Leading with the right Objective and measurable metrics — Objective and Key Results
By: Supreeth Rajan
Tags: Goal Setting, Product Management, Objective And Key Results, Measure What Matters, Leadership

Objectives and Key Results — Measuring what matters

Let me start off with a quote which you come across in the book ‘Measure What Matters’ — “Ideas are easy but execution is everything.” Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is a simple idea, yet challenging. It pushes you to focus on the true goal, and helps you getting the buy-in from the team to then focus on the execution.

What is an OKR — Objective and Key Result?

Objective is the “What” to be achieved and key results is the “How” one gets to the objective.

OKR mastermind, Andy Grove steered Intel to new heights by setting challenging objectives and clearly measurable key results for his team. His influence spread across industries, and companies in various industries have used OKRs to focus on the key priorities and steer the team for greater success. It sounds simple, yet little hard to get the Objective in the OKR correct.

Lets ponder on this question — what should be the key metric for YouTube for the coming year? Should it be videos watched OR Ad revenue generated OR minutes watched OR Data compression and storage? What would be the North Star metric for the objective set that quarter or year? How about deciding on the objective and key results for a startup pizza delivery company? Should it be targeting what other big players in the industry are targeting? What is the true metric, which matters for the company and will move the needle?

These objectives and key results evolve, change, and add on to the previous wins, and over repeated execution, the right OKRs will get you compounded wins. In order to do so, setting the right objectives matter, and they should be supported by succinct, measurable, specific key results.

A well thought-out OKRs creates alignment across teams, provides clarity to employees, and can have the entire organization working towards the key needle movers. There is transparency & employees know how they contribute towards a well defined goal.

OKR — Simple Idea, powerful results when executed right

As part of a company initiative, OKR has become a key part of leading my vertical. I am in my fourth quarter of putting in the OKRs, and I am in the draft mode for Q1 2021 (it is mid Q4 2020, as I type this). These are my OKR journey learnings.

A well thought out OKR is tough, and that’s good.

The first quarter I was warming up to it, the following quarters, the intent was to really hone in on the important things and what is achievable in the timeframe. The process of setting an OKR really questions you on what is truly needed. Once they are set, the goals have to be challenging and force the team to go the extra mile. Achieving a goal easily — say 100% or 1.0/1.0, whatever metric your choose, means your goal was not challenging enough. The true intent is to hit the fully committed goals and also the stretch goals but get to the 80–100% with a struggle (in some cases only around 70%). You are taking challenging bets on what would work for the consumer and company, so your target and metric should make you feel that getting a 100 is tough and not easily doable. But don’t confuse it with the wrong objective, say, you have embarked on an objective, and midway you realize they were the wrong ones which do not make an impact. You have to scrap them, and focus on what matters. The key is to ensure you put in the effort to plan for the right ones before you spend time on them, but if you do have the wrong objectives, discard them and focus on what matters.

Transparency is a big win in this process, you get to see what everyone is working on, your objectives become transparent as well. You are now open to questions, feedback, or input from people who want to help and contribute. This helps in alignment, and highlights what others are working on, and how your objective fits the bigger picture.

Conversation, feedback becomes more simple. You regularly check in with your team members and keep the discussion about the OKRs and share feedback both ways. What was tough, was it challenging, what dependencies? It really helps in the transparency part, and everyone knows what the discussion is going to be about. And because it is transparent, the right team and member gets recognized for the wins.

So how does an OKR look, there are various examples on the net, here is one super simple example I just made up.

Objective:

Share what I read in Q4 2020.

Key Result:

Read and finish 3 books in Q4 (one book in 4 weeks). Summarize the book to less than a 4 minute read. Share on Medium and LinkedIn within 2 weeks post reading.

If I am easily able to hit Key results at 100%, then it probably needs to be a little challenging. Ideally reduce it to 3 weeks. If I am unable to hit the 4 week mark, then, the question is, is this truly the priority or am I working on things which should be discarded.

Andy Grove grew Intel to new heights in an uncharted territory using OKRs, his philosophy influenced companies like Google, Yahoo, BMW, clearly crossing industry lines. Measure What Matters is a good read on how CEOs and leaders used OKRs to drive their companies to greatness. Hopefully by the end of it, you question what is truly important, and have clear measurable metrics to support that vision of yours.