There are many frameworks to set goals, and I decided to learn about most of them and try them out in private and personal life. In this series of articles I will write about the most popular goal setting frameworks as a basic overview, their positive and negative sides and with emphasis on practicality and universal use. I will test them out in the wild and see what would be the experience with them. There are many frameworks, like OKRs, SMART, HARD, CLEAR, WOOP, SWOT, PEST, SOAR, Hoshin Kanri, OGSM, Balanced scorecard, NCTs, Scaling Up, BHAG, CFRS and I will pick which sounds to me the best according to the mentioned attributes. 

I think most people (at least in corporate jobs) already had some contact with goal settings. Yearly/quarterly goal setting is usually the one of the must-be activities. Often it is just a formality, but I invite to you use goal setting to your advantage. Why are goals a good idea?:

• • Transparency – you will know where you are and what you need to and if you are getting where you want to be
  • Alignment – everyone pushes in the same direction in a team, others can understand your motivation and help you
  • Focus – you can be more mindful and understand what is most important for you, your team or the organization
  • Accountability – you can show your results and be accountable before you, your team or organization
  • Empowerment – you can get the support you need if others understand what we want
  • Engagement – you or your team members can be engaged by the with purpose which are expressed in the goals
  • Commitment – if you formulated, agreed and understand what you want, there is a higher chance you and your team members will be motivated to strive for the goals

Be very careful to revisit the goals regularly. I’ve seen too many “set it and forget it” goals. It was effort that was almost totally in vain. 

Adaptive goal setting – don’t over plan

One of the basic facts of life is that circumstances are always changing, and you need to be agile enough to react. To be agile you don’t plan too much ahead as the situation can change rapidly, and then you did all your planning (almost) in vain. In personal life and also in professional setting, the situation you are in can change from day to day. That’s why you don’t do a detailed plan too long in to the future, but you try to balance out the planning to have it just in time. One of the basic principles of Lean is that you try to defer decisions as late as possible. Why? As mentioned, the situation can change: a new opportunity can come, your priorities can change, crisis hits in etc… To avoid premature planning, you can plan in iterations, keeping before your eyes your priorities and a vision. You need to find out what is the ideal time interval to plan ahead. The planning and executing phases can alternate. In ideal case, you invest just enough time to have a good enough plan. A great example we have in the PMP materials: 

Ergo don’t put too much in to planning efforts otherwise the efforts can be in vain. Search for balance, so your plans are barely enough. I can’t tell you how often I found myself in the situation when after some change the whole planning effort went down the river. The collary risk of doing too much planning up front shows it really nicely: 

Now, let me start with the one of the most widely known goal framework the OKRs. 

Objectives and Key results

OKRs is a goal-setting framework used by organizations and individuals to align their efforts and measure progress towards specific and measurable outcomes. It is used today by giants like Google, Amazon, Netflix and other. John Doerr popularized this approach and introduced it at Google in 1999 as an alternative to traditional management practices. There was no goal framework in place when John joined Google, so he proposed OKRs and it was accepted. OKRs became a part of the culture of Google to this day. John Doer wrote a book where he describes his journey and the practical use of OKRs: “Measure What Matters”.

The framework is really easy to understand, but it takes time to master. Typically, it consists of two parts: Objectives and, Key Results, hence the name OKR:

• Objective – The objectives are pointing toward a general heading for the future. They are high level goals which an individual, team or organization want to achieve. You ask: Where do I/we want to be at the end of the year/quarter/month? What do we want to achieve long term?
• Key Result – Is a measure of progress that proves progress toward a specific objective. You ask: How will we measure progress? (traction)

There are various ways how to put down OKRs, but this is a standard formula:  I/we will _______ (Objective), as measured by _______ (Key Results). You can see the clear connection between an objective and a key result. Each objective needs to have a key result, so you can know if you are heading to a right direction. Some sources also mention Projects or Initiatives, which describes specific work that needs to be done to achieve the key result. 

Looking back and scoring

At the end of a given period, you should look back and evaluate if you are meeting the goals and to what measure. I’ve seen to many times the “Set it and forget it.”. If you do so, nobody will take you seriously.

You should have hard data to support the evaluation on which the KRs should be based. For this you can use a numeric style, say 0 is nothing was achieved and 1 is everything achieved (or just use 0%-100%). In some cases it is not always possible to have a numeric representation. Sometimes it’s also not needed for this case you can simplify and use traffic light approach: green-yellow-red. You could go even simpler to a simple “yes” or “no” approach. Did you meet it? Or did you not? Have we released the MVP/MMP or not? Usually a more detailed approach is preferred, but I can imagine that in case there are more granular and simple goals, it could work.

The general advice is, that the best is to set 60% – 70% as a realistic goal, the rest is a stretch. If you consistently reach 100% of your goals, then they are not challenging enough. Goals should motivate you and your team to stretch. A 100% score should be really a victory. Success shouldn’t be given. As the general advice regarding goals says “red is beautiful”. Setting too low goals would not benefit you or your organization. 

 

Types of OKRs

There many types of OKRs, but let me mention 2 basic groups and one special:

• grouped by reach/aspiration
  • moonshots
  • roofshots
• grouped by level
  • personal
  • team
  • organisational/strategic
• Special: learning OKRs

By reach

OKRs can be various based on your situation. It can be an aim for the moon or just the roof.

Moonshots or aspirational OKRs. You could have missed the original plan, but maybe you gone far ahead of what you would if you had planned for a conservative goal. Let’s say I’ve planned to read 50 books, but I managed to read just 40, but it’s still more if I would planned just for 25. In other words, they are flexible or stretch goals, they force you to think bigger and be free from the usual rails of thinking what is normal. Aspirational goals can give you engagement, challenge and thus, motivation.

Roofshots or also called committed goals are goals that you really need to fulfill. Roofshots are what you could attain, and success would mean you reached 100%.

I’m trying to combine both types, so we can feel some motivation when we fulfill an objective and at the same time be challenged to achieve more by another goal. 

By organisational level

Personal, team or strategic OKR are naturally different. If you have a smaller team, I would suggest to do the OKR formulation together. It would help the team to really own the goals. It’s a long know fact, that if the team creates their goals they own them more if they would have been set as directive from above.

How to do it with a team? Make a few facilited workshops where you at first diverge in opinions and then coverage to 3 objectives and one key result per objective. Agree on how often you would revisit the OKRs and check on your progress. Place the OKRs to a highly visible place where the team can be reminded what are your goals. Always communicate and re-communicate the goals. If needed re-adjust the course with the team, add new KRs or Objectives. Specific actions and todos should also be derived from the KRs, so distribute the work to the team.  

On a higher, strategic level, formulate the goals with the leaders. Formulate together the goals of the organisation. Distribute the OKRs, make them visible, and revisit them together with the whole organisation. Make really sure that they are understood, clear and transparent. An non-transparent goal could seem like obfuscation or no real sense of heading. This can lead to loss of trust in the organisation. Furthermore, be sure that the methods you use are really measuring outcomes not outputs, that the measurement methodology used is clear and trustworthy. Unclear or questionable measurements can lead to loss of trust of your team/employees.

OKRs are like an accelerator; they can move the direction of the organisation to a better course or worsen it. You show your hand to the team or the organisation. You show what you think is important, how you want to measure it and if you will really follow through and not just ‘set and forget’. If you decide to go for OKRs organisation wide, make proper preparations and receive regular feedback, so you can change course when needed.

Learning OKRs

As mentioned the set of OKRs can consist of various types. Another type could be a learning OKR that is meant to find out if your heading is right. Treat them as experiments that can find out if a hypothesis is correct. The target is to try out several paths, test ideas, explore possibilities and learn something valuable from the testing. 

 

Few examples

I believe that the straightest way to learn is to learn from examples, although you have to take them with a grain of salt as each OKR has to reflect your specific circumstances.:

• Moonshot OKRs for an organisation
  • We want to be in the top 3 digital health device providers in the world as measured by
    • market share
    • customer retention
    • new customers
• Roofshots OKRs for a team
  • We will solve the crisis with critical issues affecting users on productive environment, measured by
    • the number of critical issues found on production will be bellow 3 issues per quarter
    • the mean time of critical issue resolution will be under 3 hours
• Personal learning OKR
  • I will find out if ketogenic diet is helping me to be healthier, as measured by:
    • my BMI
    • my cholesterol
    • my blood pressure