Great articulation by Mike Davidson in his reflection of being one year at Microsoft: Our north star is at least pretty pure — Daily Active Users — and that metric is usually a good indicator that you’ve made something people like, but doctrinaire allegiance to almost any singular metric can quickly make people forget why we are in this profession to begin with: to improve lives. Or to put it squarely in Microsoft parlance again: […]
I’ve recently come across the Operator’s Manual, a post by Ian McAllister. It’s a compilation of tips for communicating data, dates and deliverables. Basically, how to live up to “be bright, be brief, be gone”. Taking inspiration from that post, below are some tips that I frequently share when it comes to OKRs. My standard line is “OKRs are deceptively simple, but tricky to get right” or as I just recently heard from Isaac “a […]
One of the biggest success factors for OKRs is culture. A healthy team culture of trust is fertile ground for successful OKR implementations. One of the core principles is to “embrace the red” in OKR reviews. It’s important to celebrate what teams are doing well. At the same time, learning and growth happens in areas that are blocked or need attention. As teams create new categories, targeting new audiences and inventing new products, there will […]
I used to pride myself in the belief that a shared document is all it takes to manage OKRs. As teams grow, so does complexity and entropy. At some point, it makes sense to invest in a proper OKR management tool.
Greek mythology teaches a great lesson on focus and the perils of distraction
The concept of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is deceptively easy. Objectives are ambitious, qualitative and time bound goals of a team. Each objective is typically supported by ~3-4 key results. Key Results are measurable achievements that contribute to those goals. They are business outcomes and typically expressed in terms of adoption, engagement, cost, performance or quality. An OKR describes both what a team wants to achieve and how it is going to measure its […]