How to make OKRs work for you

You are brought in to help a company facing these challenges: lack of transparency, changing priorities, infinite amount of work, low engagement.

Or you are working in a company where you have heard these complaints more than once: 

“No one knows what my teams are working on” 

“Priorities change every week” 

“My team isn't engaged” 

"Departments are not helping each other"

 “My to-do list just keeps growing”

You read the first article of this series, realized that OKRs can help you, bought the book ‘Measure what matters’ by John Doerr and are convinced to try this out. Now comes the fun part: implementation!

How do we make this the new goal setting protocol for your area or company? Let’s deep dive into it.

The first step, as in any change effort, is to make everybody understand we need to change. You are very aware of these pain points we mentioned and are willing to give OKRs a shot. We need to bring others to the same level of understanding.

Begin by collecting data on these challenges. 

• Ask leadership if they know what every team is working on
• Track the frequency of priority changes
• Measure average lead time from project start to delivery
• Gauge team engagement with an anonymous survey

This dataset serves two purposes:

1. Justify the change
2. Act as a benchmark to assess the impact of your OKR implementation

While you do this, begin crafting your very own OKR operating model.

Key steps include:

• Decide if you want to go with a pilot or implement a full-scale change.
• Identify the hierarchical levels at which OKRs will be created.
• Set the duration of each OKR cycle (e.g., quarterly, annually).
• Communicate the reason behind adopting OKRs.
• Define working agreements around OKRs e.g. how often and when do we review them, can we change them mid cycle?, where do we store them, etc.
• Create and deliver training sessions that cover the OKR theory, provide examples, suggest templates, and explain the designed governance.
• Create the workshops to set OKRs up.

What I just listed can work as your personal checklist when implementing OKRs. 

While the sequence may change, it's essential to address each item.

Don't spend too much time on getting everybody to write the best OKR possible. Writing outcome based key results and ambitious objectives takes practice. Get the protocol flowing, get everybody to run through the motions and they will get better each cycle. John Doerr talks about 4-5 cycles to get it right.

In the initial phase of implementation, consider these two actions:

1. You assign yourself or somebody as the go-to-person for everything OKR related. This person should have the bandwidth to support in depth any team that asks for help. Support may include guidance on how to write OKRs, as well as ensuring the governance and working agreements are being followed. 
2. Facilitate a retrospective focused on OKRs at the end of each quarter. Implement this practice across all levels utilizing OKRs. Some questions for the retrospective:

• Did I accomplish all of my objectives? If so, what contributed to my success?
• If not, what obstacles did I encounter?
• What have I learned that might alter my approach to the next cycle’s OKRs?

About opting for a pilot over implementing a full-scale change, I need you to be very transparent about what you want to accomplish with the pilot. Align with your stakeholders what your assumptions are and what needs to happen with the pilot for it to be considered successful and pave the way for scaled up OKRs. Don’t timebox the pilot to a fixed timeframe. Run it until your assumptions are tested right or wrong.

Implementing OKRs can be quite the adventure, with each step offering its own set of challenges and insights. This is the core of what I do, and I'm here to help you navigate it. Got questions or want me to dive deeper into a specific step? Drop a comment below!

The next article is on the usual challenges I face when implementing OKRs. Stay tuned!