OKR's

A goal setting and alignment framework.

Dustin McCraw

Sept 2018

* Measure What Matters - John Doerr

Operation Crush:
An Intel Story

In 1979 Intel was facing a crisis. Motorola was increasingly winning chip contracts.

A sales manager notified management of the situation and within 1 month, the entire company of Intel had the same goal.
"Crush Motorola"

Every single person in the company knew the goal, knew how to achieve it, and how to measure if they were successful.

If you tell everyone to go to the center of Europe, and some start marching to France, and some to Germany, and some to Italy, that's no good - not if you want to all going to Switzerland. If the vectors point in different directions, they add up to zero. But if you get everyone pointed in the same direction, you maximize the results!

- Andy Grove, Measure What Matters

How could Intel,
a giant company even back then,
change their direction so quickly?

 

OKR's

Objective
Key Result

Objective - "Where do I want to go?"

Key Results -  "How do I get there?"

Objective

• A description of a goal to be achieved in the future.
• Sets a clear direction and provides motivation.
• Can be thought of like a destination on a map.

Key Results

• A metric with a target value that measures progress towards an Objective.
• Is like a signpost with a distance that shows you how close you are.
• Are not ambiguous. They must have a number. They must be measurable.

“It’s not a key result if it doesn’t have a number,” Marissa Mayer

OKR Examples

Objective: Increase Drivers in System (uber)

* Increase driver base in each region by 20%

* Increase driver average session to 26 hours / weekly in all active region

Objective: Increase Geographic Coverage of Drivers (uber)

* Increase coverage of SF to 100%

* Increase coverage for all active cities to 75%

* Decrease pickup time to < 10 mins in any coverage area during peak hours of usage

Objective: Increase average watch time per user (youtube)

* Increase total viewership time to 61 minutes daily

* Expand native YT application to 2 new OSs

* Reduce video loading times by 5%

OKR Must Do's

• 3 - 5 Objectives with 2 - 5 Key Results
• Half are top down with the other half are bottom up
• Quarterly with checkins
• Public - anyone in the company can see your OKR's and progress
• Separate comp/evaluations from OKR's
• Be ambitious (stretch goals)
• At end of cycle grade each objective and key results

Will take 3 - 5 quarters to be able to write good OKR's

OKR DONT'S

• OKR's are not a todo list!

• Don't set too many OKR's

• Don't set OKR's in isolation

• Don't set it and forget it!

OKR's are about being outcome-based, not output based!

OKR Superpowers

 

• Focus and Commit to Priorities 

• Align and Connect for Teamwork

• Track for Accountability 

• Stretch for Amazing 

Focus and Commit to Priorities 

Only three to five top objective per cycle. Too many OKRs dilute and scatter people’s efforts. Decide what not to do, and discard, defer, or deemphasize accordingly.

The single most important element for OKR success is conviction and buy-in by the organization’s leaders.

Align and Connect for Teamwork

Show employees how their objectives relate to the company’s top priorities. Align their goals with transparent, public goals, on up to the CEO. 

Encourage a healthy proportion of bottom-up OKRs— roughly half. (people closest to the problem often have the best solutions)

Remove silos by connecting teams with horizontally shared OKRs.

Track for Accountability 

OKR's are public as are the results.

Continuously reassessment and honest, objective grading— and start at the top. When leaders openly admit their missteps, contributors feel freer to take healthy risks.

Have regular check-ins and progress updates to keep OKR's timely and relevant. Course-correct with agility, or to fail fast.

Stretch for Amazing

Distinguish between goals that must be obtained and those that stretch.

Design stretch OKRs to fit the organization’s culture. A “stretch” may vary over time, depending on the operating needs of the coming cycle.

Establish an environment where individuals are free to fail without judgment.

Q3 Personal OKR's

Kick the $#!T out of Payments
* $1.5 million in payments
* $1.1 million in registration
* $400k in invoicing

Become a better manager to support my team  
* Read one management book
* Take a management course on Coursera
* Pick 4 articles on communication skills
* Pick 4 articles on team motivation
* Write up my manager readme and job description

Understand our invoicing metrics better to make better business decisions
* Each month, write down # of divisions using invoices, # of invoices created, amount of money paid
* Determine percentage of invoice landing page route

Questions?

Thank you!