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This is OKR reading notes
Summarizing the must-read chapters of "This Is OKR", OKR is a set of management methods that ensure that the entire organization is focused on completing matters that are equally important to everyone.
Edited at 2021-02-13 11:46:41
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This is OKR reading notes
- bacteria
This is a mind map about bacteria, and its main contents include: overview, morphology, types, structure, reproduction, distribution, application, and expansion. The summary is comprehensive and meticulous, suitable as review materials.
- Plant asexual reproduction
This is a mind map about plant asexual reproduction, and its main contents include: concept, spore reproduction, vegetative reproduction, tissue culture, and buds. The summary is comprehensive and meticulous, suitable as review materials.
- Reproductive development of animals
This is a mind map about the reproductive development of animals, and its main contents include: insects, frogs, birds, sexual reproduction, and asexual reproduction. The summary is comprehensive and meticulous, suitable as review materials.
- Recommended to you
- Outline
This is OKR
Chapter 1 When Google meets OKR
If you don't know where your destination is, you may never get there
OKR
OKR is a set of management methods that ensure that the entire organization is focused on accomplishing things that are equally important to everyone. "
Goals should be important, specific, action-oriented, and inspiring.
Key results are the criteria for checking and monitoring how we achieve our goals. Effective key results should be specific, time-bound and challenging, but achievable. Most importantly, they must be measurable and verifiable.
OKR reflects the company's main goal, can guide employees to work together and collaborate, connect different businesses together, and provide clear goals and cohesion for the entire organization.
OKRs clarify expectations: what needs to be done (as soon as possible) and who will do it. OKR allows employees to align their vertical and horizontal goals.
Theoretical research support
Edwin Locke's "difficult goals" tend to be more effective in improving performance than easy goals; secondly, specific, difficult goals tend to "bring higher output" than vague goals. [
Clear, challenging goals can indeed increase productivity.
A two-year study by Deloitte found that no single factor is more important than "clearly defined goals that are documented and freely shared." Goals ensure consistency, clarity, and increase job satisfaction.
“If goal priorities conflict, are unclear, make no sense, or are changed haphazardly, employees will become frustrated, cynical, and demotivated.” [
OKR’s Four Great Tools
Tool 1 – Focus and Commitment to Priorities
Weapon 2 - Collaboration and connection in team work
Tool 3 - Responsibility Tracking
Weapon 4 - Fully extend and challenge the impossible
Chapter 4 Tool 1: Focus and Commitment to Priorities
It is our choices, not our abilities, that reveal who we are. J. K. Rowling
While whittling down your bucket list is always challenging, it’s worth it. As any experienced leader will tell you: no one person or company can “do it all.” By choosing a set of OKRs, we can highlight a few things—important things that must be done according to plan and on time.
Communicate clearly “When you go out of your way to emphasize something multiple times, team members may actually start to listen to you.”
Key results are the levers that pull the goal and the nodes in the process of achieving the goal. If the goal setting is more scientific, 3 to 5 key results are usually enough to ensure the achievement of the goal. Too many goals tend to dilute focus and hinder expected progress.
Perfection and Excellence Don’t let perfection be the enemy of excellence. [11] Remember, at any point in the OKR cycle, previous settings can be modified or even completely discarded. Sometimes, the “right” key results emerge within weeks or months of putting in the work.
The OKR system should provide the most outstanding thing for the enterprise, that is, "focus." Only when we keep the number of goals small can we really focus on this.
OKR is neither a wish list of everything that needs to be accomplished nor the sum total of the team’s daily tasks.
Simplicity and focus are at the heart of what we call First Tool.
Chapter 7 Weapon 2: Collaboration and connection in team work
Steve Jobs: Don’t hire smart people and tell them what to do; let them tell us what to do.
transparent
At any given time, a significant number of people in an organization are doing the wrong thing. The real challenge for us is to know what these wrong things are. "
Goals in an organization that are made public are often easier to achieve than those that remain secretive, and simply pressing the "open" button can increase the overall likelihood of goal achievement. [
Transparency can also sow the seeds of collaboration in an organization and promote collaboration among employees.
By removing invisible barriers between everyone's goals, OKR systems expose repetitive and redundant tasks, saving organizations significant time and money.
Collaboration
Collaboration is scarce in organizations. Research shows that only 7% of employees fully understand the company's business strategy and what the company expects them to do in order to achieve common goals. [
Focused, transparent OKRs. OKRs connect each person's work to team work, department projects, and the overall organizational mission.
Example: Fantasy Football Team
Hierarchy and correlation: Moderate levels of hierarchy and correlation can often make organizational operations more coordinated, but when all goals are overly interconnected along the organizational hierarchy, the process may degenerate into a mechanical, purely numerical activity. , will bring adverse effects in four aspects.
loss of agility
lack of flexibility
Employees are marginalized: In a top-down ecosystem, employees are hesitant to share goals-related problems or promising ideas.
Single-dimensional connections: When levels and connections are concentrated vertically, the effectiveness of horizontal and horizontal connections in the organization will be greatly reduced.
Activate grassroots
Cross-level: Because OKR is highly transparent, goals can be shared as long as each level is not complacent in the association process. A goal can skip multiple levels if it serves a larger goal.
exception
Since the top-level OKRs are well-known and the OKRs of everyone on the team are publicly visible, goals will naturally align over time. This way, situations where the team's goals are not aligned with the overall goals will appear more intrusive, and major initiatives that involve everyone will be easier to manage directly. [
Google's "20% time" work system may be a classic exception to the principles of hierarchy and association. Project "Reindeer" - Gmail
Excessive goal synergy may also create compulsion in the organization, thereby causing mental harm to organizational members. To avoid this, healthy organizations tend to encourage certain goals to emerge from the bottom up.
Innovation is often more likely to occur at the edges of an organization than at its center. In other words, the most powerful power of the OKR system often comes from insights outside the core management.
The ideal OKR system often allows employees to independently set some goals and most or all key results. OKR can guide organizational members to expand to a higher and further scope,
The same goal has different driving effects on the same person when it comes from different sources.
In business practice, there is rarely a single right answer. Freeing people's minds and supporting them to find the right answers is key to how we help everyone succeed. High-performing teams will maintain creative tension between top-down and bottom-up goal setting paths, strive to maintain creative tension between collaborative and relatively less collaborative OKR systems, and achieve team growth. And development.
cross-functional coordination
Unacknowledged dependencies that remain in the organization are the number one reason for declining project performance. The solution to this problem is to enable horizontal, cross-functional, peer-to-peer and team-to-team connections in the organization. For innovative and relatively complex problems, the ability of isolated individuals to solve problems is not comparable to that of interconnected groups.
Perfect and smooth connections often enable companies to respond faster. To gain a competitive advantage, leaders and employees alike need to connect laterally and break down barriers. A transparent OKR system can promote this kind of free collaboration
As long as the goal is publicly visible to everyone, "every squad on the team" can solve any problem they encounter. And the management tax is zero
Chapter 10 Weapon 3: Responsibility Tracking
Deming: We believe in God. Everyone but God must speak with data.
OKR life cycle 3 stages
Startup: Need a good system
Example: This company’s 82,000 employees all dutifully record annual goals in electronic folders, which means that changes in OKRs each quarter will generate 328,000 documents throughout the year. In theory, these goals are public, but who has the patience to look for connections or consistency between goals? If no one can see the goals you share, can the system be considered transparent?
Goals cannot be tied to everyday tasks. At the same time, the goals are not updated in a timely manner, which makes these goals not very relevant, which also leads to the growing gap between plans and reality. At the end of each quarter (or even worse, the end of the year), we are left with “zombie” OKRs that are purely theoretical and meaningless.
Excellent OKR system
1. The OKR system makes everyone’s goals clearer. Users have direct access to the goals of their boss, direct supervisor, and the entire organization in the OKR system.
2. The OKR system is helpful in driving team enthusiasm. It's easier to stay motivated and motivated when employees know they're doing the right thing.
3. The OKR system helps improve internal network efficiency. Transparent platforms can guide individuals to work with colleagues who share their professional interests.
4. The OKR system helps save time, money, and reduce frustration. Traditional goal setting methods waste a lot of time on things like meeting minutes, emails, electronic documents, and slides. With an OKR management platform, all relevant information can be ready when needed.
Track all the time
OKR Mentor
OKR systems do not require daily tracking, but regular checks - preferably weekly - are necessary to prevent performance degradation.
Without an action plan, managers become prisoners of business matters. Without checkpoints to review plans as the business grows, managers have no way of knowing which business items are truly important and which are just distractions. "[
Adaptability is a core feature of the OKR system. 4 choices and additional instructions
Continue: If the target is in the green area, it means the target is tracking normally and there is no need to adjust it.
Update: If a goal is in the yellow zone, it reminds us that the goal needs "special attention" and that key results or goals need to be adjusted to adapt to changes in workflow or external environment.
Start: You can restart a new mid-term OKR at any time if necessary.
Stop: If the goal is in the red zone, it indicates that there is a great "risk" in achieving the goal. The current goal is no longer useful, and the best solution may be to give up.
Although the OKR system provides a positive driving force for many people, it can also prevent us from going further in the wrong direction.
When a key result or goal becomes obsolete or unrealistic, end it immediately. There's no need to stubbornly cling to an outdated prediction - delete it from your list and move on. Goals serve a purpose, not something else.
When an objective is removed before the end of the OKR evaluation cycle, it is important to notify everyone associated with it. This also brings us to a little reflection: What was there that I didn’t foresee when we started this quarter? What lessons can I learn that will guide me in the future?
In order to achieve the best results, subordinates and managers must conduct detailed checks on OKR several times every quarter, including reporting progress, identifying obstacles, improving key results, etc. In addition to one-on-one inspections, teams and departments also need to hold regular meetings to evaluate progress toward common goals one by one. If a promised OKR fails, the team develops a remediation plan.
Summary: Clear and Repeat
Objective assessment
0.7~1.0 points = green (goal completed) [8] 0.4~0.6 points = yellow (goal made progress, but not completed) 0~0.3 points = red (goal failed)
self assessment
The purpose of the evaluation is not to distinguish whether the target results fall in the red, yellow or green zone, but to use this evaluation to let them see how everything they do connects to the company's overall goals. After all, goals and key results are there to get everyone to do the right thing. "
OKR scoring clarifies what went right and wrong in the work and how the team can improve. Self-assessment can better drive the setting of goals for the next quarter. Here, there is no criticism, only learning.
A transparent and open culture is important
Reflection
OKR is action-oriented, but if you just keep working hard without occasionally stopping to reflect, it is no different from the "hamster wheel" that never stops.
Dewey: We do not learn from experience, but by reflecting on it. "[
Have I accomplished all my goals? If so, what contributed to my success? If not, what obstacles have I encountered? If I were to rewrite a complete goal, what would need to change? What lessons have I learned that can help me formulate OKRs for the next cycle more effectively?
After you've thoroughly evaluated your work and identified your shortcomings, take a deep breath and enjoy your progress.
Chapter 12 Weapon 4: Challenge the Impossible
The biggest risk is doing nothing.
OKR pushes us away from our comfort zone, leads us beyond the boundaries of our abilities, and keeps moving closer to our dreams. It can discover new capabilities and breed more creative solutions, while also promoting innovation in business models.
Bill Campbell: “If companies don’t continually innovate, they will perish—note that I said innovation, not repetition.”
"Big Hairy Audacious Goals" (BHAG): BHAG is an audacious goal, and it is also like a huge mountain waiting to be conquered. It is clearly visible and extremely tempting, a place that people long to “reach” immediately. This ambitious goal focuses everyone’s attention and efforts
Locke: The more challenging the goal is, the better the results will be. Although the gap between high-difficulty goals and their output results is usually greater than the gap between low-difficulty goals and their output results, the final results achieved by the former are still better than those by the latter. "
Achieving ambitious goals relies on the tremendous power generated by the OKR system. Focus and commitment are necessary to achieve your goals and achieve true differentiation. Only organizations that are transparent, collaborative, have consistent goals, and have high internal connections can go further and longer than other conventional organizations.
Two “baskets” of OKR
commitment goals
Commitment goals are closely linked to Google's daily assessment indicators. These commitment goals (such as sales goals and revenue goals) should be completed (100%) within the specified time.
Visionary (challenge) goals
Challenging goals reflect a bigger picture, higher risk, and a greater focus on the future. They can come from any level and aim to mobilize enthusiasm and energy throughout the organization. It is not difficult to see from the definition of challenging goals that they are extremely difficult to achieve (the average failure rate is 40%)
The relative weight of these two baskets is closely related to organizational culture
example:
Intel 8086
Gmail: Larry Page pointed out: "Most people tend to think that something is impossible, rather than going back to the roots of the real world to find opportunities to make it possible."
A 10% improvement means you are like everyone else and you are doing the same thing. You may not fail, but you can never be too successful either. That's why Page expects Google employees to create products and services that are 10 times better than their competitors.
At Google, according to Andy Grove’s original standards, the probability of ambitious OKRs being achieved is usually 60% to 70%. In other words, at least 30% of goals are considered unattainable when they are set.
Adjustment of challenging goals: When pursuing high-effort, high-risk goals, employee recognition is crucial. Leaders must communicate two things to their employees: the importance of the results and the firm belief that the results can be achieved. [
Chapter 15 Continuous Performance Management: OKR and CFR
CFR emphasizes transparency, accountability, empowerment and teamwork at all levels of the organization
CFR
Conversation: Real, high-quality communication between managers and employees, designed to drive performance improvement.
Feedback: Two-way communication between colleagues face-to-face or online to evaluate work progress and discuss future improvements.
Recognition: Reciprocal recognition based on the size of an individual's contribution.
Example: PACT’s continuous performance management
A friendly breakup: Separate compensation and OKRs
For companies that are ready to promote and implement a continuous performance management system, the first step is to separate salary from OKR. Neither salary increase nor bonus can be directly related to OKR, because they are two different things. The dialogue mechanisms have their own rhythms and cycles.
Continuous performance management is an ongoing, forward-looking conversation between leaders and employees, usually centered on five questions:
what are you doing?
How are you doing? How are your OKRs going?
Are there any obstacles in your work?
What do you need from me to help you achieve your goals?
What help do you need to achieve your career goals?
Because OKRs properly reflect the value of a person's work, they are a reliable source of periodic feedback. But when goals are tied directly to pay, employees have no expectations. They become defensive, they become disengaged and lose motivation to produce better results, and then feel idle due to a lack of challenge, and the organization is the ultimate victim of this behavior.
At Google, according to Laszlo Bock, OKR only accounts for 1/3 or even less of the performance appraisal.
At present, we have not invented any formula that can be used to accurately explain complex human behaviors, because judgments of others are subjective and mixed with personal factors. In many work scenarios today, OKR and salary are "good friends". They go together and never separate. However, they do not need to "live" together, which may be healthier.
Dialogue: Dialogue between managers and employees typically occurs in five key areas.
1. Goal setting and reflection: Employees’ OKR plans are set for the upcoming cycle, and the focus of discussion should be on how to most effectively integrate personal goals and key results with the organization’s top priorities.
2. Continuous progress updates: Rely on data to quickly supervise the real-time progress of employees' work, and be ready to solve problems at any time. [
3. Two-way coaching: Help employees realize their potential and help managers reach the next level.
4. Career development: Help employees improve their skills, discover opportunities for growth, and let them see room for future promotion in the company.
5. Lightweight performance evaluation: This is a feedback mechanism that uses organizational needs as a benchmark to summarize and compare organizational input and employee output since the last meeting. (As noted, this conversation has nothing to do with employee annual compensation and bonuses.)
feedback
Today’s employees want to be “empowered” and “motivated” rather than have their managers tell them what to do. They want to express their opinions to their managers, rather than working hard for a year only to learn at the end of the day whether their managers have praised or criticized their performance.
Feedback can be very constructive, but only if it is specific enough. Positive feedback and negative feedback
Approval
Ongoing recognition is a powerful driver of engagement
Encourage recognition among colleagues.
Establish clear standards.
Share stories that build a sense of identity.
Increase the frequency and availability of recognition.
Recognition of company goals and strategies.
Chapter 18 Culture
Bezos: You need a culture that encourages innovation, no matter how small.
Andy Grove: Simply put, culture is a set of values and beliefs that govern how things are done in a company. The root of a company's success lies in building a positive and strong corporate culture.
A healthy culture and structured goal setting are interdependent and go hand in hand in the pursuit of excellence.
Collective responsibility, fearless risk-taking and measurable results are core values that Andy Grove values
Project Aristotle conducted research at Google and found that team performance is closely related to the following five questions.
1. Structure and Clarity: Are our team’s goals, roles, and execution plan clear and defined?
2. Psychological safety: Do we feel safe and comfortable taking risks in this team?
3. Meaning of work: Are we doing something important to each of us?
4. Reliability: Can we trust each other to deliver high-quality work on time?
5. Impact of work: Do we sincerely believe that the work we do is truly meaningful?
OKR culture is a culture that emphasizes responsibility. You will not just deal with things just because your boss gives you orders, but will do your best to complete each goal seriously, not only because they are vital to the company, but also because you cannot let down the team members who trust you .
Resource 1 Google’s internal OKR template
OKRs are big, they’re not incremental—we don’t have to achieve them all. (If so, we're not being aggressive enough.) We measure our performance with colored progress bars:
0~0.3 points are red
0.4~0.6 points are yellow
0.7~1.0 points are green
First, the “what” is the goal. Be clear about goals and intentions. Be aggressive, but be realistic.
Goals must be tangible, objective, and clear. It should be obvious to a rational observer whether the goal has been achieved.
Successful achievement of goals must bring clear value to the company.
Second, key results mean “how”.
Set measurable milestones that, if achieved, will advance goals in an efficient manner.
Be sure to describe results, not actions (activities). If OKRs contain words such as "consult," "help," "analyze," or "participate," such descriptions actually refer to actions (activities). Instead, describe the impact these activities have on end users.
Complete evidence must be included. The evidence must be available, credible and perceptible.
Cross-team OKR: Cross-team OKR should be completed by all teams that substantially participate in the OKR, and each team's OKR should be clearly presented in the OKR of the entire project.
Commitment OKR and Vision OKR
Commitment OKR refers to OKR that we will definitely achieve, and it is a goal that we are willing to adjust our working hours and resource allocation to ensure that it is achieved. The expected score for the Commitment OKR metric should be 1.0. If the score is less than 1.0, you need to explain the reason for the unfinished part, because it indicates that there is some mistake in the team's planning or execution of the plan.
Visionary OKRs express our expectations for changes in the world. However, we may not know exactly how to get there and the resources necessary to achieve this OKR. The average score of visionary OKR indicators is 0.7, and the variance is large.
Mistakes and Pitfalls of OKR Settings
Trap 1: Failure to correctly differentiate between commitment-based OKRs and vision-based OKRs
On the one hand, treating commitment-based OKRs as vision-based OKRs will generally increase the risk of failure. The team may not value it and may not change its business priorities to focus on the achievement of this OKR.
On the other hand, mistaking vision-based OKRs for commitment-based OKRs can create artificial obstacles that prevent the team from effectively finding a path to achieve the OKRs, and may lead to a reversal of priorities that detracts from the commitment to deliver on the promise. People with OKRs focus instead on visionary OKRs.
Trap 2: OKR settings as always
OKRs are often set based on what the team believes can be achieved "without changing anything they are currently working on" rather than on the results that the team or customers really want.
Trap 3: Fearful and visionary OKR setting
Litmus test: When asking customers what they want, have the company's expectations met or even exceeded the customer's needs?
Trap 4: Moving forward with a heavy load
If a team can meet all OKRs without utilizing all team members or resources, it simply means they are either hoarding resources, not setting challenging goals, or both.
Trap 5: Low-value goals (OKRs that no one cares about)
Litmus test: Can the OKR reasonably achieve a score of 1.0 without providing direct end-user benefit or financial benefit? If you can, then reset OKRs to focus on tangible benefits.
Trap 6: Suboptimal key results for committed goals
A common mistake is that the setting of key results is valuable, but the goals cannot be fully achieved through effective collaboration.
This trap is extremely harmful because it prevents people from discovering the resources needed to achieve their goals in time, and they cannot discover in time that they cannot complete the corresponding goals as planned.
Litmus test: Is it possible to score 1.0 on all key results and still not achieve the true intent of the goal? If this is a possibility, key results will need to be added or reset until their successful completion is sufficient to ensure that the objective will also be successfully completed.
Reading, understanding and executing OKRs
Commitment OKR
If your commitment OKR doesn’t reach 1.0 when the deadline comes, then it needs to be revisited. This is not to punish the team, but to let the team understand where they made mistakes in the planning and execution of OKRs, thereby helping them improve their ability to achieve 1.0 points in the process of executing committed OKRs.
Commitment OKRs are graded to ensure that the service will meet the service level agreement for that quarter, or that some clear functionality or improvements to the infrastructure will be achieved by a certain date, or that a certain amount will be manufactured and delivered at a certain cost point. number of servers.
Visionary OKR
Visionary OKRs and their associated priority goals should remain on the team’s OKR list until completed. They can be carried from one quarter to the next when necessary. Removing them from the OKR list due to slow progress is a mistake because it can lead to misprioritization of goals, misjudgment of resource availability, or a lack of completeness to fully understand the problem.
If a team has the expertise and bandwidth to complete the OKR more efficiently than the current OKR executor, then it may be a better option to move the OKR to that team's list.
More touchstones
·If you can write them all down in five minutes, they probably won’t be of very good quality and require a little more thought.
·If the goals you set are not internally consistent, they may not be mature enough.
·If the key result is expressed in internal team terms (such as releasing Foo 4.1), then it may not be good enough. What really matters is not the release, but its impact. Why is Foo 4.1 important? A better statement would be "increase registration rates by 25% with the release of Foo 4.1" or simply "increase registration rates".
·Apply real data. If every key result happens on the last day of the quarter, you probably aren't really completing the plan.
·Ensure key results are measurable: An objective grade measure must be assigned at the end of each quarter. “Increase registration rates” is not a good key result. Relatively speaking, a better expression would be “to achieve a 25% increase in daily registration rate before May 1st.”
·Make sure the metrics are clear and unambiguous. If we say "1 million users", does it mean reaching 1 million users within the entire target period, or does it mean reaching 1 million weekly active users?
·If there are important activities on the team (or essential to accomplishing the goal) that are not covered by OKRs, add them.
·For larger organizations, OKRs need to be hierarchically divided - for the entire team, high-level OKRs need to be developed; for sub-teams, detailed OKRs need to be developed. Ensure “horizontal” OKRs (projects that require participation from multiple teams) support each sub-team’s key results.