To know me is to know that I am a joyous, if relentless, goal-setter. I love the chaos of working in the moment, but also relish the clarity of sitting down and resetting or course-correcting the flow of my daily work and life on track to specific targets.
Over the years, I’ve done loads of experiments in an attempt to nail both the art and the science of the level-up. And there are specific systems and projects that I know work. For example, I pride myself on setting my New Year’s Resolutions a month ahead of time so I can do all the prep-work to keep my 80% success rate intact. I also incorporate micro-systems like 7x7s (a rubric for prioritizing 7 key initiatives for 7 week time-blocks) and Q4 sprints into both my personal and business target-setting.
But this year, I’ve been faced with that age-old conundrum of entrepreneurs everywhere: business has been so great, life has been so blessed that I find myself facing the constant tug-of-war between the urgent and the important. Working 60-70 hours a week for months at a time to execute on delightfully fun projects with deadlines, I’ve had to call myself out for putting my own business and personal growth projects out further and further on the roadmap.
So, when a client recently introduced me to the business target and milestone setting that Intel created and Google used (and uses) to keep mission-critical, but non-urgent, initiatives front-of-mind and moving forward alongside all the daily urgencies of keeping the business running, I was all ears.
The system is known by the shorthand OKRs, which stands for Objectives and Key Results. Simply put, the company, each team and each individual engages in the exercise of setting a very small handful (4, ideally) of Objectives that contribute to the higher level objectives, then sets a few (4-5) measurable milestones with timelines that will drive the corresponding Objective (these milestones are the “Key Results”).
It’s simple, but simplicity is sometimes difficult to pull off in a manner that also drives strategic objectives. To help their portfolio companies (and all of us!) use OKRs, Google Ventures shared a video tutorial on how to set and track them. In the YouTube video, Google Ventures’ Rick Klau presents basics on OKRs as adapted from the original program John Doerr presented to the then 1-year-old company called Google.
Challenge is, the video is well over an hour long. Real talk: it’s worth watching. But just in case you have less time than interest or you just want the top-line points now so you can start working with OKRs and watch the video over Thanksgiving weekend, here is a quick and dirty outline and set of guidelines for working with OKRs.
How to Write an OKR
Here’s a sample OKR, from Doerr’s original deck
Objective
To develop a workable model for planning as measured by:
Key Results
- Finishing the presentation on time
- Completing a sample set of 3 months objectives and key results
- Having management agree to institute a trial system for a 3 month period
- Objectives are ambitious, and should feel somewhat uncomfortable
- Key Results are measurable; they should be easy to grade with a number (at Google we use a 0 – 1.0 scale to grade each key result at the end of a quarter)
- OKRs are public; everyone in the company should be able to see what everyone else is working on (and how they did in the past)
- The “sweet spot” for an OKR grade is .6 – .7; if someone consistently gets 1.0, their OKRs aren’t ambitious enough. Low grades shouldn’t be punished; see them as data to help refine the next quarter’s OKRs.
How to Set and Use OKRs to For Your Business and Personal Goals
- Set a maximum of 5 Objectives.
- Set a maximum of 4 Key Results for each Objective.
- 60% of OKRs should come from the individuals and teams and flow up to the overall company or organization – there’s no dictating down in OKRs.
- OKRs are meant to foster communication and focus – to align individuals and teams with the overall company and to keep goals visible and front-of-mind in the face of daily urgencies and chaos.
- OKRs are not intended to be a tool for employee evaluations. The goal is for them to be ambitious – if you get a perfect score on your OKRs, you shot too low. If you make them part of performance reviews, you’ll ultimately be punishing people for taking risks and aiming high. Don’t do that.
Tools for setting, publishing and tracking OKRs, from my own research:
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