OKRs: Do Not Mistake Task Lists and Small Wins for Your Goal

#OKR #DoWhatMattersMost #DoNotGetLostInEverySmallWin #RememberYourOriginalPurpose #ThinkStrategicallyAboutTheWhole OKR: Objectives and Key Results The author behind OKRs is John Doerr, also a partner at the globally renowned venture capital firm KPCB. Do not be too surprised: people working in VC tend to think along similar lines. Follow Robin’s Facebook page; I keep emphasizing #RememberYourOriginalPurpose #Focus #DoWhatMattersMost #ThinkStrategicallyAboutTheWhole. ----- Many companies flock to OKRs because their strategies and plans are increasingly likely to drift, lose their shape, and quietly peter out. Changes in the industry ecosystem compound the problem. Companies often mean well but produce poor outcomes, or begin with a clear, attractive goal only to end up in a mess. The entire supply chain and value chain turn into a chain of distortions or expedient compromises. Comparing a company’s initial objective with its ultimate outcome can leave you unsure whether to laugh or cry. Reason one: objectives and key results are not clearly defined. Many wars become tragedies because they begin without defining what victory means. Each local engagement may seem successful, yet the overall outcome is failure. Take the Vietnam War launched by the United States. Many individual battles were won. Why did that accumulation of small victories fail to produce the desired result? Vietnam ultimately became an ever-deepening quagmire. Many companies lack a clear goal and vision at the outset. Instead, they become entangled in countless small matters until their objective grows harder to see. They may accumulate small achievements while moving farther from the goal. Even while working heads down, you must regularly look up to check your direction. (Entrepreneurs can keep their heads down and work hard, provided they find a partner who keeps checking that they are not drifting farther off course. Preferably, that partner is an experienced VC professional. Ahem...) Or consider saving money. Every company has limited resources, and the original purpose of saving is to make those resources as productive as possible. The objective seems clear. Yet many companies and individuals end up becoming misers. Worse, repeated cost cutting causes enormous tangible and intangible losses. Saving money becomes both an end in itself and an outcome that forces you to save still more. (An excessive focus on short-term interests can move you farther from long-term interests...) This happens because the ultimate objectives and key results of the behavior were never clearly defined. Saving money may be a result without being a key result. What matters is obtaining as many resources as possible and growing quickly. Many non-key results need to be understood more deeply—or require sacrificing short-term interests in exchange. Reason two: even with a defined goal, execution gradually becomes hostage to particular gains, losses, successes, and failures, leaving you merely reacting to events. In essence, OKR management builds a mechanism of methods, evaluation, and corrective action that keeps present behavior from straying far from objectives and key results. ----- Remembering the original purpose of key results One point deserves particular attention: we often mistake tasks for results. Achieving a result requires a series of actions. Those actions are tasks. Suppose you want a customer to buy: the key result is for that customer to purchase your product and keep purchasing it. To achieve this, you draw up a task list. Your attention then unconsciously shifts to the tasks, and you forget what they are for. You become especially focused on particular data, although those data have value only when connected to objectives and key results. Once attention centers on tasks, that connection has already been broken. The Chinese story of the man from Zheng buying shoes is a simple example. He needs data to buy shoes, and a template of his foot is reliable data. But when he forgets the template, he focuses entirely on that piece of data and forgets that he carries the underlying data with him: his feet. We repeatedly emphasize remembering our original purpose because it is easy to forget. That forgetting is often systemic and institutional: during execution, we seem almost destined to lose sight of it. OKR management is like an exceptionally clear-headed, loyal, intelligent overseer. When you forget key results and chase non-key results, it provides a systematic safeguard for removing activities that create no value. ---- #Dedao #WuBofanMethodsOfUnderstanding