Google re: Work - Manual: Setting Goals with OKR (Translation)
Below is a translation of the Google manual re: Work - Guide: Set goals with OKRs . I decided not to write from scratch another general overview on OKR, but simply to translate this, at the moment, the most authoritative guide to OKR, and supplement it with links and my own materials on OKR , which include several abstracts of the attached Google Ventures video in Russian language.
Update: In November 2017, Rick Klaw wrote a series of tweets, which significantly corrects some points from his 2012 presentation, the video of which is presented below: Google OKR Video five years later - an overview of Google Ventures' experience in implementing OKR (2012-2017)
Studies have shown that commitment to the goal helps to increase productivity. If you look more deeply, research finds that setting challenging and well-defined goals can further increase employee engagement in achieving these goals. Google often uses “goals and key results” - “Objectives and Key Results” (OKRs), trying to set ambitious goals and track progress towards them.
')
In practice, the use of OKR differs from other methods of goal setting because of the desire to set very ambitious goals. In this application, OKR allows teams to focus on larger challenges and achieve more than they thought possible, even if they did not fully achieve their goal. OKR can help teams and individuals to get out of their comfort zone, prioritize their work, and learn both from successes and failures.
As former Intel CEO Andy Grove noted in his book “High Performance Management” (note: added a link to the Russian abstract, at the bottom of that page there are links to the original and the translation of the text of the book) , there are two questions that need to be answered to successfully configure the system collective goals such as OKR:
John Dorr , one of Google’s initial investors and current board member, learned about OKR from Andy Grove while working at Intel. Dorr said that when he joined Intel, the company moved from memory production to microprocessor manufacturing, and Grove and the management team needed an approach that would help employees focus on prioritization to ensure the success of this transition. OKR helped them communicate these priorities, maintain consistency, and perform this switching.
Decades later, in early 2000, Dorr introduced OKR to Google’s executives, who saw their value and began testing them over the next two quarters. Today, Google sets up annual and quarterly OKR and holds quarterly company meetings to ensure public accessibility and OKR evaluation.
OKR is used far outside of Silicon Valley in a wide variety of organizations. Sears Holding, a Fortune 100 company , implemented OKR for its 20,000 employees, which had a positive effect on total sales and individual efficiency . Meanwhile, a relatively small IT team at McKinnon Secondary College in Australia uses OKR, improving team concentration and interaction (note: replaced the broken link) .
Google often sets goals that are beyond the threshold of what seems possible, sometimes called “stretch goals” - “ambitious goals” (a more accurate translation is “goals that require total commitment”). Creating unreachable goals is quite difficult, as they can be viewed as preparing the team for failure. However, more often, such goals tend to attract the best people and create the most interesting working conditions.
Moreover, if you mark high, even failure to achieve a goal usually leads to significant improvements.
Such ambitious goals are the building blocks for outstanding achievements in the long term, a kind of "mission to the moon."
An important part of OKR is their transparency. When introducing OKR into an organization, it would be helpful to understand what they are, why they can be useful and how they will be used. Research shows that efficiency is higher when people are committed to their goals , so it will be important that everyone be involved.
Consistency Once an organization knows what it is focused on and how it will measure success, it becomes easier for people to associate their projects with the goals of the organization.
Discipline and prioritization. It can be difficult for any team in a company to say no to a good idea, a project that is worth attention, or a necessary improvement. Once everyone agrees on what are the most important goals, it becomes easier to say no to less important ideas. Saying no is not a political or emotional discussion, it becomes a rational response to a commitment that the entire organization has already made.
Communication. OKR should be publicly available within the organization so that each employee knows the goals of the organization and indicators of success. Dick Costolo, a former Google employee and CEO of Twitter, was asked in an interview: “What did you learn from Google that you used on Twitter?” , To which he replied (note: replaced the broken link; this issue is being discussed at 12 minute video) :
When setting goals, Google often starts with organizational OKR and coordinates priorities using from three to five goals with about three key results for each goal. Successful OKRs often come from a combination of top-down and bottom-up sentences, allowing people from the entire organization to voice what they think is worth the time and how they can best use their efforts.
The development of OKR, setting clear goals, measured by agreed outcomes, can push teams to achieve great success and focus the organization’s attention on top priorities. Poorly written OKRs can create an intricate strategy, question internal indicators, and encourage teams to maintain the status quo. When developing OKR, try to avoid the following pitfalls:
Although there may be different approaches, it will be useful to first set the goals of the organization so that teams and individuals can set their own goals to support these larger goals. This will help create coherence across the organization. The next solution - how many levels of “command” OKR are needed for the organization - are OKR necessary for a separate deportament, functions and subgroups?
For the purposes of the team level, you need to realize that not every OKR organization needs to be displayed in the OKR of each team. It is possible that the OKR team will focus on only one OKR organization. However, there must be some relationship between the OKR team and at least one of the OKR organizations.
One way to establish these OKR teams is to arrange a meeting of all team leaders for goal setting. At Google, team leaders sometimes list priorities for the upcoming quarter in the context of the company's OKR. When creating these priorities, it is useful to pay attention to the organization's OKR and check:
Another thing that OKR are not is a checklist. They are not intended to be the main task list, consisting of everything the team will work on during the quarter. If a team sees this as a collective task list, it can lead to becoming overly focused on what the team wants to do, rather than what the team wants to accomplish. Use OKR to determine the effect the team wants to see, and allow the teams to come up with methods to achieve this effect.
Google OKR is usually ranked on a scale from 0.0 to 1.0, a score of 1.0 means that the goal has been fully achieved. Each individual key result is evaluated, and then, using an approximate average value, respectively, the goal is evaluated. This estimate is described as “approximate” because sometimes some weight parameters are taken into account for different results. Sometimes the key results are either 0 or 1 - if the key result was “Launch a new widget marketing campaign”, the end result may be either that it is running or not. Some of them are more discrete — if the key result is “Run six new functions”, and only three new functions were launched, OKR can be rated as 0.5. This is not a science, but it is important to be honest and, to the highest degree, consistent in the assessment process.
What to consider when evaluating OKR:
Use and adapt this table for OKR estimation and calculation of total estimates.
DOWNLOAD PDF OPEN AS GOOGLE DOC
Use and adapt this document for recording and evaluating OKR
DOWNLOAD PDF OPEN AS GOOGLE DOC
OKRs serve to help set a strategy for a company at Google - they are a set of goals that a company wants to achieve. To this end, some teams believe that it is best to review them several times a quarter. Thus, they can serve as a calibration tool, giving everyone the opportunity to adapt to new information, abandon goals that are clearly not achieved, and pay more attention to goals at the frontier of the possible, which will receive their help in implementing by attracting additional resources. Here is an example of a graph showing how a command might fit an OKR installation:
Mid-November - Brainstorm the first quarter goals
end of November - Make a decision about fixing and sharing OKR within the organization
mid-December - inform OKR of the entire company for the first quarter and year
mid-January - make personal OKR drafts
end of January - present OKR at the general meeting of the company
mid-February - managers track individual OKR
How often the team will check will depend on what are their own needs, tied to the time of year, how well the communication within the team is already built and how well the team acts regarding the prediction of results based on the possibility of their implementation.
Some teams at Google have found that reconciliations in the middle of an interval are useful and can guarantee that everyone will focus on the same goals. For some teams, an informal review of quarter goals is sufficient; for others, a more formal approach is acceptable.
The Google Ventures team shared some information that Google learned about using OKR, with comments from its portfolio. Rick Klaw, a partner at Google Ventures, presented this presentation to many startups who are learning OKR for the first time. The presentation presents the basics of what OKR is, how they can help a fast-growing startup to stay focused and what needs to be avoided when mastering the OKR.
Update: In November 2017, Rick Klaw wrote a series of tweets, which significantly corrects some points from his 2012 presentation, the video of which is presented below: Google OKR Video five years later - an overview of Google Ventures' experience in implementing OKR (2012-2017)
Introduction
Studies have shown that commitment to the goal helps to increase productivity. If you look more deeply, research finds that setting challenging and well-defined goals can further increase employee engagement in achieving these goals. Google often uses “goals and key results” - “Objectives and Key Results” (OKRs), trying to set ambitious goals and track progress towards them.
')
OKR - Short Review
- Goals are ambitious and may feel somewhat uncomfortable.
- Key results are measurable and should be easily evaluable by number (Google uses a scale from 0 to 1.0)
- OKRs are publicly available, so that everyone within the organization can see what others are working on.
- The “hit on the bull's eye” for a preliminary assessment of OKR is the achievement of 60-70% of it. If someone repeatedly achieves their goals, then their OKR are not ambitious enough, and they need to think more ambitiously.
- Low scores should be considered as data to clarify further OKR.
- OKR is not synonymous with employee assessment.
- OKR is not a collective list of the following cases.
In practice, the use of OKR differs from other methods of goal setting because of the desire to set very ambitious goals. In this application, OKR allows teams to focus on larger challenges and achieve more than they thought possible, even if they did not fully achieve their goal. OKR can help teams and individuals to get out of their comfort zone, prioritize their work, and learn both from successes and failures.
OKR - a brief history
As former Intel CEO Andy Grove noted in his book “High Performance Management” (note: added a link to the Russian abstract, at the bottom of that page there are links to the original and the translation of the text of the book) , there are two questions that need to be answered to successfully configure the system collective goals such as OKR:
- Where do I want to go? This answer gives the goal (“objective”)
- How will I evaluate my progress to where I want to go? The answer gives the stages of promotion, or key results (“key results”)
John Dorr , one of Google’s initial investors and current board member, learned about OKR from Andy Grove while working at Intel. Dorr said that when he joined Intel, the company moved from memory production to microprocessor manufacturing, and Grove and the management team needed an approach that would help employees focus on prioritization to ensure the success of this transition. OKR helped them communicate these priorities, maintain consistency, and perform this switching.
Decades later, in early 2000, Dorr introduced OKR to Google’s executives, who saw their value and began testing them over the next two quarters. Today, Google sets up annual and quarterly OKR and holds quarterly company meetings to ensure public accessibility and OKR evaluation.
OKR is used far outside of Silicon Valley in a wide variety of organizations. Sears Holding, a Fortune 100 company , implemented OKR for its 20,000 employees, which had a positive effect on total sales and individual efficiency . Meanwhile, a relatively small IT team at McKinnon Secondary College in Australia uses OKR, improving team concentration and interaction (note: replaced the broken link) .
OKR and ambitious goals
Google often sets goals that are beyond the threshold of what seems possible, sometimes called “stretch goals” - “ambitious goals” (a more accurate translation is “goals that require total commitment”). Creating unreachable goals is quite difficult, as they can be viewed as preparing the team for failure. However, more often, such goals tend to attract the best people and create the most interesting working conditions.
Moreover, if you mark high, even failure to achieve a goal usually leads to significant improvements.
Such ambitious goals are the building blocks for outstanding achievements in the long term, a kind of "mission to the moon."
Implementing OKR in your organization
An important part of OKR is their transparency. When introducing OKR into an organization, it would be helpful to understand what they are, why they can be useful and how they will be used. Research shows that efficiency is higher when people are committed to their goals , so it will be important that everyone be involved.
Tips for introducing to OKR:
- What is OKR? Cover the basics of what OKR is and how they work.
- Why use OKR? Give an overview of how the organization is currently approaching goal setting, as well as all the limitations and problems of this approach.
- How do OKR work? Explain the sequence of what is expected of each person, what are the main steps and how people will be accountable.
- Still skeptical about OKR? Leave time for questions, with particular emphasis on identifying any skepticism.
Consistency Once an organization knows what it is focused on and how it will measure success, it becomes easier for people to associate their projects with the goals of the organization.
Discipline and prioritization. It can be difficult for any team in a company to say no to a good idea, a project that is worth attention, or a necessary improvement. Once everyone agrees on what are the most important goals, it becomes easier to say no to less important ideas. Saying no is not a political or emotional discussion, it becomes a rational response to a commitment that the entire organization has already made.
Communication. OKR should be publicly available within the organization so that each employee knows the goals of the organization and indicators of success. Dick Costolo, a former Google employee and CEO of Twitter, was asked in an interview: “What did you learn from Google that you used on Twitter?” , To which he replied (note: replaced the broken link; this issue is being discussed at 12 minute video) :
“The thing that I saw on Google, and which I definitely applied on Twitter, is OKR — goals and key results. This is a great way to help everyone in the company understand what is important and how you are going to measure it. This is, in fact, a great way to communicate strategy and how you are going to measure strategy. This is how we use them. When you grow a company, the most difficult thing to scale up is communication. This is unusually difficult. OKR is a great way to make sure everyone understands how you are going to measure success and strategy. ”
Set goals and identify key results.
When setting goals, Google often starts with organizational OKR and coordinates priorities using from three to five goals with about three key results for each goal. Successful OKRs often come from a combination of top-down and bottom-up sentences, allowing people from the entire organization to voice what they think is worth the time and how they can best use their efforts.
Goal setting tips:
- Choose only three to five goals — a larger number can lead to teams that are too bloated and disperse.
- Avoid expressions that do not push for new achievements, for example, “continue to hire”, “maintain a position in the market”, “continue to make X”.
- Use expressions that convey final states, for example, “climb the mountain”, “eat 5 pies”, “provide Y functionality”.
- Use tangible, objective and unambiguous expressions. It should be obvious to any observer whether the goal has been achieved or not. Studies show that more specific goals can lead to increased efficiency and goal achievement (note: replaced the broken link) .
Tips for identifying key results
- Identify about three key results for each goal.
- The key results express measurable milestones that, when achieved, will directly contribute to the achievement of this goal.
- Key results should characterize the original results, not the actions. If key results include words like “advise,” “help,” “analyze,” “participate,” they describe actions. Instead, describe the impact of these actions, for example, “publish customer satisfaction levels by March 7,” rather than “assess customer satisfaction.”
- The stages to be measured should include a sign of completion, and this sign should be accessible, convincing and easily detectable.
Avoid writing errors OKR
The development of OKR, setting clear goals, measured by agreed outcomes, can push teams to achieve great success and focus the organization’s attention on top priorities. Poorly written OKRs can create an intricate strategy, question internal indicators, and encourage teams to maintain the status quo. When developing OKR, try to avoid the following pitfalls:
- Incorrect communication of OKR for ambitious goals (“stretch goal OKRs”) - Setting ambitious goals requires careful communication, both within teams performing these goals, and with other teams that depend on the work performed as part of the OKR for an ambitious goal. If your project depends on the goals of the other team, make sure you understand their goal setting philosophy. If they use ambitious targets, you should expect that they will provide about 70% of their stated OKR.
- OKR to maintain business as usual (“business-as-usual OKRs”) - OKR is often written based on what the team thinks it can achieve without changing anything they are doing now, as opposed to what the team really wants or her clients. To test this, make a group ranking (“stack rank”) of the team’s current work, as well as recently requested projects in terms of the ratio of the value to the required effort. If OKR contains something other than the most important effort, then it’s just OKR to support business as usual. Drop low-priority efforts and redirect resources to the most important OKR. There are some goals that will remain the same quarter after quarter, for example, “Ensure customer satisfaction is more than XX%”, and this is normal if this goal is always a high priority. But key results must evolve in order to push the team to continue to innovate and become more effective.
- Underdevelopment of its capabilities (“sandbagging”) - Teams that can perform all their OKRs without having to use all the capabilities of their team can either accumulate resources in advance, or not strain their teams, or both.
- Low-value goals - OKR should have a clear value perspective from a business point of view - otherwise there is no reason to spend resources on their implementation. Low-value goals, even if they are fully achieved, will not be important for the organization. Ask if OKR can be rated as 1.0 under reasonable circumstances without providing a direct organizational benefit? If so, rephrase OKR to focus on tangible benefits.
- Inappropriate key results for goals - If the key results for this goal do not represent all that is necessary to achieve this goal, there may be an unexpected miss in this OKR. This can cause delays in both the definition of resource requirements and the discovery that the target will not be reached on time.
Identifying OKR for a team
Although there may be different approaches, it will be useful to first set the goals of the organization so that teams and individuals can set their own goals to support these larger goals. This will help create coherence across the organization. The next solution - how many levels of “command” OKR are needed for the organization - are OKR necessary for a separate deportament, functions and subgroups?
For the purposes of the team level, you need to realize that not every OKR organization needs to be displayed in the OKR of each team. It is possible that the OKR team will focus on only one OKR organization. However, there must be some relationship between the OKR team and at least one of the OKR organizations.
One way to establish these OKR teams is to arrange a meeting of all team leaders for goal setting. At Google, team leaders sometimes list priorities for the upcoming quarter in the context of the company's OKR. When creating these priorities, it is useful to pay attention to the organization's OKR and check:
- Are team priorities tied to any key organization result?
- Do team priorities make it more likely that an organization will successfully achieve organization OKR?
- Are there, from the point of view of other people, unaccounted cases over which this team should work?
- Are there more than three priorities?
Another thing that OKR are not is a checklist. They are not intended to be the main task list, consisting of everything the team will work on during the quarter. If a team sees this as a collective task list, it can lead to becoming overly focused on what the team wants to do, rather than what the team wants to accomplish. Use OKR to determine the effect the team wants to see, and allow the teams to come up with methods to achieve this effect.
Remedy: OKR Evaluation
Google OKR is usually ranked on a scale from 0.0 to 1.0, a score of 1.0 means that the goal has been fully achieved. Each individual key result is evaluated, and then, using an approximate average value, respectively, the goal is evaluated. This estimate is described as “approximate” because sometimes some weight parameters are taken into account for different results. Sometimes the key results are either 0 or 1 - if the key result was “Launch a new widget marketing campaign”, the end result may be either that it is running or not. Some of them are more discrete — if the key result is “Run six new functions”, and only three new functions were launched, OKR can be rated as 0.5. This is not a science, but it is important to be honest and, to the highest degree, consistent in the assessment process.
What to consider when evaluating OKR:
- “Hitting the bull's eye” for OKR is in the range of 60-70%. A score below can mean that an organization is not doing enough that it is capable of. A score above may mean that the desired goals are not set high enough. With the Google scale of 0.0 - 1.0, the expectation is that the average value ranges from 0.6 to 0.7 for all OKRs. For organizations that are new to OKR, this tolerance for “failing” to achieve uncomfortable goals is uncomfortable in itself.
- OKR are not synonymous with performance evaluation. This means that OKR is not a comprehensive tool for assessing an individual (or organization). Rather, they can be used as a summary of the fact that a person has worked in the last period of time and can show his contribution and effect to larger OKR organizations.
- Publicly evaluate OKR organizations. In Google OKR, the entire organization is generally publicly available and is evaluated annually and quarterly. At the beginning of the year, a general meeting of the company is held, where estimates for the previous OKR are reported and new OKR are reported, both for the year and for the upcoming quarter. The company then meets quarterly to review the estimates and install new OKRs. At these company meetings, the owner of each OKR (usually the leader of the relevant team) explains the assessment and all adjustments for the upcoming quarter.
- Reconciliation during the quarter. Before assigning a final grade to a class, it is useful to conduct a mid-quarter check for all levels of OKR in order to give individuals and teams a sense of where they are. The reconciliation at the end of the quarter can be used to prepare for the assignment of the final estimate.
OKR - table
Use and adapt this table for OKR estimation and calculation of total estimates.
DOWNLOAD PDF OPEN AS GOOGLE DOC
OKR - ratings map
Use and adapt this document for recording and evaluating OKR
DOWNLOAD PDF OPEN AS GOOGLE DOC
Update OKR regularly
OKRs serve to help set a strategy for a company at Google - they are a set of goals that a company wants to achieve. To this end, some teams believe that it is best to review them several times a quarter. Thus, they can serve as a calibration tool, giving everyone the opportunity to adapt to new information, abandon goals that are clearly not achieved, and pay more attention to goals at the frontier of the possible, which will receive their help in implementing by attracting additional resources. Here is an example of a graph showing how a command might fit an OKR installation:
Mid-November - Brainstorm the first quarter goals
end of November - Make a decision about fixing and sharing OKR within the organization
mid-December - inform OKR of the entire company for the first quarter and year
mid-January - make personal OKR drafts
end of January - present OKR at the general meeting of the company
mid-February - managers track individual OKR
How often the team will check will depend on what are their own needs, tied to the time of year, how well the communication within the team is already built and how well the team acts regarding the prediction of results based on the possibility of their implementation.
Some teams at Google have found that reconciliations in the middle of an interval are useful and can guarantee that everyone will focus on the same goals. For some teams, an informal review of quarter goals is sufficient; for others, a more formal approach is acceptable.
Watch a Google presentation on OKR (video)
The Google Ventures team shared some information that Google learned about using OKR, with comments from its portfolio. Rick Klaw, a partner at Google Ventures, presented this presentation to many startups who are learning OKR for the first time. The presentation presents the basics of what OKR is, how they can help a fast-growing startup to stay focused and what needs to be avoided when mastering the OKR.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/334416/
All Articles