“We start our journey to our dreams by wanting, but we arrive by focusing, planning, and learning.” Christina Wodtke

“you can release all the features you want, but if it doesn’t solve the underlying business problem, you haven’t really solved anything” Marty Cagan

This post is a summary of Christina Wodtke’s Radical Focus, on the method of using Objectives and Key Results to set goals and measure progress towards them.

Common reasons for things not getting done, and how to do better

Common, bad approach	Better approach
Too many goals, and unclear prioritisation, leading to lack of focus. “greedy and unrealistic”	Pick the goal that matters most.
Goals and their purpose are unclear	Clarify the goal: describe what it will look like to achieve the goal.
Forgettable goals	Communicate goals “obsessively and comprehensively… you have to reiterate it daily”
Not tracking progress towards goals regularly. This is “the most common fail”.	Make the goal live, in regular processes and rituals and ways of thinking. “You must weave reminders into every aspect of company life.” e.g. talk about progress in status emails, and regularly evaluate work against the goals. “The cadence is what makes the difference between goal setting and goal achieving.”
Not making time to work towards goals	Dedicate time to accomplishing the goal. Committing to Key Results in a time-bound way helps us make progress on this important-but-not-urgent work.
Giving up instead of iterating	“Be ready for failure, ready to learn, and ready to try again”

The path to success is simple but hard

“To be successful, you have to focus on what matters. You have to say no a lot. You have to check in with your team and hold people accountable to their promises. You have to argue about whether or not your tactics are working and admit when they aren’t. There isn’t much complexity to OKRs, but they take quite a bit of discipline to do well.” Wodtke

What are Objectives and Key Results?

An Objective is what you want to accomplish. It’s inspirational. A Key Result (or set of key results) is how you’ll know if you’ve achieved a given Objective. A Key Result is measurable and grounded. A key result should be a stretch - you should have a 50% chance of achieving a given Key Result.

Neither the Objective nor the Key Result specify how the goal is to be achieved:

“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what you need done and let them surprise you with their results.” General George Patton

You’ll also set Health Metrics so that you make sure that you don’t lose sight of underlying performance of your organisation or product - for example, you might track service availability as a health metric, or customer churn, or team health (assuming that these aren’t things you’re trying to change through your Objective and Key Results).

Wodtke suggests setting 1 Objective, with three Key Results, per quarter. In my experience in larger, more complex organisations, you might need more. In the year ahead for my products at GDS, I’m setting out 3 Objectives.”

Objectives and Key Results process

Set inspiring and measurable goals

Make sure you and your team are always making progress towards that desired end state. No matter how many other things are on your plate.

Set a cadence that makes sure the group remembers what they are trying to accomplish and holds each other accountable

Now you can evalute your work against the OKRs, and ditch any work that doesn’t work towards them.

OKRs shouldn’t just be about meeting targets - they should be about learning

“Just setting metric-defined goals - even if you call them OKRs - isn’t enough. OKRs without focus and a cadence of learning become an exercise in making your numbers.”

How OKRs relate to performance management of individuals

Keep OKRs separate from individual performance reviews.

In this context, how do you assess performance and decide who gets pay and promotions?

“Instead of a one-time performance review event, use continuous conversations to coach and calibrate. Have one-on-ones at least twice a month and calibrate on three things: engagement, performance, and alignment. We use five levels of each and recommend both manager and employee share their view so perception gaps can be addressed quickly.”

Bonus insights

“Starbucks had started by bringing high-quality, European-style coffee to one small Pike’s Place cafe and charging three times the going price for a cup. Coffee used to be bottomless and a buck. Now it was a single cup of single origin and cost three. Starbucks had invented a marked and then owned it.”

When faced with an uncomfortable decision as a leader, you can use Intel’s Revolving Door test. “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?” e.g. in their case, getting out of the memory business.