I am always getting a bit ironic when I hear clients say “I think we should do OKRs, don’t you?”. It’s a bit like when people tell me “You guys from Phusis do the Holacracy stuff, right?”. Methodologies are just a means to an end… OKRs are all about Defining an ambitious goal, then translating it into a couple of measurable results to reach. Wow, revolution ?? ! Well yes, obviously, this is interesting for you and your team to do. Now does it deserve entire companies to be dedicated to the OKR thing… Hum, your call. Anyway, let’s surf on the hype to bring sane and effective measuring practices in teams.
Measuring is indeed key for continuous improvement and steering. Many teams and managers have lost this ability, not measuring anything, measuring things that do not matter, or using measures only as a way to put pressure or fire people. Here are a couple of suggestions we make to our clients when they start measuring again, with OKR, or any measurement method:
- ?Your main objectives should be a direct translation of your purpose (the why) in the context of the coming period. You can certainly follow up several strategy-related metrics (the how) but do not necessarily put target on those: your main targets should describe the impact. For example, if your purpose as a Marketing department is to have the brand living in people’s heads, you will follow up on the social media activity, and put a target on the number of active followers this quarter (Impact), not on the number of tweets (Strategy = Tweet 4 times a week).
- ?The “health” metrics, for example “team solidarity level”, are also interesting to follow up, and potentially worth a target to reach. Even if they are subjective, they can be measured and will always say something important about where you stand as a team.?
- ?Don’t push objectives on teams or people. Let them define their own objectives, in alignment with the superior level objectives. There is nothing more frustrating than receiving unrealistic or uninteresting objectives, so you better let teams define how they can best contribute. If you have a psychologically safe environment, people will stretch themselves alone, you will only have to challenge here and there, where the blind spots lie. You can obviously hold bi-directional discussions to fine-tune. To some this will seem natural, but in all too many, even “modern” organizations, the definition of autonomy is: “I let people define how they reach the objectives I give them”. We need to go further if we are serious about autonomy and considering people as adults.
- ?Ensure metrics are followed up locally on a regular, systematic basis, so people can adapt their strategies, or even the objective itself, as they go. We usually do that in the operational meeting.?
- ?In this unforeseeable world, prefer shorter term, relative metrics over long term, absolute ones. They will prove much more meaningful and resilient when the context evolves.?For example, prefer “Quarterly Turnover should be above the market median” over “This year’s turnover should be 23 M€”.?
- ?Using individual objectives will increase individualistic behaviour. Using only collective objectives might trigger disengagement. To solve this issue and foster collaborative work, do ban individual objectives, but follow up and make total transparency on individual performances. This way you incentivize collaboration while keeping people accountable to the team. Again, this requires a psychologically safe environment. And that’s another story to tell…
