Simon's Journal: "Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results", Christina Wodtke - Notes, Actions and Additional Resources

Background

In my One Word year of “focus” in 2018, I am reading 9 books and looking for people to read along with me for 1 or more of those books. The reading plan can be seen here. This 3rd book for March 2018 is one of three that form the foundation of my 3rd Working Out Loud circle in Q1 2018.

Why this book?

From the end of 2017 I started seeing an increasing volume of references to #OKRs in tweets. As always, when I have not seen a word or phrase before I go exploring. It turned out that OKRs mean Objectives and Key Results. The very first video resource I found turned out to be the inside story of how OKRs were successfully pitched to Google as a way of running their business and staying focused on their top business priorities. I was also intrigued as this approach is being used by startups to running their businesses.

As a Project Manager as one of the key roles I perform in a number of areas of my life, I am familiar with objectives as I define them at the outset of every piece of work I undertake to help understand how we all know when we have finished and how we measure if we have been successful or not.

I added this book to my reading list simply to understand what OKRs are and whether this was an approach to add to my ever-growing set of tools to lead and manage myself and others.

Ideally, as I planned my 2018, my intention was to actually use the approach to set my personal OKRs for my life and to set OKRs for teams that I am leading or a part of.

How I read the book

I read the book on an iPad using iBooks and highlighted relevant passages for reviewing later.

The bulk of the book is in the form of a fable – telling a story to earth the ideas and concepts of the book in a real-life-type situation. As always with fables, this certainly helped bring the methodology to life.

I collated a final set of notes which are listed below.

Also, as always when I read books, my attention is drawn to any content on the subjects that I am reading. I have seen a large number of articles etc on OKRs and I have included some of these in the Additional Resources section at the end of this post.

What I thought of the book

This was a practical read and kept me engaged throughout. I enjoyed the fable to illustrate the method with real-life situations that you could wrestle with.

As I read the book I kept on thinking about how I would apply this approach personally and with others.

The idea of lead and lag measures that were explored in Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” (my February 2018 book) and in “4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals” by Sean Covey, Chris McChesney and Jim Huling. This is a subject that I need to explore further.

The start-of-week and end-of-week structure for each week in a quarter was not new to me but I have never personally used this approach or been involved in organisational or project teams that have used this approach. I believe these are similar or the same as approaches used for Agile and Scrum.

The approach certainly makes sense and would certainly get the whole of a team and wider parties on the same page and focused on the same things that need to be done to achieve and exceed the desired outcomes.

I particularly liked the idea of setting stretch key results that you should not be able to achieve easily and the consequent drive for raising the bar as the team works to meet its OKRs.

The 4 quadrant reporting sheet looked like it was a good way of summarising progress past period and work to do this next period.

In the same way that Working Out Loud is popular in Germany, OKRs seem to be similarly popular in that country.

My actions from the book

These actions will all undertaken after I publish this blog post.

To define a personal OKR or more than one for whatever I decide to do next after completing my 3rd Working Out Loud circle that is in its final week. This will help me further understand the OKR approach and try it out for real. This will also help me as I seek to further intensify my focus and work more deeply.
In my working life to start considering using OKRs when drawing up project scoping-type documents for workstreams of any size. I would not make a song and dance about it but simply word objectives in OKR format and see how these are received. There is one workstream that I have already started thinking about would be ideal for this in terms of my own personal impact but also strategic for the company.
On the back of 1 and 2, to see whether the 4-quadrant reporting product would be appropriate in my progress reporting to stakeholders.
To explore the Additional Resources below to further help my understanding of the OKR approach.
Whilst no one actually read the book with me during March, I made a number of approaches to people who referenced OKRs on Twitter and LinkedIn. I will share this blog post with those that I had an exchange of communication with. This will include the following questions:-

When did you first come across OKRs?
How have you developed your understanding of OKRs?
What do you use OKRs for in your personal and/or working life?
What resources would you recommend to me and others to help their understanding and practical application of OKRs?
What lessons have you learned in your application of OKRs that you would want to share with others?

Book Notes

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Foreword

When performance is measured by results
(Marty Cagan, Founder, Silicon Valley Product Group)

Started career at HP. Was taught “The HP Way” including performance management system “MBO” – Management By Objectives

Based on 2 fundamental principles:-

Patton’s “don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what you need done and let them surprise you with their results”
“when performance is measured by results”

If you do not solve the underlying business problem, you have not really solved anything

MBO refined, most notably at Intel, and now known as Objectives and Key Results (the OKR system)

Introduction

It is not important to protect an idea. It is important to protect the time it takes to make it real

The system I use comprises 3 simple parts:-

Set inspiring & measurable goals
Make sure you and your team are always making progress towards that desired end state
Set a cadence that makes sure the group remembers the goals and holds each other accountable

Inspiring and Measurable Goals

I use OKRs for goal setting

Set annually and/or quarterly

Unite the organisation and/or team(s) behind a vision/mission

We start our journey to our dreams by wanting but we arrive by focusing, planning and learning

O – Objective

What you want to do
Qualitative
Inspiring
Motivates
Pick the goal that matters most
Single sentence so easily remembered by all on the team, in the organisation
Actionable by the team independently

KR – Key Results

How you know if you have achieved the goal
Make you a little scared you cannot make them
Something tough but doable in 3 months
All stretch goals, need to be hard but not impossible
Impossible goals are depressing
Hard goals are inspiring
Quantitative
Set confidence level of achieving each one then review that level each week

Important/Urgent Matrix

Should spend time in important and urgent AND important but not urgent
Solution is to time constrain things that are important but not urgent to make them urgent

Weekly priorities

Remind you to achieve the key results
Weekly review helps you discover what conditions allow you to achieve them AND what keeps you from getting things done

Cadence

Starting every week with a public setting of priorities is powerful. You commit to the team and to each other to make the Objectives occur

Tone of the meeting is team members helping other team members meet the shared goals they have all committed to

A Friday celebration of what has been achieved is 2^nd book end of a high performing team’s week. This commit/celebrate cadence creates a habit of execution

Teams all demo whatever they can from the past week

Benefits:-

Start to feel like part of a winning team
Team starts looking forward to having something to share
Team seeks wins
Helps all understand what each team member contributes

Do not change OKRs mid-term but learn from why they were invalid

OKRs are not about hitting targets but about learning what you are truly capable of

A startup’s enemy is time. The enemy of timely execution is distraction.

Do not be a dreamer, be an executioner.

In entrepreneurship, pivot is a change in tactics without change in strategy

To help decision making, what would someone not burdened by history and emotion do

[ reference to Nukey Brown beer!! ]

Suggested sheet in 4 quadrants:-

Top right – Objective, followed by 3 Key Results with 5/10 after each KR

= 50% confidence of hitting them

Bottom right – Health Metrics

Things we want to protect while we shoot for the moon
Forces a discussion each week about these
Continue to watch

Top left – This Week

P1 x 3, P2 x 2
Key priority tasks this week to affect the OKRs

Bottom Left – Next 4 Weeks

Pipeline of important things that we expect to happen
Helps eliminate surprises across the team

OKRs hold me/us to my/our promises even when I/we feel like sliding back into my/our comfort zones

We need to commit to each other and to our organisation and our goals and then execute like mad people

The Framework for Radical Focus

Why we can’t get things done:-

We have not prioritised our goals

If everything is important, nothing is important
By setting 1 x O and 3 x KRs to measure it, you provide the focus needed to achieve without distractions

We have not communicated the goal obsessively and comprehensively

Reiterate it daily
Report progress in status updates and meetings
By repeating at start and end of a week, ensures that the goal is in front of everyone’s minds

We do not have a plan to get things done

Need a process to focus your work in the midst of the everyday when it is too easy to lose focus

We have not made time for what matters

Make the important urgent
Block out time to do what matters

We give up instead of iterate
Once you set OKRs, do not forget them

OKRs can cascade so each team’s mesh with other teams’ across the organisation

Can also do individual OKRs

How To Hold a Meeting to Set OKRs for the Quarter

Keep the meeting small
No devices
Pre-meeting – get one Objective from all team members
1 person collates best to input to meeting
4.5 hours (2 x 2 hour sessions with 30 min break)
Goal – cancel the 2^nd session, focus!
Each attendee brings Objective or 2
Pre-meeting Objectives on Post-Its on wall
Place new Post-Its on wall identifying duplicates & patterns
Rank them
Narrow to 3
Discuss/ Debate/ Fight/ Rank/ Pick
Freelist (design thinking) as many metrics as possible to measure Objectives (1 per Post-It)
Affinity map (design thinking) them
Pick your 3 types of metrics
Write KRs as e.g. “X Daily Active Users”

Forces discussion of metric 1^st then value 2^nd

Ideally, have usage metric, revenue metric and a satisfaction metric
The goal is find different ways to measure success
Set values for KRs (50% confidence in achieving them!!)2
End with 5 mins of

“Is the Objective inspirational?”
“Do the KRs make sense?”
“Are they hard?”
“Can you live with this for a full quarter?”

OKRs for Product Teams

As organisation grows, OKRs become more necessary to ensure that each product team understands how they contribute to the greater whole, for work coordination across teams and avoiding duplicate work

Scrum helps set a rhythm of execution

Connecting Company Business Objectives with Service Department OKRs

Ask hard questions re how these teams contribute to the business goals, encourage them to be creative with their OKRs to get better/ richer buy-in from these groups.

Timing for Implementing OKRs

Assumed that training or research in basics has been done

Hindrances:-

Putting off meetings
Not doing the homework
Refusing to make decisions

Address these! Your company goal setting is your company’s life! Commit!

See earlier process for a team and wrap round the organisation’s in total

Repeat each quarter

If you do not meet any OKRs, why? Fix it.

If you hit them all, set harder goals and move on

First Time

Likely to fail 1^st time!

Reducing that risk:-

Start with only 1 OKR for the org
Have one team adopt OKRs before the entire org
One that has all they need to achieve their goals
Apply OKRs to projects

E.g. include OKRs on Kanban cards
Allows you to

Prioritise better
Learn faster
Communicate more effectively

A great way to develop the habit of communicating why we are doing what we are doing

Prioritise work on roadmap via expected impact

Improve Weekly Status Emails With OKRs

Lead with your team’s OKRs and how much confidence you have that you are going to hit them this quarter

Colour code them: red LT 3, green GT 7

List last week’s prioritised tasks and if they were achieved

If they were not, explain

List next week’s priorities

3 x P1s
Could add 2 x P2s

List risks and blockers
Notes – short, timely, useful

This can be a task that wastes key resources or can be a way that teams connect and support each other.

Common Mistakes

Set too many goals per quarter

Try setting only 1

Set OKRs for a week or a month
Set a metric-driven objective
Don’t set confidence levels
Don’t track change confidence levels
Use the Start-of-Week as status update
Talk tough on Friday

OKRs help orgs achieve the best possible rather than the most probable results

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Additional Resources

This was another great example that when I am concentrating on a book subject, I see lots of articles etc on that subject when I am not specifically looking for such content.

Video: John Doerr on OKRs and Goal Setting at Google and Intel: