 Hello everybody. I'm back with another webinar for product school. So glad to be doing these. They're so much fun today We are going to talk about okay ours, which is a zero to one approach today So really how to get started how to identify the problem spaces that you might face in your own organization how to start getting adoption and a lot of Checklists so get ready to write down some lists So who am I I'm Shannon. Hello. Nice to meet you again If you didn't see my previous webinar on Kano, you can go and check that out on the product school Website and today I've been working in product and tech working on strategy And so I'm going to be talking to you about how to turn that chaos into clarity and how to get okay our tactics Used in your organization So let's start with a quote from one of my favorite books. It's by Richard remelt. It's called good strategy bad strategy You should definitely read it and he says leaders have a duty to absorb complexity and ambiguity Passing on to the organization a simpler problem one that is solvable and I think that the reason this quote Resonates so much with me is because I've seen okay ours used kind of in the opposite way as a very tactical Short-term achievement focused tool and Richard is very smart and has written many good books on strategy and I love that he talks about something being simple and solvable and transforming the Ambiguity and complexity is something people can actually get behind and I really think that's the core value of objectives and key results. So it's something I want to you to keep in mind during this presentation and Uses a guide when you're writing your own objectives and key results So let's talk about what can go wrong First because before you can start doing this, you're gonna need to get people online with you and in one of my last organizations I noticed there was a real struggle people were afraid of this tool. They did not want to use it They were not convinced by it So I did some asking around and I realized that the main reason people didn't like it was because it was being used as a Kind of performance management tool. So anybody who's ever worked on the group project knows that There's you know, some people who do a good job and some people who don't or some people who through their circumstances It just doesn't work out and the whole group is held responsible for that and then everybody fails And so that's definitely something to try to avoid when using objectives and key results And it was one of the main reasons why people didn't like it in this organization, but it wasn't the only reason Okay, ours had also been used as a project management tool a project tracking tool There's something a lot of organizations do so watch out for those things because they are definitely going to hinder the success of what this is actually for So I talked to the teams that I was able to manage if you're not managing teams directly I'll have to work with you know, other folks to get buy-in and agreement and you know Start small is really the key objective that I want to pass on to you here You want to start with one or two teams and make them successful with this once you have a little bit of traction You can move ahead to five or six and that's exactly what we did We started writing objectives and key results that had a very different Format a very different approach than the ones that had been seen before and we did not try to transform the whole organization at once We did some common ground and some good alignment with other teams And we were managing to hit a turning point when we saw that all five teams were using them Well on a quarterly basis or a semesterly basis depending on the team's velocity and impact and We had started to reach a point of success where other teams in product and engineering were asking us How would how are you doing this? How is it working for you? And so we started to do some training And when we got about half those teams working on it we started iterating on that approach to make it more palatable to the wider organization and That's when we noticed that other teams outside of product and engineering We're starting to ask us about it and we started to do a company-wide training and really find our maturity So what we saw was exactly like the adoption curve My teams were that little red bit and then product and engineering were the orange and the yellow And then some other organizations within our some other teams within our organization and departments where the late majority and laggards But it follows the curve and that's I think what you should expect Understand the potential problem spaces the hurdles or the bad experiences that people have felt Try to start small and then adopt over time And be ready to do a lot of repeating and a lot of change management within your organization And that is definitely critical to your success You will have Obstacles it's a lot like pushing that boulder up the hill at first You'll have people who are Facing a lot of dependencies or too many options people who want to use it for micromanagement or control devices um people who will think it's not worth doing because there's so many other problems but I'm telling you that if you use it well, it can absolutely transform the value driving aspects of your organization So it's really worth doing so In order to do that well You have to get away from this achievement mindset this project management mindset and you have to kind of focus on Strategy so good strategy is really the foundation of this if you haven't done a good strategy First, you know, it's your compass and it tells you which direction to go in You won't be able to write a good objective that centralizes people around that strategy. So it's critical that you start with strategy Then we'll talk about how to write good. Okay ours themselves And finally wrap up with some communication tactics because this is not to be done in a void by yourself and Not sharing this is meant to align with other people. So that communication is really critical So today we're going to talk about that shift between the achievement mindset and the strategic mindset We're going to actually do the work together around how to build consensus how to work on that communication aspect How to write good. Okay ours. What is a bad. Okay? And what is what does that really look like so you can recognize it when you see it And we're going to wrap up with all those checklists that I mentioned So let's get started. We're going to first talk about the strategic mindsets I know it seems like a funny place to start when you're talking about objectives and key results But because I believe that if you use it with an achievement focus, you will fail So what is the difference between these two things? I think is the right question to ask ourselves first So let's dig into that So I think that achievement thinking Owns some really important stuff, right? It's focused on budget and cost and schedule and quality and resources And it's all about getting stuff done But on the strategic side, we don't really care about that stuff. Well, we care, but Like not as much we we're really focused on the vision about how to be competitive About how to position ourselves with the right pricing and market approach How to continuously improve and iterate and ultimately we're focused on the performance So there's going to be that in between space where it could go on either side when you're dealing with communication and coordination and scope and Building launch plans and all those things and all of this is important You don't want to stop doing this stuff I'm just saying that when you are doing objectives and key results It's more on that right hand side. You're focused more on the strategy than you are on the achievement. So Which is all this really boiled down to? The achievement mindset is about getting stuff done right now It's about launching and getting it out the door and not worrying about perfection. It's about flexibility Right, you're looking towards the end zone. You want to get it done But strategic mindset Has a different approach. We're really focused on that long-term value on iteration on outcomes over outputs on Strategy on trying to prioritize for the long haul So there's a really big difference between those two things and if you use objectives and key results for the short-term achievement You are missing the point of using them as a strategic tool So I've waxed a lot of poetic here about what not to do and like some pitfalls to watch out for but let's get into actually doing the work And talk first and foremost about productivity So adam grant is another great author and you can see him on linkedin quite a bit. He talks a lot about the environments in workplaces and Doing objectives and key results poorly is a great way to ruin your environment So I went looking for one of one of his quotes and I liked this one where it says Productivity is overrated What counts most is the quality of the output and not the quantity And I talk about this because When we're talking about strategy, we're not talking about getting stuff done You need to find your compass find the right direction to go in so you can orient those objectives So What's good strategy? What does that look like? This is a question that I get asked a lot in my consulting So let's talk first and foremost about bad strategy. What is it? So richard again gives us a great definition Thank you richard. He says it is fluffy distracted expressions of desire that don't address the critical issues I want to highlight the words Critical in this critical issues in this sentence because it's really the heart of what we're trying to get at when there's bad strategy It's things like, you know, be the best in our sector and increase our sales And take actions to beat competitors Like we don't know really what any of that means or why it's important or what actually needs to happen in order to get it done It's just one of those fluffy goals, right So in good strategy, it's exact opposite of that It's focused. It's coordinated. It is tackling a diagnosed challenge through guiding policy. It is letting people know This is why this problem is important and how you should approach it So you have to have a solid diagnosis in order to do that So i'm going to give you one so we can see what this looks like So a good strategic overview would highlight your weak spots. It would say competitors deliver more value Their onboarding is faster and easier and our strategy goes in too many directions So we've really centralized and identified the problem spaces that we are facing So the impacts of that so further diagnosis. Why is it important? Why do we care? Revenue is dropping the loss rate is increasing And teams feel distracted and overworked and it's hard for us as managers to really follow All the work in progress. So now we have understanding about what's going on So the strategic response that we're looking for is something like focus that strategy on one or two main goals to reduce the whip And prioritize the projects across teams in the acquisition and onboarding phase of the customer because that's where we see most people dropping out of the funnel So get ready. This is your first checklist. Here it comes Here's my strategic checklist if you want to have a good strategy first things first Start with your decision makers. You need to know who the sponsors are and who the people Are that can say yes to your ideas. They are the ones who can tell you This is valuable or it's not or this is dangerous or this is conflicting with our business approaches So mapping out your decision makers is critical to doing good strategy Next I know it's an oldie, but goodie, but do a swat strengths opportunities weaknesses and threats and I know a lot of people like to do swats that are focused kind of on The internal with strengths and weaknesses and the external with opportunities and threats But I really like to do it differently. I like to do it in the now and future states So strengths and weaknesses are what's going on with us right now could be internal or could be external who cares and opportunities and threats are things that could happen in the future And again internal external doesn't matter what matters is that you're thinking about What's going on in your business in your department or in your team? Whatever level you are at however big your organization is at you need to understand What's happening so that you can do this third thing which is the diagnosis Understanding what's happening is key to writing good objectives and key results If you don't know what and why you cannot create how You want to impact it so understanding their diagnosis helps you map the impacts and actors And then finally write some good objectives and key results Which leads you to your guiding policy or your decision matrix Or whatever you call it in your organization because it usually goes by some particular name But it is the way that you onboard people Into your way of working in your decision-making process so This is all of these things are critical to making good strategy if you skip any one of them Like if you skip your decision makers, you won't have a good alignment with the leadership or if you skip mapping the impacts you won't have a good idea of Who you're impacting in your process if you don't have good policies that are written down People probably won't follow them or adopt them. So This is your strategy checklist. Please do every single one of these things So that's all my best advice on strategy and how to start writing that Um, if you want to see a deeper dive on this, let me know. I'm happy to do a follow-up workshop on that But next let's talk about okay ours because that is the topic du jour This is the thing that we are all here to talk about today. So I like this quote from john newer who wrote the book Measure what matters one of the best books out there about okay ours and he says bad okay ours are like bad gps Directions they take you away from your destination, but make you feel like you're making progress I've definitely seen this in organizations who haven't figured out how to do okay ours yet But let's start at the beginning if you're trying to get adoption for your okay ours Then you definitely need to snapshot this slide when i'm done presenting it So the first thing that they bring us are clarity to help you make a real transparent point And anyone who knows that being convincing is all about having a good point So clarity talks about the why why does this matter? Metrics what things we really want to know what are the outcomes that we're really looking for? How do we know that we can actually measure them and it takes away all the surprises everybody's aligned and knows what to expect The next thing that they bring us is that focus now going back to the very beginning The first quote that I gave from richard where he talks about bringing a simpler problem Focus is critical to simplicity That brings higher value because people are not working on 10 000 things Everybody knows that when you're working on too many things at once you won't get anything done So limit your whip and simplify your approach by giving focus with your objectives and key results And finally they can bring real alignment by coordinating teams and coordinating departments Around goals that are actually clear. So this helps you to avoid conflicts and really Create an environment where you can work in concert together So let's talk about what makes an objective good I think there's some stuff here get ready for checklist number two people First of all you have to be realistically aspirational That means, you know Keep your eye on the stars put your feet in the ground Don't set goals that people cannot achieve Just because you want to Push them to do more right you have to be realistic in this goal Next it has to explain why I always like to say to people if I have to ask you a bunch of questions about your objective It's not good enough yet. Like it needs to be clear to me why this matters Why it's a real problem to solve going back to your diagnosis This should respond to your diagnosis Then we have outcome focused and this is also something that I see a lot in organizations They talk about launching a thing or basically what I categorize as jobs to be done Objectives are not jobs Objectives are goals. There are things to aspire to they're not something you do. There's something you get So watch out for that in your objective making Finally, they have to be informed by your SWAT by your strategy If you are not looking at that at your diagnosis at your SWAT and saying What goal is going to move the needle on those weaknesses or threats or maintain our Strengths and opportunities you're going to get stuck and you're going to get distracted So keeping the focus means staying rooted in your strategy Finally, they have to be aligned with other programs other teams other departments You have to talk about it You have to agree and make sure that you are on the same page That this problem that you've done such a good job of explaining is actually worth fixing And lastly, it has to be simple If you are I've seen this too many times people are writing objectives With all this flowery language And it's so hard to understand. I have to read it two or three times Make it simple make it so that I can read it once and know exactly what you're talking about and exactly why it matters That's critical to success, especially when you're starting and trying to get adoption for this technique So let's put all this into a sentence Good objectives are connected to strategy It just makes sense And they don't leave you asking questions. That's how you know, you've done a good job on your objectives So now we've talked about objectives. Let's talk about the key results. What makes a good key result? First of all has to be measurable If it does not have a number it doesn't exist. I think it was the former CEO of yahoo who said that But it's definitely something you hear a lot if you don't measure something it doesn't really exist So it needs a number it has to be valuable if it's not bringing value Why the hell are you measuring it? And I've seen people do key results that are a lot like here is a A launch by this date in this region And I'm just like, okay. Yeah, it has a number because it has a date But the hell are you talking about? What am I getting out of this? How do I know it's actually bringing valuable? Progress to launch this thing just getting something done Is not good enough for objectives and key results. You have to know what is the value gained from doing that thing It has to be incremental. I know some people might disagree with me here. That's fine But I think when you're starting out and this goes back to why this is a zero to one presentation Because when you're starting with objectives and key results, you're going to get some resistance So you want to do something that is actually doable that shows success Because success breeds more success if you do something and you do it well And you can show people that it it actually worked that you achieved the goal Then set a harder goal and this is how you train people up and change management to do things Next you want it to be connected So I've seen you're not going to believe me, but it's true people do key results That are not at all connected to their objectives and I'm like What is going on here your key result has to be a reflection of your goal They're the same thing the same topic and if you're not connecting them They shouldn't be there. So Finally has to be feasible. I know I talked about achievable feasible same thing Your key results have to be as doable as your objective You can't write something pie in the sky like be the best in our field and win 200 percent more business It's not going to work And I see people do this as a means of like lighting a fire under their staff and trying to get stuff done But I'm telling you it doesn't work All it does is fail and make you and your organization think that okay ours don't work And the team think that they are bad at setting goals You just were too High up there. You need to be reasonable here And the last one is make them few One of the big mistakes people can make is setting too many goals and too many krs And this has the result the direct result of being really hard to follow. So One or two objectives Two to three key results. That's all you need and if you're doing more you're losing that focus aspect So when it comes to key results, what does all this mean a good kR? Measures value and outcomes not effort or achievement Keep it small simple and to the point So let's do an example so you can see something in practice Here is um an actual objective that I've seen Retain existing customers and launch onboarder to lead our market while reducing costs and increasing value Do you see anything wrong with this picture? First of all It has a y that is missing. So retain existing customers. Why do we need to retain? What is the challenge of not what happens if we don't retain our customers? Like we don't know it has not been expressed Then it talks about launching a thing So like why is the solution in the goal? Isn't that a bit micromanagey here? Why does it even matter? We don't know if this actually will solve the problem now we're Putting the solution right in the problem. Then we have this lead our market while reducing costs and increasing value This isn't a strategic approach What are we even doing leading the market while reducing costs and increasing value? I know it sounds like very marketing speak and I'm not really sure what it all means It just kind of leaves me going what so it's all very confusing. It's too many things in there um So leading the market reducing costs increasing value are actually three kind of distinct objectives So i'm going all right. Why do we have all the strategies in one strategy? Why are we trying to do all these things at once? What is going on here? So as you can see this objective while it sounds good When you hear it for the first time, maybe you have to read it a couple times to get it But like eventually you're like, yeah, that sounds good. That sounds smart. Let's do that But it's really got a lot of problems So let's try some krs that i've actually seen so what if they had krs like Plan for reducing costs by q3 reduce cogs by end of q2 and launch the on butter by end of june Doesn't sound that bad Right, you can see this and go. Yeah, they know what they're going to do I have problems with this. Okay. So first of all, who cares about plans This is what I like to call a fake progress alert Plans do not actually achieve anything at all I had a boss say this to me once he's like plans. Who cares right? So that always stuck with me The next thing that I saw here was this reduce cogs There's no number we don't actually know what the measurement is here So there's no real value being obtained again. What is what is good enough when we're reducing that cost And then launching the on border again. This is a thing that you're doing. How do you know that that even worked? What are you measuring? We're talking about retention in the goal, but we're not measuring retention So why is this even valuable to us? So this is an example where someone can write something that sounds pretty good But is in fact completely wrong Just doesn't measure any value period So let's try it again Maybe you can write even better ones, but let's try and rewrite something So to increase the acquisition rate, we will reduce our onboarding friction and prioritize early value gains So note that I'm not putting any solutions in this I am saying why our acquisition our acquisition rate is dropping. We need to raise it That's the challenge to be addressed And I'm saying what we need to do to get there but not in two specific terms Reduce that friction early in the onboarding space and prioritize the value early on So key results that I rewrote our onboarding Time reduced by 10% This is how we know that we are doing faster onboarding is the time to onboarding reduced Um 80 new customers get value in two months So that means that a very very large portion of our customers are immediately seeing value And then finally our acquisition rate is up 10 percent Now this is probably happening within a quarter or a semester So we don't really need to say buy this date or in this time because it's probably already set up in your organization But we understand what i'm trying to do I want to improve the onboarding experience for the majority of our customers and give them fast value to improve our acquisition Nobody's wondering why are we doing this? Nobody's saying how are we supposed to do it? Nor are they're saying Exactly what they're supposed to do to do it. It's just that right middle ground of giving direction without micromanaging So Now that you know a little bit about strategy and okay ours we can talk about communication Which is the final and most important part of this presentation So what is required for good feedback? To know that your objective is actually ready and is actually good enough you need to ask people So first things first you need to ask the right people Don't ask your best friend who you're working with. Hey, how did I do? Ask people who actually challenge you and if you're working in the product and tech space Whereas this is really catching on the most You want to talk to your design and engineering people so you're three in the box You want to talk to support marketing product marketing security any back office people sales pre sales strategy leadership? You decide okay, but don't forget about the key groups in that impact mapping as aspect of this If you're going to affect somebody with your objective, you better ask them if they think that it's good enough So make sure that you're asking the right people or what you're doing will not be a hit Next you want to ask about the right things. So don't ask them. What do you think? Give them real information on how they should be responding to you. So ask them Am I working on the right problem? Have I covered risks in my space? Do you think that I'm missing any? Are any opportunities missed that I'm not addressing in my SWAT my diagnosis in my strategy or in my objectives that are A part of all that discussion When I present my objectives to people I often will present the strategy some of the research that went into why like my SWAT And what I think is going on that diagnosis. They know why I picked those objectives So I like to ask them these three questions that they know that I care About getting it right and I think that they need to tell me about this stuff And then finally you need to do the right timing. So quarterly is the um Cadence where I've seen this used the most Although I like semesterly because I feel like when you're talking about strategy changing it every three months just feels Really short Six to nine months is kind of a minimum for me usually So you want to ask about things in the right time? So if you do have it on a quarterly basis, you're checking things Um pretty frequently. So a quick check in the concept phase Um, you're just thinking about something Check in with people. Am I asking the right questions? If you're doing a deep dive while you're validating concepts you want to um, make sure that you're asking them the right questions around How you might do it or what they might do or how that's impacting them Sanity checks during the build phase if you're in the build phase of your project or program Or your product then you're going to be focusing on does this make sense for everybody? Are we all aligned with this direction? And if you're at the release phase or your product then you're talking about quality checks and making sure that the measurements are on point So there's different things you're going to check with different people at different times is what i'm saying But don't forget that just because you have an idea. It doesn't mean that it's right You need to validate it So your head might be spinning at this point I'm giving you a lot of information And a lot of tips and tricks. So now we're going to do the takeaways part of this presentation I apologize for my voice. I've had laryngitis for weeks. It's just not coming back But we're going to talk about takeaways as much voice as I have left So first things first You got to shift the mindset in an organization in order to get it to adopt objectives and key results. Well So how do you do this? You want to stop thinking about your program or your project? You're going to miss something important. You want to shift into the strategic mindset and thinking about that long term value This is why this is such a great tool for product teams because it really focuses on that iterative approach and the long term value You want to prioritize your outcomes over your outputs more value needs to be prioritized Over that throughput. This is not about getting stuff done and remind people as many times as you have to that you're talking about outcomes here You want to focus on strategy? They need clear why's in order to be valuable to people So pick your most important why don't try and do five or six pick the most urgent and important one And then finally get the right people in the room Before you go trying to spread all of your ideas around Think about who's impacted who decides and who can get me to where I want to go Who's Alignment do I need in order to get this goal achieved is the right question to be asking yourself And talk to them about objectives and key results as a way to bring people together and get them all on the same page That will really help you in shifting the mindset away from achievements and projects and launches and into outcomes and measurements and results Okay, now I know that this sounds really daunting. So let's talk about how to actually start So I'm going to revise a little bit that story that I told you in a takeaways So first keep it simple one or two teams for six months low stakes It works better with the resistance of you if you make something that is easy to achieve So don't pick your hardest problem and decide to launch okay ours around it pick something easy and launch okay ours around it Listen and solve their pain points. So where you will see adoption start to hit in organizations Is when they feel like you're actually solving their problems So if you talk to people and find common ground around a problem space that needs work And okay ours can help bring alignment and focus to that problem space Now you've done a double duty you've solved the problem And you've taught people that this tool can help them solve other problems So if you're bringing more pain than you're solving you're obviously not going to be successful So listen to the pain points and make sure that this is going to be a good fit for for your teams to make sure that it's a big success afterwards The third goal is to expand and build more trust So I mentioned how I started with just one team and then a couple and then I did all of my five teams And then we started doing work within product and engineering That's what i'm talking about don't try to launch this as a full-scale organizational change The chances of it being misunderstood or misused are really high So you want to use it in a way that brings people together Incrementally and over time Then you can make sure that you're teaching people in the right way and avoid all the bad practices that kind of pop up When someone is left to their own devices with this tool And finally you need sponsorship This is a strategic tool If the leaders are not aligned with you, you can have a really hard time making this adopted so Try working on it within your team get some success Show your success story and after you've done this several times you will see more broad exposure By the way, this can scale to pretty much any organizational size I think this has been really important to bring up because there are so many tools That are oriented towards really large organizations or really small organizations I think this is the one strategic tool besides maybe the SWAT Which i've seen that can apply to pretty much any size organization It is a strategic alignment tool that works in in one team or 200 teams in the exact same way The difference maybe and something to keep in mind Depending on the size of your org Is that when you're working on rolling it out to really large organizations You're going to have to spend a lot more time training and a lot more time aligning So that means understanding each other's dependencies and risks is going to be a bigger more daunting task and Taking the time to actually talk to each other About your objectives and key results is going to be pretty critical to your success So That's all I got today. I gave you some checklist I gave you two big sets of takeaways on how to get started I hope that this helps you if you have things that you would like to hear more about or Questions for me. You can always reach me on linkedin And I hope that this gave you some great information looking forward to seeing you next time. Bye. Bye