(2016-09-02) Wodtke One Objective To Rule Them All

Christina Wodtke: One Objective to Rule them All. Getting to one objective is nearly always the hardest talk I’ll have with a team. I called my book Radical Focus and not “A Guide to OKRs” because I believe focus is the thing that makes the difference between excelling and flailing about in mediocrity.

So why do so many companies struggle with choosing a single OKR set for a quarter? This is what I’ve seen:

1. You are jamming years of work into a quarter

prioritize and sequence effort for maximum impact.

Appropriately sequenced objectives create institutional learning

2. You are Confusing Push Efforts with Protect Efforts

In Radical Focus, I talk about the weekly foursquare, where you check progress towards OKRs, discuss efforts toward OKRs and monitor health metrics.

OKRs do NOT have to cover everything you do, they cover the single most important thing you must exponentially improve this quarter.

So you pick a handful of key metric you want to keep in the green while you are making heroic efforts toward the OKRs.

I recommend keeping your health metrics to a minimum. Three to five is enough.

3. You are Making an OKR set for Every Department

A company OKR should unite the company toward a single goal.

unifying theme

If you find an OKR set that really is about the company’s success, other teams will find ways to make it happen as well, from customer service to legal

4. You are Saying the Same Things the Different Ways