conversely, depend on them to drive results. OKRs should ideally be transparent throughout the organization, meaning everyone can see what others are measuring and provide feedback and input. This transparency fuels collaboration, alignment, and, ultimately, the execution of strategy. 

OKRs Facilitate Conversation and Drive Engagement
An essential distinction of the OKR model is its focus on inclusivity. They are not a top-down exercise with goals handed down, as if on stone tablets, to lower-level units and departments who are expected to execute dutifully, regardless of their opinion. It is expected that individuals will have a legitimate say in the objectives and key results chosen, reflecting a mix of top-down and bottom-up goal setting. Having the opportunity to meaningfully contribute to what you will be held accountable for goes a long way in enhancing engagement. Moreover, when results are tabulated later, the chance to engage in a meaningful discussion, conducted in a spirit of inquiry, boosts morale. It may also demonstrate to superiors an employee’s readiness for the next level on the corporate ladder. 

OKRs Promote Visionary Thinking and a Growth Mindset
Carol Dweck, a Stanford professor, known for her work on motivation and, more specifically, mindset, posits that people can be divided into two camps. Some individuals believe their success results from innate ability and are said to have a “fixed” mindset. Others feel success is a result of hard work, tenacity, and determination. They are said to possess a “growth” mindset. Fixed mindset individuals fear failure because they feel it’s an assault on their basic abilities. Those with a growth mindset embrace failure and recognize it as an opportunity for learning and improvement. 

Organizations may be similarly classified using this distinction. Those who “suffer” from a fixed mindset will often forgo opportunities that involve risk, motivated primarily by a fear of failure. OKR organizations, on the other hand, embody the growth paradigm, relish failure, embrace a spirit of failing fast, and learn quickly. We believe that to compete in today’s global economy, all companies must adopt a growth mindset. Doing so means stepping out of any predefined comfort zone and creating audacious goals. 

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IN SUMMARY

With so many visionary, intelligent, and creative people here at Outhouse, there has never been a shortage of great ideas.  What we realized over time is we needed a better way to organize, prioritize and execute.  With renderings, virtual tours, animations, visualizers, and other interactive platforms for home builders constantly evolving, it is easy to fall into a pattern of starting too many projects.  OKRs allow employees to continue to push the envelope on innovation while forcing us to choose, strategize, and focus our collective efforts on executing those ideas that will have the greatest impact on our company and our clients.  We believe your company will benefit from implementing OKRs as well.

Next up… PREPARING FOR OUR OKR JOURNEY!