Recently, I’ve reviewed the OKRs framework, or Objectives and Key Results. This is a widespread framework used by most of the top tech companies like Google, Amazon, Spotify, and many other non-tech companies as well. The compelling reason for using this framework is its ability to align teams with ambitious objectives, which in turn support the overall company’s goal.
This framework has a lot of value when it comes to structuring a company’s goals and breaking them down into more tangible activities, but by itself it is not what makes a team exceptional.
OKRs are directives that tell a team what to focus on. It is somehow a top down approach, where strategy trickles down from top leadership and translates into more tangible guidelines as we approach the individual contributors’ level. Though it’s often the case that the OKR exercise is carried out at a team’s level, the objectives still need to align with the overall vision that was agreed upon by a small group of leaders within a company. In this sense, then, the objectives are directives for a team to go and execute on a pre-defined strategy.
The opinion I propose here is that what makes a team deliver on a mission, goal or objective is the passion each individual has for what they do. It’s the translation of the objectives into a passion that makes the OKR framework effective.
If you think about it, team members don’t repeat to themselves OKRs as a mantra every day, OKRs are not what makes them get up from bed and go to work, their beliefs and values are what drives them. The interlock between their own values and the objectives they were given is what motivates them and makes them successfully achieve those key results.
The tricky part of this is that each member of the team has different values, experiences, and thus they will care and feel passionate about different things. A successful team is one where, by nature of self-analysis, or invited by a leader, each member has translated the set of given objectives into something that resonates with them and they deeply care about.
Let’s consider the very simplistic example proposed below, and please note that Objectives are usually much more ambitious and innovative then the one in the example, especially for technology companies:
Objective1 - Achieve 20% higher sales for cooking books
TM1* - cares about this because she believes in healthy eating and feels particularly at ease promoting healthy cooking books.
TM2 - cares about it because he knows home-cooking is a trending theme.
TM3 - feels this objective is very aligned with her other project, a podcast about cooking, through which she can advertise the cooking books available at her company’s store.
*TM stands for Team Member
At first read, it might seem that what I’m looking for is “what’s in for them”, though that’s again not enough to create a passion. The “what” needs to be something each team member deeply cares about, otherwise they won’t be backing the objective when times get tough (and they always do!). Only when an objective means something deeper than just a set of guidelines to follow, will the team member make an objective truly their own. But what happens if a team member doesn’t feel strongly or even agrees at all with one of the objectives?
Let’s look at another example:
Starting point: Company’s OKR is to achieve 20% higher sales in cooking books
TM1: Lucrezia, who has received these OKRs from leadership, is not passionate about cooking and actually thinks focusing on selling leadership books will have more impact on her team’s results.
Question: How do we align this objective with Lucrezia’s values and passions?
There are two aspects to consider in this situation:
- Though the objective itself can’t be changed, the “how to get there” has a certain level of flexibility that would allow a person to find a unique angle of getting to the objective that resonates with them.
- Though the objective itself might not be the one the individual would have picked, it can still align to a broader career or personal goal.
Talking more tangibly, in this case Lucrezia cannot change the fact that the goal of her team is to sell 20% more of cooking books, but she can look at the objective from two different angles:
- Lucrezia doesn’t have cooking experience she can leverage in order to sell more effectively, but she does love to explore different cuisines and travels a lot, and this experience can also be leveraged when positioning a cooking book, moreover, by having to sell cooking books she will explore a lot of cuisines she wasn’t aware of (personal passion/goal).
- Achieving a 20% growth result in something she didn’t believe to be as effective as other alternatives will demonstrate to herself and others that she’s a great seller, no matter what it is that she is tasked to sell. This will give her a measurable number to use in her promotion case that she has been preparing for the next perf cycle (professional goal).
Note the phrases I underlined above. What I wanted to highlight is the fact that we are connecting the original objective to something that Lucrezia really cares about, and even if she might not feel as aligned to the original objective the way it was proposed, she does feel very strongly about it now that we identified connections to other aspects of her life and career that matter to her.
How can we do this in a more programmatic way? Below I propose a simple methodology that can help make objectives more personal and meaningful. My suggestion is that for each of the questions proposed, the team member doesn’t just answer but draws a map on a piece of paper.
Step 1: break the objective apart to map its dependencies and impact areas. When you answer, think creatively and in an expansive way.
For each objective, think of the following:
- What factors, internal or external, could have influenced the decision of picking this objective?
- Why do you think it is deemed important by top leadership and how does it align with the wider company’s vision?
- Is there anything you are currently doing that could serve this objective?
- What would you learn by working on this objective?
- If this objective was reached, what would it mean to you as an individual?
Result: this step is all about broadening the objective to visualize its impact. By the end of this step you should have uncovered aspects of the objective that weren’t obvious before.
Step 2: build connections. Look at each of your answers simultaneously and think of how they are connected to each other.
Observe your previous answers simultaneously and think of the following:
- Do you see any pattern or theme?
- Can you think of a new role for yourself while operating in this space?
Result: this step is about uncovering opportunities you have in the opportunity space. By the end of this step you should have identified a theme and a role you can play in this space.
Step 3: bring it closer to your heart. In this last step we connect your findings to your values and passions.
Observe the pattern/theme and the role you have uncovered, and think of the following:
- How does this theme align with your passions and values?
- What would having that role make you feel?
- What would having that role allow you to achieve?
Result: with this last step, we are connecting the uncovered paths and role opportunities that we identified during the "unpacking" part of the exercise, to the more intimate real of emotions.We are writing black on white how a certain set of activities would make us feel and how they align to our values. This last step is the key to create that connection between objectives and passions, without which an objective is just one of many directives.
I suggest doing this exercise whether you are an individual contributor or a manager. The good thing about this framework is that there is no right or wrong answer, anything you jot down has the sole purpose of serving you.
If you try it out, please reach out and let me know if it was useful, and what could be improved in the proposed framework.
