Measure What Matters | OKR Resources

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”—Meister Eckhart For our US friends who are celebrating Thanksgiving, who and what are you grateful for in terms of your work? Are there leaders who make it feel less like a job and more like a vocation? Are there colleagues you would walk through walls for? Have you let them know how much you appreciate them???

Is your organization facing an end of year reckoning? So much to do in so little time? We’ve been there. If your team is struggling with too many priorities or conflicting priorities or overall failure to launch, implementing OKRs might just be the solution you’re looking for.?

If crafting effective Key Results is crucial to an organization’s success, what’s the best way to ensure KRs are top-notch? Start by being meticulous with your language (seriously, it makes a huge difference) and then consider these questions: - Is the KR specific and timebound? - Is it aggressive yet realistic? - Is it measurable and verifiable?

Can you name the 3 Types of Key Results? Jeff Bezos often uses one type, Andy Grove leaned toward another, and each can give a team a clearer sense of which actions to take next. The 3 types of KRs are inputs, outputs, and outcomes. In many cases, though, a team that combines all three will find a powerful way to meet their Objectives. Let us know in the comments, which one your team uses most often?

Connecting a team’s mission to its strategy is not easy. Executing against that strategy? Even harder. But a team can get — and stay aligned — using OKRs. It starts with clarifying next steps and rallying folks around a shared definition of success. Tell us in the comments how you’ve successfully connected your overall strategy with your day-to-day work.

This is the greatest management communication ever written. In November 1979, Andy Grove faced every leader's nightmare: A competitor was about to destroy Intel's entire business. Motorola's new chip was objectively better than theirs. Grove knew they had weeks, not months to respond. What happened next was remarkable. Grove gathered 100 key leaders in a San Jose hotel room to align on Intel’s OKRs. One day later, he wrote his "Operation Crush Memo" which became legendary: → "Motorola is beating us. Their chip is better. Full stop." → "We're losing because we forgot who we serve, not because of technology." → "Every engineer will be paired with a customer. Learn their problems firsthand." → "200 days. 2000 design wins. No excuses.” The entire organization transformed overnight: → A massive chart in HQ tracked every win → Every department aligned to one mission → Every engineer became a solution provider, not a chip seller Result? → Intel won 2000+ designs in 12 months → Won IBM as their client for the first PC → Sales grew from $1B to $1.6B in just one year → Intel dominated personal computing for the next 30 years Grove's efforts led to one of his most famous quote: "Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them." The lesson for leaders? When facing a big threat, you don't need a 90-day strategy. You don’t need your disparate teams to come up with plans. You don’t need to hire third-party consultants to tell you what to do. You need one leader. One clear plan. And just one day to align thousands. --- What is your favorite company turnaround story? ?? Share and follow for more similar content like this. Source: Measure What Matters by John Doerr

Need Help Focusing and Prioritizing Your Team’s Work? When goals collide (or worse, are all over the place), you’ll want to declare — and draw attention to — what matters most right now. OKRs push teams to focus and prioritize, demanding that everyone not only is aware of, but is working toward, the organization’s core objective. Implementing Objectives and Key Results can help uncover and resolve competing priorities, as well as navigate the classic tradeoff between short-term success and long-term success.? We’d love to know what the biggest obstacle your team faces when prioritizing competing projects.? ? Tell us in the comments and check out our new video on how to persuade teams to focus and prioritize.

If you’re struggling to understand how KPIs are differ from OKRs, think about it this way: KPIs can be critical in keeping the lights on (no one, after all, wants the payroll software to hit a snafu), but they don’t typically represent the most important outcomes you want to achieve. That’s where OKRs come in. As Ryan Panchadsaram likes to say, “OKRs are KPIs with soul – because they give direction and purpose.”?

Good news! You’ve drafted your next Objectives! Now it’s time to ask five essential questions to make sure they are as strategic and inspiring as possible: 1. Is this incremental, a leap, or a discovery? 2. How can you make your Objective more specific? 3. How can your Objective be more action-oriented?? 4. How can you frame it more concisely?? 5. How can you make it more memorable? Taken together, these five questions will ensure your Objectives are specific, concise, and memorable. But tell us – which of these questions is the *most* helpful in creating an OKR your team can really? get behind??

Can You Name All Five Benefits of OKRs? John Doerr describes them as superpowers. What we like about them is how they banish micromanaging, territorialism, blown deadlines and other office misdemeanors. Take a look and let us know how many you could recall (without a hint!). ?? 1. OKRs lend us FOCUS. They remind us of what’s most important at any given moment. They also define what’s *less* important. They give us permission to say “no” to a task that will distract us from what matters most. 2. OKRs provide us with ALIGNMENT. Because they’re transparent throughout the whole organization, OKRs help to break down silos. They enable an organization to get its priorities in sync –?from top to bottom. 3.? OKRs also call for collective COMMITMENT. They give everyone a way to share their views on what matters. OKRs guide us to a shared set of priorities. 4. OKRs provide a framework for TRACKING progress. Clear performance benchmarks remove ambiguity about how close we are to making a positive impact. As Andy Grove, the father of OKRs, liked to say, “OKRs prevent any arguments over whether an individual or team achieved something.” Yes? No? It’s simple. 5. When OKRs are working well, they’ll encourage us to STRETCH for bold and amazing goals.?