May 6, 2025 • 46 mins
When project goals feel disconnected from broader business objectives, it can be challenging to stay motivated and on track. You may find yourself questioning the purpose of your work, only to discover that the strategic objective is simply to "build an app." If you're struggling to link your projects to the bigger organizational picture, this episode is for you.
Carsten Ley, an expert in project management and OKRs, shares valuable insights on how to use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to align project delivery with overall business strategy. He discusses how integrating OKRs into your project management practice can drive better alignment, measure impact, and keep your team focused on the bigger picture.
Resources from this episode:
- Join DPM Membership
- Subscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcasts
- Connect with Carsten on LinkedIn
- Check out Asia PMO and OKR Asia
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Galen Low (00:00):
It's been a long day, and it feels like the
(00:02):
project you're working on isnowhere close to its objective.
The team feels like the missionis just to build an app for
the sake of building an app,without much more to go on.
You are ready to shut yourlaptop for the day, but you
figure maybe you should goback to the outputs from
strategic planning justto get some inspiration.
Maybe it's just that youand your team are too close
to it and aren't seeingthe forest for the trees.
(00:23):
So with the last bit of energyyou have, you pull up some of
the more strategic documentsyou were given — just to get
refreshed on the vision andobjective for the project.
And there it is, plain as day.
The big strategicobjective for the year
was... "to build an app".
If you're struggling toconnect your project goals to
strategic business objectivesand vice versa, keep listening.
(00:43):
We're going to be exploringhow OKRs — objectives and
key results — can give yourprojects a framework for
driving alignment, measuringimpact, and motivating your
teams toward the biggerpicture business strategy.
Hey folks, thanks for tuning in.
My name is Galen Low withthe Digital Project Manager.
(01:04):
We are a community of digitalprofessionals on a mission
to help each other getskilled, get confident, and
get connected so that we canamplify the value of project
management in a digital world.
If you wanna hear moreabout that, head on over
to thedpm.com/membership.
And if you're intofuture-forward conversations
and practical insights arounddigital project leadership,
consider subscribing to thisshow for weekly episodes.
(01:27):
Today we are talking about howto link project delivery to
broader organizational goals byincorporating objective and key
results — also affectionatelyreferred to as OKRs — into your
project management practice.
With me today is Carsten Ley— project management consultant,
OKR coach, and co-founder ofboth Asia PMO and OKR Asia.
(01:48):
Carsten, thanks forbeing with me today.
Carsten Ley (01:50):
Thank you, Galen, for having me on the show.
Galen Low (01:53):
I'm so excited to dive into this because I'll
admit that this is an areawhere I don't know a lot, so
I'm gonna be learning as wellalongside some of my listeners.
I think it's such aninteresting topic.
We've been talking a lot inmy community about how to be
more strategic, how to tie intobroader business goals, how to
be a bit more cross-functionaland not just isolated
delivering our projects.
And OKRs is somethingthat keeps coming up.
(02:14):
So I thought maybe we couldjust start with a central
question, which is maybeyou could tell us what are
OKRs and why should projectmanagers and project delivery
leaders care about them?
Normally this is like someoneelse's problem to define,
and it's like the businessstrategy that we're not always
plugged into, but I'm justwondering what is the so what
(02:34):
for project managers, whyshould we care about OKRs?
Carsten Ley (02:37):
Yeah.
When companies wanna do OKRsthey have to get automatically
more cross-functional.
So OKRs is a very good triggerpoint for starting to talk
about project management.
Unfortunately, a lot ofcompanies don't do it,
and I will tell you why.
So we have normally incompanies strategy, we have
a one year target, and beforewe had under the one year
(02:59):
target sub measurementswe call KPIs, right?
Maybe some of your projectdeliverables or milestones
or increments were connectedto this one year KPIs, right?
Somehow, and you gotmeasured on that, right?
Bluntly, I was also aproject manager of PMO.
Sometimes I just get measuredhow many project I delivered a
(03:19):
year, but not really how the,and of course, project magic
triangle on scope, on time.
On budget, but not really ontarget, on customer, on making
the business happy, right?
Often we measure in projectsonly how the project perform
without really seeing ifthe outcome of the project.
(03:39):
That's what we wanna changehere, strategy one year
targets every company have,and with OKRs, a lot of
company want to acceleratea little bit and do a three
or six months planning only.
And before Covid, we hada lot of tech company as
clients because it comesfrom Google and Intel, and
(04:00):
it's very famous in the tech,communicate and tech community.
Anyway, do something what wecall agile project management,
which is also faster in thesprints and more accelerated
in the outcome deliveryand on the customer focus.
So fits very well with Agile.
Now since Covid, weget approached by a
lot of traditionalcompanies doing OKRs.
(04:23):
We had pharma clients, wehad government clients,
we had NGO clients, right?
They're like, we,because the world is more
volatile and a little bit.
Entities, no matter ifAgile or non-Agile cannot
plan 12 months anymore.
So they wanna break itdown to a three or six
months planning with OKR.
(04:44):
So that's the firstthing what OKR is doing.
You are not planning for 12months, you're planning on
three, six months, and afterthat, you plan the next three,
six months cycle because youwanna measure shorter result to
be better in the next planning.
The second thing OKR is doingis out of the strategy and out
of the yearly targets we developobjective and ideally, these
(05:06):
objective are business topics.
Objective can be to increasethe sales, to increase the
efficiency, to launch aproduct, to do something right?
Strategy are anobjectives, anomaly topics.
So it doesn't have to beimmediately siloed into
sales, marketing, operations.
(05:26):
So we highly recommend notto do OKRs like we do our
sales OKRs, our marketingOKRs, our operational.
A lot of company want that,but we don't think it's good
because what OKR does andnow we come to the structure,
we have one objective andbelow one objective, we can
have multiple key results.
(05:46):
So it means if I make a key, anobjective, a little bit broader,
and I say we wanna be successfulon the market or double our
success on the market this year.
So marketing gets a KR, salesgets a KR product, gets a KR
delivery, gets a KR, and theyall have to work together
and their KRs are measuredtogether against the objective.
(06:09):
And that's how you avoidsiloing because you make all
the four, five departmentsor main people who run
their key results, right?
Responsible againstthe objective.
And that's where projectmanagement of course,
come in because projectshave already objectives.
And this is a no-brainer.
Whatever we learned inPMI/PMP, how to do smart,
(06:33):
objective, blah, blah, blah,you know that from PMP stuff.
That's already whatwe need for OKRs.
So if you have a good projectobjective, block it in the OKRs.
The only thing I will askyou is to tune it down
to three or six months.
So I don't want to know yourproject objective after two
(06:53):
years, like in long term projectoh, we wanna launch the product.
I said, okay.
But what is your objectivethe next six months?
Do you have somepreparatory work?
Are you already launchingsomething small?
Are you showingsomething to the client?
Do you get any sign-offs?
I don't know.
You can break the objectivedown to six months,
(07:13):
which is doable, right?
Smaller.
Sometimes we have projectphases, so we just take phase
one or phase two, and theninside these three or six
months, I want measurable.
And now comes a littlebit the magic and the
problem for project folks.
We are very used to measure ourtask and our think of, right?
(07:37):
We have deliverable milestones,which consists of 20 tasks.
And when the 20 tasksare done, we have our
deliverable or milestone andwe can measure that in OKR.
We call that an inputor work key result.
So this is what youcreate as work input.
(07:58):
The problem is in OKRs, wealso need output key results.
So we wanna know, even in thefirst phase of the project,
the first three to six months,how will it help the company?
Does it alreadyhelp the company?
Because nowadays I don't thinkwe should lock ourself down two
years and then deliver somethingfor the company, right?
(08:21):
Projects have to deliverfaster and also need
intermediate results, right?
Feature updates or any productreleases or any launches
after three or six months.
So with this thinking that weare not only measuring what
the project is doing, if yousay, for example, I did a
(08:43):
lot of like product projects.
I worked for banks before.
So you make a new product,a credit card product,
or a deficit product.
So the project team alwayssay, oh, I'm in charge
to build the product.
But what happens withthe product afterwards?
I don't care.
I give it tomarketing and sales.
That's exactly what wewanna avoid with OKRs.
(09:04):
So we tell to the projectteam, you built the first
features of the product.
We launch them either withtest customer or life.
Depends what kind of, ifyou are a FinTech or a
bank, I understand that intraditional bank, you cannot
launch live smaller packages.
But in a FinTech you can,for example, but you can only
launch the test customersand then at least the project
(09:27):
team has to get the feedbackfrom the test customers.
And measure if they like itor not, or if it's feasible or
not, or if it's sellable or not,and then they probably have to
rework it in the next phase.
That's where also the projectplanning can only be three or
six months because wheneveryou get an outcome you have
(09:48):
to test it with somebodyon the marketability or
on the business impact.
And if this is notgiven, maybe you have to
rework the phase again.
Galen Low (09:58):
That's actually really interesting.
Your point about measurement,like we're used to KPIs that
we can measure instantly and onour own right, we're like, did
the project come in on budget?
Did we manage toget it done on time?
To your point earlier aboutthe PMO, it's have I done
the number of projectsI was supposed to do?
And then we measure it andit's easy, it's instant and
there's no dependencies.
But what you're talking about,what I'd like is, A, that
(10:20):
customer focus, but also B, justthat like cross functionality.
Because in other words, toachieve a key result in that
scenario, the project teamwould have to finish their
sprint or their productincrements and then hand it
off and then have marketingand sales, for example.
Take that to a testcustomer group, conduct some
research, and then come backwith the outcome of that.
(10:42):
And that will define whether ornot we achieved the key result.
Not completing that.
Carsten Ley (10:46):
Yeah, we would even go a step more, right?
The project objective can haveproject key results, but also
sales, marketing, key results.
We even don't haveto hand it over.
Nowadays, we say theyall work together inside
the project or as partof the overall objective.
Right.
I give you an example froma client we had, right?
(11:06):
They made a very,they were a startup.
They made a very fantasticapp before covid for events,
and the app looked like that.
In any event, you get probablythousand, 2000, 3000 photo
wedding or business event.
And then at the beginning of theevent, you get a picture from
every participant, or you scanthe face of every participant,
(11:30):
and then from this three, four,5000 photos at the end of the
event, it sends the photos whereyou are on automatically to you.
That's amazing, right?
You know that the pain when yougo to an event and they send
you a link with 800 photos andyou have to scroll through and
say, shit, where is my photo?
Did they really take my photo?
(11:52):
And where am I?
Maybe you can even find yourlost twin with that one, right?
That's also funny function.
Maybe somebody who looks exactlylike you because suddenly you
get other photos and it's alsofunny, you know what I mean?
What a problem of thiscustomer was before we came in.
They made an app forphotographers, so their product
team developed three to sixmonths an app for photographers
(12:14):
with very complicatedfunction to manipulate
photos, blah, blah, blah.
And then we came in because wealso do a little bit customer
experience and UI/UX consulting.
And they were like, yeah,now we have this app.
Can you reach out tosome photographers how
we can market that?
We had a lot of photographersin our community because we were
also running events, and it waslike, shit, I'm a photographer.
(12:38):
I don't pay anything for anapp where people can find
themselves, and I have myown programs on my computer.
You know what I mean?
I mean, I don't needany app, which helps me
to manipulate photos.
I have that already.
I get paid to make photos.
I don't get paid todistribute photos.
That's the event organizer.
So we went back to the client.
(12:58):
I said, I don't know whathappened the last three, six
months before we were there,but your market scoping
was course completely off.
We have done a surveywith 10 20 photo grabbers.
Nobody wants to buy that thing.
At the same time, wespoke with a lot of event
organizers, like couples forwedding or like companies,
and they said, oh, okay,we probably wanna buy that.
(13:20):
So we went back to thedevelopment team and to the
owner of the company and said,I. Maybe the last three, four
months was a little bit for thepin your development, but we
have to strip down this programnow with all the complicated
function for photographers,which event organizers won't
understand that they don't care.
They don't have to makethe photos more beautiful.
(13:41):
Anyway, we have to make anapp now for event organizers
to just upload photos andmaybe get the photos from the
participant or the scan andthen just to distribute it.
There, that, I don't know howmuch money they spend on the
development, but just developingwithout having a market research
(14:02):
and without knowing reallywhat is the market right there?
You have to make theteam responsible.
The developer can just say,okay, my bosses told me I should
develop an actual photograph.
But then I'm saying what kind ofproject team do you guys have?
Where's the ui ux guy?
Where is the test aftertwo or three sprints with,
you don't need a, you don'tneed a full fledged app yet.
(14:25):
You just tested and say,we have two free function.
Did you speak withany photograph?
They said, no, we didn'tspeak with any photograph.
And that's what OKR canprevent if you make the project
target out of the business.
Not out of project milestones.
Yeah.
Galen Low (14:42):
You mentioned OKRs plug in really well with
Agile, and I think some folkslistening, they might say, oh,
but Carsten we don't need OKRs.
If we have a cross-functionalAgile team, we're customer
focused, we are iterative,we build an increments,
and we always put it infront of the customer.
What does OKRs do ontop of a team like that?
If they're already gettingcustomer input along the way and
(15:04):
they're being cross-functional,they feel like they have shared
goals, do they need OKRs?
Carsten Ley (15:09):
Yeah.
Then on the bottom, they aredoing very well, and I give them
that, but how is it on the topwith the strategic alignment?
The first function for OKRs,and maybe I went a little
bit too fast into the Epicexample, but the first
function of OKRs is that teams.
Which go from sprint to sprint.
And I know from my ownexperience that a lot of
(15:31):
development teams, theyhave a sprint planning with
two, three sprints ahead.
So we know agile teamsplan around six to
three months ahead.
Depends how long is the sprint?
Two or four weeks sprint.
So there's a myth.
No Agile team just blendstwo weeks ahead, right?
That's a myth because they havea function, which is called
sprint planning, which combinesthis sprint planning, and I
(15:54):
don't say you have to make alot of extra work, but you can
combine your sprint planningfor six weeks up to three months
with the OKRs and align itwith the strategic input from
the objectives from the OKRs.
I always wanna avoid isthat people get more work
with a new methodology.
(16:16):
OKR has a weekly or biweeklytracking where we measure.
Now you have probably everytwo weeks sprint review.
So start this sprint reviewwith OKR, starting with data.
If you have alreadydata in sprint review,
then we use it for OKR.
Don't do anything else.
So you are already there.
Unfortunately, we seethat some sprint reviews
(16:37):
are not focused on data.
It's just a littlebit blah, blah, blah.
Sorry to say that, right?
So we wanna help them tocreate the data with OKRs,
and if you have a sprintplanning which goes six to
three months, then it shouldtie in with the three months
objective of the business.
And if they have it already.
(16:58):
Do they need OKR?
I don't know.
But it gives you the structure.
It gives you the structurefrom strategy to yearly
to three months to sprintplanning to sprints, right?
That you have a clear and alsoan evidence that you, with
your little two weeks sprints,actually work against the
strategy, so you can prove that.
Galen Low (17:18):
That's very appealing because like you mentioned,
I hear about so many teams.
They've been asked to builda thing, they build it,
and everyone, someone'sactually, you know what,
that's not what we need.
Or, it's it's not tiedto the business strategy.
And a, it's not very motivatingfor the team because they're
like, we're just building stuff.
We're like a featurefactory for our product.
And B, they might not bebuilding the right thing because
they're setting their own goalsin two to four week increments.
(17:40):
Not really paying attentionor being plugged into the
broader strategic goals.
Carsten Ley (17:44):
There's one thing I would like to
mention about the motivation.
We had a climatetech client, right?
Amazing climate tech client.
They build an app tomeasure carbon footprint
for companies, alright?
But it's very meaningful.
But then before we came withOKR, they were telling the
developers, for the first sixmonths, we develop an app.
(18:06):
And I said, that's boring.
Every startups is telling thattheir developers, for the first
six months, we build an app.
So why should you be motivatedto work for a specific startups?
I understand why techpeople stunt so much.
If I would be a tech person andI come to a company and say, oh,
now you build another app after10, 20 app, I would be woo.
(18:27):
But if you tell people inthe climate tech, Hey, we are
environmentally conscious.
We want you to helpto build an app.
That companies can measurecarbon footprint, right?
And you have to enable that.
That's much more inspiring.
That's where theobjective comes in.
You know what I mean?
It trickles down from the,almost from the company
(18:49):
purpose or from the North Star.
Galen Low (18:51):
It's funny because that like really
plugs it together.
You see publicly tradedcompanies and they've,
published their annual reportor whatever, or they've got
that very some might sayjust highfalutin like mission
statement and like values.
And I think a lot of folksin the trenches, so to speak,
doing the project, they'relike yeah, that's what you tell
your shareholders and whatever.
But what I like about whatyou just said is that like the
(19:12):
objective ties together thatoverall mission and strategy
to the work being done.
And it can be used to inspirepeople, like it is a tangible,
tactile vision, not justwords on a page to make
shareholders happy or to getmore customers or whatever.
It actually, assuming that itis actually the mission that's
actually quite inspiring.
Carsten Ley (19:32):
It's not only inspiring, it can even
function as a protection forthe people in the trenches.
So if I tell you we make aclimate based app, and then
one day I tell you, oh, youhave to develop a game now.
So I have the power as in thetrenches say, why do I have to
make a, I can question things.
I'm not just on a lowerlevel where people
(19:54):
may, now you grow dead.
Now you grow dead.
Now you write 100 lines on that.
It's not veryinspiring on the job.
I know I write this code,or I program these functions
for a climate based tracking.
I can also challengemy bosses a little bit.
If they say, oh,now you develop.
(20:15):
An act to get coupons fromMcDonald's, which is maybe
not so carbon friend.
Can backfire, right?
Galen Low (20:21):
I wonder if you could talk to me about the
process, because I think intheory I'm loving it, right?
Like I think, yeah, no punintended with the McDonald's
thing but I think it actually,it's an interesting idea that
ties things all together.
Like you said, it doesn'tnecessarily add more work on
top, it's more of a structure.
A lot of the folks I talkto, the project managers,
sometimes even the PMOs,they're not really involved
(20:43):
in business strategy.
So what are some examples ofsome OKRs and like, how can
they be arrived at in a waythat is also cross-functional?
Or are they alwaysjust handed down?
Carsten Ley (20:53):
Let's stay on the climate tech case.
The climate tech,they just got funding.
They started, they saywithin one year we need this
carbon footprint app ready.
And meanwhile, we haveto, okay, program the app.
We have to find partners,we have to get funding.
All the stuff, all the targets,what in the, and we have to
(21:14):
onboard people, all the targets.
Startups have the first year,and let's say in a startup
that's already a strategy, oneor two years because you don't
know how long you are there,so you don't have to blend.
So you don't have to blendfive years if you just
start getting funding,so that's your strategy.
And then this trickles downto yearly objective, which
(21:36):
maybe the team leader know.
So at least the team leaderand the founders should sit
together and say, what do wewanna achieve the next year?
Like a draft, because weare in a WCA world, so
maybe like an estimation.
And then from that one, we planthree months targets, right?
So we say Q1, we wanna havea prototype of the app.
(21:58):
And then with this objective,which is probably done between
the founders and the teamleaders, not yet the team.
Okay.
With this objective, firstthree months, we want the
prototype, and now I go intothe prototype project, which
is not only the dev team.
Ideally I build it as aproject with market people,
with salespeople, wherewe get potential customers
(22:21):
or partners to test it.
And then I ask my team,I make a workshop.
As a team leader or with anexternal consultant like us,
what can be the measurable keyresults the next three months?
So it's not a top down process.
That's also the beautiful part,and it ties a little bit in
what they normally do, also inthe Agile and Sprint branding
(22:43):
that they involve the team.
And then we say, whatdo we wanna achieve?
Objective.
We know we wannabuild a prototype.
How can we measure that?
We successfullybuild a prototype?
So you come upwith different KR.
So first KR is probablyabout coding and developing
wire frame prototype, right?
Another KR is like that you testthe prototype with a certain
(23:06):
kind of numbers and you geta certain kind of feedback.
You can measure also likethat you find out after the
first three months whichfunctions are missing, that
you have worked for thenext three months, right?
Things like that can beKRs, and then the team has
this three months targets.
Inspirational, the prototypefor climate tech plus the
(23:28):
key results to measure.
And then out of that, they canstart with the sprint plan.
They can say which ofthese, because the OKR
is like your backlog.
It's like your overalltarget backlog.
And out of that you can say,what do we put now in the
first two or three spreads?
This is how the process work.
I don't think we put alot of more and more work.
(23:50):
We put a little bit more workon the team leads because we
want the team leads from everyteam or the project leads in
the, at least yearly planning.
We don't have to do it astrategy, but at least involved
in the yearly planning.
Even in bigger companies.
We do that, that atleast department leads,
project leads, PMO leads.
(24:12):
Are in the discussionof the yearly planning.
Galen Low (24:15):
I like that you involve, if I'm understanding
you correctly, if you findan organization that is not
bringing those team leads in,your recommendation would be
to go in and bring them tothe table for annual planning.
Carsten Ley (24:27):
Yes.
What we always wantin the KR process.
In some companies you dotwo, three level OKRs.
You do a company OKRs, thenunfortunately, they want
a silo in department OKRs,which we are not fan, but
we can build that for them.
We had very traditionalcompanies, so they want
it like that, right?
Yeah, understand.
And of course if they builddepartment OKRs, it's easier
(24:49):
for them to assign theresponsibility because they
do it like the org chart.
Which is not very agile, butit's how companies work power
are and you know how it's right.
So we have company OKRs,department and Team OKRs in
some companies, and then wealways want two layers together.
So Company OKRs is the toppeople with the department
(25:11):
leads, department OKRsis department leaders
with the team leads.
Team OKRs is teamleads with the team.
This is a little bittransparency, which is a
big word in KR alignmentand also bottom up input.
Bottom up doesn't mean thatwhen you talk about strategy
in the top ecolon of yourcompany, that you ask your
(25:34):
cleaning people for input.
Of course, that's not bottom up.
It's not so extreme.
It means that you at leastexpose the next layer to it.
Agile companies.
We had a very interestingclient in the US called
Scratch Pay or Scratch Finance.
They were FinTechand then a SaaS.
I think now they'reFinTech again, a little bit
switching the business model.
(25:55):
And what they did, theyhad 150 mainly developers
worldwide, and then themarketing and the sales team In
California in Silicon Valley.
And they wanted togo very bottom up.
So the top founders and the topleads were drafting the strategy
and the yearly targets, andthen we sent a survey out to
(26:17):
150 people worldwide and askedfor the feedback on the strategy
or yearly targets by survey.
This is amazing.
So you can also do that if youwant real bottom up, right?
You can make asurvey, I promise.
Not a lot of peoplewill respond, honestly.
Some people, fair enough,some developers are also
like, I don't wanna beinvolved in the strategy.
(26:38):
Why?
They have to, maybe they'renot paid for it, right?
But some people want to.
So you give opportunitiesto give feedback.
We get one very interestingfeedback, maybe modern
times a little bit.
They had one objective onthe company like smashing the
competitor or any word likethat, and one female team lead
was feeding back in the survey.
(27:00):
Let's not use soaggressive language here.
That was a very cool feedbackthat some people didn't feel
good in the company with allthis aggressive founder talk
that you always use Woolworths.
It's not necessary.
It was a very nice feedback.
To tone it a little bitdown that the people
can identify with that.
Like I said, if we buildOKRs on different level
(27:22):
is always the so next.
So if you would build likePMO OKRs, the project manager
should be there, and then whenwe build it for the projects,
it would be the project andthe project team together.
Galen Low (27:34):
I like that idea, overall.
Where my head goes isalmost around education.
And what I mean is, I knowI've worked within a lot of
organizations that will ask forfeedback, but when the feedback
comes back, they're like, yeah,these people don't get it.
Then I'm thinking, okay, ifI was someone responding to a
survey, or if I was someone ona team, if I was a team lead,
trying to get my team to comeup with key results, but they
(27:56):
weren't really quite gettingit, I didn't feel like maybe
their key results were aligningto the objective, or maybe
they weren't as measurable.
How do you provide educationthroughout an organization
so that people understandwhat a good key result is?
And also so that leaders knowthat when they're getting
feedback from their team,it's not just willy-nilly
arbitrary stuff that theydon't have to pay attention
(28:18):
to, but that everyone actuallygets it, understands what the
framework and the structureis, and has enough education or
training around it to providemeaningful input, so that
input gets taken seriously?
Do you go in and trainpeople about OKRs or do you
kinda have to intuit it?
Carsten Ley (28:33):
Normally when we start with a company
who hasn't done OKRs, weprovide on different levels.
The training.
We also do that on deliverlevel because the OK R
training is also a buy-in.
Like you said before, someproject management, PMO, they
don't want to do OKR becausethey think they cover it
already completely by Agile,and maybe we can prove in the
(28:55):
training it's not fully covered.
And there are two, three things.
They don't have to changetheir whole process but do a
little bit better, especiallyon the outcome and on the
business oriented side.
So us and of course a lotof other KR providers, we
have a clear structure, howto build an inspirational
objective, which should beconnected to the strategy.
(29:16):
There should always bethe why we are doing it.
Why are we building an app,not because we are just a
startup and we build an app,'cause there's a purpose
behind and ideally a goodpurpose which inspires people.
And then the key results, likeI said before, we can measure
work with the key results,which is almost like a KPI.
(29:37):
So how many projects did you do?
How many functionsdid you develop?
But these are not thereal good key results.
The real good key results iswhat is the impact of our work?
Does the test customerlike the fun shops?
Yeah.
Did the five projects I didthis year, did any of this
project got launched andmake money for the company?
(30:00):
That's maybe a good question.
That's what we should measure.
What we educate a lot besidethe structure and the setup
is the mindset to say, I'mnot only responsible for
my little area that I get400 lines of code then.
I'm also responsible howthis code impacts the product
(30:21):
and if the product sellsand there is sometimes a
little bit of resistance.
It's change management.
You always get resistancewhere people say, oh,
I'm just a developer.
I'm not responsible howthe product performs.
That's a little bitthe spirit we have to
set up in the company.
That's why we don't wannasilo sales, marketing product.
(30:43):
That's actually thequintessential of
projects, right?
That you bring peopletogether, that you bring
a developer together and aui, ux and a salesperson and
say, we are in this together.
Not everybody sits in theproject meeting who I don't
care about the other part.
Galen Low (31:01):
That's the interesting thing about silos
is that they're safe becauseyou know the people in your
silo, you build this trust aboutachieving a goal together, but
as soon as you step outta thatsilo, you're like, I don't know
if I can trust these folks.
It's interesting you mentionchange management because the
thing I had on my mind is thatthis culture change, assuming
you're coming from a teamculture that didn't do this,
(31:21):
that was a bit more siloed.
Maybe effective, but probablylike culturally siloed.
And you're moving intothis more cross-functional
interdepartmental model.
Do you find that itcreates a bit more conflict
as it's getting going?
Carsten Ley (31:33):
We only see conflicts on a department
level if what some of the leadswants to dominate, that's in.
So middle management isa little bit an issue.
When they wanna build theirlittle kingdoms, how I call
it, and they say, no, Idon't want product to do
anything with my sales KPIs.
No.
That's only my numbers.
Blah, blah, blah.
They don't wanna sharethe success of their
(31:54):
numbers on team level.
We don't see so much problems.
Because in an KR structure,we measure in a system
where everybody can see thenumbers from different teams,
what we normally set up.
And there are also on the marketlike thousands of OKR tools.
We don't have our own becausethere are so many, I mean there
(32:15):
are KR tools for Jira, forMicrosoft, for everything has
a block in with OKR nowadays.
So we can reallyrun the numbers.
If everybody checks in everytwo weeks, like after a sprint
review operational on a teammeeting and puts the numbers
inside or how their work isgoing and how it impacts the
business or the outcomes,we can measure that up and
(32:39):
display it very transparently.
So I don't think there's alot of conflict that people
are scared about, that peopleare a little bit more scared.
When they say that they cannotinfluence, and that's true.
But then there's also onething we should mention.
OKRs are not performancenumbers like KPIs.
(33:00):
We also have this, I don'tknow if you heard about
this, the stretch KR, between70 and a hundred percent.
There's also a leeway anda leverage that when you
don't hit a hundred percent,you don't get immediately
penalized on your bonus.
Because if you do that,and that's the same in
agile management, right?
I'm a very big fanof management 3.0.
(33:21):
I don't know if you know thismethodology where they say
award should be frequent.
An award should be tied tosuccesses, not to long term
panelizing systems, right?
This is very importantthat we reject if a company
says we wanna implementOKRs and we wanna change
our bonus system to OKRs.
And I said, no way.
(33:42):
Because then people are scaredto work cross-functionally
together and people arenot bold in trying things.
That's what we want in KRand Agile, that people try
things and that people haveideas in the project and
you shut that completelydown if you put a bonus
performance measurement behind.
This is very important onthe cultural thinking that
(34:03):
you give people space.
We always say also what is atrick, but it works very well.
The first three monthsof OKRs in a company we
always call OKR Pilot.
Okay?
Either we do it on leadershiplevel for buy in or we do it
in a team just for testing it.
Because first, if you saypilot, people still have to
(34:25):
hope it goes away, which doesn'tobviously, but it still sounds
like it can go away, right?
It doesn't go away normally,but it can go away.
Second pilot sounds alsolike we can influencing and
things are not so serious yet.
Let's play aroundwith it, right?
So we always tell ourclients, why don't we
start with an OKR pilotand you'll tell your staff.
(34:48):
We try OKRs first.
I know most companies havealready decided they go for it.
It will not go away, but atleast you can smooth it up a
little bit at the beginning.
Galen Low (34:58):
I like that and I, to your point, sometimes
people are using it as anopportunity to gather input and
yeah, maybe they've made thatdecision to go with it, but at
least they are gathering inputand feedback about how they
should go about doing it aswell, which I think is actually
really quite interesting.
To play the devil's advocatea little bit here, I know some
folks, they're saying thatOKRs are falling out of favor.
(35:19):
It was just like fad or trendthat people dipped into and
now a lot of organizationsare just like avoiding them.
But also to your point,there's a whole bunch of
organizations who haven'tstarted using them yet.
For teams of like projectmanagers, or I guess even just
like teams in general, how canthey advocate for using OKRs
for their projects and howthey work together if maybe
(35:41):
leadership is not bought intothe idea or they're dragging
their heels, they keep sayingthey're gonna do it, but
they aren't doing it yet.
Can a team at the teamlevel, can they advocate
to make this change?
Carsten Ley (35:52):
You can run OKRs only on a team level
sometimes for a pilot.
When the leadership teamdoesn't monitor the pilot,
we do it on one team first.
And of course, we look a littlebit for a more agile team.
So like product teamwhere it works well.
So the only thing that if youhave a project team or even a
functional team, the only thingthe team has to do is they
(36:14):
anyway have already KPIs orkrs, which they measure, right?
So it's not a new thing.
You have to measure something.
Nowadays there's adata sheet, right?
They use any systemlike Microsoft Planner,
Monday.com, whatever.
Everybody uses them.
If not, they use Excel.
But you have to report everyweek or every two week,
(36:35):
or at least once a month.
What are you doing, ifyou're doing well or not, and
maybe produce some numbers.
So that's not a rocket science.
So we use these numbers, usethem as key results, and add,
like I said, some more businessoriented key results, which
goes a little bit above the teamor about the impact after the
(36:58):
finalization of the project.
With that, you always have toask yourself the right question.
So the question is, whydo we do this project?
Why do we launch this product?
Of course, we as projectmanager and project team,
we get paid to launch theproduct and then we hand it
over to operations and sales.
But if you wanna live bythe OKRs, you say, why
(37:20):
do we launch the product?
So I ask sales and thesales tell, yeah, we expect
at least the first months,we wanna make 10,000.
So I would put it in myproject K off and I would make
a post-implementation phase.
And I say, let's be responsibletogether with sales for
the first two months,post-implementation phase.
(37:41):
And we wanna do minimumevery month, $10,000.
And of course then theproject team say, oh, that
not only depends on us,that also depends on sales.
But we work with sales together.
We bring them in the project,which is also fun because you
learn something from sales,and then of course, sales can
feedback you in the first weeksalready, or we have problem
(38:01):
with this functionality.
The customer doesn't like this.
Ooh, this is what you want.
You don't wanna finishyour project anymore.
And also, when you wanna bea long-term employee for your
engagement, when you speak aboutemployee engagement, you don't
wanna just finish projects.
You wanna see that your projectshave an impact for the company.
Or if we speak aboutclimate tech, even for
(38:22):
the society, right?
If we go one step in any team,even in an operational team, in
a functional team, you can startthat because the objectives
your team leader should know, heshould know long-term planning,
and if not, then you are shouldbe bold enough to, as a team
leader, to go to your bossesand ask these questions because
(38:43):
you are entitled to know Projectobjective is launch a product.
So I go to my PMO coursesand says, why do we have
to launch this product?
How does it tieinto the strategy?
Hopefully they tell you thatit ties into the strategy and
they're not saying, no, we arejust trying something weird,
which nobody really cares about.
(39:03):
That would be verydemotivational, right?
With the information from above,you can build your objective
very easily, and with the stuffyou measure, you already have
your first key results, whichyou measure the project success.
And then you also have tomeasure the business impact
and then you see if yourteam wants to do that.
(39:24):
I don't say everybodyneeds to do OKRs.
Some companies are fine to say,let the projects people just do
their project and then who handover to sales operations, we
don't wanna bother you with it.
That's completely fine for me.
But try it with a teamand see how people react
if they're interested.
Galen Low (39:42):
That's interesting.
I like the bottom up grassrootscollaboration approach, right?
It's Hey, let's talk to salesand see what their targets
are, and then let's measure it.
Even though our projecttechnically, whatever, our
sprint, our increment, ourrelease completed, but we're
still interested in what it doesin its life beyond our team.
Inevitably, we're probably gonnabe continuing to work on this.
(40:03):
And there's this sort ofcontinuity, this longevity of
the mission that is tied to thecompany, not just to like this
one sort of project or sprint.
Carsten Ley (40:11):
Because when we do that, normally improvements
after a project phase happenin a nice collaborative way.
What happens normally,especially in a PMI setting,
when you make a hard cut of theproject and you hand, or when I
was there, I worked for banks.
Before we had that, we wereonly the project team and
then we handed it over.
(40:31):
We fulfilled all themilestones and deliverables.
But maybe very beginningof the project, somebody
gave us the wrong input.
Yeah, or maybe the sales leadchange right from beginning
to end of the project.
So you hand it overto the new sales lead.
After two months, they go toyour bosses and they escalate
the shit out of you and youhave a lot of problems and
(40:54):
all the fighting begins.
And that's not a reallynice way to work together if
things are not successful, ifthe project outcome anyway,
sooner or later, it'llbackfire to your project team.
Galen Low (41:05):
That's an interesting way of looking at it.
Carsten Ley (41:07):
Why don't you prevent that a little bit
more proactively and workwith the right folks together
for the hand or during theproject already to make sure.
It will be a success.
Galen Low (41:18):
I like that.
You touched on one last thing.
I thought maybe I'd end with itbecause we've been talking about
top down, at the leadershiplevel, talking about bottom up.
A project team might justbe curious to try this out.
Maybe it's a team pilot.
You mentioned PMOs, which isthis sort of meaty middle, and
earlier you mentioned that evenwhen you were running a PMO,
sometimes your metrics werejust like, did you turn out
(41:39):
the right number of projects?
But it seems like OKRs might bea great opportunity for PMOs.
That aren't really at thetable to become a bit more
strategic, and maybe this isa whole nother episode, but
I was just thinking, how canPMOs leverage OKRs to be tied
to the business so they're notjust like a project factory?
Carsten Ley (41:57):
PMOs should be a part of the strategic,
or at least a yearlyplanning discussion.
That's the first thingwe should make sure.
And then PMO similar,like departments can have
OKRs, and business OKRs.
Not only Project OKRs,don't speak about the
number of project and howmany project manager we
have to regrow and how manyprojects we have to set up.
(42:19):
So we can blend this PMO alreadyand say for this yearly target.
So one yearly targetis a product launch.
Another yearly targetis a market launch.
Another yearlytarget is efficiency.
So PMO Below can brainstormand say, what projects can we
propose a little bit bottomup or from the middle as
PMO to launch products toconquer the market, to make
(42:44):
the company more efficient.
And especially when you speakabout efficiency topics, the
best suggestions can comealways from the teams, right?
Or from the project manager.
It doesn't come from top down.
They don't know much aboutwhat's going on below,
honestly, often, right?
Let's say like that.
But you understand what I mean.
And PMO is a verycross-functional department who
(43:05):
has also governments function.
When I was running a PMO in aFinTech later after the bank,
we used PMO a lot for survey.
We were surveying team membersfrom different teams about their
requirements and what they needfrom projects or from launches.
Not only always the obviousteam leads and their
(43:27):
requirement input, we weresurveying more people.
We were also running PMO.
Sometimes PMO can do more andwe can do the next episode.
We were running asuggestion box in PMO.
We PMO had the company'sdigital suggestion box, right?
You know what I mean?
That anybody could come fromanywhere and say, Hey, I have
(43:48):
an idea for a project, becausethat doesn't go very well.
And we had a little bitbudget to give reward for
that if that suggestionwas taken up and we made a
successful project out of that.
PMO with this cross-functionalpower can do a lot.
And people trust PMO.
We don't politics.
We are very neutral.
(44:11):
In the KR process.
Being part of the strategicyearly discussion and
making suggestion to itand also coordinating it
at the end is fantastic.
Galen Low (44:21):
I love that idea and definitely I
wanna dig more into that.
We'll do another episodeon OKRs for PMOs.
I think that soundsreally interesting.
Carsten Ley (44:28):
That will be amazing.
Yeah.
Galen Low (44:29):
Love that.
Carsten, thank you so much forspending the time with me today.
I've had a lot of fun.
I've learned a lot.
This has been great.
Carsten Ley (44:35):
Thank you very much.
Pleasure to be here.
Thank you, Galen.
Galen Low (44:38):
Alright folks, there you have it.
As always, if you'd like tojoin the conversation with
over a thousand like-mindedproject management champions,
come join our collective!Head on over to
thedpm.com/membershipto learn more.
And if you like what youheard today, please subscribe
and stay in touch onthedigitalprojectmanager.com.
Until next time,thanks for listening.
It's been a long day, and it feels like the
(00:02):
project you're working on isnowhere close to its objective.
The team feels like the missionis just to build an app for
the sake of building an app,without much more to go on.
You are ready to shut yourlaptop for the day, but you
figure maybe you should goback to the outputs from
strategic planning justto get some inspiration.
Maybe it's just that youand your team are too close
to it and aren't seeingthe forest for the trees.
(00:23):
So with the last bit of energyyou have, you pull up some of
the more strategic documentsyou were given — just to get
refreshed on the vision andobjective for the project.
And there it is, plain as day.
The big strategicobjective for the year
was... "to build an app".
If you're struggling toconnect your project goals to
strategic business objectivesand vice versa, keep listening.
(00:43):
We're going to be exploringhow OKRs — objectives and
key results — can give yourprojects a framework for
driving alignment, measuringimpact, and motivating your
teams toward the biggerpicture business strategy.
Hey folks, thanks for tuning in.
My name is Galen Low withthe Digital Project Manager.
(01:04):
We are a community of digitalprofessionals on a mission
to help each other getskilled, get confident, and
get connected so that we canamplify the value of project
management in a digital world.
If you wanna hear moreabout that, head on over
to thedpm.com/membership.
And if you're intofuture-forward conversations
and practical insights arounddigital project leadership,
consider subscribing to thisshow for weekly episodes.
(01:27):
Today we are talking about howto link project delivery to
broader organizational goals byincorporating objective and key
results — also affectionatelyreferred to as OKRs — into your
project management practice.
With me today is Carsten Ley— project management consultant,
OKR coach, and co-founder ofboth Asia PMO and OKR Asia.
(01:48):
Carsten, thanks forbeing with me today.
Carsten Ley (01:50):
Thank you, Galen, for having me on the show.
Galen Low (01:53):
I'm so excited to dive into this because I'll
admit that this is an areawhere I don't know a lot, so
I'm gonna be learning as wellalongside some of my listeners.
I think it's such aninteresting topic.
We've been talking a lot inmy community about how to be
more strategic, how to tie intobroader business goals, how to
be a bit more cross-functionaland not just isolated
delivering our projects.
And OKRs is somethingthat keeps coming up.
(02:14):
So I thought maybe we couldjust start with a central
question, which is maybeyou could tell us what are
OKRs and why should projectmanagers and project delivery
leaders care about them?
Normally this is like someoneelse's problem to define,
and it's like the businessstrategy that we're not always
plugged into, but I'm justwondering what is the so what
(02:34):
for project managers, whyshould we care about OKRs?
Carsten Ley (02:37):
Yeah.
When companies wanna do OKRsthey have to get automatically
more cross-functional.
So OKRs is a very good triggerpoint for starting to talk
about project management.
Unfortunately, a lot ofcompanies don't do it,
and I will tell you why.
So we have normally incompanies strategy, we have
a one year target, and beforewe had under the one year
(02:59):
target sub measurementswe call KPIs, right?
Maybe some of your projectdeliverables or milestones
or increments were connectedto this one year KPIs, right?
Somehow, and you gotmeasured on that, right?
Bluntly, I was also aproject manager of PMO.
Sometimes I just get measuredhow many project I delivered a
(03:19):
year, but not really how the,and of course, project magic
triangle on scope, on time.
On budget, but not really ontarget, on customer, on making
the business happy, right?
Often we measure in projectsonly how the project perform
without really seeing ifthe outcome of the project.
(03:39):
That's what we wanna changehere, strategy one year
targets every company have,and with OKRs, a lot of
company want to acceleratea little bit and do a three
or six months planning only.
And before Covid, we hada lot of tech company as
clients because it comesfrom Google and Intel, and
(04:00):
it's very famous in the tech,communicate and tech community.
Anyway, do something what wecall agile project management,
which is also faster in thesprints and more accelerated
in the outcome deliveryand on the customer focus.
So fits very well with Agile.
Now since Covid, weget approached by a
lot of traditionalcompanies doing OKRs.
(04:23):
We had pharma clients, wehad government clients,
we had NGO clients, right?
They're like, we,because the world is more
volatile and a little bit.
Entities, no matter ifAgile or non-Agile cannot
plan 12 months anymore.
So they wanna break itdown to a three or six
months planning with OKR.
(04:44):
So that's the firstthing what OKR is doing.
You are not planning for 12months, you're planning on
three, six months, and afterthat, you plan the next three,
six months cycle because youwanna measure shorter result to
be better in the next planning.
The second thing OKR is doingis out of the strategy and out
of the yearly targets we developobjective and ideally, these
(05:06):
objective are business topics.
Objective can be to increasethe sales, to increase the
efficiency, to launch aproduct, to do something right?
Strategy are anobjectives, anomaly topics.
So it doesn't have to beimmediately siloed into
sales, marketing, operations.
(05:26):
So we highly recommend notto do OKRs like we do our
sales OKRs, our marketingOKRs, our operational.
A lot of company want that,but we don't think it's good
because what OKR does andnow we come to the structure,
we have one objective andbelow one objective, we can
have multiple key results.
(05:46):
So it means if I make a key, anobjective, a little bit broader,
and I say we wanna be successfulon the market or double our
success on the market this year.
So marketing gets a KR, salesgets a KR product, gets a KR
delivery, gets a KR, and theyall have to work together
and their KRs are measuredtogether against the objective.
(06:09):
And that's how you avoidsiloing because you make all
the four, five departmentsor main people who run
their key results, right?
Responsible againstthe objective.
And that's where projectmanagement of course,
come in because projectshave already objectives.
And this is a no-brainer.
Whatever we learned inPMI/PMP, how to do smart,
(06:33):
objective, blah, blah, blah,you know that from PMP stuff.
That's already whatwe need for OKRs.
So if you have a good projectobjective, block it in the OKRs.
The only thing I will askyou is to tune it down
to three or six months.
So I don't want to know yourproject objective after two
(06:53):
years, like in long term projectoh, we wanna launch the product.
I said, okay.
But what is your objectivethe next six months?
Do you have somepreparatory work?
Are you already launchingsomething small?
Are you showingsomething to the client?
Do you get any sign-offs?
I don't know.
You can break the objectivedown to six months,
(07:13):
which is doable, right?
Smaller.
Sometimes we have projectphases, so we just take phase
one or phase two, and theninside these three or six
months, I want measurable.
And now comes a littlebit the magic and the
problem for project folks.
We are very used to measure ourtask and our think of, right?
(07:37):
We have deliverable milestones,which consists of 20 tasks.
And when the 20 tasksare done, we have our
deliverable or milestone andwe can measure that in OKR.
We call that an inputor work key result.
So this is what youcreate as work input.
(07:58):
The problem is in OKRs, wealso need output key results.
So we wanna know, even in thefirst phase of the project,
the first three to six months,how will it help the company?
Does it alreadyhelp the company?
Because nowadays I don't thinkwe should lock ourself down two
years and then deliver somethingfor the company, right?
(08:21):
Projects have to deliverfaster and also need
intermediate results, right?
Feature updates or any productreleases or any launches
after three or six months.
So with this thinking that weare not only measuring what
the project is doing, if yousay, for example, I did a
(08:43):
lot of like product projects.
I worked for banks before.
So you make a new product,a credit card product,
or a deficit product.
So the project team alwayssay, oh, I'm in charge
to build the product.
But what happens withthe product afterwards?
I don't care.
I give it tomarketing and sales.
That's exactly what wewanna avoid with OKRs.
(09:04):
So we tell to the projectteam, you built the first
features of the product.
We launch them either withtest customer or life.
Depends what kind of, ifyou are a FinTech or a
bank, I understand that intraditional bank, you cannot
launch live smaller packages.
But in a FinTech you can,for example, but you can only
launch the test customersand then at least the project
(09:27):
team has to get the feedbackfrom the test customers.
And measure if they like itor not, or if it's feasible or
not, or if it's sellable or not,and then they probably have to
rework it in the next phase.
That's where also the projectplanning can only be three or
six months because wheneveryou get an outcome you have
(09:48):
to test it with somebodyon the marketability or
on the business impact.
And if this is notgiven, maybe you have to
rework the phase again.
Galen Low (09:58):
That's actually really interesting.
Your point about measurement,like we're used to KPIs that
we can measure instantly and onour own right, we're like, did
the project come in on budget?
Did we manage toget it done on time?
To your point earlier aboutthe PMO, it's have I done
the number of projectsI was supposed to do?
And then we measure it andit's easy, it's instant and
there's no dependencies.
But what you're talking about,what I'd like is, A, that
(10:20):
customer focus, but also B, justthat like cross functionality.
Because in other words, toachieve a key result in that
scenario, the project teamwould have to finish their
sprint or their productincrements and then hand it
off and then have marketingand sales, for example.
Take that to a testcustomer group, conduct some
research, and then come backwith the outcome of that.
(10:42):
And that will define whether ornot we achieved the key result.
Not completing that.
Carsten Ley (10:46):
Yeah, we would even go a step more, right?
The project objective can haveproject key results, but also
sales, marketing, key results.
We even don't haveto hand it over.
Nowadays, we say theyall work together inside
the project or as partof the overall objective.
Right.
I give you an example froma client we had, right?
(11:06):
They made a very,they were a startup.
They made a very fantasticapp before covid for events,
and the app looked like that.
In any event, you get probablythousand, 2000, 3000 photo
wedding or business event.
And then at the beginning of theevent, you get a picture from
every participant, or you scanthe face of every participant,
(11:30):
and then from this three, four,5000 photos at the end of the
event, it sends the photos whereyou are on automatically to you.
That's amazing, right?
You know that the pain when yougo to an event and they send
you a link with 800 photos andyou have to scroll through and
say, shit, where is my photo?
Did they really take my photo?
(11:52):
And where am I?
Maybe you can even find yourlost twin with that one, right?
That's also funny function.
Maybe somebody who looks exactlylike you because suddenly you
get other photos and it's alsofunny, you know what I mean?
What a problem of thiscustomer was before we came in.
They made an app forphotographers, so their product
team developed three to sixmonths an app for photographers
(12:14):
with very complicatedfunction to manipulate
photos, blah, blah, blah.
And then we came in because wealso do a little bit customer
experience and UI/UX consulting.
And they were like, yeah,now we have this app.
Can you reach out tosome photographers how
we can market that?
We had a lot of photographersin our community because we were
also running events, and it waslike, shit, I'm a photographer.
(12:38):
I don't pay anything for anapp where people can find
themselves, and I have myown programs on my computer.
You know what I mean?
I mean, I don't needany app, which helps me
to manipulate photos.
I have that already.
I get paid to make photos.
I don't get paid todistribute photos.
That's the event organizer.
So we went back to the client.
(12:58):
I said, I don't know whathappened the last three, six
months before we were there,but your market scoping
was course completely off.
We have done a surveywith 10 20 photo grabbers.
Nobody wants to buy that thing.
At the same time, wespoke with a lot of event
organizers, like couples forwedding or like companies,
and they said, oh, okay,we probably wanna buy that.
(13:20):
So we went back to thedevelopment team and to the
owner of the company and said,I. Maybe the last three, four
months was a little bit for thepin your development, but we
have to strip down this programnow with all the complicated
function for photographers,which event organizers won't
understand that they don't care.
They don't have to makethe photos more beautiful.
(13:41):
Anyway, we have to make anapp now for event organizers
to just upload photos andmaybe get the photos from the
participant or the scan andthen just to distribute it.
There, that, I don't know howmuch money they spend on the
development, but just developingwithout having a market research
(14:02):
and without knowing reallywhat is the market right there?
You have to make theteam responsible.
The developer can just say,okay, my bosses told me I should
develop an actual photograph.
But then I'm saying what kind ofproject team do you guys have?
Where's the ui ux guy?
Where is the test aftertwo or three sprints with,
you don't need a, you don'tneed a full fledged app yet.
(14:25):
You just tested and say,we have two free function.
Did you speak withany photograph?
They said, no, we didn'tspeak with any photograph.
And that's what OKR canprevent if you make the project
target out of the business.
Not out of project milestones.
Yeah.
Galen Low (14:42):
You mentioned OKRs plug in really well with
Agile, and I think some folkslistening, they might say, oh,
but Carsten we don't need OKRs.
If we have a cross-functionalAgile team, we're customer
focused, we are iterative,we build an increments,
and we always put it infront of the customer.
What does OKRs do ontop of a team like that?
If they're already gettingcustomer input along the way and
(15:04):
they're being cross-functional,they feel like they have shared
goals, do they need OKRs?
Carsten Ley (15:09):
Yeah.
Then on the bottom, they aredoing very well, and I give them
that, but how is it on the topwith the strategic alignment?
The first function for OKRs,and maybe I went a little
bit too fast into the Epicexample, but the first
function of OKRs is that teams.
Which go from sprint to sprint.
And I know from my ownexperience that a lot of
(15:31):
development teams, theyhave a sprint planning with
two, three sprints ahead.
So we know agile teamsplan around six to
three months ahead.
Depends how long is the sprint?
Two or four weeks sprint.
So there's a myth.
No Agile team just blendstwo weeks ahead, right?
That's a myth because they havea function, which is called
sprint planning, which combinesthis sprint planning, and I
(15:54):
don't say you have to make alot of extra work, but you can
combine your sprint planningfor six weeks up to three months
with the OKRs and align itwith the strategic input from
the objectives from the OKRs.
I always wanna avoid isthat people get more work
with a new methodology.
(16:16):
OKR has a weekly or biweeklytracking where we measure.
Now you have probably everytwo weeks sprint review.
So start this sprint reviewwith OKR, starting with data.
If you have alreadydata in sprint review,
then we use it for OKR.
Don't do anything else.
So you are already there.
Unfortunately, we seethat some sprint reviews
(16:37):
are not focused on data.
It's just a littlebit blah, blah, blah.
Sorry to say that, right?
So we wanna help them tocreate the data with OKRs,
and if you have a sprintplanning which goes six to
three months, then it shouldtie in with the three months
objective of the business.
And if they have it already.
(16:58):
Do they need OKR?
I don't know.
But it gives you the structure.
It gives you the structurefrom strategy to yearly
to three months to sprintplanning to sprints, right?
That you have a clear and alsoan evidence that you, with
your little two weeks sprints,actually work against the
strategy, so you can prove that.
Galen Low (17:18):
That's very appealing because like you mentioned,
I hear about so many teams.
They've been asked to builda thing, they build it,
and everyone, someone'sactually, you know what,
that's not what we need.
Or, it's it's not tiedto the business strategy.
And a, it's not very motivatingfor the team because they're
like, we're just building stuff.
We're like a featurefactory for our product.
And B, they might not bebuilding the right thing because
they're setting their own goalsin two to four week increments.
(17:40):
Not really paying attentionor being plugged into the
broader strategic goals.
Carsten Ley (17:44):
There's one thing I would like to
mention about the motivation.
We had a climatetech client, right?
Amazing climate tech client.
They build an app tomeasure carbon footprint
for companies, alright?
But it's very meaningful.
But then before we came withOKR, they were telling the
developers, for the first sixmonths, we develop an app.
(18:06):
And I said, that's boring.
Every startups is telling thattheir developers, for the first
six months, we build an app.
So why should you be motivatedto work for a specific startups?
I understand why techpeople stunt so much.
If I would be a tech person andI come to a company and say, oh,
now you build another app after10, 20 app, I would be woo.
(18:27):
But if you tell people inthe climate tech, Hey, we are
environmentally conscious.
We want you to helpto build an app.
That companies can measurecarbon footprint, right?
And you have to enable that.
That's much more inspiring.
That's where theobjective comes in.
You know what I mean?
It trickles down from the,almost from the company
(18:49):
purpose or from the North Star.
Galen Low (18:51):
It's funny because that like really
plugs it together.
You see publicly tradedcompanies and they've,
published their annual reportor whatever, or they've got
that very some might sayjust highfalutin like mission
statement and like values.
And I think a lot of folksin the trenches, so to speak,
doing the project, they'relike yeah, that's what you tell
your shareholders and whatever.
But what I like about whatyou just said is that like the
(19:12):
objective ties together thatoverall mission and strategy
to the work being done.
And it can be used to inspirepeople, like it is a tangible,
tactile vision, not justwords on a page to make
shareholders happy or to getmore customers or whatever.
It actually, assuming that itis actually the mission that's
actually quite inspiring.
Carsten Ley (19:32):
It's not only inspiring, it can even
function as a protection forthe people in the trenches.
So if I tell you we make aclimate based app, and then
one day I tell you, oh, youhave to develop a game now.
So I have the power as in thetrenches say, why do I have to
make a, I can question things.
I'm not just on a lowerlevel where people
(19:54):
may, now you grow dead.
Now you grow dead.
Now you write 100 lines on that.
It's not veryinspiring on the job.
I know I write this code,or I program these functions
for a climate based tracking.
I can also challengemy bosses a little bit.
If they say, oh,now you develop.
(20:15):
An act to get coupons fromMcDonald's, which is maybe
not so carbon friend.
Can backfire, right?
Galen Low (20:21):
I wonder if you could talk to me about the
process, because I think intheory I'm loving it, right?
Like I think, yeah, no punintended with the McDonald's
thing but I think it actually,it's an interesting idea that
ties things all together.
Like you said, it doesn'tnecessarily add more work on
top, it's more of a structure.
A lot of the folks I talkto, the project managers,
sometimes even the PMOs,they're not really involved
(20:43):
in business strategy.
So what are some examples ofsome OKRs and like, how can
they be arrived at in a waythat is also cross-functional?
Or are they alwaysjust handed down?
Carsten Ley (20:53):
Let's stay on the climate tech case.
The climate tech,they just got funding.
They started, they saywithin one year we need this
carbon footprint app ready.
And meanwhile, we haveto, okay, program the app.
We have to find partners,we have to get funding.
All the stuff, all the targets,what in the, and we have to
(21:14):
onboard people, all the targets.
Startups have the first year,and let's say in a startup
that's already a strategy, oneor two years because you don't
know how long you are there,so you don't have to blend.
So you don't have to blendfive years if you just
start getting funding,so that's your strategy.
And then this trickles downto yearly objective, which
(21:36):
maybe the team leader know.
So at least the team leaderand the founders should sit
together and say, what do wewanna achieve the next year?
Like a draft, because weare in a WCA world, so
maybe like an estimation.
And then from that one, we planthree months targets, right?
So we say Q1, we wanna havea prototype of the app.
(21:58):
And then with this objective,which is probably done between
the founders and the teamleaders, not yet the team.
Okay.
With this objective, firstthree months, we want the
prototype, and now I go intothe prototype project, which
is not only the dev team.
Ideally I build it as aproject with market people,
with salespeople, wherewe get potential customers
(22:21):
or partners to test it.
And then I ask my team,I make a workshop.
As a team leader or with anexternal consultant like us,
what can be the measurable keyresults the next three months?
So it's not a top down process.
That's also the beautiful part,and it ties a little bit in
what they normally do, also inthe Agile and Sprint branding
(22:43):
that they involve the team.
And then we say, whatdo we wanna achieve?
Objective.
We know we wannabuild a prototype.
How can we measure that?
We successfullybuild a prototype?
So you come upwith different KR.
So first KR is probablyabout coding and developing
wire frame prototype, right?
Another KR is like that you testthe prototype with a certain
(23:06):
kind of numbers and you geta certain kind of feedback.
You can measure also likethat you find out after the
first three months whichfunctions are missing, that
you have worked for thenext three months, right?
Things like that can beKRs, and then the team has
this three months targets.
Inspirational, the prototypefor climate tech plus the
(23:28):
key results to measure.
And then out of that, they canstart with the sprint plan.
They can say which ofthese, because the OKR
is like your backlog.
It's like your overalltarget backlog.
And out of that you can say,what do we put now in the
first two or three spreads?
This is how the process work.
I don't think we put alot of more and more work.
(23:50):
We put a little bit more workon the team leads because we
want the team leads from everyteam or the project leads in
the, at least yearly planning.
We don't have to do it astrategy, but at least involved
in the yearly planning.
Even in bigger companies.
We do that, that atleast department leads,
project leads, PMO leads.
(24:12):
Are in the discussionof the yearly planning.
Galen Low (24:15):
I like that you involve, if I'm understanding
you correctly, if you findan organization that is not
bringing those team leads in,your recommendation would be
to go in and bring them tothe table for annual planning.
Carsten Ley (24:27):
Yes.
What we always wantin the KR process.
In some companies you dotwo, three level OKRs.
You do a company OKRs, thenunfortunately, they want
a silo in department OKRs,which we are not fan, but
we can build that for them.
We had very traditionalcompanies, so they want
it like that, right?
Yeah, understand.
And of course if they builddepartment OKRs, it's easier
(24:49):
for them to assign theresponsibility because they
do it like the org chart.
Which is not very agile, butit's how companies work power
are and you know how it's right.
So we have company OKRs,department and Team OKRs in
some companies, and then wealways want two layers together.
So Company OKRs is the toppeople with the department
(25:11):
leads, department OKRsis department leaders
with the team leads.
Team OKRs is teamleads with the team.
This is a little bittransparency, which is a
big word in KR alignmentand also bottom up input.
Bottom up doesn't mean thatwhen you talk about strategy
in the top ecolon of yourcompany, that you ask your
(25:34):
cleaning people for input.
Of course, that's not bottom up.
It's not so extreme.
It means that you at leastexpose the next layer to it.
Agile companies.
We had a very interestingclient in the US called
Scratch Pay or Scratch Finance.
They were FinTechand then a SaaS.
I think now they'reFinTech again, a little bit
switching the business model.
(25:55):
And what they did, theyhad 150 mainly developers
worldwide, and then themarketing and the sales team In
California in Silicon Valley.
And they wanted togo very bottom up.
So the top founders and the topleads were drafting the strategy
and the yearly targets, andthen we sent a survey out to
(26:17):
150 people worldwide and askedfor the feedback on the strategy
or yearly targets by survey.
This is amazing.
So you can also do that if youwant real bottom up, right?
You can make asurvey, I promise.
Not a lot of peoplewill respond, honestly.
Some people, fair enough,some developers are also
like, I don't wanna beinvolved in the strategy.
(26:38):
Why?
They have to, maybe they'renot paid for it, right?
But some people want to.
So you give opportunitiesto give feedback.
We get one very interestingfeedback, maybe modern
times a little bit.
They had one objective onthe company like smashing the
competitor or any word likethat, and one female team lead
was feeding back in the survey.
(27:00):
Let's not use soaggressive language here.
That was a very cool feedbackthat some people didn't feel
good in the company with allthis aggressive founder talk
that you always use Woolworths.
It's not necessary.
It was a very nice feedback.
To tone it a little bitdown that the people
can identify with that.
Like I said, if we buildOKRs on different level
(27:22):
is always the so next.
So if you would build likePMO OKRs, the project manager
should be there, and then whenwe build it for the projects,
it would be the project andthe project team together.
Galen Low (27:34):
I like that idea, overall.
Where my head goes isalmost around education.
And what I mean is, I knowI've worked within a lot of
organizations that will ask forfeedback, but when the feedback
comes back, they're like, yeah,these people don't get it.
Then I'm thinking, okay, ifI was someone responding to a
survey, or if I was someone ona team, if I was a team lead,
trying to get my team to comeup with key results, but they
(27:56):
weren't really quite gettingit, I didn't feel like maybe
their key results were aligningto the objective, or maybe
they weren't as measurable.
How do you provide educationthroughout an organization
so that people understandwhat a good key result is?
And also so that leaders knowthat when they're getting
feedback from their team,it's not just willy-nilly
arbitrary stuff that theydon't have to pay attention
(28:18):
to, but that everyone actuallygets it, understands what the
framework and the structureis, and has enough education or
training around it to providemeaningful input, so that
input gets taken seriously?
Do you go in and trainpeople about OKRs or do you
kinda have to intuit it?
Carsten Ley (28:33):
Normally when we start with a company
who hasn't done OKRs, weprovide on different levels.
The training.
We also do that on deliverlevel because the OK R
training is also a buy-in.
Like you said before, someproject management, PMO, they
don't want to do OKR becausethey think they cover it
already completely by Agile,and maybe we can prove in the
(28:55):
training it's not fully covered.
And there are two, three things.
They don't have to changetheir whole process but do a
little bit better, especiallyon the outcome and on the
business oriented side.
So us and of course a lotof other KR providers, we
have a clear structure, howto build an inspirational
objective, which should beconnected to the strategy.
(29:16):
There should always bethe why we are doing it.
Why are we building an app,not because we are just a
startup and we build an app,'cause there's a purpose
behind and ideally a goodpurpose which inspires people.
And then the key results, likeI said before, we can measure
work with the key results,which is almost like a KPI.
(29:37):
So how many projects did you do?
How many functionsdid you develop?
But these are not thereal good key results.
The real good key results iswhat is the impact of our work?
Does the test customerlike the fun shops?
Yeah.
Did the five projects I didthis year, did any of this
project got launched andmake money for the company?
(30:00):
That's maybe a good question.
That's what we should measure.
What we educate a lot besidethe structure and the setup
is the mindset to say, I'mnot only responsible for
my little area that I get400 lines of code then.
I'm also responsible howthis code impacts the product
(30:21):
and if the product sellsand there is sometimes a
little bit of resistance.
It's change management.
You always get resistancewhere people say, oh,
I'm just a developer.
I'm not responsible howthe product performs.
That's a little bitthe spirit we have to
set up in the company.
That's why we don't wannasilo sales, marketing product.
(30:43):
That's actually thequintessential of
projects, right?
That you bring peopletogether, that you bring
a developer together and aui, ux and a salesperson and
say, we are in this together.
Not everybody sits in theproject meeting who I don't
care about the other part.
Galen Low (31:01):
That's the interesting thing about silos
is that they're safe becauseyou know the people in your
silo, you build this trust aboutachieving a goal together, but
as soon as you step outta thatsilo, you're like, I don't know
if I can trust these folks.
It's interesting you mentionchange management because the
thing I had on my mind is thatthis culture change, assuming
you're coming from a teamculture that didn't do this,
(31:21):
that was a bit more siloed.
Maybe effective, but probablylike culturally siloed.
And you're moving intothis more cross-functional
interdepartmental model.
Do you find that itcreates a bit more conflict
as it's getting going?
Carsten Ley (31:33):
We only see conflicts on a department
level if what some of the leadswants to dominate, that's in.
So middle management isa little bit an issue.
When they wanna build theirlittle kingdoms, how I call
it, and they say, no, Idon't want product to do
anything with my sales KPIs.
No.
That's only my numbers.
Blah, blah, blah.
They don't wanna sharethe success of their
(31:54):
numbers on team level.
We don't see so much problems.
Because in an KR structure,we measure in a system
where everybody can see thenumbers from different teams,
what we normally set up.
And there are also on the marketlike thousands of OKR tools.
We don't have our own becausethere are so many, I mean there
(32:15):
are KR tools for Jira, forMicrosoft, for everything has
a block in with OKR nowadays.
So we can reallyrun the numbers.
If everybody checks in everytwo weeks, like after a sprint
review operational on a teammeeting and puts the numbers
inside or how their work isgoing and how it impacts the
business or the outcomes,we can measure that up and
(32:39):
display it very transparently.
So I don't think there's alot of conflict that people
are scared about, that peopleare a little bit more scared.
When they say that they cannotinfluence, and that's true.
But then there's also onething we should mention.
OKRs are not performancenumbers like KPIs.
(33:00):
We also have this, I don'tknow if you heard about
this, the stretch KR, between70 and a hundred percent.
There's also a leeway anda leverage that when you
don't hit a hundred percent,you don't get immediately
penalized on your bonus.
Because if you do that,and that's the same in
agile management, right?
I'm a very big fanof management 3.0.
(33:21):
I don't know if you know thismethodology where they say
award should be frequent.
An award should be tied tosuccesses, not to long term
panelizing systems, right?
This is very importantthat we reject if a company
says we wanna implementOKRs and we wanna change
our bonus system to OKRs.
And I said, no way.
(33:42):
Because then people are scaredto work cross-functionally
together and people arenot bold in trying things.
That's what we want in KRand Agile, that people try
things and that people haveideas in the project and
you shut that completelydown if you put a bonus
performance measurement behind.
This is very important onthe cultural thinking that
(34:03):
you give people space.
We always say also what is atrick, but it works very well.
The first three monthsof OKRs in a company we
always call OKR Pilot.
Okay?
Either we do it on leadershiplevel for buy in or we do it
in a team just for testing it.
Because first, if you saypilot, people still have to
(34:25):
hope it goes away, which doesn'tobviously, but it still sounds
like it can go away, right?
It doesn't go away normally,but it can go away.
Second pilot sounds alsolike we can influencing and
things are not so serious yet.
Let's play aroundwith it, right?
So we always tell ourclients, why don't we
start with an OKR pilotand you'll tell your staff.
(34:48):
We try OKRs first.
I know most companies havealready decided they go for it.
It will not go away, but atleast you can smooth it up a
little bit at the beginning.
Galen Low (34:58):
I like that and I, to your point, sometimes
people are using it as anopportunity to gather input and
yeah, maybe they've made thatdecision to go with it, but at
least they are gathering inputand feedback about how they
should go about doing it aswell, which I think is actually
really quite interesting.
To play the devil's advocatea little bit here, I know some
folks, they're saying thatOKRs are falling out of favor.
(35:19):
It was just like fad or trendthat people dipped into and
now a lot of organizationsare just like avoiding them.
But also to your point,there's a whole bunch of
organizations who haven'tstarted using them yet.
For teams of like projectmanagers, or I guess even just
like teams in general, how canthey advocate for using OKRs
for their projects and howthey work together if maybe
(35:41):
leadership is not bought intothe idea or they're dragging
their heels, they keep sayingthey're gonna do it, but
they aren't doing it yet.
Can a team at the teamlevel, can they advocate
to make this change?
Carsten Ley (35:52):
You can run OKRs only on a team level
sometimes for a pilot.
When the leadership teamdoesn't monitor the pilot,
we do it on one team first.
And of course, we look a littlebit for a more agile team.
So like product teamwhere it works well.
So the only thing that if youhave a project team or even a
functional team, the only thingthe team has to do is they
(36:14):
anyway have already KPIs orkrs, which they measure, right?
So it's not a new thing.
You have to measure something.
Nowadays there's adata sheet, right?
They use any systemlike Microsoft Planner,
Monday.com, whatever.
Everybody uses them.
If not, they use Excel.
But you have to report everyweek or every two week,
(36:35):
or at least once a month.
What are you doing, ifyou're doing well or not, and
maybe produce some numbers.
So that's not a rocket science.
So we use these numbers, usethem as key results, and add,
like I said, some more businessoriented key results, which
goes a little bit above the teamor about the impact after the
(36:58):
finalization of the project.
With that, you always have toask yourself the right question.
So the question is, whydo we do this project?
Why do we launch this product?
Of course, we as projectmanager and project team,
we get paid to launch theproduct and then we hand it
over to operations and sales.
But if you wanna live bythe OKRs, you say, why
(37:20):
do we launch the product?
So I ask sales and thesales tell, yeah, we expect
at least the first months,we wanna make 10,000.
So I would put it in myproject K off and I would make
a post-implementation phase.
And I say, let's be responsibletogether with sales for
the first two months,post-implementation phase.
(37:41):
And we wanna do minimumevery month, $10,000.
And of course then theproject team say, oh, that
not only depends on us,that also depends on sales.
But we work with sales together.
We bring them in the project,which is also fun because you
learn something from sales,and then of course, sales can
feedback you in the first weeksalready, or we have problem
(38:01):
with this functionality.
The customer doesn't like this.
Ooh, this is what you want.
You don't wanna finishyour project anymore.
And also, when you wanna bea long-term employee for your
engagement, when you speak aboutemployee engagement, you don't
wanna just finish projects.
You wanna see that your projectshave an impact for the company.
Or if we speak aboutclimate tech, even for
(38:22):
the society, right?
If we go one step in any team,even in an operational team, in
a functional team, you can startthat because the objectives
your team leader should know, heshould know long-term planning,
and if not, then you are shouldbe bold enough to, as a team
leader, to go to your bossesand ask these questions because
(38:43):
you are entitled to know Projectobjective is launch a product.
So I go to my PMO coursesand says, why do we have
to launch this product?
How does it tieinto the strategy?
Hopefully they tell you thatit ties into the strategy and
they're not saying, no, we arejust trying something weird,
which nobody really cares about.
(39:03):
That would be verydemotivational, right?
With the information from above,you can build your objective
very easily, and with the stuffyou measure, you already have
your first key results, whichyou measure the project success.
And then you also have tomeasure the business impact
and then you see if yourteam wants to do that.
(39:24):
I don't say everybodyneeds to do OKRs.
Some companies are fine to say,let the projects people just do
their project and then who handover to sales operations, we
don't wanna bother you with it.
That's completely fine for me.
But try it with a teamand see how people react
if they're interested.
Galen Low (39:42):
That's interesting.
I like the bottom up grassrootscollaboration approach, right?
It's Hey, let's talk to salesand see what their targets
are, and then let's measure it.
Even though our projecttechnically, whatever, our
sprint, our increment, ourrelease completed, but we're
still interested in what it doesin its life beyond our team.
Inevitably, we're probably gonnabe continuing to work on this.
(40:03):
And there's this sort ofcontinuity, this longevity of
the mission that is tied to thecompany, not just to like this
one sort of project or sprint.
Carsten Ley (40:11):
Because when we do that, normally improvements
after a project phase happenin a nice collaborative way.
What happens normally,especially in a PMI setting,
when you make a hard cut of theproject and you hand, or when I
was there, I worked for banks.
Before we had that, we wereonly the project team and
then we handed it over.
(40:31):
We fulfilled all themilestones and deliverables.
But maybe very beginningof the project, somebody
gave us the wrong input.
Yeah, or maybe the sales leadchange right from beginning
to end of the project.
So you hand it overto the new sales lead.
After two months, they go toyour bosses and they escalate
the shit out of you and youhave a lot of problems and
(40:54):
all the fighting begins.
And that's not a reallynice way to work together if
things are not successful, ifthe project outcome anyway,
sooner or later, it'llbackfire to your project team.
Galen Low (41:05):
That's an interesting way of looking at it.
Carsten Ley (41:07):
Why don't you prevent that a little bit
more proactively and workwith the right folks together
for the hand or during theproject already to make sure.
It will be a success.
Galen Low (41:18):
I like that.
You touched on one last thing.
I thought maybe I'd end with itbecause we've been talking about
top down, at the leadershiplevel, talking about bottom up.
A project team might justbe curious to try this out.
Maybe it's a team pilot.
You mentioned PMOs, which isthis sort of meaty middle, and
earlier you mentioned that evenwhen you were running a PMO,
sometimes your metrics werejust like, did you turn out
(41:39):
the right number of projects?
But it seems like OKRs might bea great opportunity for PMOs.
That aren't really at thetable to become a bit more
strategic, and maybe this isa whole nother episode, but
I was just thinking, how canPMOs leverage OKRs to be tied
to the business so they're notjust like a project factory?
Carsten Ley (41:57):
PMOs should be a part of the strategic,
or at least a yearlyplanning discussion.
That's the first thingwe should make sure.
And then PMO similar,like departments can have
OKRs, and business OKRs.
Not only Project OKRs,don't speak about the
number of project and howmany project manager we
have to regrow and how manyprojects we have to set up.
(42:19):
So we can blend this PMO alreadyand say for this yearly target.
So one yearly targetis a product launch.
Another yearly targetis a market launch.
Another yearlytarget is efficiency.
So PMO Below can brainstormand say, what projects can we
propose a little bit bottomup or from the middle as
PMO to launch products toconquer the market, to make
(42:44):
the company more efficient.
And especially when you speakabout efficiency topics, the
best suggestions can comealways from the teams, right?
Or from the project manager.
It doesn't come from top down.
They don't know much aboutwhat's going on below,
honestly, often, right?
Let's say like that.
But you understand what I mean.
And PMO is a verycross-functional department who
(43:05):
has also governments function.
When I was running a PMO in aFinTech later after the bank,
we used PMO a lot for survey.
We were surveying team membersfrom different teams about their
requirements and what they needfrom projects or from launches.
Not only always the obviousteam leads and their
(43:27):
requirement input, we weresurveying more people.
We were also running PMO.
Sometimes PMO can do more andwe can do the next episode.
We were running asuggestion box in PMO.
We PMO had the company'sdigital suggestion box, right?
You know what I mean?
That anybody could come fromanywhere and say, Hey, I have
(43:48):
an idea for a project, becausethat doesn't go very well.
And we had a little bitbudget to give reward for
that if that suggestionwas taken up and we made a
successful project out of that.
PMO with this cross-functionalpower can do a lot.
And people trust PMO.
We don't politics.
We are very neutral.
(44:11):
In the KR process.
Being part of the strategicyearly discussion and
making suggestion to itand also coordinating it
at the end is fantastic.
Galen Low (44:21):
I love that idea and definitely I
wanna dig more into that.
We'll do another episodeon OKRs for PMOs.
I think that soundsreally interesting.
Carsten Ley (44:28):
That will be amazing.
Yeah.
Galen Low (44:29):
Love that.
Carsten, thank you so much forspending the time with me today.
I've had a lot of fun.
I've learned a lot.
This has been great.
Carsten Ley (44:35):
Thank you very much.
Pleasure to be here.
Thank you, Galen.
Galen Low (44:38):
Alright folks, there you have it.
As always, if you'd like tojoin the conversation with
over a thousand like-mindedproject management champions,
come join our collective!Head on over to
thedpm.com/membershipto learn more.
And if you like what youheard today, please subscribe
and stay in touch onthedigitalprojectmanager.com.
Until next time,thanks for listening.
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