Not just ‘measurable key results’, ‘but right & measurable key results’ gets objective accomplished.

Many organizations today practice OKR (Objectives and Key Results) to attain organizational objective. OKR is a very simple but very powerful framework which can help to keep marching towards objective and to measure if we are headed in the right direction.

Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel and who is called father of OKR, said Objective should be “Qualitative, Time-bound, Actionable, and Ambitious.” Notice the term ‘ambitious’ in this statement. So, Objective should not be something which can be achieved very easily or is too obvious to happen anyway.

Every Objective may have another subset level of Objectives associated. For example, there can be Organization level objective and then each department can define their own objective, aligning to organizational objective. Similarly, team’s within the department can have their own Objective too. An important point is that Objectives are not simply cascaded till end; Departments or Team’s can have some specific objective too which is not clearly called out at top level. But every Objective at each level ‘must have’ key results associated to them to measure progress and success. A Key Results must be quantifiable, objectively gradable, ambitious, and achievable. John Doerr, author of ‘Measure What Matters’ says — “The Objective is what you want accomplished. The Key Result is ‘how I’m gonna get that done.”

Google undoubtedly is pioneer in adopting OKR framework and it has worked very well for them. Outlining importance of OKR framework, Dick Costolo, the former CEO of Twitter, said in an interview:

“The thing that I saw at Google that I definitely have applied at Twitter are OKRS-Objectives and Key Results. Those are a great way to help everyone in the company understand what’s important, and how you’re going to measure what’s important. It’s essentially a great way to communicate strategy and how you’re going to measure strategy. And that’s how we try to use them. As you grow a company, the single hardest thing to scale is communication. It’s remarkably difficult. OKRs are a great way to make sure everyone understands how you’re going to measure success and strategy.”

Remember once again that an Objective must be ambiguous. And Andy Grove said in this regard that “70% is the new 100%.” Which means that encourage employees to target a tough objective and even if they achieve 70% of it, that’s a good achievement. The point which is very important in this aspect is that how management is implementing OKR framework. If OKR framework will be tied to employee appraisal process, employees will always be afraid to commit for any big-bold objectives as they will fear failure and as a result will fear bad appraisal. Organizations focused on growth mindset must create an environment where employees are not afraid to take calculated risks.

Now since we know that ‘Key Results’ in OKR play an important role and can help organizations to track progress towards objectives effectively, question is how to define Key Objective? There are multiple ways in which ‘Key Results’ are defined. Mostly results are in form of getting some milestone/activity completed or achieving some measurable results. But question again is that just having a measurable key result which may help in getting objective fulfilled is enough or some thought process is required to even judge that ‘measurable key result’ is the ‘right key result’ or not? Let’s try to understand this with two examples — one from today’s time and one from mythology.

Today, fitness is a big thing in everyone’s mind. When defining personal life objectives, specifically for people crossing age of 35, fitness becomes one of the top priorities. In the era or technology, we have so many gadgets to track our fitness level. More often I have seen my friends having objective to be healthy which they measure by immunity level or using any other measure. Now while defining key objective to attain this objective, they will say that step count in my smartwatch must cross 20K steps daily. If we analyze this objective, this is measurable. This will also help to get objective achieved. But is this the right key result? I have seen many friends who if forget to wear smartwatch someday, will not go for walk as they think steps will not get counted or tracked. So focus here is not on walking which is the main driver towards objective but it shifts on how to track the steps in smartwatch which is wrong.

In Mahabharat when war became certain between Pandav and Kaurav, both sides were trying to add more power on their side. Objective was very clear on both sides that they had to win the war. Adding warriors, arms, support were the key results which could get them to the objective. In this process Duryodan who was leading Kaurav’s side and Arjun who was from Pandav’s side, went to Krishn to request for this support. Krishn did not want to appear as biased so he offered Duryodhan two choices. Both were very clearly measurable. One option was that you can take my army which was two akshauhini (An akshauhini is described in the Mahabharat as a battle formation consisting of 21,870 chariots; 21,870 elephants; 65,610 horses and 109,350 infantry). Another option is that I will be on your side, but I will not fight.

Duryodhan was given first priority to choose from the options. If we analyze strength of both sides. Kaurav’s had strength of nine akshauhini and Pandava’s had strength of seven akshauhini. So addition of two akshauhini of Krishn on Pandav’s side would have made strength equal but they would have advantage of having Krishn on their side. On the other hand, if two akshauhini of Krishn was added on Kaurav’s side, Pandav’s would have been outnumbered by a big margin. Yes, Pandav’s would have Krishn, but he would not fight. Both options had a very clear key results associated. If we analyze options given by Krishn, they were ‘Power’ and ‘Wisdom’. He said if you choose power, you will not have my wisdom on your side; my army will just follow your orders. If you choose Wisdom, you will be less by two akshauhini in power but you will have strategy from me. Also point to note is that whatever name and fame Krishn got, was all by his own. He killed many demons alone. There was no success on his name which was attributed to his army. He proved himself so many times that he was visionary and a great strategist.

Duryodhan, made a decision in favor of power and we all know end result that he lost the war. In summary even if key results are measurable; its not easy to make right decision unless we are aware of the big picture and all influencers which can make or break the objective. We say that periodical checkpoints on ‘Key Results’ helps to take corrective actions but in most cases, by the time negative impact is noticed, it’s not feasible to revert the decision or take corrective action.

Objectives and Key Results must be defined collectively at team level. Everyone must contribute. But leaders who are leading the organization or department or a team should contribute in this process with the vision and bigger picture they have in mind. They should also evaluate if the key results identified are just ‘measurable’ or is ‘right & measurable’. In today’s competitive world, option to fail is not there and stakes of failing are very high so Right Objectives and ‘Right & Measurable Key Results’ must be selected.