What are OKRs?

A summary of Resource 1: Google’s OKRs Playbook, from Measure What Matters.

Google has the most experience implementing “objectives and key results” (OKRs). They use OKRs to “think big”. Different work can be vastly different in impact: big products like Chrome and Android started as small teams. OKRs help us choose what we’ll work on, and help us track that work. OKRs combat our natural bias towards urgent tasks, in favour of working on non-urgent but important tasks. OKRs combat our natural conservative bias, in favour of aggressive goals.

After some time, we grade OKRs between 0 and 1, expressing “how well we did”.

Writing Effective OKRs

Objectives say what we’re going to do, and the Key Results say how we’re going to do it.

Key Results must be measurable, so we know whether we have achieved the result. For example, “publish average and tail latency measurements from six Colossus cells by March 7”. This is better than “assess Colossus latency”.

Key Results must include evidence of completion, like change lists or published metrics.

Cross-team OKRs

Achieving OKRs requires contribution from many groups. Every group’s OKRs should express their shared OKR.

Committed vs. Aspirational OKRs

Each objective is either committed or aspirational. This says whether we have a clear idea of how to achieve the objective. Expected score for a committed OKR is 1. Expected score for an aspirational OKR is 0.7.

OKR traps

Trap: not distinguishing committed and aspirational. This distinction is essential for being aggressive yet realistic.

Trap: “business-as-usual”. A description of what we’re doing.

Trap: Timid aspirations. Set aspirations which you or customers want, but don’t know how to achieve.

Trap: “Sandbagging”. Committed objectives should consume most team resource. Committed+aspirational should consume more than current resource. If teams meet all their OKRs, management should reassign their resource to other teams!

Trap: low-value objectives. Objective should provide business value.

Trap: insufficient KRs for committed Os. If all KRs are achieved, the O must be achieved.

Reading, intepreting, and acting on OKRs

Teams who cannot deliver the expected score must ESCALATE. This helps management develop alternatives and reassign resource.

New OKRs SHOULD require more resource to achieve!

Committed OKR which does not achieve 1.0 requires postmortem.

Committed OKR example: meet all SLAs.

Aspirational OKRs should remain until completed. Dropping them disguises problems.

Managers need to use their team’s OKRs to ask for resource.

Express KRs in external terms, not using internal terminology. Use real dates. Ensure measurable results. Ensure unambiguous. “If there are important activities on your team that aren’t covered by OKRs, add more [OKRs]”. Make OKRs hierarchical: more detailed ones for sub-teams.

Resource 4: In Sum

Four superpowers of OKRs:

Focus and Commit to Priorities
Align and Connect for Teamwork
Track for Accountability
Stretch for Amazing

Focus and Commit to Priorities

Recomment annual+quarterly OKRs. Phase in with upper management. Designate an “OKR shepherd” to ensure people make time to choose what matters. Commit to 3-5 top objectives per cycle. Decide what not to do. For inspiration, look to mission statements, plans, and themes. Pair qualitative and quantitative results. Most important element for success is CONVICTION from leaders.

Align and Connect for Teamwork

Incentivize employees by showing how their objectives relate to company objectives. Use all-hands to show why an OKR is important. Repeat it. Don’t cascade without feedback from subteams. 50% bottom-up OKRs. (! what does this even mean) Connect teams with shared OKRs. Use cross-functional teams. Ensure everyone knows when OKRs are revised.

Track for Accountability

Grade honestly, especially at high levels of mgmt motivate people with measures of achievement check the OKRs regularly weekly OKR 1:1s between managers and team members you can change OKRs at any time AS CONDITIONS CHANGE (but note earlier advice to not remove OKRs you haven’t achieved) At the end of the cycle, grade the OKRs Use a collaborative, real-time goal-setting system (??)

Stretch for Amazing

Distinguish committed vs aspirational. Establish environment in which failure is ok Set goals which are possible but unlikely Use 10x OKRs for aspiration roll over the aspirational OKRs to the next cycle

Continuous Performance Management

Don’t assess performance annually - do it continually

Goal attainment shouldn’t be rewarded with bonuses (it could even be “punished” by reassigning resource elsewhere)

Notes

Product OKRs Channels product OKRs Channels engineering OKRs Channels marketing OKRs Channels sales OKRs

What is the difference between Objectives and Key Results, really? I don’t buy it It doesn’t explain the relationship between Os and KRs

This doc says “OKR” in many places where it should really say “Objective”. e.g. “Committed OKR” should really be “committed objective”.

This doc is low on examples. It’s very unclear to me what “OKRs done well” looks like.

What are the consequences of OKRs not met?

Doesn’t talk about annual/quarterly process. When do we appraise the O and score it?

When should we set individual OKRs?

Tagged .

More by Jim

What does the dot do in JavaScript?

foo.bar, foo.bar(), or foo.bar = baz - what do they mean? A deep dive into prototypical inheritance and getters/setters. 2020-11-01

Smear phishing: a new Android vulnerability

Trick Android to display an SMS as coming from any contact. Convincing phishing vuln, but still unpatched. 2020-08-06

A probabilistic pub quiz for nerds

A “true or false” quiz where you respond with your confidence level, and the optimal strategy is to report your true belief. 2020-04-26

Time is running out to catch COVID-19

Simulation shows it’s rational to deliberately infect yourself with COVID-19 early on to get treatment, but after healthcare capacity is exceeded, it’s better to avoid infection. Includes interactive parameters and visualizations. 2020-03-14

The inception bar: a new phishing method

A new phishing technique that displays a fake URL bar in Chrome for mobile. A key innovation is the “scroll jail” that traps the user in a fake browser. 2019-04-27

The hacker hype cycle

I got started with simple web development, but because enamored with increasingly esoteric programming concepts, leading to a “trough of hipster technologies” before returning to more productive work. 2019-03-23

Project C-43: the lost origins of asymmetric crypto

Bob invents asymmetric cryptography by playing loud white noise to obscure Alice’s message, which he can cancel out but an eavesdropper cannot. This idea, published in 1944 by Walter Koenig Jr., is the forgotten origin of asymmetric crypto. 2019-02-16

How Hacker News stays interesting

Hacker News buried my post on conspiracy theories in my family due to overheated discussion, not censorship. Moderation keeps the site focused on interesting technical content. 2019-01-26

My parents are Flat-Earthers

For decades, my parents have been working up to Flat-Earther beliefs. From Egyptology to Jehovah’s Witnesses to theories that human built the Moon billions of years in the future. Surprisingly, it doesn’t affect their successful lives very much. For me, it’s a fun family pastime. 2019-01-20

The dots do matter: how to scam a Gmail user

Gmail’s “dots don’t matter” feature lets scammers create an account on, say, Netflix, with your email address but different dots. Results in convincing phishing emails. 2018-04-07

The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

OpenSSL’s inadequate documentation, confusing key formats, and deprecated interfaces make it difficult to use, despite its importance. 2017-12-02

I hate telephones

I hate telephones. Some rational reasons: lack of authentication, no spam filtering, forced synchronous communication. But also just a visceral fear. 2017-11-08

The Three Ts of Time, Thought and Typing: measuring cost on the web

Businesses often tout “free” services, but the real costs come in terms of time, thought, and typing required from users. Reducing these “Three Ts” is key to improving sign-up flows and increasing conversions. 2017-10-26

Granddad died today

Granddad died. The unspoken practice of death-by-dehydration in the NHS. The Liverpool Care Pathway. Assisted dying in the UK. The importance of planning in end-of-life care. 2017-05-19

How do I call a program in C, setting up standard pipes?

A C function to create a new process, set up its standard input/output/error pipes, and return a struct containing the process ID and pipe file descriptors. 2017-02-17

Your syntax highlighter is wrong

Syntax highlighters make value judgments about code. Most highlighters judge that comments are cruft, and try to hide them. Most diff viewers judge that code deletions are bad. 2014-05-11

Want to build a fantastic product using LLMs? I work at Granola where we're building the future IDE for knowledge work. Come and work with us! Read more or get in touch!

This page copyright James Fisher 2018. Content is not associated with my employer. Found an error? Edit this page.