The Sword of OKR (Idea) 01——The Changes that OKR Brings to Us

Author: vivo Internet platform product development team

I. Introduction

OKR is the Objectives and Key Results method, originated from Intel and carried forward in Google. In recent years, it has become popular in China, and many companies have successively introduced the OKR management method. Small and micro start-ups as small as 2-3 people, as large as large enterprises with hundreds of thousands of employees, have all benefited from it. After three years of active practice, the vivo Internet team has confirmed that this target management tool has a very strong role in promoting business and personnel development.

"Where are the OKRs that many companies are vying for? Can I use them?"

If you know from various channels that OKR has a positive effect on the enterprise, you must also have such questions. So in this section, let's briefly answer this question, and also discuss the core concepts of this series of articles, so that you can confidently learn OKR and the practical experience of this series of articles in depth.

In layman's terms, OKR is a set of scientific goal management tools and methods. Its characteristics are that it pays attention to employees' intrinsic motivation, stimulates employees' intrinsic potential, and enhances employees' enthusiasm for work. Different from other goal management methods, OKR weakens the relationship between goal management and performance appraisal. By encouraging employees to actively set more challenging goals, encourage openness and transparency of goals, and team sincere cooperation and alignment, and finally achieve the goal of a large team. .

This series of articles is based on the specific OKR practice in our team, describes how we understand and apply OKR, and how to practice the knowledge of "team management" in the process of applying OKR, and share our team management experience and experience in the article. idea. We believe that the organic combination of OKR and management ultimately requires a consistent understanding of management, just as Drucker said: " The management principle an enterprise needs is to allow individuals to give full play to their strengths, condense a common vision and a consistent direction of effort, and build a team. cooperation, reconciling individual goals and common well-being ”, which includes two more points:

1. Consistent goals are the key to achieving strategic goals

In the case of opaque information, the plans and strategies of employees and the enterprise are not aligned, the plans and directions of the teams are not aligned, and the goals are inconsistent with each other. How can smooth collaboration be possible? Especially when employees only focus on personal achievements, and the team only cares about partial success, rather than the overall goal of the enterprise, which is very fatal to the development of the enterprise.

2. The responsibility of management is to give full play to the talents of employees

Running a business is actually an operator, and so is team management. It is one of the goals of enterprise management to make the best use of talents. OKR allows employees to formulate challenging tasks by themselves, and break through their own limitations in the process of achieving goals, and gain a sense of growth and achievement. During the goal setting stage, employees can actually feel that they are in control of their work, rather than being dominated. In the process of goal implementation, employees can gain real ability improvement, sense of achievement and corresponding influence, and then have stronger motivation to challenge the goal of the next stage, thus entering a virtuous circle. In the end, OKR effectively stimulated the potential of employees and gradually released the potential of the entire team.

In this series of articles, we use a scenario-based approach to tell the story, so that you can understand the details of our implementation in fragmented time, and gain something from it, to relieve the confusion of OKR practice and team management.

2. Why do we introduce OKR?

Through the previous introduction, I believe you already have a preliminary impression of OKR. This section mainly introduces what kind of team we are, and makes it clearer under what background we started to contact and practice OKR.

Our team was established in 2015 with only a few people at first, mainly responsible for the business direction of vertical e-commerce. The first e-commerce R&D team received the construction task from 0 to 1 with a tight schedule and heavy tasks, and it was also Yali Shanda. Fortunately, the team is relatively sound. There are old drivers who have been deeply involved in the Internet for many years, and fresh college students who are just starting out. Under the guidance of the atmosphere of mutual help and mutual learning, they have opened up roads and bridges in every mountain and water, and gradually opened up a new atmosphere in a chaotic situation. . In the end, we gnawed the hard bone of domestic e-commerce, and gained the trust of the business team and the praise of the brother team.

Under the influence of this team style, more and more businesses have been handed over, and the team has gradually turned into a small group, into a large group, until it has grown into today's platform product research and development center, responsible for the entire vivo Internet platform direction. R&D work. In these 8 years of changes, we have witnessed the rapid development of the Internet, and we have also experienced organizational structure adjustments, business adjustments, and team mergers. We have changed a lot, but we have always maintained the original intention.

Along the way, we have won a lot of honors, but also encountered a lot of difficulties, especially in the case of the continuous expansion of the team, our team management is facing huge challenges:

1. The team goals are not aligned, and project collaboration is always difficult

This was a very common problem at the time, and it mostly occurred in projects with upstream and downstream dependencies. For example, a certain project is supported by multiple teams at the same time, and these teams have their own product plans and goals. As a result, in the project version, team A often felt that a requirement was very important and urgent and needed the cooperation of team B, but found that team B had a resource conflict because of its own plan.

2. The character's perspective is biased, and the Roadmap shoots the head

Even in the same project team, there will be differences on some things due to different roles. From the perspective of R&D, a product needs to run stably and with high performance. At this time, he will think about the external interface. Performance optimization; from the perspective of the product manager, we want to make the product have more complete functions and keep adding new functions.

Because of limited resources, should we optimize the interface performance first or develop new product features? The two groups of people are arguing, and everyone says that their priorities are high. How do we make decisions at this time?

3. The manpower of the version is idling, and the coordination of resources is not timely

Our team is responsible for a lot of projects. More than a dozen people participate in large projects, and one person is responsible for several small projects. It is normal for the situation of "drought to die from drought, and flood to die from waterlogging". Some projects have a special period of time. The schedule of the version is reversed according to the final delivery time, and at this moment, some other projects have only small and sporadic needs, so don’t be in a hurry.

4. Learning to be aggressive is empty talk, and completing tasks is the only thing

In order to build a learning-oriented team, the company has specially built an online learning platform with various types of learning videos, and stipulates how long each employee must participate in learning each year. Even this is not very effective. By the end of the year, many people need to sprint. After all, learning is painful, and it seems impossible to make everyone happy.

5. When performance appraisal is questioned, what is considered excellent?

The innovative effect of a high-performance employee is several times that of a person with medium ability. At the same time, the outstanding results created by outstanding talents can also inspire more outstanding talents, which shows how important outstanding people are.

So how do you identify great talent? In the past, we used a combination of EIA + self-assessment + KPI to assess excellence, which caused employees to question the fairness of the result, because the EIA + self-assessment itself is very subjective, and KPIs are not transparent enough, managers always need to face it directly The challenge: Why is this person mediocre and better than me?

The above lists some of the pits that our team has gone through before. In fact, in the final analysis, it is still a question of how to manage the team, including how to mobilize the enthusiasm of employees and how to exert everyone's subjective initiative. This is also the direction we have been thinking about. In 2016, we have gradually realized that the original KPI-like performance appraisal method has become unsuitable for R&D positions. Then we went to look for new management methods, investigated the mainstream management methods, and found that none of them perfectly matched the culture of vivo Internet and the actual situation of the team.

Under the circumstance that the external search was fruitless, we began to explore new management concepts to build a high-performance team, and at the same time actively searched for better management tools, hoping to better implement and promote the accumulated experience. In the summer of 2019, the department began to learn and introduce OKR management tools. After studying OKR related theoretical books, we were surprised to find that the tools that we had been looking for that could solve our pain points appeared in front of us, and we sighed that we would meet each other late.

3. The changes that OKR brings to us

Our team's vision: continue to grow into a first-class technical team in the industry, and create a self-organized, high-performance benchmarking team. At present, it consists of three major Internet server R&D teams, with a staff size of about 200 people. The overall business can be divided into three directions (troika): platform products, marketing products, and innovative products. The three business directions complement each other and have their own responsibilities and missions.

Platform products mainly include two modules: business platform and efficiency middle platform, which are projects that improve precipitation and stably support business development.

Marketing products mainly include two modules, online marketing and offline marketing, which mainly focus on the reuse of capability combinations to help marketing reform.

Innovative products mainly include two modules: management innovation and technological innovation. Innovative products are mainly derived from business and explore new possibilities.

Regardless of the size of the team or the complexity of the business, it is not difficult to see that the management of team members and the business faces considerable challenges. Since the official introduction of OKR in 2019, in order to cope with the ever-changing business and the constantly adjusted organizational structure, in the development of the team and business, we have continuously practiced and optimized the management method that conforms to the characteristics of our team. , and gradually precipitated a set of logical and clear management concepts.

Since the introduction of OKR for more than three years, the management concept of "future-oriented organization" that we have always adhered to has blossomed everywhere, bringing changes to our team in all aspects. The cohesion, atmosphere and productivity of the team have been greatly improved. The following are the changes that we believe are the most important.

3.1 Focus on the most important goals of the team

The main thing in life is to set a great goal and the determination to achieve it. - Goethe

First, we need to have good goals, be "great" enough, and at the same time make everyone feel involved. After the introduction of OKRs, our goal is to generate bidirectionally through top-down + bottom-up. After the company determines the annual planning and strategic goals, we will formulate challenging goals according to the characteristics of our own business and team to support the implementation of the strategy; then team members take the initiative to think and formulate key results to measure the realization of this goal to This solves the problem of the separation of goal formulation and goal execution, so that team members have a sense of participation and autonomy.

Secondly, we will designate a person in charge for each key result, usually the person who proposes it, of course, it can also be negotiated by others. Under the owner system, the subjective initiative can be better exerted, and the desire to fulfill the commitment can be stimulated from a psychological point of view.

Finally, use the online OKR management tool to ensure the transparency and openness of goals, remind employees to continue to focus on their OKR goals through weekly OKR tips, and continue to motivate and feedback difficulties through the biweekly OKR celebration party. Working together, team members stay focused on the most important goals from start to finish.

3.2 Focusing on Value Challenges Impossible

Some people may say that setting goals is not easy, but we believe that goals should not be too many. It is necessary to concentrate superior forces to solve core problems and keep the organization focused. Resources are limited, and in order to keep the organization focused, goals must be value-focused. In this way, things become much simpler. When we conduct two-person goal PK, we compare the value of Zhang San's goal and Li Si's goal. As we think deeply, think about the value of our goals to users, the value of products, and the value of the organization, and then we evaluate together, and finally determine our goals for this quarter.

At this time, some people will retort, don’t you think about value without introducing OKR? The formulation of goals will definitely require thinking. Referring to the previous section, when OKRs are not introduced, the goals are formulated by a few people, and most of them are convincing themselves. After the introduction of OKRs, the goals are formulated by everyone, so at this time, it is necessary to every Individuals need to think about goals. If you want your goal to stand out, then you have to make the business value of your goal very clear, such as how much daily activity can be increased for the product, how much revenue it will bring, and how much it will save.

Goal setting is focused on value and has gradually changed the way we measure performance. In the past, our performance evaluation looked at the output of employees' business version and boss's tasks in a performance cycle, and employees passively accepted tasks; with our pursuit of target value, performance evaluation has also become simpler, examining employees in the performance cycle. The value brought by the internal staff is enough, and employees take the initiative to explore tasks and solve the core problems of the team.

3.3 Efficient team collaboration

Challenging goals are set at the beginning of the quarter, so how do you ensure the key results of the goals are achieved at the end of the quarter? Setting goals is easy, but achieving them is difficult. From an idea to a working product or service, to getting customers to recognize the value, then customers start using it, and finally willing to pay for it, each link of the whole process is more difficult, and each link requires us to form a suitable team to complete.

As can be seen from the introduction about our center in the previous article, the business forms that the team is responsible for are different, the priority and importance of each business are also different, and the cycle of each project operation shows the phenomenon of alternating busy and idle. Means to rationally dispatch human resources? What should a KR leader do when assessing the current lack of manpower needed for KR completion? What if a member of a team with outstanding combat effectiveness wants to do more besides completing the KR he is responsible for?

In response to the above phenomenon, we have built a partner platform: a system for managing talent pools, recruiting talents, and claiming tasks. When we expect to solve the above problems through this platform, the biggest problem we face at this time is how to ensure the enthusiasm of employees to claim the task. For ordinary employees, the need to step out of their comfort zone and face unfamiliar needs and unfamiliar partners is a very challenging thing in itself. If there is no good team atmosphere, it will inevitably lead to a decline in willingness and no one to participate. , no one publishes, a vicious circle that eventually becomes a mere formality.

Thanks to the openness and transparency of OKR's goals and the idea of layer-by-layer decomposition, employees have a clearer understanding of organizational goals and a stronger willingness to achieve common goals. Only the victory of the big team can prove the value of the efforts of the small team and the success of the individual efforts. In such a win-win atmosphere, the trust and cooperation between people has been strengthened, internal friction and competition have been weakened, and the ability of the partnership platform has been maximized.

In the more than one year since the launch of the partner platform, a total of 35 tasks have been released, a total of 72 colleagues have applied, and a firepower output of 408 person-days has been achieved, which not only helps us coordinate the manpower between projects, but also promotes the team. Grow together and let outstanding people stand out. Continuous success and victory make employees more trust in the organization and teammates, bring about a virtuous circle, and realize our vision of concentrating on big things.

3.4 A strong learning atmosphere

In order to practice our core values (learning is one of the core values of our company), in order to better solve technical problems in business development, and also for the self-growth of employees, it is necessary for us to create a strong learning atmosphere .

As a manager, building a learning team is part of his work. How to build a R&D team? The usual practice is to designate a person in charge, and let the members of the organization team take turns to share his knowledge and experience with everyone at a fixed time and place, such as reading notes, designed solutions, online problems... Since there are ready-made models that can be copied, for a team like us with strong execution, we can do what we say, so we made a rule: every Thursday night at 7:30, everyone will take turns to share. Once a week, it takes turns to share, and there are many people in the team. One person can’t share several times a year. On the bright side, this task is not very difficult to complete. The person in charge is also full of confidence with his solid chest. Full.

One day after half a year, the person in charge suddenly said: No, sharing can’t go on. First of all, there are no more bullets (there is no more content to share), and the inventory has been emptied; in fact, the people involved in the study have lost their enthusiasm. The number of participants is less than 5 people, neither want to share, nor want to learn. I asked the reasons for not participating. Some of them need to release the version urgently, and some need to cooperate with the test. They all have their own opinions.

How to solve the problem of no bullets? We decided to try another sharing mode, so we organized a book club. Everyone read the same book together for a period of time, and shared their reading experience once a month. The form of sharing is oral, which is very lightweight. Everyone should be able to stick to it. Facts have proved that we are still too naive. This time, the duration of the sharing session was shorter than that of the last time. We only did a few sessions and then ended silently.

After we encountered OKR, the situation reversed. We followed the goal of "creating a happy and enterprising learning team atmosphere", and formulated different KRs each quarter to support the achievement of O. In this way, we have transformed the original assignment method into active registration, and at the same time, the target traction of OKR can allow the person in charge to focus on the implementation and achievement of the target. The learning atmosphere has undergone a 180° reversal, and teaching and learning have changed. It has become a matter of course, and many new ideas and ideas are also generated in the collision. Flash sharing, technical salon, source code reading, algorithm topic, reading club, good article sharing, etc. are thematic activities for technical learning in the center, with various forms, and build a learning and exchange platform for the members of the center.

(Reading Club Sharing: Reading Experience of "Value")

3.5 Continuous internal innovation

In today's world, new technologies, new products, new services, and new models are emerging one after another, and traditional business models are facing subversive challenges. Innovation is the soul of an enterprise, and innovation is the inexhaustible driving force for enterprise development. For companies in the mobile phone industry, innovation will appear more important. For our team, innovation is mainly reflected in the incubation of new capabilities and new projects.

We first cultivate the soil of innovation and encourage innovation through the target traction and incentive strategy of OKR. As we all know, from birth to implementation of an idea, the biggest difficulty is to start to act. 99% of ideas are killed by themselves before they can be acted on. Therefore, we need to establish an atmosphere that encourages innovation and tolerates failure, and reduces the difficulty for employees to take the first step.

The second is to focus on innovation goals and track the innovation process. Through continuous incentives, employees can have enough motivation to invest in the completion of innovation goals for a long time; through phased alignment, the team can understand the current progress and bottlenecks, and use the wisdom of the group to solve difficulties together. In order to protect the growth and growth of innovative buds.

Finally, focus on innovative results and maintain positive incentives. Because the goal of innovation itself is extremely challenging and uncertain, when summarizing and reviewing, we do not pursue the completion of this OKR, but whether the goal is valuable, challenging, and whether employees are paying Enough effort is the measure, even if the KR is not completed in the end, it will not affect the employee's performance appraisal. Under such a concept, the credibility and continuity of the innovation atmosphere is guaranteed, and innovation becomes a matter of course.

In the past three years, under the guidance of setting goals around innovation, the center has successfully incubated 6 components and 12 services, which have been used by more than a thousand systems within the company, and we are also exploring open source, so that these Components and services serve more people.

Through OKR practice, we have reversed the atmosphere of "fear of making mistakes, dare not fail, dare not try and make mistakes", and create a culture of "willing to innovate, dare to break through, and dare to challenge".

3.6 Employee Productivity Improvement

The improvement of employee productivity can be said to be the inevitable result of implementing OKR scientific management. A feature of OKR execution: bottom-up, that is, autonomy, is a basic psychological need for intrinsic motivation. The OKR concept emphasizes that when setting goals, a considerable part of the goals must be proposed by employees themselves, rather than assigned by superiors. Only in this way will employees perceive that the goal is their own goal, not a goal imposed by others, thereby significantly enhancing the sense of commitment to the goal, and ultimately bringing about an increase in employee productivity.

The construction of overseas malls is a good case. Initially, only the Indian market raised the need to build an official mall overseas. We only need to copy a set of domestic sales mall system and deploy it to India. This method is simple and efficient, but we did not stop there. At that time, we foresee that, Demand from other overseas markets will also follow. In order to quickly respond to the development of global business in the future, we have done sufficient competitive product analysis, technical research, architecture design, and brainstorming collisions. After a period of exploration and polishing, we Created a set of universal global solutions, including multi-language copywriting system, multi-time zone common components, multi-country isolation framework, multi-computer room domain name deployment solution, etc. A system can meet the needs of multi-region and multi-brand, greatly The human efficiency has been improved, and a new mall can be deployed as fast as 7 days when the business needs really come. These capabilities better support the development needs of the mall's current business, and at the same time empower other export businesses to solve related problems. The multi-language platform also won the company-level design-driven award in one fell swoop.

The construction of overseas capabilities, from the idea to the establishment of the goal to the implementation, is completed by the employees voluntarily and from the bottom up. The technological era requires technological innovation, and knowledge workers need to break through the existing experience and inertial constraints. The OKR scientific management mechanism provides It gives employees more room to play, and productivity improvement comes naturally.

4. Summary

This chapter tells you about the six obvious changes that have taken place after we introduced OKR. These changes are both cause and effect. They form a flywheel of a virtuous circle with each other, towards our vision: "continue to grow into a first-class technical team in the industry, And created a self-organizing, high-performance benchmarking team” to keep moving forward.

If you also want to change your team, want to have a deeper understanding of how OKR changes us step by step, want to know more about our core concept of implementing OKR, and want to know what management concepts our team has, then this is A series of articles written just for you. I hope the experience of our team along the way can open a window for you, inspire you, and help your team management.

In the future, we will share with you the following topics:

OKR has brought us a lot of changes. Has your team introduced OKR? Why introduce OKRs? What changes has it brought to you? You are welcome to interact and share in the message area.