My Notes About : [O]bjectives and [K]ey [R]esults

Meanwhile, at the hall of justice… sorry, couldn’t avoid it, it was the first phrase that came to my mind while starting this article 🤣, anyway, let’s continue :P

So, for a while now we’ve been hearing, studying and discussing OKRs, although it’s origins going long before the 90s, I’m particularly starting to study it more profoundly now, then I though… why not to share it? So here I’m, and here is what I’ve learned so far 😊

(yes, I use a lot of emojis)

OKRs : Origins 👀

The theory development is attributed to Andy Grove (1936–2016), who was the CEO of Intel for more than 10 years, and at Intel, goal-management was called “iMBO,” or “Intel Management by Objectives” (referring to the term MBO, from Drucker (1909–2005) .Then, in 1999, John Doerr (1951) , who hear of the iMBO in a Andy’s course in 1975, introduced the idea of OKRs to a start-up Kleiner Perkins had invested in .. the startup was called Google¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The idea took hold and OKRs quickly became central to Google’s culture as a

“management methodology that helps to ensure that the company focuses efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization.”

OKRs : Benefits ✨

✅Focus — With clear and shared goals, it is easy for everybody to put focus where it matter the most, here and now.

✅Alignment — As OKRs are unfolded in the planning phase in which leaders, collaborators and peers collaborate to create it. Starting from, and aligned with the company missionary/visionary goal, to: strategic OKRs, then tactical OKRs to short-cycle OKRs, and continuing to monitoring and debriefing phases. As in the saying, it let us all “rowing in the same direction”. We all know what it’s happening and where we want to go.🚣‍♀️🚣‍♂️

✅Motivation — Difficult but achievable targets, increases people motivation in relation to the tasks that need to be done! Learning and growing, challenging yourself, overall there is gains to everybody :)

OKRs : What is that? 🤔

Objectives and key results (OKR) is a goal-setting framework for defining and tracking objectives and their outcomes.

Tip — simple statement to help form an OKR:

“We will _ _ _ _ _, and we will know if we were successful

if we can _ _ _ _ _, _ _ _ _ _, _ _ _ _ _ _.”

- OKRs, From Mission to Metrics — Francisco S. Homem de Mello p.3

OKRs : How to create good KRs? 🔎

OKRs must follow the SMART concept :

1. Good KRs must be based on a specific quantitative indicators… like plotable on a chart.
2. Ideally easy to measure.
3. The indicators must be sensitive to the efforts of the person responsible for the KR — possible to carry out.
4. The monitoring must be coherent with the OKRs time-box — short enough so the objective is measured in time — inspection and adaption😋

OKRs : Management Lifecycle ⏳

Objectives are defined and unfolded according to the corporate goals, derived from its Mission and Vision.

• Mission is the company’s purpose , reason why it exist as an organization.
• Vision is a description of the future, formed from the impact that the company will bring to the world.

One thing important when talking about OKRs, is to differentiate efforts from actual results. The relationship between efforts and results is always relative, but an OKRs should track results relative to the person or team that owns them.

• Results aren’t efforts or job descriptions
• Efforts are the things you do to achieve the desired result, like : working out to run faster — personal experience : I don’t like to workout, but I like running and working out is good for preventing lesions so, I try..

That said, lets go to the my notes on the lifecycle I’ve learned about :

1️⃣Planning — Unfolding the objectives. Starting from the company’s inspiring vision, leading to the strategic OKRs, we have the tactical OKRs, which are the ones we look for to build our short-cycle OKRs, the ones we usually work on for 3 months, and that are unfold to teams and individuals, and that turn into action plans and projects to achieve the OKRs.

2️⃣Monitoring — During the time we are working on for example, our short-cycle OKRs, we track the progress of our action plans and initiatives, so we can make adjustments as needed. Strongly recommended to do that collaboratively.

3️⃣Evaluation — Checking the results. The way we will measure the results can be agree within the company. As we foster the stretching goals, is a common sense to consider the goal achieved at it’s 70% progress, with 100% being considered beyond expected. Other way could be based on expected results like: if you want to reduce churn in 5% per month, and you achieve those 5 % you have 100% achievement result. Some could use even the binary concept :100% achievement or nothing.

OKRs : Evaluation Beyond the Score — Debriefing 🧡

“Debriefing is where the OKR cycle ends, and a new cycle starts. Its main purpose is to wrap up the scoring of the OKRs and to learn from what happened throughout the cycle.” — OKRs, From Mission to Metrics — Francisco S. Homem de Mellop. 92

Other interesting thing I’ve learned : Why we are afraid of goals and metrics? Probably because we are conditioned to be afraid of scolding, or failing, which causes us anxiety.

When I heard it last night in the hr-rocks-academy training, I found it true, it’s reality, and they also made important points about the debriefing culture, it should be focused on collaboration and learning, in order to achieve even more ambitious goals together🧡🥰. We said along this article that OKRs benefits could be focus alignment and motivation, and that it puts everyone — and I mean everyone, from every direction in our company, top, down, left, right — rowing in the same direction, and that… that is gold when we are talking about results and growing.

So, points about debriefing, there we check:

• Results achieved
• Strenghts
• Weakenesses
• Lessons Learned

We celebrate and together we plan whats next as the new cycle starts right after the previous ends.

Note : While studying I have the habit to take notes, that’s the way I get to absorb and comprehend the most of the information I’m learning. I decided to share it now because.. why not? Regarding OKRs, although I have general knowledge about it I’m not a specialist, last night I took the “https://hr-rocks-academy.teachable.com/ — Curso de Introdução às OKRs”free training and found it awesome! Those are a few notes a took from the course, among other materials I’ve researched, the references are bellow. Anyway, if you have any material, opinion or in general if you are also studying this subject, please, share with me — if you feel comfortable to- , I’m a learner, and will continuing my studies regarding it. Maybe I’ll continue sharing my findings .. really, learning and relearn is a passion.

If you are still here with me AHAHA Thank you for you attention and hope it was useful information for you!

See you!

P.S.: Writing it I discovered that Peter Druker was born in the same day as I: November 19 😋

References

1. Doerr, John (2018). Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs. Penguin Publishing Group. p. 31. ISBN 9780525536239.
2. https://hr-rocks-academy.teachable.com/ — Curso de Introdução às OKRs
3. https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/set-goals-with-okrs/steps/understand-moonshots-vs-roofshots/
4. OKRs, From Mission to Metrics — Francisco S. Homem de Mello
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR#cite_note-doerr_book-2