How do you solve a problem like OKR chaos?

Not all OKR implementations have the luxury of starting with a blank sheet of paper.  

 

Now that OKRs have been around for a while, it's no surprise that progressive managers and leaders have started to make use of them.  While it's great to see this energy and enthusiasm, we end up with many variations in how they are being used, and the organisation ends up with no one "speaking the same language" when it comes to OKRs.  Inevitably, this results in inefficiencies, and people can start to lose faith as they are not seeing the mystical benefits some sell OKRs as having. 

  

This is exactly the scenario I have recently been working within a large multinational, so I thought it might be useful to share some reflections on the experience. 

 

This “organic” growth of OKRs over the period of a couple of years had meant that leadership were now faced with a key decision: do we allow this to continue as is, or do we go all-in and invest in making OKRs part of our organisational operating system? 

 

Their brief to me was to find out what they already had, assess their level of maturity, report on the value OKRs were delivering thus far and provide them with options for how they could gain more value from them if they wanted to. 

 

Over a series of interviews and focus groups, along with an analysis of OKR artefacts and cultural data, I built up a very interesting picture which revealed some great insights: 

1. Everyone I spoke to was in support of using OKRs for defining and tracking transformational goals 
2. Varying levels of maturity existed. This was based on a wide range of factors ranging from how the OKRs themselves were written to agile leadership & culture, routines and systemisation. Those areas with the highest maturity scores were the ones with the strongest routines (“heartbeat” as they call it) 
3. The lack of an OKR system was making tracking & reporting harder than it needed to be and goal data more difficult to access 
4. There were attempts to work cross functionally but this was made difficult by the lack of a consistent OKR approach. Cross-functional working was flagged in engagement data as a major opportunity for improvement 
5. Some elements of their aspired culture were now at odds with what they wanted to see OKRs help to stimulate – a tradition of excellence and perfectionism didn’t sit well with rapid experimentation and iteration 
6. There was widespread confusion about how OKRs fit into the landscape of what goal-setting and performance-tracking methods were already in place, such as MBOs, KPIs, scorecards etc. 

As for the value seen from OKRs after up to a couple of years use (in some areas), this was reported as: 

• Clarity – a rise by 11% in 6 months in people reporting having an understanding of what’s expected of them 
• Connection – a rise by 10% in 6 months in people reporting how closely they feel their work contributes to company priorities 
• Discipline of execution helps to keep up momentum 
• Outcome focus developing 
• Focus maintained on value-building activity 
• Improved ability to pivot 
• Cross-functional working beginning to improve 

So, plenty of opportunities to optimise their use of OKRs further and clearly, there’s the energy to do that. With this in mind, my recommendation was to focus on designing the right OKR framework and governance to help support and guide the whole organisation. I can stress how essential this is. Even when working with smaller businesses, it was part of our approach to help them develop a “Playbook”, so everyone had the same understanding and approach. In a larger and more complex enterprise, something more comprehensive than a Playbook is required but the fundamental need is exactly the same. Without this, you end up with exactly the same challenges as I listed from 1 to 6 above, and more. 

 

While the temptation might be to form a small working party to do the design work swiftly, my guidance was to take an inclusive approach to it by inviting input from those in the areas who have already been using OKRs. They have built up experience and learned from doing so and it’s both important not to waste this and for them to feel like they are contributing to the design, as the final framework is likely to require them to change some of their working approaches to OKRs. While this will mean that the design work will take a little longer, it is time well spent as it’s likely to help enrol more support for the changes it will require some to make. 

 

So, have you encountered the “OKR governance” challenge? If so, what did you find, and how did you work through it?