Daily Inspired #12

The Topic

Learning about OKR. This is something that I know will help me in my future works but still having some trouble in implementing it into my works. So, I need to do some reading and really understand how it works. As of now, I am using Weekdone web app to track my OKR.

The Learning Points

Objective & Key Results

Objective equals a direction or a goal that we want to achieve whether it is from a company perspective, team, or even personal. Therefore, in the Weekdone app, it has a company, team, and personal OKR for us to fill in. In order to create the OKR that we can follow, we need to be clear on why we set the objective in the first place. Then, it follows with the KEY RESULTS that reflect whether the objective is achieved.

To be clear that OKR can be very different for every department like for marketing there is one set of OKR but for the technical department will be another set. Plus, the key results have to be very specific to the objective and the key results need to be measurable.

KPI VS OKR

We used to have KPI which is the Key Performance Index to track our performance. However, OKR is not KPI. It is not created to solve performance issues. In Google, Intel, Microsoft, they are using OKR to be part of their KPI which in exchange for increments, bonuses, or even shares. In Google, they are using 360-degree assessment to judge and rate whether the employee is doing a great job based on the OKR set by themselves. Plus, such assessment is done by people who are working directly and indirectly with the person which would give a more objective perspective in terms of the result of the assessment. However, when it comes to the sales team, the verdict is that OKR cannot be applied as OKR is more like a compass to quantify something that is intangible. Yet, sales are very figure based, one sale is one sale and it is absolute.

How to set objective?

The objective needs to be big to an extent challenging the team's or company's limit, yet it should not go beyond the line where it is impossible. There should be a fine line whether it is reachable or not. If setting the objective too overly exaggerated, then it would be very discouraging.

The max objectives we can go for are 5 as the focus for the team is limited. In my personal opinion, 3 is good enough as individually, handling so many objectives at one time, either one or two of the objectives will get abandon for some time as the cost to change from one to another objective is high.

How to set key results?

Key results should be no more than 4 for each objective. Key results should be set in a measurable manner. For example that we need to sell 88% of the seats in a concert (an objective). So the key results would be to get an A list artist to host a concert and also highlighting the star in all the marketing materials. So the result should be traceable and tangible.

Transparency

Transparency for OKR is of utmost importance as it is more like a tool of communication that is able to bring everyone to go in the same direction. A company would succeed when everyone is going in the right direction at an accelerated speed. Other than that, all the people within the organization will have a clear view of the job scope of every person including the top management. With that, it encourages cross-departmental collaboration to be a more frequent phenomenon. Another usefulness of OKR is that it can create positive pressure for all the people within the company. There will be peer pressure when we see others are setting challenging objectives while they are not performing and taking for granted.

Inspiration

To be honest, I have yet to have a good and well planned out Objectives for myself for this year-round. A lot of changes had happened at the speed of months and finally, I had settled down when I really get to stabilize my cash flow for a moment. I would need to set a time out for myself to really pick my brain and set OKR for myself which can be shared on my personal website that can be held me accountable too. Guess that would be during this weekend which I can use around 2 hours to get things set up for my individual and company. Once done, I will also share my planning on HIVE too.