Hello to my lovely subscribers, I hope you all are doing well and had a great start to the week!

In the last edition of newsletter part (2/3) of OKR 101 series, we learned how to write great OKRs that leads to high impact and growth. I would recommend you to check that out first if you haven’t already. Click here to read it and then come back to this one so that you have a better understanding.

Now that you have good idea of how to write great OKRs but just writing great OKRs won’t move the growth needle will it?

I dont think so!

Hey, you can definitely try ofcourse but,

Without a proper system of implementation and tracking, there are slim chances of any success with OKRs and its effective use within a team or even at individual level.

Now let’s see how that system should look like,

Effective use of OKR framework = System for planning & writing OKRs + System for tracking and reflecting on OKRs

Lets dig deeper first into the “System for planning & writing OKRs”

Planning and writing of OKRs is quite arduous and time consuming task as it involves communication with different stakeholders, brainstorming sessions, drafting OKRs, communication to different product teams and management etc.

These preparations require alot of time and energy, hence can’t and shouldn’t be done in a day or two.

These activities needs to spread out over the week or two so that it wont done in haste and you also have enough time for brainstorming, aligning and writing.

Below image shows how the planning and writing can be organized during 1 week.

Day 1:

Setting Objectives first is extremely critical step and usually takes a lot of time. Make sure objectives that are set are very clear to all the stakeholders.

Once objectives are set, you can move ahead with creating the first version (draft) of OKRs.

I would recommend to keep the size of meeting/workshop small for better brainstorming and effective decision making. In this case “less is better”

Possible Stakeholders involved: PM, Product Owner, Engineering Lead, Designer, Business Analyst, Finance

Day 2:

Taking the draft version as foundation, frame the OKRs but resist the urge of perfection. For that there would be OKR refinement session later in the day.

For eg. You are trying to set a KR as “reducing the customer care issues from x1% to x2%”. What i observed when we were writing OKRs was, we wasted a lot of time thinking what would be these values (x1 and x2) and didn’t emphasize whether reducing the customer care issue is aligned with the set objective in the first place.

Focusing on the quality first and then quantity is the way to go!

In OKR Refinement session, do the refinement in terms of jotting down the exact numbers in Key Results (x1 and x2 from above example) as per the status quo, resources available etc. so that you achieve your objective.

Important Step: Assign Key Result Owner for each Key result so that they can track the progress of the key results and make sure it is on the right track.

More stakeholders should be involved as you already set the “destination” and now they can give their valuable input for reaching the destination.

Possible Stakeholders involved: PMs, POs, Engineering Team, Designer, Business Analyst, Operations & Customer Care, Finance, Sales & Marketing, Legal etc.

Day 3:

Discuss with different cross product team for any cross-over as an objective for product 1 might affect other team’s product 2 and that needs to be addressed and aligned in this meeting.

This will help the teams to prepare their resources (capacities) accordingly.

In the OKR refinement session, you can then make the required changes if any.

Possible Stakeholders involved: PMs from different product teams, Product Head, Engineering Head

Day 4:

Present the framed OKRs to the board members for agreement and also for any suggestions or feedback.

In the OKR refinement session, you can again then adjust the OKRs accordingly.

Possible Stakeholders involved: PMs, Department Heads, C-Level

Day 5:

Communicate the final OKRs to the whole team so that everyone knows what they are and where to find them.

Ideally the planning for OKRs should be ready before the start of new quarter so that you know what needs to be done in the quarter from Day 1

For eg. For the OKR planning for Q4, start these session in the middle of September so that by the end of it you already have the OKRs framed, aligned, agreed and ready to be use from 1st Oct!

Software or tools to use to write and track OKRs?

There are few softwares available that provide features to document OKRs and track them such as 15Five, Mooncamp, Asana, Notion, Google Sheet etc.

Important thing is try and choose whatever works for you. We used 15Five at first but weren’t satisfied with it so switched to Google Sheet. It’s simple and effective!

System for “tracking and reflecting on OKRs”

Now that we have framed and written down our OKRs, next step is to track the progress of Key Results and reflect on it on regular basis

Benefit: To understand what has gone well, what needs to be changed or what are the roadblockers so that you (team) can act upon them asap.

In order to track the progress of OKRs and reflect on it ➜ bi-weekly sessions, monthly meetings and OKR retrospective needs to be set up,

Bi-Weekly Sessions: These meetings should happen every alternate week and the agenda of this meeting should be to track the progress of the Key Results and check the confidence level.
Now this is where the Key Result Owners would come into picture as they will be the main participants of this meeting as they would be driving the Key Results.
This session is also important to check the confidence level of achieving the Key Result in the quarter. Key Result Owners will assign a confidence value to their respective Key Result.
For example: We use the scale 0 to 1, so 0 would mean 0 % chance of completing the Key result in the current quarter, 1 would mean 100% and 0.5 would mean 50% chance of completing the Key result in current quarter, so on and so forth.
Confidence Level will guide you whether you can achieve the KR or there are some roadblocks that needs some addressing.
Participants: PMs and Key Result Owners
Monthly Meetings: These meetings should be held on monthly basis and should provide an overview of progress for all KRs and set objectives to the higher management so that they are aware of it and also for you as a PM, if there are any roadblocks that needs intervention from higher management like Head of Departments or C-Levels, these are the meetings to put them forward and set the right expectations.
Participants: PMs, Head of departments, C-Level
OKR Retrospective: OKR retrospective should happen once in a quarter just before you start the OKR planning for next quarter.
This could be game changer for the team if you do it!
Restrospectives allows the team to reflect what went right and what went wrong in the whole OKR process.
In these retrospectives you might discover that you didn’t set the objectives right, or you didn’t write enough KRs to achieve the objectives or the quantitative values that were set were incorrect etc.
Once you note down the bad and good stuff, you can improve your OKR process next time for better results and that’s the beauty of retrospectives.

Disclaimer: You won’t be able to do everything right first time with OKRs. Like any new system, it will also take few iterations to be super effective but your learnings from each quarter will help you grow and improve.

Aim for improvement and not for perfection!

On this note we end our OKR 101 series here. I hope you all learned something and now can implement the OKR framework in your team or even at individual level as well. Don’t underestimate the power of written Goals. It will surpise you 😃

I will be adding some interesting or cool stuff that i came across during the week. Might be helpful for you as well. Let me know if it is not 😉

Intersting stuff from the week:

Intersting stuff that i wrote:

OKR 101 - How to write great OKRs that leads to high growth?

OKR 101 - What are OKRs and why every organisation should use this framework?

How to prioritize "your" work better as a Product Manager?
7 Things you must do in the first 6 months of your transition to an early PM role
Awesome Problem Prioritization Framework that can do wonders for your Product-Market Fit

That’s a wrap! 🚀

See you next week. Stay healthy and stay curious! 🤘🏽😎

If you like the article, kindly share it, that would be awesome 😁

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Issue #8 | OKR 101 - How to implement OKR…