Why you’re doing too little…

I’m not being facetious! Regular readers of this blog (and anyone who works with me) know that I’m normally encouraging people to strip things out of their day to day operations, but as with all things, there’s a tipping point where ‘cutting things out’ can turn into ‘not doing enough’.

Have you ever been in a coffee shop during rush hour? Watching the baristas making multiple drinks is like watching a well-choreographed dance, with coffees being made gracefully, accurately and at speed. Go to the same coffee shop when there’s only one customer waiting and it can be quite painful to watch it’s so slow.

So when I talk about doing too little, I’m not talking about sitting at your desk, staring out the window at clouds (or making just that one latte). What I mean is not working on enough projects at the same time. As I talked about in a previous blog [link to too many projects blog], whilst having too many balls in the air can lead to burnout and a drop in quality, having too few can be equally detrimental.

As well as the obvious problems it could cause with your cash flow, think about how it can affect things at an organisational level, specifically, the mindset of your team.

If your people don’t have a North Star to drive towards, and you’re not involving them collaboratively in terms of planning, then what motivation can they be expected to have to drive their own key results forwards and stay loyal to you/the company? The shock waves of the Great Resignation are still being felt as more and more employees realise the same position with better treatment and prospects are opening up around them.

A busy, but focused, team are going to have an intrinsic motivation to push projects on, to buy-in to your vision for the company. If they’re engaged in what they, and you, are aiming for, then you’re going to have a much more positive team/company/situation.

So how do you achieve this? As I’ve said before, in terms of ‘busyness’ you should be aiming to work on between 3-5 projects concurrently to avoid overload. In terms of ‘business’, if you aren’t using them already, then you should be considering OKRs.

OKRs stand for ‘Objectives and Key Results’ and is a collaborative goal-setting methodology used to set ambitious goals with measurable results. Objectives are where you want the company to be headed: they should be short, inspirational and ambitious. Key results are the elements you will measure to map your progress towards each objective. You should be looking at 3-5 objectives per quarter with 2-5 key results per objective.

I know what you’re thinking – how are these different to KPIs? Obviously both are used to measure progress of sorts, but when you really dig into it you’ll see that OKRs are far more agile and collaborative. Whilst KPIs tend to be leadership-led and used to measure the performance of an individual, as well as being fairly rigid, OKRs give you focus, engagement and alignment, and give you specific targets linked to more aspirational team-set goals (that help get them out of bed in the morning!).

OKRs are a fantastic way to get buy-in from your team, as well as giving shape and focus to your business growth journey. If this sounds good to you, then get in touch and see how we can help you.