The topic of OKRs is hot!
Driven also by the success of so-called more advanced and innovative companies. Google, YouTube, Adobe, and many others.
OKRs are perceived as a goal-setting methodology capable of bringing innovation, results, and also "new ways of working" that value and put people at the center.
However, all this may bring to mind the fate of methodologies that in the past — even recently — were presented as the "ultimate solution", but then delivered results below expectations.
Remember Spotify’s Agile model?
Several companies that adopted it have partially backtracked. They realized it couldn't work without the necessary "adaptations" to take into account culture, skills, processes, compliance aspects, etc.
For OKRs, the risk is the same. Applying the model without considering the organization’s starting point (culture, skills, leadership style, technologies) is often ineffective.
By itself, the OKR goal-setting system is very simple and easy to understand. This is because it captures the nature of work. Or rather, it captures and structures the steps that people and teams naturally follow when asking themselves, "how can we achieve the result in the best way, and in line with the organization’s purpose and strategy?"
In our experience, the key question therefore becomes: "how can we support the actions that ensure the greatest success in adopting OKRs?"
It’s crucial to start from the dimensions that characterize the organization and are involved in how results are achieved.
The main ones are:
- strategy and its new role
- transparency
- leadership style
- data as a tool
OKRs and the New Role of Strategy
The OKR goal-setting method is characterized by a participatory process both in the goal definition phase and in the monitoring and updating phase.
Everything happens with frequency, which makes it possible to respond to today’s complexity and the speed of change. These actions are carried out by those (individuals or teams) who are directly involved and responsible for achieving those results.
Therefore, OKRs give autonomy and empower people in defining and monitoring their own goals.
On one hand, this has a very positive impact on team and individual engagement; on the other, acting with autonomy and accountability requires being ready to do so.
In the transition to OKRs, it’s important to consider:
- Are the company’s strategy and goals communicated and understood?
- What tools do people — all of them, regardless of role — have to make OKR-related decisions strategically?
- What methods and skills have been shared and developed to ensure people are aware and prepared to read and interpret internal and external changes and impacts?
- Are other organizational practices and rules aligned with this way of working, or do they create inconsistencies and friction?
OKRs and Transparency
In a previous article, we highlighted the transparency enabled by this Goal Setting method, which requires that everyone’s objectives are known by everyone.
Here, instead, we focus on transparency as a cultural trait of the organization.
The need to share the company’s strategy and objectives raises the question of how much an organization wants to be transparent about this type of information.
Setting aside confidentiality and compliance aspects — particularly relevant in some industries — this choice is by no means obvious.
The risk is to go all-in, providing all the information needed to manage one’s OKRs consciously, while still keeping other managerial or organizational information confidential. Especially considering that in some contexts, OKRs and Performance Management coexist, and that the former — unlike the latter — is not tied to career or reward decisions.
On paper, such a situation aligns with the OKR system’s management boundaries. On the other hand, it prevents building strong trust between people and the organization, and from creating a conscious and participatory culture — the foundation of a good employee experience.
Style of Leadership
It’s no surprise that even with OKRs, leadership comes into play.
The OKR system requires individuals and teams to manage their own goals, check them frequently, evaluate them with related metrics, and update them.
Changes to key results — or even to objectives — are common. They can be updated, scaled down, or abandoned.
On paper, this is all consistent with the OKR approach. But if the organization has previously operated with traditional management tools, then there are often frequent discussions between employee and manager, or among teams when working with Agile methodologies.
In such contexts, acting autonomously is not a behavior that appears overnight. Years of command-and-control management leave their mark.
It is therefore essential to align leaders as early as possible with the new mindset needed to truly make the OKR goal-setting system participatory.
There’s no time to waste. Management must be prepared to embrace a true support and service-oriented leadership, capable of aligning those who need to act autonomously, thereby giving the organization speed and agility.
OKRs and "Data as a Tool"
The frequency of Key Results updates, and their interdependence across different teams and roles (see here), promotes the emergence of that organizational action — more or less informal — that we are already aware of, even if not reflected in charts and processes.
The OKR goal-setting system — potentially — makes organizational action more fluid, increasing the adaptability and agility of the organization.
Governance, therefore, should rely less on strategic plans and Gantt charts, and instead adopt a "real-time governance" approach.
With more granularity than in the past, the OKR system makes it possible to gain a clear understanding of the current situation and to act accordingly, enabling the resources and activities needed to achieve short- and medium-term goals.
Of course, this is only possible if the necessary know-how and technologies are in place to read and interpret OKR-related data — always in relation to other data present within the organization.
And finally, as we have often stated, systemic thinking and approach are becoming an increasingly urgent necessity.