The Sword of OKR (Idea) 02 - OKR Evangelistic Journey

Author: vivo Internet platform product development team

1. How did we introduce

1.1, corporate culture matching

Around the end of 2013, some entrepreneurs were baptized by OKR in Silicon Valley and used it on a small scale in their own companies, so OKR began to be introduced into China. Vivo's first taste of OKR was in 2019. The Internet management team at that time noticed the successful practice of OKR in large companies such as Google and Microsoft, so they asked the management in the department to carry out the study of OKR.

Since then, we have started the OKR research work with the goal of landing on a large scale within the platform product R&D team. The method is roughly to find information, find cases, and then make a summary. Read through the classic OKR books on the market at that time, including "This is OKR", "OKR Work Method", "OKR: Target Management Tool from Intel and Google" and "OKR User Manual"; then contact Google, Employees from Microsoft and ByteDance work backgrounds were interviewed.

Combined with the specific practices of some domestic companies that use OKR, we have summarized five basic characteristics that companies that apply OKR need to have:

1. Promote inner drive

OKR believes in the power of internal motivation and encourages employees to independently set challenging goals and exercise their abilities. Harvest happiness in the process of being competent for positions and ability improvement, and be satisfied in mutual appreciation and embracing success. Therefore, the successful implementation of OKR requires companies to create an open and creative atmosphere for employees, so as to maintain employees' enterprising spirit to challenge challenges, and not become frustrated and depressed because they fail to achieve OKR goals.

2. Flat organizational structure

OKRs need to constantly pay attention to the implementation of the goals. When encountering problems, they need to respond and adjust in a timely manner, quickly obtain the support of superior resources, and exchange information inside and outside the team. This requires simplifying the management level and shortening the decision-making path.

3. Information transparency and disclosure

OKR promotes openness and transparency and encourages positive feedback. Referring to the "Context, not Control" promoted by Zhang Yiming in ByteDance, if OKR can run successfully and efficiently, it is inseparable from a transparent and open Context that runs through the entire system.

4. Equal communication atmosphere

The formulation of OKR requires team members to communicate frankly, fully understand each other's views, and finally reach a consensus based on the strategic goals of the company. Therefore, to create the ultimate communication environment, it is necessary to be able to truly achieve equality and openness, and to break the "hierarchical" communication barriers among organizational members. .

5. Benefit and risk sharing

The key to OKR's ability to promote the spiral of organizations and individuals lies in the internal drive, and it is not enough to rely on "feelings and beliefs" to enable employees to grow and shine in a long-term and stable manner. It also requires a set of effective talent management mechanisms, such as equity and The ascending channel meets the actual needs of employees seeking fame and fortune, and realizes the dual drive of spirit and material.

We compared the company's core values " duty, user-oriented, design-driven, learning team " with it and found that the degree of fit is very high:

Duties , always maintain a normal mind, take responsibility for oneself, adhere to integrity, result-oriented and ownership; design-driven is a systematic way of thinking and values to innovate to solve the potential needs of users and promote social progress; learning, always be aggressive, not Satisfy the status quo. Creative design and active awareness, as well as self-improvement, break the limitations of individuals and groups, which is similar to the internal drive of OKR.

User-oriented , all work must be based on the real needs of users. When user needs change, we need to judge and respond in a timely manner, which requires us to flatten the structure, reduce information transmission errors, and improve collaboration and management efficiency. This echoes the corporate culture and the team, and insists on extensive and in-depth teamwork to deal with the uncertainty and complexity of market demand.

If you can't see results and rewards, and there is no other motivation, it will inevitably lead to frustration and intimidation. As stated in the mission of the corporate culture, by serving the four stakeholders of users, employees, partners and shareholders well, let the four stakeholders continue to be happy. In fact, the external thrust (community of interests) is also described here, which coincides with the sharing of OKR interests and risks.

After the corporate culture has been demonstrated, let's look at the team management method. For a long time, the platform product R&D leadership team has always maintained a strong combat effectiveness, coped with uncertainty, and built a learning high-performance team with a more open mentality. This concept runs through the management behavior, continuously optimizes the accumulated management experience, and summarizes the methodology.

The iteration has gradually formed a unique management style with "openness + collaboration" as the direction sign, "trust + cohesion" as the power source, and "inheritance + development" as the weapon and shield to the future. The management method that is continuously practiced in the team is to emphasize human nature, weaken KPI and performance results, and strengthen goal traction and result orientation. This is consistent with the idea of encouraging employees to challenge themselves and decoupling from performance advocated by OKR.

The author says:

"Here we are discussing the corporate culture of vivo company, but in fact, the analogy is also applicable to other companies. People and companies that grew up in this magical land of China will inevitably be deeply affected by the " Rupi Daogu rule of law " "The nurture and influence of ideas, its core values and cultural heritage are very similar. If KPI belongs to Legalist governance, then OKR is closer to Taoist management. A mature enterprise needs to be in different stages and in different fields. A tilted balance between Tao and Fa, to find a management model that is more suitable for one's current situation.

People follow the earth, the earth follows the sky, the heaven follows the Tao, and the Tao follows the nature. In the past, we tended to the KPI model, which is applicable when the country is weak and needs to work hard to turn over to the master. Although it suppresses the moral and human nature, it ensures the basic efficiency and will not go astray. Now that the situation is completely different, it is time to embrace a more diversified management model that is more in line with the roots of Chinese people's thinking. "

1.2. Judging the impact of introduction

At this stage of the analysis and demonstration, no conflict points have been found in the company's corporate culture, management methods and OKRs, so our research has been completed halfway. The other half is, will the introduction solve the old problem or will it create new problems? Based on the OKR-related characteristics learned in the book, combined with the practice of OKR in Byte, Microsoft and other companies, we can get the following possible impacts after summarizing:

1. Group goals are the same (positive)

The in-depth practice of corporate culture creates an equal, transparent, positive, and self-driven atmosphere and environment for employees. Understanding will deviate due to different roles and focus. Especially after deviations occur, if there is no timely and effective means of communication to synchronize, then it is likely to find that the big team wasted energy in unimportant directions during the review at the end of the year. As a "target communication tool", OKR can ensure the consistency of the general direction, and constantly correct the details, and finally achieve the convergence of team goals.

2. Stimulate the vitality of the organization (positive)

At present, the internal departments of the enterprise are subdivided and there are more and more functions. Each team is only responsible for its own team goals, which leads to difficulties in final collaboration. Without the encouragement of staged victory, employees will only become more and more silent. OKR encourages employees to break through individual limitations and not be afraid of failure and difficulties. It is based on atmosphere creation, performance is not directly related to KR, coaching management, and long-term benefit and risk sharing. In this environment, employees are all working towards the same goal, rejoicing in the progress of others, trusting each other more, and collaborating more smoothly.

3. Performance management challenges (negative)

The implementation of OKR requires a lot of time and energy of team members, from the formulation of OKRs, weekly reports, celebrations, and resumption of the whole cycle. Moreover, since OKRs are decoupled from performance evaluations, managers cannot directly obtain employee performance from the implementation of OKRs, so it is bound to bring additional performance evaluation processes and methods. This is a new challenge for many managers who "lie and win" under the KPI model.

4. The short-term effect is not obvious (negative)

The introduction of OKR does not mean that the environment faced by the enterprise and the resources it has have changed, but it can only allow the enterprise to respond to changes faster. The execution effect of OKR is closely related to the mentality of the decision-making layer, the cognition of the participants, the way of thinking and behavior. Switching from a traditional goal management tool to OKR has brought about a huge change in the concept. It is difficult to change a habit, and it is even more difficult to change the way of thinking. Only by practicing OKR for a long time and maintaining a transparent, open and equal team atmosphere can OKR's success be achieved. The value manifestation is constantly increasing.

(Image credit: pixabay )

The negative effects listed above, we believe, can be solved by other means. The first is to weaken the 360 EIA and self-assessment, and strengthen the intermediate process records of managers to reduce the acceptance barriers of employees. The second is to face managers, do a good job in knowledge training, provide relevant auxiliary management tools, and improve the ability and efficiency of managers. As for the problems with insignificant short-term effects, we will do a good job of expectation management for managers and leaders, leaving enough space and time for operation.

Combined with the current management model of our company and the conflict caused by the rapid changes in the current Internet form, we analyzed and judged that the introduction of OKR to replace the original KPI management model brought positive results > negative results. Therefore, it is feasible and appropriate to introduce OKR.

2. Team introduction and practice

2.1. Analysis of the current situation of the team

After the conclusion of the preliminary investigation, we made a quick decision under the leadership of the team leader, took the initiative, embraced OKR, and made a lot of preparations for the actual implementation of OKR as a management tool.

We will organize the relevant knowledge learned from books, including core principles and operation modes, on PPT, and begin to publicize it among various functional teams. We have imagined that many people may ask questions about OKRs, and they have done enough homework, thinking that they can give perfect answers, and then they can be implemented in an orderly manner. However, reality has poured cold water on us:

What I learned in the book is only an abstract conclusion after all, but the practical operation is a real problem.

At the publicity meeting, some managers agreed with the management concept of OKR and thought that they could give it a try; some managers questioned OKR. In their understanding, the existing management model was running very healthy, and no problems were found; even some people It is believed that OKR is just an imported product, and it is very likely that it will be unaccustomed to running in our team.

We did not expect that the same platform product R&D team has such a big difference in the understanding of OKRs by different roles. In this case, we had to suspend the implementation of the plan and turn to calmly thinking and analyzing how to implement it. We re-observed the existing teams within the platform product development team to understand how they operate and manage internally. After summarizing, we found:

1. The management methods are quite different: different functional lines and different business lines have different management methods. The management style of some teams has been biased towards OKRs, which weakens KPIs; most teams rely heavily on KPIs.
2. The management ability is uneven: the management of the platform product R&D team is cultivated within the company, and some have work experience in other companies, and some managers have entrepreneurial experience. Different resumes lead to different understandings of management. .
3. The composition of the team is different: some teams have been established for a long time, and the team members are deeply influenced by the corporate culture; there are also some employees of individual teams, almost all of whom have recently jumped over from other companies, trust and recognition of the company and the platform product development team The degree is not high.

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Combined with the current status of the platform product R&D team and the current teams, a set of self-consistent and well-functioning management concepts have been precipitated. We decided to abandon the drastic change in the process of introducing OKR, and instead use a relatively flexible and gentle way to gradually implement it. We first choose to conduct OKR pilots in teams with strong intentions. Give them support and encouragement, including training support, leadership support, and remove the psychological burden of use. In-depth participation, understand the various difficulties and doubts they encountered in the landing, and follow up and solve them in a timely manner. In the cycle of "pilot-review-improvement-pilot", we constantly enrich and improve our promotion methods and practical postures.

In this way of promotion, we no longer aim to expand the scope and speed of promotion, but hope to take into account the characteristics of different teams and the management styles of different roles, so as to avoid the misunderstanding that amputation is suitable, and to be more local , so as to form OKRs based on the company and team's characteristic style.

2.2. Promote problem collection

With the launch of the OKR landing plan, we have also received a lot of feedback and questions from the pilot team. We have summarized and summarized the problems. Here are some typical questions for your reference:

1. Whether the achievement of goals can be used to determine performance

Different from the production and research team, the original performance management of some functional teams is strongly dependent on the KPI model. Managers and employees are very meticulous in setting goals and tracking the process. It is very intuitive to have a bird's-eye view of the completion of team goals and employee progress from an upper-level perspective, and it is also very convenient to give performance evaluations based on the completion results. After they implemented OKR internally for a period of time, they found that they still returned to the old way of KPI, and evaluated employee performance according to the achievement of KR. However, this method is not recommended for association in various authoritative books, and it also violates the original intention of encouraging employees to make bold breakthroughs. How to solve this situation?

In view of this situation, our suggestion is that the management concept should be in line with the original intention of OKR as much as possible, and use the method of target traction to motivate employees and dilute the assessment. In practice, it is not unreasonable to use KPI-like methods to ensure the lower limit of weakly related performance, and to conduct personnel management and performance evaluation. The detailed interpretation of this piece will be explained in the subsequent chapters, and will not be repeated here.

2. Can OKR be applied to dispatched employees?

During the period of rapid expansion of some of the company's incremental businesses and innovative businesses, in order to reduce employment costs and project risks, a large number of employees will be hired through third-party labor service companies. The salary and promotion incentive policies of such employees are different from those of the company's own employees. The company will not have too strong training expectations, and it cannot continue to stimulate employees' initiative through the "benefit and risk sharing" strategy described above.

The team that asked this question used KPIs to assign tasks and goals to its own employees, and evaluate employee performance based on the results achieved. If OKR is implemented at this time, if you blindly use growth, prospects, and development to give employees a lot of blood, they will not be able to pay in the end. Instead, they will lead to employees' slack and resentment. Therefore, we suggest that the execution level of OKR can fall to the level that can establish long-term stable trust and interest relationship, and the original model can be used at the lower level. The actual implementation method here is to use OKRs to manage their own employees, and when their own employees evaluate the performance of external employees, they still rely on KPIs.

3. OKR project and functional direction weight measurement

Some R&D teams reported that when formulating OKRs, they found that Os are all project-oriented, and directions such as personal development and skill improvement cannot be reflected in OKRs, which makes it easy for employees to feel divided during the implementation process: things that the functional line attaches importance to , It may not be important from the perspective of the project line. If you do not track and follow up in personal OKRs, it will inevitably lead to a lag in the growth of employees and teams. But in fact, the improvement of skills and influence is very important to the long-term development of organizations and individuals, and corporate culture also requires employees to persist in learning and enterprising.

We refer to the 8/2 golden rule and suggest that when employees formulate personal OKRs, 80% of their energy should be devoted to projects and business directions, and 20% of their energy to innovation, exploration, and learning directions, so as to fit the development plan and expectations of the functional line. In this way, it can not only retain the traction of OKR goals, use the power of the group to complete challenges, but also ensure the continuous development of individuals and organizations.

The three problems listed above are only a small part of the relatively typical problems found in the actual landing. More practical cases will be introduced in subsequent articles. We find these problems, give relevant knowledge and reference cases, and follow up the team to try to solve the verification until the use of OKR tends to be stable. In the end, some teams choose to use commitment OKRs, some teams use challenging OKRs, and some teams use OKRs and KPIs in layers.

There are also some teams that have been trying for a long time. Although we are constantly adjusting, we will continue to experience acclimatization. After summarizing, we found that OKR has certain requirements for the landing team, and the use of OKR by a team with a low degree of matching cannot really play the role of OKR. After a period of pilot operation and collecting feedback from various teams, we have sorted out three elements that are suitable for OKR teams:

1. Team Features: Self-Driven, Agile Teams, Interest-Based
2. Business direction: Facing high innovation and high uncertainty business and work
3. Management style: mutual trust, dare to delegate, coaching leadership

After the pilot operation, some unsuitable teams switched back to the KPI management model, and the employees of these teams became very relaxed, while other teams, with the help of the management model with team-specific OKRs, achieved rapid improvement in performance. Of course, there are still some problems, which we are still trying to solve. We will find other teams with practical experience to communicate and discuss, to iteratively optimize the response method, and maintain the original enthusiasm. If you also have a lot of confusion and can't find the answer, or have relevant experience to share, welcome to join the community and let us learn and grow together!

3. The specific steps of introducing OKR

Change: change the essence of things - "Chinese Dictionary".

The title of this chapter has been discussed within our team for a long time. Why don't we end up using the very catchy word "revolution"? This has to come back to our company's cultural philosophy. The company insists on "doing the right things and doing things right", but the external environment is constantly changing. We need to keep learning and progress to adapt to the changes and do the right things in the present and the future. From this, we believe that any company does not need subversive and knock-down "changes", but based on its own logic and theories, continuous improvement and optimization to improve its ability to cope with changes. Have the ability to meet the test and impact of the so-called "V (variable) U (uncertain) C (complex) A (fuzzy)" complex environment, and will not be abandoned by the times because of using the wrong method at the wrong time.

We believe that OKR is not just a management by objectives method, but a set of concepts. Just like the words of Patriarch Bodhidharma, "Buddhism is originally from the soil, and I teach the Dharma to save my fascination. One flower blooms with five leaves, and the result comes naturally." We hope that through this series of articles, more people can understand and practice it. , and benefit from it. If you are reading all kinds of OKR books at this moment, you can gain something from this article, and apply it to the enterprise. By promoting OKR to solve some existing problems, managers will be treasured, and employees will be relieved, then it is like Bodhidharma. Like preaching the Dharma, it is an achievement worthy of aftertaste and pride.

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Next, we will officially enter the OKR evangelistic journey. According to the sequence of operations, screening and selection -> obtaining authorization -> cognitive alignment -> environmental preparation, let's start with screening and selection.

3.1. Is your team suitable for OKR?

Most managers in the company are responsible for the quarterly or annual goals of the team, data, revenue, profit, management and so on. Introduce a new method of team goal management. Once a failure occurs, the blow and impact will be unbearable for managers. If there are no members in your team who have a deep understanding of OKR or have actually participated in the use of OKR, then when you first make a choice, you will definitely have this question, is a team like ours suitable for OKR? So we hope that before adopting OKR, first make sure that your team or enterprise belongs to the following types:

1. IT/Internet team with rapid product updates

Compared with traditional enterprises, the Internet industry is more likely to produce new things and phenomenal products, and the rapid change of products is also a very common phenomenon. This is a very big challenge for a team specializing in the Internet. The team not only needs to have strong At the same time, it is necessary to continuously break through its own limitations. The product and operation team need to have a high sensitivity to the market environment, and technically need to be innovative and seize the opportunity. This coincides with OKR's encouragement to break through limitations and self-break, so this type of team is very suitable for introducing the OKR target management model.

2. In the face of uncertain work, focus on self-driven teams

The stimulating effect of OKR on employee productivity mainly comes from non-deterministic work. If the daily work content of employees is similar to piecework/time, and requires compliance with the process, OKRs cannot improve the efficiency and productivity of employees when they are relatively rigid. In this case, it is more appropriate to use the traditional KPI performance management method. If the work content that the team needs to deal with is more non-standard, partial design, and needs to exert a sense of ownership and innovation in order to create greater value, it is more suitable for OKR application scenarios.

3. Teams that carry the digital transformation of traditional enterprises

Teams preparing for transformation need to think about whether the past model can meet the needs of transformation and development. The art of war has a cloud: "the top and bottom have the same desire to win." Very high recognition, OKR is a very good target traction tool in this case. OKR plays a very important role in such teams. First of all, it can effectively avoid the occurrence of ambiguity in decision-making and team members have no sense of direction during the transformation process. At the same time, it can standardize the work content of team members and timely correct deviation from the core goal Behavior.

4. An entrepreneurial team ready to go big

Compared with mature enterprises, the entrepreneurial team faces a high risk of survival. "Explore" and "detours" are the norm. "How to confirm that you are on the right path" and "how to correct the direction in time" are the right way for the entrepreneurial team. problem. OKR's tight alignment of goals and results is a boon for startup teams, ensuring that goals are on the right track. At the same time, the flat management structure within the start-up team is relatively simple, with few layers, and the goals and performance management methods of OKR can be implemented and communicated very well.

In subsequent articles, we will consider multiple factors such as corporate culture requirements, team requirements, employee capabilities, atmosphere, and business, and integrate them into a scorecard. Based on the scorecard, you and your team can quickly verify whether the current team can seamlessly switch OKRs, and can also find out what needs to be supplemented, which will not be listed here.

3.2, teach you a trick to persuade the boss to use OKR!

The godfather of leadership and change, John P. Kotter, said in Leading Change: "Change can only be implemented effectively when driven by good leadership, not just good management." This book was rated as one of the most authoritative management books by Time magazine. It is almost a must-read book for management with the prefix C, and this theory is also used by Huawei today.

Studying this book carefully, we understand change as "too many backward changes lead to the need for overall innovation and death". Although companies often do not allow themselves to fall into such a situation, the thinking and ideas for promoting change explained in the book are still worth learning from. The core idea in vernacular is:

" Leadership is Pangu, management is an axe, and if you want to open the sky, you need both ."

Analogy to the implementation of OKRs, we observed that more than 70% of the failure cases have the same problem, that is, the participation of top managers is too low. In the process of introducing OKR, some companies may just verbally say "you go and see, and report in a period of time", or they may attach great importance to the participation of middle and grassroots and employees, and require them to master the OKR operation process and understand the principle. However, the senior management itself does not participate in the actual implementation process of OKR. In this way, some problems will gradually become apparent during the operation, including that the dismantling deviation of the enterprise's strategic goals is always not corrected in time, and the goals between departments are not aligned, which makes it very difficult to collaborate between the grassroots. At the same time, middle and high-level executives will also have doubts about the effect of OKRs. After all, the top-level goals are not aligned and opaque, and the execution of OKRs is a mere formality, which is ultimately reluctant to give up.

Looking at ByteDance's Zhang Yiming, he has spared no effort to implement "Context, Not Control (context management, not control management)" in the enterprise from the very beginning. In order to give full play to the power of collective wisdom and create an ideal distributed decision-making center, he reserves two days in advance every quarter to conceive his own OKRs, which will be published on Feishu after the formulation, and employees can directly Plan your own OKRs for his OKRs. At the same time, in order to correct the misunderstanding of "Context" at different levels, Bytes regularly holds face-to-face meetings with Boss to allow employees to communicate directly with the company's top management. Under various measures, the open culture of Byte has profoundly affected the daily way of doing things and thinking of employees. There is more trust between people, smoother collaboration, and excellent talents can maximize their own value.

Therefore , obtaining the authorization and support of leaders is a necessary condition for the introduction of OKR .

Generally speaking, there are two situations in obtaining authorization: you are the boss, or your boss has studied OKR in depth, understands its principles, and supports you very much; your boss has heard of this goal management tool, and is not sure whether to promote it. There is no idea, and there are doubts about the effect after application, you need to convince the boss. If you are in the first situation, then congratulations, the biggest difficulty has been solved, you can skip this section. If you are in the second situation, we need to be fully prepared to meet the challenge from the leadership.

First of all, you should try to collect materials related to OKRs , including but not limited to:

Which well-known companies have successfully applied and when: overseas are 1999 Google, 2011 YouTube, 2014 Uber, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., domestic 2019 vivo, 2012 bytes, 2014 Zhihu, 2015 Huawei, 2018 Midea, 2018 Ali , 2019 Baidu, Xiaomi, Tencent, etc. It can be seen that traditional enterprises and Internet enterprises are covered, and the industries involved are even more different. Each enterprise adjusts the use posture of OKR according to its own characteristics and adjusts measures according to local conditions.

What are some of the more vivid examples that have been greatly improved after the use of OKRs: Chen Pengpeng Braised Goose Restaurant (2016-2018 to achieve 1-10 stores in Shenzhen), Beijing Haoyunwei Restaurant (introduced in 2019 to achieve a turnaround, and in Guangzhou and Shenzhen , Nanjing and other cities have expanded many branches), and there are more practical cases that will not be listed here.

Secondly, you need to sort out what the implementation of OKR can bring to your company. You can follow the map to see if the current company has the following problems:

1. Inconsistent goals, traced back to the upper level can only be ignored
2. Cross-team collaboration is difficult and resources are difficult to mobilize
3. The external environment changes rapidly, and the strategic adjustment and organizational response are always not timely
4. The information is opaque, and the layers are gradually distorted, which can only be guessed.
5. Only the top and bottom, the PPT culture prevails, the management and the grassroots are opposed
6. Employees have no passion, eat and wait to die, and lie down with a big pot of rice

If there are these situations, then you can introduce OKR to your boss. Based on the characteristics of OKR itself, these problems can be gradually disintegrated, so that the company can develop faster and employees are more motivated.

Finally, devise a plan to advance the implementation of OKRs , including:

1. Delineate the scope of the pilot. For teams within this scope, employees must be aggressive, managers have leadership, and the team atmosphere is positive. The more they meet the requirements of the OKR team, the better;
2. To form a promotion team, team members need to have a certain influence, such as functional line executives, department managers, and your boss. Not only the approval and support of team members, but also their deep participation, in order to promote the goal of OKR can also be Formulate a goal, and each internal role will claim and decompose;
3. Arrange promotion meetings, including publicity and mobilization for the entire range, answering questions from middle and senior management, and promotion within small teams, with different priorities for different groups of people;
4. Regular review and summary, within the scope of the pilot, we should continuously collect positive and negative voices in the process, adjust the use posture of OKR, and give encouragement to achieve small promotion goals, so that the team can maintain confidence and the boss can maintain confidence;
5. Expand the scope of promotion and pilot scope After OKRs are implemented for a period of time, when the team stabilizes and generates good income, you can repeat the cycle of steps 1-5 until the whole company starts to use OKRs

When you are ready with the above content, you can introduce OKR as a powerful tool for business development to your boss. If it really doesn't work, pull your boss into the group, and we will use our actual combat experience to help you persuade the boss.

3.3. The unity of knowledge and action: the secret of OKR implementation

"I know the truth, but I still can't live my life" - the truth behind this is that knowledge and action are not one.

The smooth implementation of OKR is not a simple top-down arrangement, nor a bottom-up report, but requires all members of the organization to reach a basic consensus on OKR and agree with the management philosophy advocated by OKR. Managers truly agree that the execution of OKRs has a huge impetus to the team's combat effectiveness, and as individuals, they can also recognize that the implementation of OKRs can promote their own growth and performance. Only in this way can we avoid mechanical and task-based execution, which violates the original intention of introducing OKR.

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When implementing OKR within our company, many managers will ask: "What is the difference between OKR and other performance tools, such as KPIs? What are the advantages? What problems can be solved?". It is normal to have such doubts, because any changes to the organization will require a very large cost, and the cost of fault tolerance of management methods is even more unbearable.

From the point of view of evangelists or top management members, what is even more frightening is that the middle-level and grass-roots managers do not raise doubts, thinking that OKRs are simple and clear, do not need to focus on learning, and can be directly tested without special attention. Maybe some people have used it before, or can easily understand the underlying logic of this set of goal management tools, which can ensure that they can get started quickly when they use it, but most people in the target group we promote are the first time. OKR, don't know how to use it.

Therefore, in the face of these problems, we can share and communicate some basic principles with employees, organize promotional activities, such as knowledge sharing sessions, PPT or videos, and set up communication groups, etc., to spread the word, so that everyone can get in touch with OKR for the first time. There is a general outline in the mind, which is to do information input. Let everyone know what kind of thing this is, what is the difference between it and KPI, and what it can bring to everyone. This contributes to the general awareness of Lacy employees and allows everyone to reach a preliminary consensus on the understanding of OKRs.

At the same time, we suggest that for different roles, there should be a certain bias in the promotion. From the perspective of different roles, we should think backwards, how to promote it, and formulate different strategies.

3.3.1 For managers

OKR can exert the power of a team. Schopenhauer said: "A single person is weak and powerless, like a drifting Robinson. Only with others can he accomplish many things." Building a high-performance team is not management. It is a matter of one person, but requires group effort. Therefore, we need to clarify to managers the natural advantages of OKR in terms of communication assistance, organizational atmosphere, and cross-organizational cooperation, and why OKR can help managers build "high-performance teams".

Of course, as an OKR introducer, you cannot report good news but not bad news. When managers use OKRs for team management for the first time, they will definitely encounter problems that they have not encountered before. If they do not make psychological expectations and solutions in advance, they will inevitably be disappointed with OKRs. There are two main challenges faced by managers here, one is management thinking and the other is management behavior. For managers who are accustomed to using KPIs for goal management and performance management, it is easy to imitate behavior, but it is very difficult to change thinking, which requires in-depth study and practice, and continuous repetition in the process of OKR operation. Summary, continuous adjustment and optimization, to strengthen the concept of identity, transform thinking inertia.

So what are the thoughts that need to change cognition and strengthen understanding?

1. High-performing teams are not in charge

Give up control over employees and become a "coaching mentor" who motivates employees to grow continuously. In the traditional management method, managers give tasks, or employees make task commitments, and then give evaluations according to the completion of tasks. In this mode, managers and employees set a lower limit and upper limit of performance together, and employees will of course try to avoid performance. Below the lower limit, but without special assistance at the same time, the employee will not break the agreed performance ceiling. And OKR can more reflect employees' participation in goal achievement, participation in management, and pursuit of advanced needs. Therefore, in order to let employees exert their initiative, to a greater extent, managers need to give up control management methods, change their thinking, and embrace change.

2. Assessment is not the purpose, but the selection and training of talents

When managers evaluate employee performance, they cannot directly link OKRs to performance. Therefore, the process of evaluating employees' performance is also the process of evaluating employees' "talent portraits". By referring to the completion of employees' KR, it is also necessary to check the instructions in the employee's weekly and monthly reports, and observe their efforts to achieve KR. hard work, and personal growth.

"Is he a man with a strong desire to succeed?"

"Is he good at learning and growing?"

"Does he dare to take responsibility and is willing to take responsibility?"

In the process of formulating OKR goals, implementing OKR evaluation, and the final OKR review, managers can easily find employees who are willing to set challenging goals and strive to achieve them, as well as employees who are enthusiastic but need continuous motivation. Talents with special characteristics are cultivated, and finally a gradual and growing team is formed.

Of course, not using the completion of KR as an assessment basis does not mean no assessment. Our ultimate goal is to reduce internal friction, improve human efficiency, and increase the performance ceiling. When actually measuring the performance of employees, a more comprehensive evaluation is required, and the implementation of OKR can be indirectly referred to.

3. Transparency, openness and equality are the foundation of high-performance teams

We stress this again because it is the easiest to understand, but the hardest to do. People are always accustomed to relying on the strong and trampling on the weak. This kind of strong and weak relationship runs through almost everyone's life. This is common among parents and children at home, among students and teachers in school days, and among leaders and employees in the workplace. So in this natural relationship, if you want to create openness and equality, and get along like friends, you need managers to change their thinking habits first.

If employees report the problems encountered in the implementation of OKR, it is not to give encouragement and provide resources, but to order and blame from the position of the superior, then everyone will be cautious, make fewer mistakes, and do not do well, many excellent ideas will be will be stifled, and the organization will stagnate or even regress. Only through openness, transparency and co-creation can each employee know more clearly which direction the organization is heading in, what he can contribute to, and how to achieve self-transcendence in the process.

In the process of OKR practice, what are the key behaviors that need special attention?

1. Some tips for getting support from team members

When managers try OKR within the team, try to introduce as much as possible the driving effect of their personal performance and growth. Start with some famous people, interesting knowledge, it is easy to attract the attention of employees and make them interested. For example, talk show actor Hulan jokes about OKR jokes, such as 3.3.2 The theoretical basis for promotion among participants and individual successful cases, etc.

In addition, in the process of internal promotion, clarifying some of the summarized characteristics will enable them to quickly understand what they can get by using OKR, and what they need to undertake and change. This is very helpful for reducing employee vigilance and making OKR implementation smooth. The essential.

2. It is critical to cultivate OKR seed players

OKR itself has no way to constrain the behavior of employees in the team. It is more of a target traction and communication tool, so the smooth implementation and realization of the expected driving force requires the participation of every member at every level. Therefore, as a manager, when promoting OKR to the next-level managers, you also need to input the information for managers in Section 3.3.1 to ensure that the understanding of each level is consistent.

At the same time, managers also need to cultivate seed players in the team, influence and instill their ideas, let them understand the benefits of implementing OKR, and support the implementation of OKR. The ideal seed player is generally a person with active thinking, clear thinking, outgoing and able to drive the atmosphere in the team, and has a leadership temperament. Make them OKR coaches, or the backbone of OKR implementation on the team. Their in-depth participation can effectively drive other members of the team, which makes it easier to build a positive and healthy atmosphere and a transparent, equal and open team culture. Under the role model effect, dispelling the resistance and precaution of the masses can ensure the correctness of the overall direction to a greater extent.

When the process is mature, it can be properly decentralized, and everyone can form a service node, so that the entire OKR weaving process can be free from the wrong tonality of formalization, movement and handover.

3. Atmosphere creation is not just talk

As a manager, it is necessary to create a transparent, open and equal communication atmosphere as a long-term investment, and it is necessary to continue to practice and lead by example. Managers are the weather vane of a team, and the way they behave directly affects the way employees do things. In our team, from the team leader, to the first-level group, to the second-level group, the leaders of each level will send weekly reports to the subordinates on the last day of the working day. We also advocate cross-level communication, including one-on-one ministers, one-on-one OfficeHour, etc., to implement transparency and openness.

When leading members to complete a round of OKR implementation, managers need to conduct a review and summary, the purpose is to improve the execution effect of OKR, how to better stimulate everyone's enthusiasm, and let everyone understand the "upper and lower limits" of the team or leadership for OKR implementation Where, let employees understand how "open" they can be. This is the process of trust and temptation. Generally speaking, when it comes to human nature, it is slow and ineffective. It needs to be consistent and let the members understand that what the leader says and does are consistent.

In actual implementation, adjustments are still made based on different team characteristics. Just like the teams listed above with a large number of dispatched employees, it is also very good to continue to implement the spirit of OKR to keep the entire team enthusiastic, but it may not be necessary to pay special attention to KR. It is enough to directly pay attention to the completion results of KPIs. So, as evangelists, what we have to do is give enough support and help, give enough space and time, fertilize and prune like a sapling, and wait for it to grow freely.

3.3.2 For Participants

In 2015, because of the massive turnover of employees, Microsoft conducted a full-staff survey. They found that the most unbearable thing for employees was not the salary, nor the lack of promotion channels, but the performance appraisal mechanism. Labeling and grading employees through KPIs is actually a kind of psychological slavery, which cannot give employees positive incentives at all.

Looking at the present, the post-00s are already "rectifying" the workplace. They are a generation that grew up in an environment of information explosion, and a generation that is rich in materials and has no worries about food and clothing. Compared with the post-80s or 90s, they are no longer simply "making money", but pay more attention to career development and work. experience and personal value. Therefore, for the participants, we must stand in their perspective. The level of needs of the post-00s group has risen above that of belonging, respect, aesthetics and even self-realization.

Therefore, it is obviously not advisable to use performance-based compensation to kidnap employees' careers. Then, in order to provide better and faster development for the company, for better coordination of the organization, and for employees to realize their personal value and surpass themselves, it is very theoretical for evangelists to recommend OKR to employees from this perspective.

With theoretical support, let's find some practical cases: Susan Worthy, Google's NO.16 employee, she was named the most influential female entrepreneur in the Internet industry by "Time" magazine, Google was just born that year The first office at the time was Susan's garage. She used OKRs to help the soon-to-be-disappeared YouTube grow ten times faster. Since 2011, she has been selected as one of the "100 Most Influential Women of the Year" by Forbes every year. Behind her success, OKR has contributed a role that cannot be ignored. There are many such cases, especially in companies that have applied OKR. With the rapid growth of the company, many industry giants have also been incubated, including Google, Facebook, ByteDance, etc.

When managers and evangelists promote OKR to a wider range, in addition to the above theories and cases, there are also some key points of promotion. In the trial operation stage, it is emphasized that the participation and enthusiasm of employees will be greatly improved:

1. You can say: just tell me what the organization needs!

OKR is different from other goal management tools and performance management tools in that we focus on "where to go". Every process from formulation to execution can be guaranteed to be transparent and open, and everyone can see it, so that everyone has a better sense of participation in their work and enhances the sense of ownership. In order to achieve strategic goals, everyone can spontaneously set personal goals, and put effort and creativity to achieve them.

Because it is not strongly dependent on the interpretation of the intermediate level, as well as its personal task decomposition and assignment, the subordinate levels will no longer have the negative emotion of being "PUA". The transformation of the internal working thinking of the organization, from the original passive acceptance of tasks to the current initiative to challenge, from the original rigid execution of orders to a thoughtful and pursuit person, will make employees more trustworthy in the enterprise.

It turns out that screws can also have their own ideas, and workers can also write poems and distances by themselves.

2. You can say: I can! I can do better!

OKR encourages employees to constantly challenge themselves and get fun and satisfaction from self-improvement and success. Since it is not directly linked to performance, they can put down their psychological burdens, continue to break through, and move towards higher goals and better themselves.

When employees master the way of thinking and underlying logic of OKR, they can use OKR to help them focus on their goals, and based on their periodic review and correction mechanism, their progress and growth can continue to accumulate, so as to continue to the next goal. Step forward, and finally realize the spiral of personal value.

3. You can say: refuse involution, start with me!

Under traditional performance management tools, good work = promotion and salary increase. So think about the brother next door when you get an S-level rating: "Wow, congratulations, you deserve it!", maybe what he actually thought was "Why? Obviously I did a good job!" . This is because resources are limited. When personal goals are directly linked to compensation, competition and cooperation will be brought about. There will also be conflicts of interest between organizations, resulting in internal friction and lower efficiency.

Now what we advocate is that personal goals are no longer linked to performance. Everyone's work is for the advancement of the company's projects. The competition relationship is not so obvious, and everyone is a collaborator who works together. The relationship between people is more harmonious, and the cooperative relationship will be stronger. When a person achieves staged success, he can get the appreciation and encouragement from the heart of all staff.

Let me ask, who doesn't like this kind of environment?

Generally speaking, a knowledge sharing meeting is arranged for a large team, which aims to analyze OKR from the concept and concept, and interpret the motivation of introduction for all; Managers conduct an internal centralized study for team members, aiming to let team members understand the positive effect of OKR on personal performance and goal achievement. With these three layers of interpretation, the large team can achieve basic cognitive alignment, and then prepare some environment for the OKR trial run.

3.4. Roll up your sleeves and prepare to dry

After obtaining the authorization of the boss and completing the cognitive alignment, you and your friends may already be gearing up for a vigorous engagement. But calm down and come to this juncture, suddenly there is a feeling of nowhere to start:

how?

We understand your mentality at this time, because it is the same as the process of introducing OKR in our department: the general manager approved and supported the promotion, and promoted it within the department, and the team leader vigorously promoted the implementation of OKR. I scratched my head, because no one could give a set of methods that can be used directly. As a result, different teams have blossomed, each with its own approach and understanding.

But in conclusion, we can explore the implementation of OKR according to local conditions, the most important thing is:

Unity in thought, no restrictions in action

1. Don't treat OKR as a silver bullet to solve all problems, just try to use the power of goal focus, information transparency, and atmosphere creation
2. There is no limit to tools, whether to use Excel, online documents, OKR tools, or even pen and paper.
3. It is best to have an OKR coach, whether it is undertaken by the manager, or an additional member can be responsible for it. It can be shared by several teams or exclusively within the team.
4. How long is each cycle of OKR appropriate? There is no clear conclusion of pros and cons, but it is recommended not to be less than 2 months, not more than 6 months

Here is just a brief explanation, which will be introduced in more detail in our subsequent chapters "The Sword of OKR (Idea) - OKR Idea Approval" and "The Sword of OKR (Introduction) - Make OKR Easy to Battle". All in all, let go of the burden and move on!

The author has something to say: "Readers, thank you very much for your patient reading, which is the greatest support for us! At the same time, we are also very much looking forward to further communication with you, including the experience and confusion of introducing OKR, and encountered in the process of introducing OKR. What's the problem. Welcome to interact in the message area~"