OKRs, Objectives and Key Results - After the Life-Sparring Podcast has been heavy on health and fitness topics recently, it is time for an exciting business and personal productivity round.
Our guest, Simon Klaiber, is not just a successful business agility consultant and coach from Frankfurt, Germany; he also runs two Podcasts (in German) on business and personal agility. In episode 21 of his Personal Agility Podcast, Simon shared his experience using OKRs for personal goal setting.
Introduced initially at Intel in the late 1970s, early 1980s by then legendary CEO Andy Grove, OKRs were later popularized by Intel staffer turned private equity investor John Doerr. Doerr brought OKRs to the young team at Google and several other Silicon Valley start-ups, from where the concept diffused into the broader tech industry.
Today OKRs are a widely used method to set goals for an organization and create alignment, transparency, and accountability across different corporate levels.
Together Simon and Fabian explore the advantages and pitfalls of OKRs and how a tool originally designed for big corporations can be helpful to achieve your personal goals.
For more details check out the show notes at Life-Sparring.com/podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Thomas Latter (00:10):
In the blue corner with the objective to get
in shape and to show off the keyresults, from Hong Kong, your
host, Fabian Gruber. In the redcorner, as agile as a young
cheetah, from Frankfurt Germany,our guest Simon Klaiber. This is
(00:36):
lifestyle round 8. Let's go.
Fabian Gruber (00:42):
Here we go. Hi Simon!
Simon Klaiber (00:44):
Hi, Fabian.
Fabian Gruber (00:46):
So this is Life-Sparring round eight. After
we did a few episodes withpretty much health and sport
focus. I think it's time forreal business minded podcasts, a
bit of personal productivity -OKRS objectives and key results
is the topic today. And I havean old friend as a guest,
(01:06):
somebody who's a perfectqualified partner for today's
round. Simon is working as abusiness agility coach, and
because he runs a personalagility podcast in German
language, he actually even hadan episode last year on OKRs,
(01:27):
for personal productivity use.
So I think I wouldn't knowanybody else whom I can record
this episode with. So veryexcited to talk to you today,
Simon. But as usual, before wedive deep into this topic, let's
talk a little bit about you andhow you kind of ended up in this
business agility field. I mean,you started differently, right?
(01:50):
You started in IT?
Simon Klaiber (01:52):
Yes, I always was a programmer started programming
is 14 years old. So I did thisas a hobby. Because this was
quite exciting in the early 90s,run a mailbox system in the pre
internet era. And so I wasalways very interested in
technology. But I also wasalways interested in people and
(02:14):
culture, it says was something Ididn't really identify as such a
thing at that time. But now inhindsight, I can see this and
it's cool. And I wasn't surewhat to do. I decided not to
start in economics or in it,like computer science, like it
would be, probably most peoplewould would sort of, because I
(02:38):
said, Okay, I can program I canget a living out of that
anytime. And I started to studycultural anthropology, which was
a very interesting field ofstudy, where I learned a lot
that I can use now. But I alwaysworked as an IT guy in different
roles on the site to finance mystudies. And this was then
(03:00):
around the .com bubble area, andpeople with it knowledge were,
well, sort of Yes. And so atsome point, I had to decide if I
want to continue with my studiesor work full time, I worked as a
freelancer all the time. Andthen I decided, Okay, let's give
it a try to work in it fulltime. And so I stopped studying
(03:22):
decision, I never reallyregretted in hindsight, because
it was a great time to start andget a lot of experience would
have been a lot harder a coupleof years later. And so I started
as a freelancer in many roles asa programmer. And as an software
developer, you come withtechnical knowledge on one side
and some Yes, social skills onthe other sides, you're pretty
(03:46):
rare breed. And so this led meto go through different roles
over the time, I worked a lotwith what nowadays you would
call a function analyst orbusiness analyst this name
wasn't used at this time. Sosomething like a translator
between the business people andthe technology people because I
was able to speak both languagesand architecture roles and then
(04:11):
of course, a team lead andproject lead roles. And when I
started this I pretty quicklyfound out that the traditional
project management approach isneither very successful nor
anything I wanted to do. So Istarted to look into the then
upcoming agile methods anddecided I want to learn more
(04:36):
about this and started to fillthe roles as a project manager,
but which I was hired for inform of a Scrum master. So a
kind of guerilla Scrum, and Ifound that I was pretty good at
that. And so I continued doingthis stopped getting paid for
programming started to gettingpaid for leading people in the
(05:00):
area. And since I always like tolearn more about things that I
found interesting, I read a lot,I heard a lot of podcasts and
also whist quite some courses.
And so I developed more into thearea, because I found out that
when you have agile teams,that's fine, but you hit the
wall pretty fast if the rest ofthe organization is not agile.
(05:23):
And so I've started to gain moreand more interest into the what
now is called the businessagility area. And try to learn
as much as I can about this andalso get more skills like an
systemic coaching education. Andso since a couple of years, I
mainly work in the agilecoaching area where I coach
(05:48):
management, business owners,CEOs, on any level, how to
change their leading style, andby this the culture in their
company organization to be in amore agile way, whatever this
might mean.
Fabian Gruber (06:07):
And your customers like, are you working
mainly with bigger companies? Ormore like typical German
Mittelstand small and mediumsized companies?
Simon Klaiber (06:15):
That's a very good question. So I started off
because this is where most ofthe it freelancers were hired in
the big company area, since I'mfrom the Frankfurt area, mostly
in the banking sector. But theproblem is very big companies is
that it's very hard to changebig organizations, especially if
(06:35):
you are not hired by the CEO andgetting hired by the CEO in a
very big corporation is veryhard. So I started to look for
midsize company mainly. So inthe last year, I mainly worked
for companies with around higherthree digit to mid four digit
(06:59):
number of employees, which Ifound out was for me the ideal
customer, because they had thepossibilities to hire someone
for a reasonable amount thatmade sense for me for something
that looks like a luxury at thefrom the outset. It's not a
necessary expense. And it'sstill small enough that you can
(07:21):
change things in a reasonableamount of time.
Fabian Gruber (07:25):
And how did COVID affect your business? I mean,
it's this this wholedigitalization, like that's
going on at warp speed at themoment, did this affect you in a
way? Or are you any way liketied up with your existing
customers, and there was not somuch of a difference?
Simon Klaiber (07:41):
Yes. And this was quite lucky there because you
have to differentiate thebeginning of the COVID crisis,
so a year ago, and the lastthree to six months. So I was
very lucky that I just was hiredby a customer on a pretty big
percentage of my available timehad a couple of weeks before
(08:02):
lockdown started here inGermany. And so if I didn't have
a good situation, at this time,it would be probably problematic
because everyone got in, I don'tknow what to do mode, no help.
No, nobody was hired. Nobodyknew how to onboard someone in a
lockdown, where practicallyeveryone was in home office, at
(08:23):
least at my customers, they sentpeople to a home office very
early. It's not at everycompany, unfortunately. But they
did it very well. And and in agood way that they said, Okay,
if you have no possibility towork at home, you can come. So
maybe 10% of the people wentback to office and they did it
very well. So so in thissituation, I was just lucky. But
(08:46):
now I have the feeling that alot of organizations found out
that they can change becausethey had to, and now are
gathering some courage to doingmore steps to change and also
some going through a moredifficult time. And they see
they have to change if they wantto have a future. Or they see
(09:08):
that they have a shifting ofbusiness models towards digital
channel at a higher speed. Andthey also see okay, I can't wait
a couple of years to do somechanges. And now I have to do
this. So now I see that thedemand is quickly going up. And
I wouldn't be booked out rightnow as I am now. It wouldn't be
(09:28):
a problem to find new customersat the moment because the demand
is pretty high at the...
Fabian Gruber (09:34):
Time to scale up, Simon.Time to scale up.
Simon Klaiber (09:36):
If the thing you you sell is your experience and
your intuition. Scaling up ispretty hard. I'm thinking very
hard about this. But I see otherpeople in the market who are who
are finding clever people, youngpeople giving them some courses
and turning them to the customerand probably they're doing
nothing really really bad. Butit wouldn't be The level of
(10:00):
quality that I want to give mycustomers. So this makes scaling
up pretty difficult and I'mreally thinking about how I
could do that.
Fabian Gruber (10:10):
Okay, so when I mentioned you have a personal
agility podcast, so actually youhave two podcasts. Right. So one
is a little bit on the hiatus atthe moment, but you actually
also have a business agilitypodcast. Yes. So how did you
kind of get into podcasting?
Like, what did motivate you? Andhow did this come about?
Simon Klaiber (10:28):
I'm listening to podcasts, at least for German
podcast consumer for a very longtime. I'm listening to podcast
for over 10 years now. And 10years ago, nobody talked about
podcasts in Germany. So it wasalways an medium I liked a lot.
So before COVID, I've had a lotof time in the car normally
going to customers and back andso so I listened a lot to
(10:52):
podcasts and lit a lot toaudible books and things like
that. So I could use that timein the car. And I always liked
it. And when I decided formyself that I wanted to give
some content out for differentreasons, because I like to share
what I know. But also especiallyon the business agility podcast
(11:14):
is also some kind of contentmarketing, of course, I saw the
about what would be the bestmedium for me. And while I'm not
better at writing, I even as aas a computer, journalist
writing focus on computermagazines, in my youth, I knew
that writing was always a hasslefor me, it's something that I
(11:36):
like to procrastinate becausewhen I'm in it, it's okay. But
starting something, it's veryhard for me when I when I'm
writing, I'm not completely surewhat's the reason yet, but that
is how it is. And, for instance,doing something on YouTube, you
have to invest a lot more inquality, you have to have a nice
background, you have to designvisuals, so producing something
(12:01):
that I would like would be muchmore Work. And I think audio is
an medium I like I like to talkI like to talk a lot,
unfortunately. And it has a goodratio between afford and output.
And so I decided to try it out.
Fabian Gruber (12:19):
And and how did you end up with two podcasts. So
like the first one, like thebusiness agility podcast,
clearly it's tied to yourbusiness and your brand, and for
sure, as a little bit ofcustomer acquisition. But how
did the personal agility podcastcome about?
Simon Klaiber (12:34):
This was also always subject matter very close
to my heart. And what I didn'tmentioned in my career
description earlier, my firstcontact with agility was through
the personal agility space. Soin this time, when I started to
think about agility, I alsothought a lot about self
(12:55):
organization because I'm alittle bit chaotic kind of
person that in the past, in myuse a lot had a lot of problems
of things that went lost in somebig piles on my desk and things
that I regretted that I didn'tdo for a lot of reasons. So I
found out okay, I have to dosomething and organize myself, I
(13:15):
found out a lot of people whoare interested in self
organization are most of thetime pretty bad organizzare eyes
people. So I looked in in a lotof things like getting things
done, and so on. And I alsofound out the book personal
Kanban, which was probably hisfirst book in the personal
agility space. And, and I foundthis very interesting and start
(13:35):
to work with some personalKanban board, which I in the end
iteration, I'm still using andgoing from there. At the same
time, when I went got into theproject management roles I found
out, okay, agility is a coolthing, that it also continues in
the professional space. Sopersonal agility was actually
(13:55):
the start of my journey. Andthis I was still thinking a lot
about it and reading a lot aboutit and trying a lot of things
out. I said, Oh, this would beinteresting to share. And this
is really more of an hobby andnot an personal branding thing.
So I really do this because Ilike the topic and I hope I can
help people find some ways thatI took long to find myself.
Fabian Gruber (14:20):
We try to cover both today a bit because at the
end, I think we should take alook at OKRs, objectives and key
results from both angles, likethe traditional business angle,
where it comes from, but ofcourse also what possible
applications that are forpersonal use and personal
productivity. How did you get intouch with OKRs? Where did you
hear about OKRs?
Unknown (14:42):
I'm not completely sure where I heard of them first. So
if you're looking at thedifferent mythology that are in
the wider agile space, so OKRsare not an agile method in its
core...
Fabian Gruber (14:55):
Occasionally they even accused of kind of being
too static right?
Simon Klaiber (15:00):
Yeah, we can talk about this later. in some more
detail. This is an interestingdiscussion. But you heard of
them, of course, you heard thestories how Google use them. And
I always thought, Oh, it's nice.
The moment when they hit homewas when I was looking harder
and also didn't a masterclasscourse there on the mythology of
(15:22):
flight levels, or it's not evenmythology, the sinking model of
flight levels. That's a modelwhere you any organization, and
also one person is also a kindof organization has three
levels, the doing level, thecoordination level, and the
strategic level. And you can useOKRs, to create strategy goals.
(15:44):
And also, you declinate thisgoals through the organization
in different ways. And this is avery good match, in my opinion.
And this is when I started tothink a lot about OKRs. And also
started to use OKRs.
Fabian Gruber (16:06):
So I personally just landed on the John Doerr
book, Measure What Matterssimply because I'm a little bit
obsessed with quantified selfand measuring things and trying
to manage them. So that's how Iactually got to it. And then by
accident, I'm now alsoprofessionally involved with
OKRs as the company, theorganization that I'm currently
(16:29):
working for, just introducedthem for goal-settings. Yeah,
maybe we start like a little bitexplaining what actually OKRs
are. So from what I understandthey are the brainchild, or at
least they are attributed toAndy Grove, who was then CEO of
Intel in the 1970s, and stillkind of little bit legendary as
(16:53):
a manager. And he introducedthem to the team at Intel as a
way to set objectives, set goalsand align the company behind
those goals, right. And theywere used for a very long time
internally at Intel and thendiffuse kind of out of Intel
into the wider Silicon Valleyspace, mainly then through Doerr
(17:16):
who became a legend by himselfin the venture capital space. He
was responsible to introducethem to Google and Google hiring
a lot of great brains and also,in a way kind of seeding a lot
of other companies in SiliconValley, I think was then the
(17:36):
catalyst to made this method,pretty common standard, I would
say even now in the Europeanbusiness. How would you define
an OKRs, Simon?
Simon Klaiber (17:47):
Before I go into defining, I would like to give a
word of caution before you startdiscussing OKRs. OKRss are a
very, very, very powerful tool.
And as any powerful tool, youcan use it for good and you can
use it for evil, you can do alot of good for your company
(18:10):
culture for ownership of all thepeople in your company for the
company, but you can also use itas an really bad dystopian
Command and Control Regime andOKRs are currently really are
starting to get a bad name andthe reason is that a lot of
(18:30):
people are using the toolwithout understanding the
details. But generally speaking,the main point of OKRs is the
point of setting strategic goalson every level of an
organization. The main key pointis that you seperate short to
(18:52):
mid term quality based but notuantified goals like " I wa
t to or we want to be somethin" but without a quantifica
ion and you match it with a meaurable key result. So a qua
tified goal. That is not the sarting point because with a lot
(19:15):
f goal setting your onlyet and quantified goal oh we
ave to raise so much money ore have to sell for so much mo
ey but you and then you you desin your mission statement or so
ething like that, out of that. Ad this what they're not doing
hey're adjusting numbers awayust to where what we stand what
is our reason why we're doing ths, and then in a second step, t
(19:38):
ey are looking not after theirresult number but which
method measurable things are thee that would show us that we
ear or reach our qualiative goalAnd if you write this key
results down, this quantifiedThis is the differentiation
between outcome and output,goal are something that
(19:59):
ou can't directly influence, Ian bring a nice example I like t
use out of the personal spae. So if you're qualified object
ve is, I want to find a jothat is matching is better ma
ching my interests in life,your key results could be. So th
(20:19):
s is not a very good objectiv. It's a very simple objective
want to get don't quote me thathis is a good objective. Bu
but for the reason of explainng here, it's it's good enoug
. So you could say my key reslts is I sent out hundre
s CVS to different companies,his is a very bad key results,
(20:40):
ecause I can game it, I can gae it and just sent out very bad
CVS to totally unmatching compaies. A good good key result woul
be, I got invited to intervews at five companies that
could imagine working for.
(21:04):
right, so you want to kind ofmeasure outcomes and and not
outputs, because output is, asyou said, can be easily gamed,
easily manipulated outcomes outof your control in the end.
And there's a second point Ijust understood pretty recently,
when you do this, you also notdefine what you're actually
(21:24):
going to do. Because there aremany ways how you could reach
this key results, you could sendout 100 CVs, you could go to
meet ups online or offline andnetwork and try to find out who
is looking for someone and justspeaking with them and getting
your interview set this way. Oryou could cold call or write on
(21:48):
LinkedIn, interesting people andtry to find this way, this is a
totally different actions, thatif you do, the bribe can all
lead to getting five interviewsat interesting companies. And
this separation, first, thinkabout what I want to do quality
side, then look, how can Imeasure my success. And only
(22:12):
after that, deciding what to do,this brings you hlt, because you
are not fixing what you'redoing, you are fixing your goal
for a certain amount of time,three months or something like
that. And this is one of thepoints that I personally find
very powerful in okrs.
Fabian Gruber (22:32):
But it's also kind of a little bit separating
that different levels have morefreedom and that way, right?
Because the whole planningprocess is very focused on the
objectives, like the big goalsthat you want to achieve. And
the key results, the measurableoutcomes that you expect to
achieve your objective. But theactions are kind of then often
(22:55):
left to the operational level.
And at the end, the person who'sin charge of achieving the key
result.
Simon Klaiber (23:01):
And this is totally in line with with
thinking in this flight levelmodel, you have a space where
you think only about strategics.
And then you have a space whereyou only think about operators
utilization, how what need to doand how do I need to coordinate
and then do we have a levelthat's only about doing and if
you are doing you don't have tothink about the strategies
(23:22):
because this is already takentaken care of, to continue. So
the second important part toOKRs it that the key results
should be a stretch goal. Sonormally say 70% of my key
result, quantifiable target is astatus where I would be very
(23:44):
happy when I wish that so 70% isgreen. So Google say 70% is
green and 100% is super clean.
This is something that is notworking in all cultures,
especially here in Germany, thatnot reaching goals. 200% is a
very difficult thing,
Fabian Gruber (24:02):
Even in the mentality of the staff members,
right. I mean, it's, I mean, Iam also German and I'm working
with a German company too. But Ithink like even the Hong Kong,
like the Asian mindset is not somuch different in the sense that
if you give them a goal, I mean,achievement is, is the goal, and
nobody feels great if they arelike at 80% achievement. And I
(24:22):
think that this is maybe alsolike underestimated, right.
Like, I mean, you said beforethat I mean there's definitely a
lot potential to really screw upokrs and have them wreck your
company culture. And I thinkthat that this is exactly like
one example right? If reallyeverybody like if it's achieved
achieve 100% or doesn't count,and then maybe also even tying
(24:46):
it to promotions or toperformance reviews or bonding,
bonus payments, etc, which theoriginal thinkers behind it all
like advised against that right.
So like john said very clearly,I mean Do a continuous
performance evaluation but nevertie it to the goals because else
you start kind of like teamsworking against each other
(25:07):
trying to make the goals, notlosing out of sight, kind of the
overall company goals.
Simon Klaiber (25:15):
This brings me to, for me the three golden
rules how to not hope I can saythe co founder OKRs. One is
never ever tie the achievementof OKRs to incentives of any
kind, not career incentives, notmoney incentives, no incentives.
(25:36):
The second point is if you're anorganization management, or if
you're in personal agilityyourself, when you are
reflecting on your success, youshould never treat not achieving
an key result as a failure butas a learning possibility. So
(25:57):
that's not nice. It's always notnice to not to reach a goal, but
it's natural not to reach agoal, especially if you set
yourself ambitious goals. Sotreated as a learning
possibility, what went wrong?
How can we do it better? Did weset the goal wrong, that's
always a possibly maybe we set agoal that we could never
possibly reach? Or could we havedone things better. And the
(26:19):
third point is, and we come tothe the last big function of
okrs is the people who areresponsible for achieving the
objective and key results needsto be the only people setting
them not to management issetting them not a discussion
(26:39):
between discussion in quotesbetween the management and
people that needs to achievethem. The people who are
responsible for achieving theokrs are the ones who set the
okrs. Nobody else. And this isthe bridge to the last part of
okrs. And why it's good forstrategical alignment in an
(27:01):
organization. So the idea behindthis, the organization at its
top set its key 123 objectives,and for each of the objectives,
two to five, best two to threekey results that they think they
can use to measure the success,then, and this is a poor
(27:26):
principle, and that's verychild. The next level below this
looks at the company goals, andnot the management saying you
have to do this and this andthat. But the next level look at
the goal and thinks about whatwe as a department, x y set can
do to pay into this goals. Andfrom this, they also define
(27:50):
their own goals. And then thenext level below it to the same
until you're on team level.
There are some people that arealso doing this on individual
level. I'm personally not a bigfan of that, at least not in all
areas, because I think teamworkis in the modern world in this
(28:12):
vuca world more important thansingle person work. So I think
it should be always a crossfunctional team that takes
responsible for delivering thereal work level one in in flight
levels in the end. And it wasthis way that you always are
looking what is the main goaland take my aims from this, I
(28:33):
get real strategical alignmentto the organization. And if I
have three months or maybe sixmonths, three months is a
typical thing, cycles ofadjusting the okrs. I have for a
bigger organization a prettyfast way to switch strategic
priorities and get them throughthe organization pretty quickly.
(28:56):
And this is a superpower.
Fabian Gruber (28:58):
I like okrs in principle. And I definitely see
that if they are set up, right,they really can do magic. And I
think that the main three thingsthat they can do is definitely
this alignment that you alsolike emphasis. And then it's a
focus, right? It makes veryclear, hey, these are the areas
that we think are the mostimportant. And then there's
(29:18):
accountability, because behindevery OKR there's somebody
responsible for it. So it'sclear within the company also
who's responsible for whichparts and how the different
departments for example, likewhat is their part in achieving
the overall company goals. And Ithink that this definitely can
help it makes everything muchmore transparent. So the the
(29:40):
interesting question then is iflike this alignment,
accountability is one of themajor last points of okrs. Why
should we also use it and theprivate space because I think
alignment and accountabilitynormally is less of an issue if
you're a one man band, and Imean focus, of course I think is
it's a it's a big one. What Ithink and, like, let me hear
(30:02):
your thoughts. I mean, for mepersonally, I think like the
biggest contribution that okrscan do for me, is the way they
force you to think. Likebasically to say, hey, like,
what do you really want toachieve? I will, like achieve
this. But what does it mean?
What is the underlying metrics?
(30:24):
What are the underlying goalsthat you actually really have to
get to have the feeling ofaccomplishing that goal? And I
think that this is a thing thatwe often don't do, right? We are
just too lazy to do this. So wehave this kind of goals and say,
I want to improve my sociallife. And then we stopped there,
instead of saying, what does itactually mean? How would I
define this? Why? How could Ikind of say, I don't know, what
(30:47):
is it like meeting a friend onceper week? Or like, what is it
actually, that I would really behappy with. And I think that
this is, for me is the biggestcontribution Actually, I'm very
curious to hear about you. And Iknow that you kind of
experimented with it a littlebit when you did that your show
last year on okrs, for personaluse.
Simon Klaiber (31:08):
So I think we have a very good grasp of the
problems here. Because youreally put the finger in the
sore points here where it'sdifficult, I'm using Okay, ask
for a little bit more than ayear now in the personal area.
So I would say I'm stilllearning a lot. So it's because
your experimentation cycles arethree months, it's not the
(31:28):
fastest learning thing. Andyou're right, this strategical
alignment thing is not the bigpoint in use of okrs. In in
personalities, it's, I think,multiple things. So the first
thing is, you are forcingyourself to really write down
(31:48):
short to mid term strategicgoals is something you most of
the time, don't do if you don'tforce you to do it. The second
point is the thinking process.
First, think about the what Iwant to achieve then about the
measurement and immediatelyleave the actions how I'm going
to do this open. That's thesecond big point. And the third
(32:11):
big point is this givingyourself a personal
accountability. Becausenormally, if you set personal
goals, and then at the end ofthe quarter, or the end of the
year, you do a retrospective,you don't really remember what
you saw it about you wanted todo three months ago, or 12
months ago, and you're prayingis trying to get everything
(32:35):
harmonic and depending on whatpersonality is. Either you are
beating yourself up likenothing, because oh, no, I
didn't reach anything. Or yousaid, Oh, yeah, no, everything
was great. Yet, I did a lot andof this, and I met a lot of
friends. And I had a lot ofquality time with my wife. And
but did I really, maybe, I don'tknow. And though this gives you
(32:57):
some kind of accountability, butyou're right, there are areas,
especially the non businessareas of the person with
charities, where quantifyingthings is a heart. And B may be
not always the best thing to do.
(33:19):
I think about a Robbie Williamssong that calls How do you rate
the morning, Sun, some things inlife, lose their worth, when you
try to quantify them. And thoughthis is really hard, and I'm
still working on this, I think Iget better at it. But this is a
very, very personal thing. Soit's hard to give you answers.
(33:40):
But I think the process alone tothink about how do I know at the
end of the quarter, or at theend of the year, if I was
successful in an area that ishard to quantify, or impossible
to quantify is an worthfulexercise.
Fabian Gruber (34:00):
And maybe we'll go a little bit deeper and I'm
really curious about yourpersonal practice. So do you use
any software? Do you just do itin I don't know an extra or in
Evernote or how do you kind ofkeep track of your goals? And
then how do you really like havea also quarterly rhythm where
you say okay, these are thegoals for the next quarter. This
(34:21):
is what I want to focus on. Andthen maybe you can explain a
little bit
Simon Klaiber (34:25):
That's that's actually exactly what I do. I
once a quarter I'm setting myokrs I'm working with a system
of five aspects of my life.
That's that's business, money,career. That's friendship and
family. That's fitness andhealth. That's partnership, law
of sexuality, and that what Icall the inner world so
(34:46):
spirituality, personal wellbeing and things like that.
Also, everything me time alsothings that I do trust because I
have fun with it and that Idon't have Family don't do for
anything else, just for mypersonal fun I put there. So I
tried to find worthwhileobjectives for each of these
(35:10):
areas. And this leads to thefirst problems because if you
focus too hard in personalagility, you've you will lead an
unbalanced life, there is anatural limitation to healthy
focusing if you are lookingafter your whole person. So what
I do is, I normally have 10 foreach of these aspects, I have
(35:33):
1,2,3, possibly worthwhileobjectives. And then I pick
three to five objectives, thelittle bit more that I would
normally do in business that Iwant to focus on, that doesn't
mean that I throw away the otherones. But I only keep them in on
the backburner. So to say, Okay,if I can do something for that,
(35:55):
that's okay. But but that's notmy focus.
Fabian Gruber (35:59):
But that also means that you don't always have
in every quarter kind of all ofthe areas or your life covered,
Simon Klaiber (36:06):
Correct, correct, or at least not as a focus. That
doesn't mean I don't doanything, but this is where I
really want to focus on. It'snot an absolute focus, like I go
to the business sector where Isay, I don't do anything else.
But this is where I really wantto achieve something this
quarter. And because it's notpossible to do everything. So if
you are saying not that Itelling anyone, you should do
(36:29):
that, if you're deciding I haveto do the ultra hardest test in
my life, or do the ultra ultrahard career move and work 16
hours a day, you can't have timefor your family, for your
partner, for your friends forfitness, maybe one other thing,
but it's impossible. So you haveto do in decision how balanced I
(36:53):
want to be in the next time. Andit's okay for some time to be
unbalanced. If you do itwillingly. And though after this
time, you have to regulate backand maybe also talked with the
people. Sorry, I won't have somuch time for you the next
month, then the your friendswon't run away. But be happy if
you come back in three months.
That will
Fabian Gruber (37:14):
be like a follow up question that I have like do
you discuss your goals with yourwife? Or is this something you
don't normally would he?
Simon Klaiber (37:23):
Yes and No, it's not said I come with my OKRS and
say sweetheart, this are mygoals. But of course, if I have
important goals in this time, Iwill share them but but not in a
methodic way.
Fabian Gruber (37:38):
In the same in the same position. I mean, my
wife would laugh at me if Iwould ask her for feedback on my
OKRs.
Simon Klaiber (37:46):
I know couples that are both coming from this
agile sector and they are doinga lot of things and think oh,
I'm we're doing this. And thereare different ways you can do
it. We are also doing anpartnership retro once a month,
but we don't do some post itsbut we just did one evening, we
are talking about what wentwell, this month. Are there any
(38:09):
important thing for the nextmonth just with a glass of wine
at the kitchen table? So youhave to find the right way that
is working for you. It's It'sIt's always for the people and
not for the methods?
Fabian Gruber (38:21):
And in terms of tools, like do you have a
specific tool that you use foryour system? Or do you kind of
Simon Klaiber (38:26):
it's pretty low key. So So when I'm working on
them, I'm just doing it in mynotebook, I have a notebook
where I do smiddy retros foreach week, and also let some
bigger retros for each month.
And I'll write down some things,what I did and what I don't did.
And if there were any problemsand things like that. And also
in this once a quarter I put inmy goals and then I put them
either an electronic Kanbanboard there and level three
(38:48):
board. I do use flight levelshere. It's not very extensive.
But so I have a special boardfor this OKR. So where I put the
okrs and then I for this five,three to five, I define then I
defined for them key results.
And I'm not very good this yetin some areas, they're working
(39:08):
pretty well in some other areas,especially the personal growth
areas and also partnershiplevels. They are very, very hard
to set. And I'm not totallyhappy with how I'm doing it
right now. Every two to fourweeks, I go on the board and
(39:29):
then I try to put in my successhow much of the key results are
already met.
Fabian Gruber (39:35):
And I was I was looking a little bit in this
space because I'm definitelyinterested to experiment a bit
more with person okay as to andI think I the best tool that I
found was with a software calledKoan. And it's it's a software
that was also, I think,recommended on the John Doerr
website. And this one is quiteinteresting because it's free. I
(39:55):
mean, at least for the personaluse because they basically
charge for that functionality.
So as long as you don't have ateam, you can pretty much use it
completely for free. And that'sbrowser based and pretty simple
to handle. And what I like aboutis this this kind of
visualization that you reallyhave your goals, you have the
okrs, and the objectives and itdoesn't electronic prompts, it
(40:16):
prompts you every week to do areview. So they have like a
weekly meditation on your onyour goals, where you also have
to say, for example, howconfident you are that you're
still achieving your goal. Andthat's quite interesting,
because you can map this overtime. So you can get a
confidence curve. And you'llsee, which is of course, also
for a company quite interestingas a tool, I looked at some
(40:37):
other tools, but most of themare like relatively pricey and
and do not have much and freefunctionality. And I think
that's if you really just wantto use it for personal use, I
would not kind of necessarilyrecommend that kind of
commitment.
Simon Klaiber (40:53):
But generally, I would say Don't think too much
about the tools keep it simple,it's it's more really the
thought process that you put increating is where the magic is,
you can do tracking pretty lowtech, you can put a couple of
posts at a at a whiteboard inyour home office, or just write
them down in a book or inEvernote or use a Trello board
(41:17):
or some other virtual Kanban.
board. It's it's more importantfor to do with it, then how you
store it.
Fabian Gruber (41:26):
And personally, you are really planning to kind
of continue with this system, ordid you do you kind of see like
something else that you wouldstill want to try as an
alternative?
Simon Klaiber (41:36):
No, no, no, I think I would like to to keep
with this, I'm not totally happyyet with the quality of focus
that I achieve. So this isanother very good thing you can
do with with such a personalokrs is that when you're doing
some retrospectives about whatyou did. So at the end of the
week, or at the end of themonth, you could check what I'm
(41:57):
currently doing, how is thishelping to achieve my key
results. And here, if you havesomething that is not helping to
achieve the key results, inbusiness context, I would say,
stop doing it. In personalcontext, I would say think about
why I'm doing it. Even if it'snot helpful for my key results.
(42:19):
And there might be a very goodreason. Balance is important. We
are we are not machines, we arepeople. But at least if you do
something that is not payinginto your key results, do it as
a very conscious decision andnot letting it slip in. Because
that's what happened all thetime.
Fabian Gruber (42:39):
But I think that's like really, really
important lightest. I mean, it'slike to emphasize really on this
retrospective to this START STOPKEEP kind of discussion, even if
you do it with yourself likelike what was not helpful. What
did I do? That was really nothelpful. I wanted to lose
weight. Why am I still I don'tknow, eating a bag of potato
chips every Friday night aftercoming home. And I think at the
(43:02):
end, that's, as you said, mostlikely, like the biggest outcome
that you can achieve, right?
Really this awareness on? Like,what do I actually want to
achieve? How would I measure itand how would I kind of also,
like mark it done. And thenlooking into kind of where your
actual behaviors may be collidewith this the goal system and
(43:23):
and kind of trying to fine tuneit to at least do some baby
steps in the right direction.
Simon Klaiber (43:32):
And again, don't be afraid that you don't reach
your goal at the beginning, youdon't be afraid that you set
very bad goals that are notworking very well at the
beginning. As I said the metricin the OKR system is not in
checking boxes and achievinggoals. It's in getting better at
setting good targets andlearning and to learn you will
(43:53):
have to fail first. So I stillhave quite a few of key results
and objective that I don't reachand I have no chance to reach.
But then I can learn why did Iset this objective, but didn't
put the priority on the topic ora set of key result or objective
that I actually could not reallydo? Did you learn something from
(44:15):
it, especially in personalspace? If I set an objective and
I don't work on it, there's areason for it. And it's very,
very helpful to understand thisreason. And there are many good
reasons this could be that I'm alazy slob. It could be that I
have psychological blockade inme, for instance, that I have
the fear of getting somethingfinished because other people
(44:37):
could then traction. That'ssomething I'm always fighting
with. It could be that it's Isaid it because I thought oh,
it's a great a great goal, butit's not actually as important
and I just didn't record itbecause it was never important.
So there are a lot of reasonsand it's more important to
understand this reasons and andlearn from them. Then, to
(45:01):
actually achieving the goal isgreat, of course. But there is
an interesting thing is thatpeople that have bad experience
or experience of really notsucceeding early in life are
often much more successful thanpeople where everything always
was successful until the day.
It's not.
Fabian Gruber (45:23):
It's like this typical tale of the one with a
speech impairment who becomespresident and the college
athlete who never had to doanything, because they got
everything handed to them basedon talent, till they kind of
meet their, ltheir peers on anational level and get realized
they're not invincible anymore.
Simon Klaiber (45:42):
and this is also something you should think about
when we talked about this 70%.
Green, super Green, think abouthow do you want to set yourself
your goals. And this is verypersonal, based on your
personality, it could be settingyou up for failure, that you
always think bad about you,because you never read the 100%
(46:02):
or maybe even not the 70%. Ormaybe you're the type that you
don't have a problem with notreaching even the 70%. But you
can maybe learn more from it, ifyou set higher goals. So this is
something you should also thinkabout it what is it for me
better to set something likethis is from Tim Collins says
(46:22):
this thinking model of the 20mile march that if you always
set and reachable, but not easygoal, you success better than if
you setting high goals andsomething don't get anything
done and sometimes get a lotdone. So if you're more in this
kind of thinking, it might bebetter for you to set reasonable
but reachable goals. And if youare not hard hit if you don't
(46:47):
reach a goal, it maybe makesmore sense to set an more
ambitious goal. But this alsoneeds a lot of introspection to
learn about what is better foryou.
Fabian Gruber (47:00):
And that's I think is a little bit the tricky
part, if you do it by yourself.
I mean, in a company context, ofcourse, this is always an
exchange, right? I mean, it'salways on team level on
different hierarchies, you getfeedback from your boss, who
says, Well, that's your goal?
Come on. And that's, of course,that makes it sometimes tedious
and exhausting. But at the sametime, it's also very beneficial
(47:21):
because you kind of getdifferent views and different
inputs. And this introspectiveis sometimes a bit one
dimensional, right, you need tokind of really be able to step
back and see yourself a littlebit from a distance. And that's
in itself a skill, right? Not soeasy to acquire as you want. I
think we covered quite a lot ofground. Did we forget anything?
Is there anything about okrsthat we completely forgot about?
Simon Klaiber (47:45):
I think there's a lot of things that we could talk
about. But I think we reallycovered the basics. It's
important that if you do okrsokrs are to helping the people
to achieve bigger goals. It'snot for the goals to be
achieved, and the people don'tmatter. And it doesn't matter if
you do it in a company contextor do it in a personal context.
(48:08):
It's a tool to help you and notyou are there to help the tool.
And if you're doing with thismindset, it's it's a great and
very helpful tool.
Fabian Gruber (48:17):
Perfect. And before we end, today's show, I
think I have to use the chanceand and ask you what other cool
methods you like from theagility space have you applied
for yourself? I mean, do youhave an all time favorite so
far? I mean, you are at, likemore than 70 episodes right of
your podcast. So far, like whatis your favorites? And what
(48:38):
should we cover maybe in afollow up episode in a bit of
time?
Simon Klaiber (48:42):
it's difficult to find one favorite. So I can
maybe there are two things Icould name. But then also,
again, a word of caution. So twothings I personally find very
helpful is as I alreadymentioned, the thought model of
the flight levels that Ipersonally think is also very,
very helpful on the personallevel to also think in yourself
(49:06):
in different levels. And thesecond part is, and I just did
an episode on this in a coupleof weeks with be out to get it's
an coaching method that I calllifelines, that is really
drawing down the line of yourlife from your birth until you
are the statistical maximum age,so around 90 years or something
(49:27):
like that at the moment, andreally draw in Where am I now
what was the important phases?
How much time do I have leftbecause I'm in my mid 40s. And I
did this the first time when Iwas in the late 30s, early 40s.
And you are really, really,really, really under estimating
how much time you have left. Andthis for me was also very, very
(49:51):
freeing point to learn and Ithink it also hindered me to
getting bad cases of mid life.
Because there's really a lot oftime left, and you can do a lot
of if you have this view, youcan do a lot of other things,
you can do a retrospective seein which phases of of my life, I
(50:13):
was the happiest, and then lookwhat was similar in this face,
and then try to construct afuture where this things that
made you happy, will be theremore often. So, getting
sometimes really doing the bigstep back and looking at your
whole time on the world, whichincludes realizing that, at
(50:34):
least for our generation isprobably still will be a limited
time, I think this is veryhelpful. And if you can do it,
it is, for me, at least it wasmore freeing than depressing
Sounds Sounds very interesting.
Fabian Gruber (50:48):
I mean, I'm definitely interested.
Simon Klaiber (50:50):
And the last point is, generally visibility
in the utility space, there area lot of people who are selling
you one size fits all methods.
And I personally think it's moreinteresting and revolving. But
of course, also harder thananything that is more
interesting and more rewardingis to really understand the
(51:10):
underlying principles, and touse them to find the right
solution for yourself. I callthis maturity from first
principles. And I also did acouple of episodes already on
that. But I also use it if whenI try to add my customers
educate the people about agilitynot to tell you this is method
one, and you just have to dothis and this and this, like in
(51:33):
an Ikea instruction. But theseare the principles, apply the
principles to your situation toget the right solution.
Fabian Gruber (51:42):
Now, I mean, it's, that's, that's super
helpful, because I mean, I'vedone a lot of this myself and my
career because I always workedfor smaller offices, smaller
companies. And normally, youcan't just plug and play tools
that are meant for biggercompanies, but at the same time,
bigger companies do them for areason. So kind of distilling
down and say, Okay, why do theydo things like this? Why do they
(52:03):
have this process? And how canwe achieve kind of this same
result with a much, much, muchsimpler process that is
applicable to an office whereyou only have 20 people or
something? That was what Ialways try to do. And I think
that's in the personal spaceeven more important, right?
Because especially when you arekind of like, in a way, like
bastardizing, like tools thatare originally developed for
(52:27):
like huge organization. Right.
And I think that's an extremelyvaluable tip. I think that's
that's it for today is one Ithink we need to do a follow up,
I guess, I think there are a lotof potential topics. Thanks a
lot. What is the best way forpeople to reach you? So like? I
said, of course, if if you'reGerman speaking, listen to
Simon's, podcasts. They aregreat. So I'm listening quite
(52:49):
regularly. And the personalagility podcast is pretty much a
weekly show. But as I said, youhave to understand German for
enjoying the benefits of theshow. Sorry, what else? How is
the best way to get hold of you?
Simon Klaiber (53:05):
Just hit me up on LinkedIn on see if this is known
in your part of the world?
Instagram, I'm on. On Twitter,I'm on pretty much every social
network. You can imagine. I'mnot yet on Tick tock, I have to
do this.
Fabian Gruber (53:21):
I can't, there is no Tick Tock in Hong Kong.
Simon Klaiber (53:23):
And it's just to tell myself that I'm not too old
to tick tock, I have to sign upthere. But you can hit me up on
pretty all social media, you'llfind me I'm there under my real
name, so it's easy.
Fabian Gruber (53:35):
As usual. I will put everything in the show
notes. So just check thededicated website for the
podcast and you will find alwayshow to reach out to Simon.
Thanks, Simon.
Simon Klaiber (53:47):
Good. Goodbye.
And thanks for having me.
Fabian Gruber (53:51):
My pleasure.
This was Life-Sparring roundeight. "Are You OKR" with a very
agile Simon Klaiber, hosted asalways by me, Fabian Gruber.
Life-Sparring is produced byTomas Latter, intro and outro
beat are by Markezi producer.
More info about Life-Sparringand this episode in particular,
(54:11):
including all links, apps andresources mentioned in the show,
you can find atLife-Sparring.com/podcast. If
you enjoyed the show, pleasesubscribe and leave a like
wherever you're getting yourpodcast from. I hope you join us
again for the next round ofLife-Sparring. Until then, stay
healthy, keep your hands up andprotect yourself at all times.
In the blue corner with the objective to get
in shape and to show off the keyresults, from Hong Kong, your
host, Fabian Gruber. In the redcorner, as agile as a young
cheetah, from Frankfurt Germany,our guest Simon Klaiber. This is
(00:36):
lifestyle round 8. Let's go.
Fabian Gruber (00:42):
Here we go. Hi Simon!
Simon Klaiber (00:44):
Hi, Fabian.
Fabian Gruber (00:46):
So this is Life-Sparring round eight. After
we did a few episodes withpretty much health and sport
focus. I think it's time forreal business minded podcasts, a
bit of personal productivity -OKRS objectives and key results
is the topic today. And I havean old friend as a guest,
(01:06):
somebody who's a perfectqualified partner for today's
round. Simon is working as abusiness agility coach, and
because he runs a personalagility podcast in German
language, he actually even hadan episode last year on OKRs,
(01:27):
for personal productivity use.
So I think I wouldn't knowanybody else whom I can record
this episode with. So veryexcited to talk to you today,
Simon. But as usual, before wedive deep into this topic, let's
talk a little bit about you andhow you kind of ended up in this
business agility field. I mean,you started differently, right?
(01:50):
You started in IT?
Simon Klaiber (01:52):
Yes, I always was a programmer started programming
is 14 years old. So I did thisas a hobby. Because this was
quite exciting in the early 90s,run a mailbox system in the pre
internet era. And so I wasalways very interested in
technology. But I also wasalways interested in people and
(02:14):
culture, it says was something Ididn't really identify as such a
thing at that time. But now inhindsight, I can see this and
it's cool. And I wasn't surewhat to do. I decided not to
start in economics or in it,like computer science, like it
would be, probably most peoplewould would sort of, because I
(02:38):
said, Okay, I can program I canget a living out of that
anytime. And I started to studycultural anthropology, which was
a very interesting field ofstudy, where I learned a lot
that I can use now. But I alwaysworked as an IT guy in different
roles on the site to finance mystudies. And this was then
(03:00):
around the .com bubble area, andpeople with it knowledge were,
well, sort of Yes. And so atsome point, I had to decide if I
want to continue with my studiesor work full time, I worked as a
freelancer all the time. Andthen I decided, Okay, let's give
it a try to work in it fulltime. And so I stopped studying
(03:22):
decision, I never reallyregretted in hindsight, because
it was a great time to start andget a lot of experience would
have been a lot harder a coupleof years later. And so I started
as a freelancer in many roles asa programmer. And as an software
developer, you come withtechnical knowledge on one side
and some Yes, social skills onthe other sides, you're pretty
(03:46):
rare breed. And so this led meto go through different roles
over the time, I worked a lotwith what nowadays you would
call a function analyst orbusiness analyst this name
wasn't used at this time. Sosomething like a translator
between the business people andthe technology people because I
was able to speak both languagesand architecture roles and then
(04:11):
of course, a team lead andproject lead roles. And when I
started this I pretty quicklyfound out that the traditional
project management approach isneither very successful nor
anything I wanted to do. So Istarted to look into the then
upcoming agile methods anddecided I want to learn more
(04:36):
about this and started to fillthe roles as a project manager,
but which I was hired for inform of a Scrum master. So a
kind of guerilla Scrum, and Ifound that I was pretty good at
that. And so I continued doingthis stopped getting paid for
programming started to gettingpaid for leading people in the
(05:00):
area. And since I always like tolearn more about things that I
found interesting, I read a lot,I heard a lot of podcasts and
also whist quite some courses.
And so I developed more into thearea, because I found out that
when you have agile teams,that's fine, but you hit the
wall pretty fast if the rest ofthe organization is not agile.
(05:23):
And so I've started to gain moreand more interest into the what
now is called the businessagility area. And try to learn
as much as I can about this andalso get more skills like an
systemic coaching education. Andso since a couple of years, I
mainly work in the agilecoaching area where I coach
(05:48):
management, business owners,CEOs, on any level, how to
change their leading style, andby this the culture in their
company organization to be in amore agile way, whatever this
might mean.
Fabian Gruber (06:07):
And your customers like, are you working
mainly with bigger companies? Ormore like typical German
Mittelstand small and mediumsized companies?
Simon Klaiber (06:15):
That's a very good question. So I started off
because this is where most ofthe it freelancers were hired in
the big company area, since I'mfrom the Frankfurt area, mostly
in the banking sector. But theproblem is very big companies is
that it's very hard to changebig organizations, especially if
(06:35):
you are not hired by the CEO andgetting hired by the CEO in a
very big corporation is veryhard. So I started to look for
midsize company mainly. So inthe last year, I mainly worked
for companies with around higherthree digit to mid four digit
(06:59):
number of employees, which Ifound out was for me the ideal
customer, because they had thepossibilities to hire someone
for a reasonable amount thatmade sense for me for something
that looks like a luxury at thefrom the outset. It's not a
necessary expense. And it'sstill small enough that you can
(07:21):
change things in a reasonableamount of time.
Fabian Gruber (07:25):
And how did COVID affect your business? I mean,
it's this this wholedigitalization, like that's
going on at warp speed at themoment, did this affect you in a
way? Or are you any way liketied up with your existing
customers, and there was not somuch of a difference?
Simon Klaiber (07:41):
Yes. And this was quite lucky there because you
have to differentiate thebeginning of the COVID crisis,
so a year ago, and the lastthree to six months. So I was
very lucky that I just was hiredby a customer on a pretty big
percentage of my available timehad a couple of weeks before
(08:02):
lockdown started here inGermany. And so if I didn't have
a good situation, at this time,it would be probably problematic
because everyone got in, I don'tknow what to do mode, no help.
No, nobody was hired. Nobodyknew how to onboard someone in a
lockdown, where practicallyeveryone was in home office, at
(08:23):
least at my customers, they sentpeople to a home office very
early. It's not at everycompany, unfortunately. But they
did it very well. And and in agood way that they said, Okay,
if you have no possibility towork at home, you can come. So
maybe 10% of the people wentback to office and they did it
very well. So so in thissituation, I was just lucky. But
(08:46):
now I have the feeling that alot of organizations found out
that they can change becausethey had to, and now are
gathering some courage to doingmore steps to change and also
some going through a moredifficult time. And they see
they have to change if they wantto have a future. Or they see
(09:08):
that they have a shifting ofbusiness models towards digital
channel at a higher speed. Andthey also see okay, I can't wait
a couple of years to do somechanges. And now I have to do
this. So now I see that thedemand is quickly going up. And
I wouldn't be booked out rightnow as I am now. It wouldn't be
(09:28):
a problem to find new customersat the moment because the demand
is pretty high at the...
Fabian Gruber (09:34):
Time to scale up, Simon.Time to scale up.
Simon Klaiber (09:36):
If the thing you you sell is your experience and
your intuition. Scaling up ispretty hard. I'm thinking very
hard about this. But I see otherpeople in the market who are who
are finding clever people, youngpeople giving them some courses
and turning them to the customerand probably they're doing
nothing really really bad. Butit wouldn't be The level of
(10:00):
quality that I want to give mycustomers. So this makes scaling
up pretty difficult and I'mreally thinking about how I
could do that.
Fabian Gruber (10:10):
Okay, so when I mentioned you have a personal
agility podcast, so actually youhave two podcasts. Right. So one
is a little bit on the hiatus atthe moment, but you actually
also have a business agilitypodcast. Yes. So how did you
kind of get into podcasting?
Like, what did motivate you? Andhow did this come about?
Simon Klaiber (10:28):
I'm listening to podcasts, at least for German
podcast consumer for a very longtime. I'm listening to podcast
for over 10 years now. And 10years ago, nobody talked about
podcasts in Germany. So it wasalways an medium I liked a lot.
So before COVID, I've had a lotof time in the car normally
going to customers and back andso so I listened a lot to
(10:52):
podcasts and lit a lot toaudible books and things like
that. So I could use that timein the car. And I always liked
it. And when I decided formyself that I wanted to give
some content out for differentreasons, because I like to share
what I know. But also especiallyon the business agility podcast
(11:14):
is also some kind of contentmarketing, of course, I saw the
about what would be the bestmedium for me. And while I'm not
better at writing, I even as aas a computer, journalist
writing focus on computermagazines, in my youth, I knew
that writing was always a hasslefor me, it's something that I
(11:36):
like to procrastinate becausewhen I'm in it, it's okay. But
starting something, it's veryhard for me when I when I'm
writing, I'm not completely surewhat's the reason yet, but that
is how it is. And, for instance,doing something on YouTube, you
have to invest a lot more inquality, you have to have a nice
background, you have to designvisuals, so producing something
(12:01):
that I would like would be muchmore Work. And I think audio is
an medium I like I like to talkI like to talk a lot,
unfortunately. And it has a goodratio between afford and output.
And so I decided to try it out.
Fabian Gruber (12:19):
And and how did you end up with two podcasts. So
like the first one, like thebusiness agility podcast,
clearly it's tied to yourbusiness and your brand, and for
sure, as a little bit ofcustomer acquisition. But how
did the personal agility podcastcome about?
Simon Klaiber (12:34):
This was also always subject matter very close
to my heart. And what I didn'tmentioned in my career
description earlier, my firstcontact with agility was through
the personal agility space. Soin this time, when I started to
think about agility, I alsothought a lot about self
(12:55):
organization because I'm alittle bit chaotic kind of
person that in the past, in myuse a lot had a lot of problems
of things that went lost in somebig piles on my desk and things
that I regretted that I didn'tdo for a lot of reasons. So I
found out okay, I have to dosomething and organize myself, I
(13:15):
found out a lot of people whoare interested in self
organization are most of thetime pretty bad organizzare eyes
people. So I looked in in a lotof things like getting things
done, and so on. And I alsofound out the book personal
Kanban, which was probably hisfirst book in the personal
agility space. And, and I foundthis very interesting and start
(13:35):
to work with some personalKanban board, which I in the end
iteration, I'm still using andgoing from there. At the same
time, when I went got into theproject management roles I found
out, okay, agility is a coolthing, that it also continues in
the professional space. Sopersonal agility was actually
(13:55):
the start of my journey. Andthis I was still thinking a lot
about it and reading a lot aboutit and trying a lot of things
out. I said, Oh, this would beinteresting to share. And this
is really more of an hobby andnot an personal branding thing.
So I really do this because Ilike the topic and I hope I can
help people find some ways thatI took long to find myself.
Fabian Gruber (14:20):
We try to cover both today a bit because at the
end, I think we should take alook at OKRs, objectives and key
results from both angles, likethe traditional business angle,
where it comes from, but ofcourse also what possible
applications that are forpersonal use and personal
productivity. How did you get intouch with OKRs? Where did you
hear about OKRs?
Unknown (14:42):
I'm not completely sure where I heard of them first. So
if you're looking at thedifferent mythology that are in
the wider agile space, so OKRsare not an agile method in its
core...
Fabian Gruber (14:55):
Occasionally they even accused of kind of being
too static right?
Simon Klaiber (15:00):
Yeah, we can talk about this later. in some more
detail. This is an interestingdiscussion. But you heard of
them, of course, you heard thestories how Google use them. And
I always thought, Oh, it's nice.
The moment when they hit homewas when I was looking harder
and also didn't a masterclasscourse there on the mythology of
(15:22):
flight levels, or it's not evenmythology, the sinking model of
flight levels. That's a modelwhere you any organization, and
also one person is also a kindof organization has three
levels, the doing level, thecoordination level, and the
strategic level. And you can useOKRs, to create strategy goals.
(15:44):
And also, you declinate thisgoals through the organization
in different ways. And this is avery good match, in my opinion.
And this is when I started tothink a lot about OKRs. And also
started to use OKRs.
Fabian Gruber (16:06):
So I personally just landed on the John Doerr
book, Measure What Matterssimply because I'm a little bit
obsessed with quantified selfand measuring things and trying
to manage them. So that's how Iactually got to it. And then by
accident, I'm now alsoprofessionally involved with
OKRs as the company, theorganization that I'm currently
(16:29):
working for, just introducedthem for goal-settings. Yeah,
maybe we start like a little bitexplaining what actually OKRs
are. So from what I understandthey are the brainchild, or at
least they are attributed toAndy Grove, who was then CEO of
Intel in the 1970s, and stillkind of little bit legendary as
(16:53):
a manager. And he introducedthem to the team at Intel as a
way to set objectives, set goalsand align the company behind
those goals, right. And theywere used for a very long time
internally at Intel and thendiffuse kind of out of Intel
into the wider Silicon Valleyspace, mainly then through Doerr
(17:16):
who became a legend by himselfin the venture capital space. He
was responsible to introducethem to Google and Google hiring
a lot of great brains and also,in a way kind of seeding a lot
of other companies in SiliconValley, I think was then the
(17:36):
catalyst to made this method,pretty common standard, I would
say even now in the Europeanbusiness. How would you define
an OKRs, Simon?
Simon Klaiber (17:47):
Before I go into defining, I would like to give a
word of caution before you startdiscussing OKRs. OKRss are a
very, very, very powerful tool.
And as any powerful tool, youcan use it for good and you can
use it for evil, you can do alot of good for your company
(18:10):
culture for ownership of all thepeople in your company for the
company, but you can also use itas an really bad dystopian
Command and Control Regime andOKRs are currently really are
starting to get a bad name andthe reason is that a lot of
(18:30):
people are using the toolwithout understanding the
details. But generally speaking,the main point of OKRs is the
point of setting strategic goalson every level of an
organization. The main key pointis that you seperate short to
(18:52):
mid term quality based but notuantified goals like " I wa
t to or we want to be somethin" but without a quantifica
ion and you match it with a meaurable key result. So a qua
tified goal. That is not the sarting point because with a lot
(19:15):
f goal setting your onlyet and quantified goal oh we
ave to raise so much money ore have to sell for so much mo
ey but you and then you you desin your mission statement or so
ething like that, out of that. Ad this what they're not doing
hey're adjusting numbers awayust to where what we stand what
is our reason why we're doing ths, and then in a second step, t
(19:38):
ey are looking not after theirresult number but which
method measurable things are thee that would show us that we
ear or reach our qualiative goalAnd if you write this key
results down, this quantifiedThis is the differentiation
between outcome and output,goal are something that
(19:59):
ou can't directly influence, Ian bring a nice example I like t
use out of the personal spae. So if you're qualified object
ve is, I want to find a jothat is matching is better ma
ching my interests in life,your key results could be. So th
(20:19):
s is not a very good objectiv. It's a very simple objective
want to get don't quote me thathis is a good objective. Bu
but for the reason of explainng here, it's it's good enoug
. So you could say my key reslts is I sent out hundre
s CVS to different companies,his is a very bad key results,
(20:40):
ecause I can game it, I can gae it and just sent out very bad
CVS to totally unmatching compaies. A good good key result woul
be, I got invited to intervews at five companies that
could imagine working for.
(21:04):
right, so you want to kind ofmeasure outcomes and and not
outputs, because output is, asyou said, can be easily gamed,
easily manipulated outcomes outof your control in the end.
And there's a second point Ijust understood pretty recently,
when you do this, you also notdefine what you're actually
(21:24):
going to do. Because there aremany ways how you could reach
this key results, you could sendout 100 CVs, you could go to
meet ups online or offline andnetwork and try to find out who
is looking for someone and justspeaking with them and getting
your interview set this way. Oryou could cold call or write on
(21:48):
LinkedIn, interesting people andtry to find this way, this is a
totally different actions, thatif you do, the bribe can all
lead to getting five interviewsat interesting companies. And
this separation, first, thinkabout what I want to do quality
side, then look, how can Imeasure my success. And only
(22:12):
after that, deciding what to do,this brings you hlt, because you
are not fixing what you'redoing, you are fixing your goal
for a certain amount of time,three months or something like
that. And this is one of thepoints that I personally find
very powerful in okrs.
Fabian Gruber (22:32):
But it's also kind of a little bit separating
that different levels have morefreedom and that way, right?
Because the whole planningprocess is very focused on the
objectives, like the big goalsthat you want to achieve. And
the key results, the measurableoutcomes that you expect to
achieve your objective. But theactions are kind of then often
(22:55):
left to the operational level.
And at the end, the person who'sin charge of achieving the key
result.
Simon Klaiber (23:01):
And this is totally in line with with
thinking in this flight levelmodel, you have a space where
you think only about strategics.
And then you have a space whereyou only think about operators
utilization, how what need to doand how do I need to coordinate
and then do we have a levelthat's only about doing and if
you are doing you don't have tothink about the strategies
(23:22):
because this is already takentaken care of, to continue. So
the second important part toOKRs it that the key results
should be a stretch goal. Sonormally say 70% of my key
result, quantifiable target is astatus where I would be very
(23:44):
happy when I wish that so 70% isgreen. So Google say 70% is
green and 100% is super clean.
This is something that is notworking in all cultures,
especially here in Germany, thatnot reaching goals. 200% is a
very difficult thing,
Fabian Gruber (24:02):
Even in the mentality of the staff members,
right. I mean, it's, I mean, Iam also German and I'm working
with a German company too. But Ithink like even the Hong Kong,
like the Asian mindset is not somuch different in the sense that
if you give them a goal, I mean,achievement is, is the goal, and
nobody feels great if they arelike at 80% achievement. And I
(24:22):
think that this is maybe alsolike underestimated, right.
Like, I mean, you said beforethat I mean there's definitely a
lot potential to really screw upokrs and have them wreck your
company culture. And I thinkthat that this is exactly like
one example right? If reallyeverybody like if it's achieved
achieve 100% or doesn't count,and then maybe also even tying
(24:46):
it to promotions or toperformance reviews or bonding,
bonus payments, etc, which theoriginal thinkers behind it all
like advised against that right.
So like john said very clearly,I mean Do a continuous
performance evaluation but nevertie it to the goals because else
you start kind of like teamsworking against each other
(25:07):
trying to make the goals, notlosing out of sight, kind of the
overall company goals.
Simon Klaiber (25:15):
This brings me to, for me the three golden
rules how to not hope I can saythe co founder OKRs. One is
never ever tie the achievementof OKRs to incentives of any
kind, not career incentives, notmoney incentives, no incentives.
(25:36):
The second point is if you're anorganization management, or if
you're in personal agilityyourself, when you are
reflecting on your success, youshould never treat not achieving
an key result as a failure butas a learning possibility. So
(25:57):
that's not nice. It's always notnice to not to reach a goal, but
it's natural not to reach agoal, especially if you set
yourself ambitious goals. Sotreated as a learning
possibility, what went wrong?
How can we do it better? Did weset the goal wrong, that's
always a possibly maybe we set agoal that we could never
possibly reach? Or could we havedone things better. And the
(26:19):
third point is, and we come tothe the last big function of
okrs is the people who areresponsible for achieving the
objective and key results needsto be the only people setting
them not to management issetting them not a discussion
(26:39):
between discussion in quotesbetween the management and
people that needs to achievethem. The people who are
responsible for achieving theokrs are the ones who set the
okrs. Nobody else. And this isthe bridge to the last part of
okrs. And why it's good forstrategical alignment in an
(27:01):
organization. So the idea behindthis, the organization at its
top set its key 123 objectives,and for each of the objectives,
two to five, best two to threekey results that they think they
can use to measure the success,then, and this is a poor
(27:26):
principle, and that's verychild. The next level below this
looks at the company goals, andnot the management saying you
have to do this and this andthat. But the next level look at
the goal and thinks about whatwe as a department, x y set can
do to pay into this goals. Andfrom this, they also define
(27:50):
their own goals. And then thenext level below it to the same
until you're on team level.
There are some people that arealso doing this on individual
level. I'm personally not a bigfan of that, at least not in all
areas, because I think teamworkis in the modern world in this
(28:12):
vuca world more important thansingle person work. So I think
it should be always a crossfunctional team that takes
responsible for delivering thereal work level one in in flight
levels in the end. And it wasthis way that you always are
looking what is the main goaland take my aims from this, I
(28:33):
get real strategical alignmentto the organization. And if I
have three months or maybe sixmonths, three months is a
typical thing, cycles ofadjusting the okrs. I have for a
bigger organization a prettyfast way to switch strategic
priorities and get them throughthe organization pretty quickly.
(28:56):
And this is a superpower.
Fabian Gruber (28:58):
I like okrs in principle. And I definitely see
that if they are set up, right,they really can do magic. And I
think that the main three thingsthat they can do is definitely
this alignment that you alsolike emphasis. And then it's a
focus, right? It makes veryclear, hey, these are the areas
that we think are the mostimportant. And then there's
(29:18):
accountability, because behindevery OKR there's somebody
responsible for it. So it'sclear within the company also
who's responsible for whichparts and how the different
departments for example, likewhat is their part in achieving
the overall company goals. And Ithink that this definitely can
help it makes everything muchmore transparent. So the the
(29:40):
interesting question then is iflike this alignment,
accountability is one of themajor last points of okrs. Why
should we also use it and theprivate space because I think
alignment and accountabilitynormally is less of an issue if
you're a one man band, and Imean focus, of course I think is
it's a it's a big one. What Ithink and, like, let me hear
(30:02):
your thoughts. I mean, for mepersonally, I think like the
biggest contribution that okrscan do for me, is the way they
force you to think. Likebasically to say, hey, like,
what do you really want toachieve? I will, like achieve
this. But what does it mean?
What is the underlying metrics?
(30:24):
What are the underlying goalsthat you actually really have to
get to have the feeling ofaccomplishing that goal? And I
think that this is a thing thatwe often don't do, right? We are
just too lazy to do this. So wehave this kind of goals and say,
I want to improve my sociallife. And then we stopped there,
instead of saying, what does itactually mean? How would I
define this? Why? How could Ikind of say, I don't know, what
(30:47):
is it like meeting a friend onceper week? Or like, what is it
actually, that I would really behappy with. And I think that
this is, for me is the biggestcontribution Actually, I'm very
curious to hear about you. And Iknow that you kind of
experimented with it a littlebit when you did that your show
last year on okrs, for personaluse.
Simon Klaiber (31:08):
So I think we have a very good grasp of the
problems here. Because youreally put the finger in the
sore points here where it'sdifficult, I'm using Okay, ask
for a little bit more than ayear now in the personal area.
So I would say I'm stilllearning a lot. So it's because
your experimentation cycles arethree months, it's not the
(31:28):
fastest learning thing. Andyou're right, this strategical
alignment thing is not the bigpoint in use of okrs. In in
personalities, it's, I think,multiple things. So the first
thing is, you are forcingyourself to really write down
(31:48):
short to mid term strategicgoals is something you most of
the time, don't do if you don'tforce you to do it. The second
point is the thinking process.
First, think about the what Iwant to achieve then about the
measurement and immediatelyleave the actions how I'm going
to do this open. That's thesecond big point. And the third
(32:11):
big point is this givingyourself a personal
accountability. Becausenormally, if you set personal
goals, and then at the end ofthe quarter, or the end of the
year, you do a retrospective,you don't really remember what
you saw it about you wanted todo three months ago, or 12
months ago, and you're prayingis trying to get everything
(32:35):
harmonic and depending on whatpersonality is. Either you are
beating yourself up likenothing, because oh, no, I
didn't reach anything. Or yousaid, Oh, yeah, no, everything
was great. Yet, I did a lot andof this, and I met a lot of
friends. And I had a lot ofquality time with my wife. And
but did I really, maybe, I don'tknow. And though this gives you
(32:57):
some kind of accountability, butyou're right, there are areas,
especially the non businessareas of the person with
charities, where quantifyingthings is a heart. And B may be
not always the best thing to do.
(33:19):
I think about a Robbie Williamssong that calls How do you rate
the morning, Sun, some things inlife, lose their worth, when you
try to quantify them. And thoughthis is really hard, and I'm
still working on this, I think Iget better at it. But this is a
very, very personal thing. Soit's hard to give you answers.
(33:40):
But I think the process alone tothink about how do I know at the
end of the quarter, or at theend of the year, if I was
successful in an area that ishard to quantify, or impossible
to quantify is an worthfulexercise.
Fabian Gruber (34:00):
And maybe we'll go a little bit deeper and I'm
really curious about yourpersonal practice. So do you use
any software? Do you just do itin I don't know an extra or in
Evernote or how do you kind ofkeep track of your goals? And
then how do you really like havea also quarterly rhythm where
you say okay, these are thegoals for the next quarter. This
(34:21):
is what I want to focus on. Andthen maybe you can explain a
little bit
Simon Klaiber (34:25):
That's that's actually exactly what I do. I
once a quarter I'm setting myokrs I'm working with a system
of five aspects of my life.
That's that's business, money,career. That's friendship and
family. That's fitness andhealth. That's partnership, law
of sexuality, and that what Icall the inner world so
(34:46):
spirituality, personal wellbeing and things like that.
Also, everything me time alsothings that I do trust because I
have fun with it and that Idon't have Family don't do for
anything else, just for mypersonal fun I put there. So I
tried to find worthwhileobjectives for each of these
(35:10):
areas. And this leads to thefirst problems because if you
focus too hard in personalagility, you've you will lead an
unbalanced life, there is anatural limitation to healthy
focusing if you are lookingafter your whole person. So what
I do is, I normally have 10 foreach of these aspects, I have
(35:33):
1,2,3, possibly worthwhileobjectives. And then I pick
three to five objectives, thelittle bit more that I would
normally do in business that Iwant to focus on, that doesn't
mean that I throw away the otherones. But I only keep them in on
the backburner. So to say, Okay,if I can do something for that,
(35:55):
that's okay. But but that's notmy focus.
Fabian Gruber (35:59):
But that also means that you don't always have
in every quarter kind of all ofthe areas or your life covered,
Simon Klaiber (36:06):
Correct, correct, or at least not as a focus. That
doesn't mean I don't doanything, but this is where I
really want to focus on. It'snot an absolute focus, like I go
to the business sector where Isay, I don't do anything else.
But this is where I really wantto achieve something this
quarter. And because it's notpossible to do everything. So if
you are saying not that Itelling anyone, you should do
(36:29):
that, if you're deciding I haveto do the ultra hardest test in
my life, or do the ultra ultrahard career move and work 16
hours a day, you can't have timefor your family, for your
partner, for your friends forfitness, maybe one other thing,
but it's impossible. So you haveto do in decision how balanced I
(36:53):
want to be in the next time. Andit's okay for some time to be
unbalanced. If you do itwillingly. And though after this
time, you have to regulate backand maybe also talked with the
people. Sorry, I won't have somuch time for you the next
month, then the your friendswon't run away. But be happy if
you come back in three months.
That will
Fabian Gruber (37:14):
be like a follow up question that I have like do
you discuss your goals with yourwife? Or is this something you
don't normally would he?
Simon Klaiber (37:23):
Yes and No, it's not said I come with my OKRS and
say sweetheart, this are mygoals. But of course, if I have
important goals in this time, Iwill share them but but not in a
methodic way.
Fabian Gruber (37:38):
In the same in the same position. I mean, my
wife would laugh at me if Iwould ask her for feedback on my
OKRs.
Simon Klaiber (37:46):
I know couples that are both coming from this
agile sector and they are doinga lot of things and think oh,
I'm we're doing this. And thereare different ways you can do
it. We are also doing anpartnership retro once a month,
but we don't do some post itsbut we just did one evening, we
are talking about what wentwell, this month. Are there any
(38:09):
important thing for the nextmonth just with a glass of wine
at the kitchen table? So youhave to find the right way that
is working for you. It's It'sIt's always for the people and
not for the methods?
Fabian Gruber (38:21):
And in terms of tools, like do you have a
specific tool that you use foryour system? Or do you kind of
Simon Klaiber (38:26):
it's pretty low key. So So when I'm working on
them, I'm just doing it in mynotebook, I have a notebook
where I do smiddy retros foreach week, and also let some
bigger retros for each month.
And I'll write down some things,what I did and what I don't did.
And if there were any problemsand things like that. And also
in this once a quarter I put inmy goals and then I put them
either an electronic Kanbanboard there and level three
(38:48):
board. I do use flight levelshere. It's not very extensive.
But so I have a special boardfor this OKR. So where I put the
okrs and then I for this five,three to five, I define then I
defined for them key results.
And I'm not very good this yetin some areas, they're working
(39:08):
pretty well in some other areas,especially the personal growth
areas and also partnershiplevels. They are very, very hard
to set. And I'm not totallyhappy with how I'm doing it
right now. Every two to fourweeks, I go on the board and
(39:29):
then I try to put in my successhow much of the key results are
already met.
Fabian Gruber (39:35):
And I was I was looking a little bit in this
space because I'm definitelyinterested to experiment a bit
more with person okay as to andI think I the best tool that I
found was with a software calledKoan. And it's it's a software
that was also, I think,recommended on the John Doerr
website. And this one is quiteinteresting because it's free. I
(39:55):
mean, at least for the personaluse because they basically
charge for that functionality.
So as long as you don't have ateam, you can pretty much use it
completely for free. And that'sbrowser based and pretty simple
to handle. And what I like aboutis this this kind of
visualization that you reallyhave your goals, you have the
okrs, and the objectives and itdoesn't electronic prompts, it
(40:16):
prompts you every week to do areview. So they have like a
weekly meditation on your onyour goals, where you also have
to say, for example, howconfident you are that you're
still achieving your goal. Andthat's quite interesting,
because you can map this overtime. So you can get a
confidence curve. And you'llsee, which is of course, also
for a company quite interestingas a tool, I looked at some
(40:37):
other tools, but most of themare like relatively pricey and
and do not have much and freefunctionality. And I think
that's if you really just wantto use it for personal use, I
would not kind of necessarilyrecommend that kind of
commitment.
Simon Klaiber (40:53):
But generally, I would say Don't think too much
about the tools keep it simple,it's it's more really the
thought process that you put increating is where the magic is,
you can do tracking pretty lowtech, you can put a couple of
posts at a at a whiteboard inyour home office, or just write
them down in a book or inEvernote or use a Trello board
(41:17):
or some other virtual Kanban.
board. It's it's more importantfor to do with it, then how you
store it.
Fabian Gruber (41:26):
And personally, you are really planning to kind
of continue with this system, ordid you do you kind of see like
something else that you wouldstill want to try as an
alternative?
Simon Klaiber (41:36):
No, no, no, I think I would like to to keep
with this, I'm not totally happyyet with the quality of focus
that I achieve. So this isanother very good thing you can
do with with such a personalokrs is that when you're doing
some retrospectives about whatyou did. So at the end of the
week, or at the end of themonth, you could check what I'm
(41:57):
currently doing, how is thishelping to achieve my key
results. And here, if you havesomething that is not helping to
achieve the key results, inbusiness context, I would say,
stop doing it. In personalcontext, I would say think about
why I'm doing it. Even if it'snot helpful for my key results.
(42:19):
And there might be a very goodreason. Balance is important. We
are we are not machines, we arepeople. But at least if you do
something that is not payinginto your key results, do it as
a very conscious decision andnot letting it slip in. Because
that's what happened all thetime.
Fabian Gruber (42:39):
But I think that's like really, really
important lightest. I mean, it'slike to emphasize really on this
retrospective to this START STOPKEEP kind of discussion, even if
you do it with yourself likelike what was not helpful. What
did I do? That was really nothelpful. I wanted to lose
weight. Why am I still I don'tknow, eating a bag of potato
chips every Friday night aftercoming home. And I think at the
(43:02):
end, that's, as you said, mostlikely, like the biggest outcome
that you can achieve, right?
Really this awareness on? Like,what do I actually want to
achieve? How would I measure itand how would I kind of also,
like mark it done. And thenlooking into kind of where your
actual behaviors may be collidewith this the goal system and
(43:23):
and kind of trying to fine tuneit to at least do some baby
steps in the right direction.
Simon Klaiber (43:32):
And again, don't be afraid that you don't reach
your goal at the beginning, youdon't be afraid that you set
very bad goals that are notworking very well at the
beginning. As I said the metricin the OKR system is not in
checking boxes and achievinggoals. It's in getting better at
setting good targets andlearning and to learn you will
(43:53):
have to fail first. So I stillhave quite a few of key results
and objective that I don't reachand I have no chance to reach.
But then I can learn why did Iset this objective, but didn't
put the priority on the topic ora set of key result or objective
that I actually could not reallydo? Did you learn something from
(44:15):
it, especially in personalspace? If I set an objective and
I don't work on it, there's areason for it. And it's very,
very helpful to understand thisreason. And there are many good
reasons this could be that I'm alazy slob. It could be that I
have psychological blockade inme, for instance, that I have
the fear of getting somethingfinished because other people
(44:37):
could then traction. That'ssomething I'm always fighting
with. It could be that it's Isaid it because I thought oh,
it's a great a great goal, butit's not actually as important
and I just didn't record itbecause it was never important.
So there are a lot of reasonsand it's more important to
understand this reasons and andlearn from them. Then, to
(45:01):
actually achieving the goal isgreat, of course. But there is
an interesting thing is thatpeople that have bad experience
or experience of really notsucceeding early in life are
often much more successful thanpeople where everything always
was successful until the day.
It's not.
Fabian Gruber (45:23):
It's like this typical tale of the one with a
speech impairment who becomespresident and the college
athlete who never had to doanything, because they got
everything handed to them basedon talent, till they kind of
meet their, ltheir peers on anational level and get realized
they're not invincible anymore.
Simon Klaiber (45:42):
and this is also something you should think about
when we talked about this 70%.
Green, super Green, think abouthow do you want to set yourself
your goals. And this is verypersonal, based on your
personality, it could be settingyou up for failure, that you
always think bad about you,because you never read the 100%
(46:02):
or maybe even not the 70%. Ormaybe you're the type that you
don't have a problem with notreaching even the 70%. But you
can maybe learn more from it, ifyou set higher goals. So this is
something you should also thinkabout it what is it for me
better to set something likethis is from Tim Collins says
(46:22):
this thinking model of the 20mile march that if you always
set and reachable, but not easygoal, you success better than if
you setting high goals andsomething don't get anything
done and sometimes get a lotdone. So if you're more in this
kind of thinking, it might bebetter for you to set reasonable
but reachable goals. And if youare not hard hit if you don't
(46:47):
reach a goal, it maybe makesmore sense to set an more
ambitious goal. But this alsoneeds a lot of introspection to
learn about what is better foryou.
Fabian Gruber (47:00):
And that's I think is a little bit the tricky
part, if you do it by yourself.
I mean, in a company context, ofcourse, this is always an
exchange, right? I mean, it'salways on team level on
different hierarchies, you getfeedback from your boss, who
says, Well, that's your goal?
Come on. And that's, of course,that makes it sometimes tedious
and exhausting. But at the sametime, it's also very beneficial
(47:21):
because you kind of getdifferent views and different
inputs. And this introspectiveis sometimes a bit one
dimensional, right, you need tokind of really be able to step
back and see yourself a littlebit from a distance. And that's
in itself a skill, right? Not soeasy to acquire as you want. I
think we covered quite a lot ofground. Did we forget anything?
Is there anything about okrsthat we completely forgot about?
Simon Klaiber (47:45):
I think there's a lot of things that we could talk
about. But I think we reallycovered the basics. It's
important that if you do okrsokrs are to helping the people
to achieve bigger goals. It'snot for the goals to be
achieved, and the people don'tmatter. And it doesn't matter if
you do it in a company contextor do it in a personal context.
(48:08):
It's a tool to help you and notyou are there to help the tool.
And if you're doing with thismindset, it's it's a great and
very helpful tool.
Fabian Gruber (48:17):
Perfect. And before we end, today's show, I
think I have to use the chanceand and ask you what other cool
methods you like from theagility space have you applied
for yourself? I mean, do youhave an all time favorite so
far? I mean, you are at, likemore than 70 episodes right of
your podcast. So far, like whatis your favorites? And what
(48:38):
should we cover maybe in afollow up episode in a bit of
time?
Simon Klaiber (48:42):
it's difficult to find one favorite. So I can
maybe there are two things Icould name. But then also,
again, a word of caution. So twothings I personally find very
helpful is as I alreadymentioned, the thought model of
the flight levels that Ipersonally think is also very,
very helpful on the personallevel to also think in yourself
(49:06):
in different levels. And thesecond part is, and I just did
an episode on this in a coupleof weeks with be out to get it's
an coaching method that I calllifelines, that is really
drawing down the line of yourlife from your birth until you
are the statistical maximum age,so around 90 years or something
(49:27):
like that at the moment, andreally draw in Where am I now
what was the important phases?
How much time do I have leftbecause I'm in my mid 40s. And I
did this the first time when Iwas in the late 30s, early 40s.
And you are really, really,really, really under estimating
how much time you have left. Andthis for me was also very, very
(49:51):
freeing point to learn and Ithink it also hindered me to
getting bad cases of mid life.
Because there's really a lot oftime left, and you can do a lot
of if you have this view, youcan do a lot of other things,
you can do a retrospective seein which phases of of my life, I
(50:13):
was the happiest, and then lookwhat was similar in this face,
and then try to construct afuture where this things that
made you happy, will be theremore often. So, getting
sometimes really doing the bigstep back and looking at your
whole time on the world, whichincludes realizing that, at
(50:34):
least for our generation isprobably still will be a limited
time, I think this is veryhelpful. And if you can do it,
it is, for me, at least it wasmore freeing than depressing
Sounds Sounds very interesting.
Fabian Gruber (50:48):
I mean, I'm definitely interested.
Simon Klaiber (50:50):
And the last point is, generally visibility
in the utility space, there area lot of people who are selling
you one size fits all methods.
And I personally think it's moreinteresting and revolving. But
of course, also harder thananything that is more
interesting and more rewardingis to really understand the
(51:10):
underlying principles, and touse them to find the right
solution for yourself. I callthis maturity from first
principles. And I also did acouple of episodes already on
that. But I also use it if whenI try to add my customers
educate the people about agilitynot to tell you this is method
one, and you just have to dothis and this and this, like in
(51:33):
an Ikea instruction. But theseare the principles, apply the
principles to your situation toget the right solution.
Fabian Gruber (51:42):
Now, I mean, it's, that's, that's super
helpful, because I mean, I'vedone a lot of this myself and my
career because I always workedfor smaller offices, smaller
companies. And normally, youcan't just plug and play tools
that are meant for biggercompanies, but at the same time,
bigger companies do them for areason. So kind of distilling
down and say, Okay, why do theydo things like this? Why do they
(52:03):
have this process? And how canwe achieve kind of this same
result with a much, much, muchsimpler process that is
applicable to an office whereyou only have 20 people or
something? That was what Ialways try to do. And I think
that's in the personal spaceeven more important, right?
Because especially when you arekind of like, in a way, like
bastardizing, like tools thatare originally developed for
(52:27):
like huge organization. Right.
And I think that's an extremelyvaluable tip. I think that's
that's it for today is one Ithink we need to do a follow up,
I guess, I think there are a lotof potential topics. Thanks a
lot. What is the best way forpeople to reach you? So like? I
said, of course, if if you'reGerman speaking, listen to
Simon's, podcasts. They aregreat. So I'm listening quite
(52:49):
regularly. And the personalagility podcast is pretty much a
weekly show. But as I said, youhave to understand German for
enjoying the benefits of theshow. Sorry, what else? How is
the best way to get hold of you?
Simon Klaiber (53:05):
Just hit me up on LinkedIn on see if this is known
in your part of the world?
Instagram, I'm on. On Twitter,I'm on pretty much every social
network. You can imagine. I'mnot yet on Tick tock, I have to
do this.
Fabian Gruber (53:21):
I can't, there is no Tick Tock in Hong Kong.
Simon Klaiber (53:23):
And it's just to tell myself that I'm not too old
to tick tock, I have to sign upthere. But you can hit me up on
pretty all social media, you'llfind me I'm there under my real
name, so it's easy.
Fabian Gruber (53:35):
As usual. I will put everything in the show
notes. So just check thededicated website for the
podcast and you will find alwayshow to reach out to Simon.
Thanks, Simon.
Simon Klaiber (53:47):
Good. Goodbye.
And thanks for having me.
Fabian Gruber (53:51):
My pleasure.
This was Life-Sparring roundeight. "Are You OKR" with a very
agile Simon Klaiber, hosted asalways by me, Fabian Gruber.
Life-Sparring is produced byTomas Latter, intro and outro
beat are by Markezi producer.
More info about Life-Sparringand this episode in particular,
(54:11):
including all links, apps andresources mentioned in the show,
you can find atLife-Sparring.com/podcast. If
you enjoyed the show, pleasesubscribe and leave a like
wherever you're getting yourpodcast from. I hope you join us
again for the next round ofLife-Sparring. Until then, stay
healthy, keep your hands up andprotect yourself at all times.
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