Impact over activity - How OKRs can make communications more strategic and focused

“It's complicated” is a generous way to describe the relationship we communicators often have with goal setting and measurement.

While we strive to be a strategic advisor to the business, we often spend little time setting strategic objectives. Working in a creative discipline, it’s easy to get much more excited to jump straight into ideas and tactics. We can’t wait to get going, which can come at the expense of strategic alignment to key stakeholder priorities and setting realistic expectation on what results communicators can and should deliver, and crucially, what success looks like.

This “you know it when you see it” approach to success in communications makes it difficult to understand when we have reached our goal or when we are getting side-tracked. Stakeholder approval – while very important – is also not a reliable indicator of success. It assumes that definitions of “successful” or even “enough” are aligned. This is not always the case.

Often, comms impact is hard to measure empirically. Especially with regard to how we've shifted perception and influenced behaviors – which can cause “perfection paralysis” and prevent us from goal setting entirely, or focusing on outputs over outcomes. A business leader was very kind when he called me out once: “I get communications is art and science, but why do we never talk about the science part?” He had a point.?

A former colleague once shared a story about a stakeholder in a previous company who would evaluate the communications success of an annual initiative by comparing the thickness of clipping books from previous years. While coverage reporting may now be more electronic than before, the ghost of the ”thud factor” still haunts our discipline. Everyone who works across markets also knows that this form of anecdotal evidence does not really transcend language barriers. So how can we better articulate the value of our work and the contributions we make to the business and still be agile and flexible?

During a long run, I almost literally stumbled upon the concept of OKRs on a podcast. I loved the ideas that John Doerr, the “godfather of OKRs,” was explaining and felt it worth looking into. What is your Objective (the big idea) and what Key Results will tell you that you are on the right track? So together with a team of communicators from across the organization, we explored what this could look like for Comms at Microsoft.

One year later, we are making good progress. I look back at my first sets of OKRs in the workshop decks I built in mild embarrassment – but also with a sense of pride. They keep getting better and better, and I love how much more collaborative they have made us as across teams. Ever since the pandemic, the clock speed of communications has been turbo-charged and turned into an ongoing white-knuckle ride. In this, OKRs are an effective tool for Communicators for alignment across the organization and to company priorities and purpose, but also to prioritize in a fast changing environment that in totality will always demand more time and energy from us and our teams than we will ever have. As blogger and author Cory Doctorow famously said, you don’t need a plan, you need a vector.

I loved how generous our OKR community and especially Marques Johnson , Paul Leslie , Jessica Baxmann , Charline Prolhac Justin Bates have been with sharing their learnings, how much I can share with colleagues like Lenka ?ábelová , Rachel Dunn , Leo McKay , Melanie Daboudet , Lisa Polloni , Katie Oakes Stevens , James Comer Felipe Gheno Elizabeth Greene Ditte Namer and I still remember Jessica Alm and Edvard Bergstrom 's guidance that every Key Result needs to have a number.

A common misconception about OKRs is that they should cover everything we do. That is not the case. Instead, it is about where we focus most of our time and energy. In the words of Vetri Vellore: “OKRs are about providing a spotlight on the most important outcomes, not a floodlight on every outcome.”

OKRs are transparent and when I heard that Viva Goals would be available soon, I reached out to colleagues Vetri Vellore , Don Campbell and Scott Blackwell to get us onboarded as soon as possible.

I also like the reflection part a lot. John Doerr is very clear that the framework is a tool and not a weapon. OKRs are guardrails, not chains or blinders. Studies show that learning is much more effective if coupled with reflection and the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate key lessons taught by experience. Educator John Dewey goes a step further: “We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.”

And that is what I love most about the OKR journey I am on. It builds on and reinforces a growth mindset. It helps me become a more strategic and focused communicator and advisor to the business. And gives me the opportunity to learn from everyone around me.

You can learn more about Viva Goals here.