OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are becoming increasingly popular. That’s good news for many organizations, possibly including your own organization… especially IF you use them in ways beyond simply re-labeling what you’ve been doing in the past.
Here’s what I mean by ‘beyond simply re-labeling’…
a) OKRs are OK if used for topics that are known: goal setting, success metrics, status updates.
b) OKRs are great when used for managing the unknown (Unknown Management): strategy tied to execution, alignment around value, feedback on trajectory
To begin, let’s check to see if we have a need in our organization to address the elements of Unknown Management.
To assess that need, simply ask ourselves if questions like the following resonate with us or our organization:
- Why do we keep getting busy doing stuff that doesn’t fulfill our strategy?
- Why do we have so many delays in how quickly we get the right stuff done? How do we even know we’re doing the right stuff?
- Why do we miss our targets? Or not stretch sufficiently in setting our targets? Or not set bold enough targets?
If those questions do resonate, then the need for Unknown Management has begun to emerge. By the way, the issue is not getting answers to these questions directly; the issue is “why are those questions arising?” Addressing the “why are they arising?” question is where OKRs can be great.
Next, we’ll describe how we apply OKRs as an operating model and use them to help us align and execute for Unknown Management, taking OKRs from ok to great!