Blog

Another topic from the book Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results that stood out to me is the idea of a weekly confidence rating for the OKRs. The idea is that every week whomever owns a key result reports on their confidence that they’ll achieve it on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being 100% confident (e.g. a value of 5 / 10 would mean 50% confident that the key result will be met).

Think about that for a minute: how often do you do a serious gut check as to whether or not you’re going to hit your current goals. Weekly? Monthly? Never? This idea of not only assessing the confidence that you’ll hit the key result but actually quantifying it on a weekly basis is great for team alignment and communication. How often have we heard someone give regular updates about their project or goal only to realize too late that they’re not going to hit it?

The next time you really want to drive accountability and clarity in your organization, ask for a confidence rating for each goal’s metric or objective’s key result and track it on a weekly basis. Watch as things improve and people are more focused.

What else? What are some more thoughts on weekly confidence ratings for OKRs?

Yesterday I was talking to an entrepreneur about different leadership methodologies and he looked at me and said, “you’re a systems guy.” Hmm, I thought about it for a second. Yes, I’m a systems guy. Then it just came out of me, “I love systems because I don’t have to think.” Of course, there’s a ton of research and thinking to come up with the system. But, once it’s in place, I know that it’s helping get things done and I don’t have to worry about it.

Over time the systems have to be tweaked and enhanced, but just the fact that the system is in operation and working means that it’s better than before. Now, I’m not advocating for bureaucracy. What I am advocating is making sure that things run in a sustainable, repeatable manner thereby delivering the desired outcomes.

Some systems that I like:

• Mastering the Rockefeller Habits
• Traction
• The 4 Disciplines of Execution
• The Advantage

My advice: pick a system and run with it. Don’t wait for the “perfect” system when there are plenty of good ones already out there.

What else? What are some more thoughts on being a systems person?

Continuing with Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results, the author shared a really interesting approach centered around a simple document for weekly alignment and accountability. The document, called the Weekly Check-in, is composed of four quadrants on one single page that represent key items to track and/or discuss.

Quadrant 1

• This Week’s Priorities
  • Labeled P1 or P2 for top priorities and secondary priorities
  • Things that aren’t P1 or P2 aren’t included

Quadrant 2

• Objectives and Key Results
  • 2 – 3 Objectives
  • 3 Key Results per Objective
  • 1-10 likelihood of hitting each key result with 10 being the best (e.g. 5/10 would mean 50% confidence)

Quadrant 3

• Next 4 Weeks
  • Big items on the horizon
  • Things everyone needs to know are coming

Quadrant 4

• Health Metrics
  • Key performance indicators for the business
  • General metrics that might or might not tie into the OKRs

This process is easily translatable into a Google Spreadsheet or a dynamic system that automates it. Regardless, leaders would do well to implement a system with a weekly review of both the near-term tasks and longer-term OKRs/goal.

What else? What are some more thoughts on the four quadrant weekly alignment document from Radical Focus?

After having several entrepreneurs recommend the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals (4DX) to me, I finally got around to reading it. Quick review: it’s awesome and every entrepreneur should spend the $11 to buy it on Amazon. Here are the four disciplines:

1. Focus on the Wildly Important
2. Act on the Lead Measures
3. Keep a Compelling Scorecard
4. Create a Cadence of Accountability

Imagine taking the core execution elements of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits or Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business and distilling it down into four disciplines and you have the 4DX book. This is important because the disciplines are all attainable and there’s less touchy feely stuff that turns some people off from the other books (e.g. I love core values and culture stuff but some people see that as being beneath them).

Here the four disciplines rephrased into simpler terms:

1. Make no more than one or two very important goals with a clear metric and deadline
2. Track two or three metrics that are leading indicators for the goals (e.g. if the goal is to sign 100 new customers, a leading indicator would be number of qualified opportunities in the pipeline)
3. Develop a spreadsheet or report for everyone to see that has the leading indicators and goal metrics (real-time, if possible)
4. Meet once a week for 20-30 minutes to talk about what was done the previous week and what will be done the next week to hit the targets (accountability!)

Seriously, every entrepreneur should buy the book and run this process (a couple critical goals, leading indicator metrics, central dashboard with the metrics, and a short weekly meeting talking about actions to hit the metrics). I recommend The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

What else? What are some more thoughts on the book and the four disciplines?

Christina Wodtke recently published a great book called Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results. As expected, the author takes the reader through a fable of a young startup that is ambling along making progress in certain areas while struggling with alignment and focus. After a mentor introduces OKRs to the team, they are slowly infused into the organization and the company takes off.

Here’s how the author describes the system:

1. Set inspiring and measurable goals.
2. Make sure you and your team are always making progress toward that desired end state no matter how many other things are on your plate.
3. Set a cadence that makes sure the group both remembers what they are trying to accomplish and holds each other accountable.

While it sounds simple in theory, in practice it takes a good deal of time and discipline. I’m a proponent of setting goals and using a system to help manage the goal process.

What else? What are some more thoughts on the book Radical Focus and the idea of goals based on OKRs?