Let’s start measuring how we’re doing in actual business terms.
A great construct for using measurements and feedback that lead to operational excellence is OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). I’ve used this approach to help clients gain their first paying clients, and I’ve used it to generate a $50MM / year revenue stream for a client. Let’s use it for ourselves and see what we can really build from a business perspective.
The construct is very simple and powerful.
- The first part is the Objective.
- It characterizes the intended inspirational outcome (e.g., detecting stress early in order to improve present and future lives in ways people may not realize).
- Typically this is a simple statement with a singular focus; i.e., it is typically not a conjunction of multiple outcomes.
- The second part is the set of Key Results.
- These characterize how the incremental impact or value is to be measured as checkpoints along the path toward achieving the Objective (e.g., number of transactions executed, number of people who are users, and/or number of organizations that are clients).
- Typically having 3-5 metrics is an indicator of the right level of focus, clarity, and scope.
- Each Key Result indicates not only what the quantitative metric is, but also indicates a start value (from), current value, and target value for the end of the interval (to).
- The construct is applied at intervals that are at Quarterly and 4-Quarter levels of granularity. These can be adapted, based on organic cadences for the objective, yet the intervals need to be expressed as regular and predictable cadences.
- OKRs are sequenced on a flexible roadmap, under the mantra of “stop starting and start finishing”; i.e., the quantity of things getting completed is more valuable than the quantity of items simply in flight.
- The Quarterly OKRs are to be a comprehensive set of objective outcomes for the Quarter; i.e., all our efforts are to be mapped into one of the Quarterly OKRs. This drives and magnifies focus for geometric increases in effectiveness.
- Given our current capacity, and even for much larger organizations, typically having more than 1-3 OKRs per Quarter is a negative sign indicating a lack of effective focus and concentration to get to an effective tipping point
Next action item for you, the reader, is to go ahead and draft OKRs starting with your immediate team, within your broader organization, based on your current goals and objectives. It’s useful to begin as soon as possible, even if you’re not at a Quarterly or interval boundary, so that you can focus and measure your intended progress. The subsequent step in leveraging OKRs is to discuss, clarify, refine, and agree that these are the Objectives you’ll use to indicate if you’re making progress and to indicate how much progress you’re making. It forces you and your team to focus and align on specifically what you’ll produce as outcomes over the next interval together.
Note: if you want or need assistance, reach out to me and we can discuss how I could help improve your results and outcomes.