Ep 34: Why You Shouldn't Start with an OKR Tool (Yet)

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to Thinkydoer Shorts,where we embrace anti-perfection
and dive straight into the messymiddle of strategy, leadership,
and personal and career growth.
I'm your host, Sara Lobkovich, creatorof No-BS Objectives and Key Results,
host of the Thinkydoers podcast,
and I'm a strategy coach, big timegoal nerd, And a board certified

(00:23):
health and wellness coach witha focus on work life well-being.
And in the next few minutes, we'llexplore a current topic or insight to
spark your curiosity and provide you apragmatic starting place to take action.
Let's dive in.
Hello, friends.
I am really excited toshare this with you today.

(00:43):
What you're going to hear wasoriginally recorded as a live.
This was a YouTube and LinkedInlive that I shared as part of my
recent Goal Fridays series I do afew times a year, I pulled together
free events for the general public.
Anyone's invited, and you can comeand learn about the inspired and

(01:05):
transformative way that I work with goalsetting, whether you've heard the term
Objective and Key Results before or not.
Today's topic is one of the spicy ones,especially because I have a lot of friends
who are with the OKR platforms, And Ido love and think very highly of the
OKR platform space, even though I don'tplay in that space too terribly often.

(01:26):
In this episode, you'll hear why Idon't recommend starting with an OKR
platform and what I do recommend instead.
So buckle up, enjoy this short,and I look forward to hearing
the questions it prompts for you.
If you are here today, thenyou have come to learn a little
bit more about tracking OKRs.

(01:46):
What's going to sound familiar tomany of you who have worked with OKRs
institutionally is a little story I'mgoing to share in a minute about how
Objectives and Key Results implementationstend to happen in organizations.
If you're here and you're a soloor a small-business person, the

(02:08):
content from today still applies.
While a lot of what I'm going totalk about is what happens with OKRs
in large organizations, the firstquestion most of us ask ourselves when
we decide to implement OKRs is, "Allright, what software am I going to use?
How am I going to track these?"

(02:29):
With that, we're going to talkabout why that isn't actually the
first question we should start withand where we should begin instead.
But first, before we get intoall that, I am Sara Lobkovich.
I'm a board-certified health andwellness coach, and I specialize
in career wellbeing and impact.
I have also trained over 2000 OKRcoaches and led OKR adoption in

(02:54):
multi-thousand person organizations.
I'm an enormous Objectivesand Key Results nerd.
And I work with organizations from theFortune 100 to purpose-driven solos.
So today we're gonna flip thescript on these things that
tend to lead to challenged OKRimplementations when it comes to

(03:17):
taking the software-first approach.
So we'll talk about why starting witha platform might lead to failure, which
is exactly what we don't want, andwhat you might consider doing instead.
And for my friends withplatforms, hello, I love you.
You're the best.
You might not like the title of this live,but you're gonna like the finish of it.

(03:41):
Because what I'm here to do is to makesure that people adopt the OKR platforms
at the right time and successfully.
So while the title might be ratherprovocative here for my, OKR platform
friends, the message you're going to like.
With that, let's dive in andtake a look at how most OKR

(04:05):
implementations tend to start.
What tends to happen is an executivegets really excited reading a copy of
Measure What Matters, and they readMeasure What Matters, or they hear about
OKRs from a colleague or a businessacquaintance, and they get all excited
about the potential of Objectives andKey Results in their organization.

(04:28):
So they come back to the office,they hand a copy of Measure What
Matters to our hero, and our herois our OKR core team champion.
Our hero reads Measure What Mattersand kicks off that first OKR cycle.
And there's a lot of excitement,especially among the executives.
There's a lot of excitementamong OKR early adopters.

(04:50):
And then there's a whole lot of skeptics.
There's a whole lot of people whowant to debate what words mean because
they're uncomfortable with the ideaof actually setting measurable goals.
You wouldn't believe the things I'veseen people do to try and stall on
actually setting measurable Key Results.
And so what tends to happen isthen we get into this, like, panic

(05:16):
over the information we got fromMeasure What Matters is not enough
for us to actually implement.
And so things go off the rails.
The first thing most people do when thathappens is they sit down and Google OKR or
they look for resources online about OKRs.
And what they tend to find is one ofthe over 100 OKR platforms that are here

(05:41):
to solve everyone's problems with OKRs.
And there are lots of them.
They're very prevalentin the search results.
They make great content.
You can't argue with theprolificness of the content
that the, OKR platforms create.
Some of it is really awesome too, asa newer practitioner, it's hard to

(06:03):
tell what is actually helpful and whatmight not be so much, or what might
be a little bit of smoke and mirrors.
so it's really easy to fall intothe funnel of the OKR platforms.
And then once you're in thatfunnel, they say, Just trust them."
That's what they exist todo — to help people with OKRs.

(06:25):
And so sign here, get your seats.
You're going to want to onboardeveryone because you need everyone
in the system for this to work.
And that's how people wind upin the OKR platform ecosystem.
We can solve all your problems.
Trust us.
Sign here.
This is going to work best if you haveus handle your platform onboarding.
So getting people into and establishedwith the software and services.

(06:50):
So, we're going to help your team learnhow to do OKRs successfully so that
both those things together lead to wins.
We're going to get quick wins with ourOKR implementation using this approach.
That's the message fromour software friends.
And sometimes, that is what happens.
But too often, what I see is thatthe services are often really

(07:16):
overburdened, like very busy.
And so it's not that they're doinganything on purpose, poorly — actually
those people, like I've been in thatposition, they're the people who wind up
in services in these companies are someof the most talented and passionate OKR
practitioners on the face of the planet.
They go above and beyond for theirclients absolutely every day.

(07:39):
But because of the system and incentivesand our OKR platform that wants to
maximize the number of seats that aresold, they want as many people using
their software as much as possible.
You might see there's a little bitof a conflict potential there, where
the OKR services onboarding mightfocus on methodology just enough

(08:03):
for people to create OKRs to typeinto the software because they want
to get those OKRs into the softwareand get people using the software.
And that lack of carefulattention to methodology might
yield a low-quality adoption.
And so, the end result of this specialtysoftware to the rescue approach that's

(08:24):
really easy to fall into is frustration ofwhy isn't anyone using the OKR platform?
We spent all this money.
We've got all this labor andno one's using the platform.
I've seen remarkably low utilizationrates on large deployments.
And this was with clients, not when Iwas working with the platforms, but I had

(08:48):
one client that deployed, I think it wasover a thousand seats of an OKR platform.
And there were three regularusers of the platform.
So, we'll talk about some of why thathappens, but we get that frustration over
why isn't anyone using this thing thatwe've put all this effort into and it was
supposed to ease all of our OKR problems.

(09:10):
And it isn't.
And then we also get this exasperationof why are we tracking milestones in our
OKR platform and our delivery platform?
Because a lot of times, the platformservices folks are always going to
say we want to focus on outcomes,not activities, in our Key Results.
But the reality is, if they're goingto get butts in seats deep into

(09:33):
the organization, at some point,people are probably going to stop
writing measurable Key Resultsand start identifying activities.
And so then, we wind up with peopledual-entering their planned activities
into the OKR platform and managingit in their project management or
whatever their delivery system is.
And so then, we wind up withIs this really any better than

(09:56):
what we were doing before?
Often, it's just a couple of coreteam members who are nagging people
to put their updates into the systemso that we can get the dashboards,
which is what the executives reallywanted to see — the pretty dashboards.
But there might or might not be any laborsaving or efficiency compared to however

(10:17):
we were doing it before, and howeverwe were doing it before is probably
things like spreadsheets or Power BI andPowerPoint and compiling our quarterly
or monthly business reviews manually.
The selling point of a lotof OKR platforms is they
make that process automatic.
You can plug everything in, the updates goin automatically, you get your beautiful

(10:39):
dashboard, and it saves a bunch of labor.
But getting to that point — it'snot always as easy as it sounds.
So, this isn't to knock the softwarecompanies because they do a really
good job at what they're good at.
And that's why we'll talkabout, I'm not anti-platform.

(10:59):
I am just pro-getting yourmethodology established before
you adopt an OKR platform.
So, where does this go wrong in thespecialty software to the rescue approach?
There tends to be an oversimplificationof methodology because we want to
get people into those butts in seats.

(11:21):
There's sometimes some wingingit involved with the approaches
that are taught by the platforms.
They might teach more practically thanMeasure What Matters does, but they
still might not provide enough practicalinformation to successfully implement.
Sometimes also, because we're adopting anOKR platform, and it's a separate piece

(11:42):
of software, it can feel like our OKRsare bolted onto the organization when they
need to be woven into the organization.
We don't throw out our existingsystems or planning methodology.
We want to weave it all together so OKRsare solving a specific problem in an
existing strategic implementation stack.

(12:04):
Most organizations really underestimatethe magnitude of the culture shifts here.
So, whether working with someone likeme, who's on the methodology side or
the platform side, implementing OKRsis a massive cultural transformation
in terms of the decisions you're goingto be making about transparency, about.

(12:26):
What gets communicated to who,about what our mandatories are,
what our must-achieves are, andwhat our stretch territories are.
Big culture shifts that the OKRplatforms, despite their services people
wanting to help with all of that and besuccessful, it's just not in their remit.

(12:49):
OKR platforms have huge awareness,and they're really good at
what they're really good at.
And it's really easy to fallinto that software funnel.
They have huge awareness.
They have big dollars tospend on search advertising.
So, you're gonna see a lot fromthe platforms when you start
trying to learn about OKRs.

(13:10):
But we have to remember that the platformsexist to sell and retain software seats.
And so, yes, they need theirmethodology to be enough successful
that they retain their users.
But most of the tool-first implementationsI've seen are designed for users to make

(13:30):
happy executives, because executivesare the ones writing the checks for
the software, most often, not always.
But there is that focus on we want tomake whoever's signing the check happy
so that we retain them as a client.
And that's different from working with amethodology-focused person like myself,

(13:51):
where I don't have a retention target.
There's no goal for me to keep clients.
I want clients to implement, learn, getenabled, get successful, and then help
them get to a point where they're readyto work with a software platform, because
people are banging down their doorsbecause they need the software solution.

(14:13):
There are just different incentivesor different reasons at play with
working with software providersversus methodology practitioners.
And then the other bottom line is,tools alone don't solve the core
challenges of implementing OKRs.
I talked about the magnitude ofthe culture shifts, like, we have

(14:34):
to actually change behavior forObjectives and Key Results to
achieve what we're hiring them to do.
So anyway, I just wanted to breakdown a little bit why so many
organizations fall into this funnel.
And then if you're in it andyou're struggling with a platform
adoption, you are not alone.

(14:54):
what I'm going to talk about fromhere on out applies to getting started
with Objectives and Key Results, andit can also apply to rebooting an
OKR implementation that's struggling.
The alternative approach, which is whatI work with, is we go methodology first.
We introduce the Objectives and KeyResults methodology, and in my model

(15:17):
ideally, we start with leaders.
We don't always, sometimes we start withinthe organization, but starting within
the organization can present some risks.
in the ideal case, we're startingwith leaders, and leaders go first
with creating Objectives and KeyResults at the top of the company.

(15:37):
And that's important because ourleaders are going to model for the
rest of the organization, what anobjective is and what a key result is.
So, what the leaders doestablishes the best practice.
We want our leaders to learn and usethe key words and meanings of OKRs.

(15:58):
This is one of the places whereimplementations go sideways all
the time — they don't necessarilyestablish a definition and a working
example of what an objective is,and especially what a key result is.
When we're working with platforms,they always, or almost always
coach, "We want our Key Resultsto be measurable, not activity.

(16:23):
We want them to beoutcomes, not activity."
But in practice, they're tryingto get OKRs into the system.
So, there are sometimes some corners cuton quality of the Key Results, especially.
That just doesn't work.
We need to model best practices ofObjectives and Key Results, and we have

(16:43):
to have quality assurance practices thatensure nothing gets called a Key Result
that isn't a key result because that termreally needs to preserve its meaning.
This is for bigger companies, notour solos, but a lot of people,
especially in large organizationsadopt OKRs, because they want to
localize from the company-level goalsor strategy down into the organization.

(17:06):
With a methodology adoption, wedon't localize or scale until our
leaders are reliably walking the talk,because they set the best practice
for the org, for everyone else.
Their behavior is what otherpeople look to learn the practice.
When we're getting ready to localizeor when we're getting ready for
scale, we establish and document thenorms, we reconcile OKRs with our

(17:32):
existing rest of our strategic stack,we avoid avoidable known issues.
That is a plug for workingwith a methodology pro.
We've seen it all.
Most of us have playbooks and practicesto avoid stepping in the things that
can be avoided because we've seenall of the common issues that affect

(17:52):
the quality of a OKR implementation.
That's not a challenge tomy clients to surprise me,
although inevitably it happens.
You can still surprise me sometimes.
But we want to focus on Objectives andKey Results as continuous learning, and
we want to keep our tools and ops simple.
So we focus on the methodologyuntil people, and not just leaders,

(18:16):
are begging for an OKR tool.
And that's by design.
We want to keep our tools and ops assimple as possible so we can focus
on the methodology adoption, reallylearn how we're going to use OKRs, and
then that makes us better customersof OKR platforms because we know

(18:37):
exactly how we are going to use it.
We know our use cases, we know how manypeople, we know how different parts of
the organization might use the platform.
It's really hard for OKR practitioners,but we have people saying, "We just
can't do the spreadsheet thing anymore.
We need software."
And that is such a better position tobe in than adopting software, and having

(18:59):
no one use it and asking why we'reusing it or why we're paying for it.
So, we let folks struggle until they'resuffering with the lack of software,
and then that makes our softwareadoption so much more successful.
In the model that I work with,and this is, again, in an large

(19:20):
organization, not a small business.
Small businesses just go really faster.
They can accelerate this.
But in a methodology-focusedadoption, in the first quarter, in
an large organization we'd focuson company-level OKRs created by a
senior leader or by senior leaders.
At the end of Q1, we do a reviewand reset of the company OKRs so we

(19:45):
can see what did we learn about theOKRs we were working with and what
might need to change for the future.
If the leaders are walking the talk, wemight localize OKRs for a next level down.
Sometimes we do all of that inone quarter, but it's really nice
to work with a company level fora quarter before we localize.
And then, at the end of Q2, if we'velocalized, we review and reset the

(20:09):
company and organizational OKRs.
And then quarter four or whenever we'reready, then we can scale so that we're
supporting cross functional OKRs or teamlevel OKRs and even aligned individual
goal-setting where people's individualgoal-setting is aligned to the OKR model.
So, that's a fast large organizationsrollout with a methodology focus.

(20:35):
And then, a slower large organizationsrollout with a methodology focus — I
use this when I have organizations thathave a really established strategic
plan and That fast approach is veryexperimental and learning focused.
If that's not culturally appropriate,then we do a slower rollout that might
start with just creating a strategyone pager in Q1 so that people can see

(21:01):
the organization strategy on a singlepage, which doesn't usually exist.
Sometimes it does, butthat's where we start.
If we have one of these orgs where weneed to move a little slower, then in
Q2, we create company-level Objectives.
We get folks used to the ideaof company- level Objectives.
And then, in Q3, we might layer in someexperimental company-level Key Results.

(21:26):
And again, we can scale when ready.
So methodology-focused adoptions arefocused on achieving methodology success,
and then we get into the platform.
How can we track OKRs without a platform?
There's like an adage in softwarethat any software problem that's

(21:50):
solved by a piece of software couldultimately be solved by a spreadsheet
and email, and it's not wrong.
So, a lot of starting out startsin spreadsheets with tracking OKRs.
If you're in a large organization andyou're like, "There's no way we could
do spreadsheets," some of the mostsuccessful OKR implementations I've

(22:13):
seen in large organizations are basedon SmartSheets, where they are able to
manage two levels of localization andthen have a linkage to their L3 material.
It actually is possible to managelarge systems of OKRs in spreadsheets

(22:34):
because if we're going to try and dothat, we just make the system simple.
We don't try and link everythingthat could possibly be linked.
We recognize there's probably maththat connects at level one and level
two, and then there's probably way lessmath that actually connects below that.
So, we tend to focus on managing levelone, or the company, and level two in the

(22:58):
spreadsheets, and that's the extent ofwhat a spreadsheet can usually handle.
When we get to three levelsof math or more, that's where
platforms really become essential.
It's pretty hard to manage morethan two levels of math in a
spreadsheet-based approach.

(23:20):
And then we always need some sort ofvisual of our Objectives and Key Results.
So, we can be really lo-fi withthe tracking and still get the
information that we want and need.
We help ourselves when we zeroin, narrow, and focus the number
of Objectives and Key Results.

(23:40):
It works better for everyone.
So, what's ultimately most importantis that leaders need objective
information to make decisions.
They need data on which they can reportup and across on team performance.
They need insight into progress,blockers, and resource needs.

(24:01):
And they need that information that theyactually have to rely on for collaboration
and cross-functional alignment.
That's what's most important for leaders.
Leaders want the nice, connected,beautiful, automated, fully
synced, integrated dashboard.
But what they actuallyneed is these four things.

(24:23):
And then our people in an OKRimplementation need, first and
foremost, clear expectations.
That they're able to see reallyclearly what's expected of them.
They also need an OKR process thatisn't yucky, because if it's yucky, then
they're gonna have to do all the workfor this process that might generate

(24:45):
a pretty dashboard for the leaders.
But we want people to loveour OKR implementations.
We want people to see thebenefit of OKR implementations.
People also need the ability toalign their work to what matters,
and that doesn't always haveto be systemically connected.
If we can see our Objectives andKey Results on a page, and they're

(25:05):
really well-formed from a methodologystandpoint, then people in the
organization can look at that singlepage and say, "I see how my work aligns.
That objective I can support.
This theme applies to my work this way."
And so being able to see that on apage view, instead of with some of the

(25:27):
platforms, it's almost like a "If I can'tsee it, it doesn't exist" issue that
people run into because it's just a bigbox of software with lots of stuff in it.
Most of them have some sort of all-in-oneview, but it is different to see the
software based all-in-one view versusthe kind of single page that you can

(25:49):
print and sit next to you on your deskthat practitioners like me work with.
And then, people need a psychologicallysafe culture to be able to tell the truth
about their progress and what they need.
And that's not somethingthat software does for us.
We have to achieve that withour impact on culture and with

(26:13):
how we approach our methodology.
Our OKR core team, the peoplewho operate our OKR rhythm, need
people to do their own labor.
They don't like nagging everyone toupdate their OKRs, and to put their OKRs
into the system and to write their OKRs.
They need people to do theirown labor, including leaders.

(26:37):
Software can facilitate that.
I said, what can be automated isautomated, software can automate
reminders, but reminders also justbecome something we ignore after a while.
And what we need to dois build the behaviors.
of people doing their own laborwith OKRs so that we don't rely

(27:00):
on our core team dragging theorganization through the OKR rhythm.
Our core team also needs easeof preparation of reporting, and
they need people banging downtheir doors for an OKR platform.
Because that's how we ensure asuccessful OKR platform adoption

(27:20):
— when people have felt the pain ofdoing this without an OKR platform.
And they're like, "Wecan't take it anymore.
We can't implement thatplatform fast enough."
It feels like we're failing.
When people say that, what thatactually is, is an enormous success,
because if you've made it to thatpoint, you have set your organization

(27:41):
up for a successful platform adoption.
So, the approach to tracking that I usewith clients when they're pre-platform
is we have our OKRs on a page.
It's usually a slide, so we cansee one set, the company OKRs,
for example, on a single page.
And then we need a way to tracklinked, quantifiable progress.

(28:03):
So, if we have multiple levels, we needthat math connected so that we can update
our child Key Results, and that rollsup to an updated parent Key Result.
And we also, in an ideal case,need some way to have a linkage
between our initiatives that alignto OKRs and the OKRs they align to.

(28:28):
And so, that is usually ourspreadsheet, and that has our
Objectives and our Key Results.
And then for a Key Result, there mightbe a link to another spreadsheet where
that Key Result's initiatives are,represented, or a link to whatever the
project management system report is.

(28:50):
for the Key Results for that initiative.
I coach separating the delivery plansor project management from OKR tracking,
because if we don't, if we try and dothose things in one tool, what tends to
happen is the project management eatsthe OKRs, and it just becomes project

(29:11):
management and delivery tracking.
So It is kind of a pain sometimes ifwe have separate project management to
then start up our OKR rhythm separately.
A lot of the toolsespecially are combined.
That might work, but we want to make surethat we have a really strongly established
methodology culture before we try andput those things together so that the

(29:35):
project management doesn't eat the OKRs.
Alright, that is why we start withmethodology and not software, and how
we do that is by keeping our tools verysimple, by focusing on excellence of
methodology, adoption — whatever thatmeans for that organization — and then

(29:59):
scaling when the organization is readyto, when leaders are modeling best
practices, and we have a solid playbook.
So, if you want more informationabout any of this — I do have a n OKR
workbook that's currently available.
The No BS OKRs workbook is only $19.
You can also, I have a print versionof that workbook that's in its

(30:23):
final stages of layout right now.
And I'm really excitedto get that one out.
So, the print version ofthe workbook is coming soon.
And then I also have a book called YouAre a Strategist: Use No BS Objectives
and Key Results to Get Big Things Done.
That one's in proofreading right now Sowith that, I'm going to turn you loose.

(30:44):
Thank you for tuning in,and I'll see you next time.
All right, friends, That's it for today.
stay in the loop with everythinggoing on around here by
visiting findrc.co/newsletterand joining my mailing list.
Got questions?
My email addresses are too hard tospell, so visit findrc.co/contact

(31:08):
and shoot me a note that way.
You'll also find me at@saralobkovich on most of your
favorite social media platforms.
For today's show notes,visit findrc.co/thinkydoers.
If there's someone you'd like featuredon this podcast, drop me a note.
And if you know other Thinkydoers who'dbenefit from this episode, please share.

(31:30):
Your referrals, your word of mouth,and your reviews are much appreciated.
I'm looking forward to the questionsthis episode sparks for you, and I
look forward to seeing you next time.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep 34: Why You Shouldn't Start with an OKR Tool (Yet)