Kingfish Group

OKR’s
March 2019

| © Kingfish Group | Confidential

Objective of this session

Objective: To train people on how to use OKR’s

Key Result 1: Provide a 30 minute overview on OKR’s (history, how to write, what matters most)
with15 mins for Q&A and 15 min over-run
Key Result 2: Team finds they have more clarity about OKR’s at the end of this session (score?)

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Background

• Andy Grove founder and former CEO Intel, wrote about MBO in his book High Output
Management and said:
- A successful MBO system needs only to answer two questions: Where do I want to go?
(The answer provides the Objective.)
- How will I pace myself to see if I’m getting there? (The answer gives us milestones, or Key
Results.)
• Enter John Doerr – From Intel to iconic investor and venture capitalist and board member of
Google.
• Kingfish Group adopted them in 2H2014.
• Other users include Dropbox, LinkedIn, Oracle, Slack, Spotify, Twitter, BMW, Disney, Exxon,
Samsung

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Why OKRs

• OKRs are a shared language for execution. They clarify expectations: What do we need to
get done and who’s working on it.
• They create clarity (focus), alignment, acceleration and job satisfaction by linking goals
to a team’s broader mission.

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Objectives – What?

• WHAT is to be achieved? “By definition, objectives are significant, concrete, action oriented,
and (ideally) inspirational. When properly designed and deployed, they’re a vaccine against
fuzzy thinking--and fuzzy execution.”
• Qualitative and inspirational
– The O should get people excited and jumping!
• Action-oriented
– Motivate you to take action as opposed to sounding good
• Actionable by the team independently
– As companies grow, they have more interdependence. “Your Objective has to be truly yours,
and you can’t have the excuse of Marketing didn’t market it.”
– Pusher, a startup using OKRs to accelerate its growth writes about its first OKR
retrospective. We learned things like:
- Don’t create objectives that rely on the input of other teams unless you’ve agreed with
them that you share priorities.
- Don’t create objectives that will require people we haven’t hired yet!
- Be realistic about how much time you will have to achieve your goals.

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Key Results – How?

• Key Results take all that inspirational language and make it measurable by quantifying it.
• Effective KRs are specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. Most of all, they are
measurable and verifiable.
– Can be based on anything you can measure: Growth, Engagement, Revenue, Performance,
Quality.
– Often starts with verbs like launch, create, develop, deliver, build, make, implement, define,
release, test, prepare and plan.
– Most times mention a specific metric which to achieve.
- Get 50 new paying users
- Increase user retention from 40% to 75%
- Reduce churn rate by 2%

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Tactics – the Kingfish twist

• Tactics take Key Results and make them actionable and easily measurable (non-numerical
KRs)
– They provide a clear path and an overview on progress
– They allow for ideation and creativity
– They enable effective and focused 1:1’s

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OKR Superpower #1:
Focus and Commit to Priorities

• “The one thing an [OKR] system should provide par excellence is focus. This can only happen
if we keep the number of objectives small...Each time you make a commitment, you forfeit
your chance to commit to something else...We must realize--and act on the realization--that if
we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing.” -Andy Grove
• Is this a must-have or a good to have?
• Is this the most critical thing we need to work on right now?

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OKR Superpower #2:
Align and Connect for Teamwork

• With OKR transparency, everyone’s goals from the CEO down are openly shared. Individuals
link their objectives to the company’s game plan, identify cross-dependencies, and coordinate
with other teams.
• “In an OKR system, the most junior staff can look at everyone’s goals, on up to the CEO.
Critiques and corrections are out in public view...Meritocracy flourishes in sunlight.”

Ideas are easy. Execution is everything. It takes a team to win. – John Doerr

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OKR Superpower #3: Track for Accountability

• OKRs are driven by data and brought to life by periodic check-ins, objective grading, and
continuous reassessment.
– An endangered key result triggers action to get it back on track, or to revise or replace it if
warranted.
– Unlike traditional, frozen, ‘set them and forget them’ business goals, OKRs are living,
breathing organisms.”
• “For an OKR system to function effectively, the team deploying it--whether a group of top
executives or an entire organization--must adopt it universally. No exceptions, no opt-outs.”

Without frequent status updates, goals slide into irrelevance; the gap between plan and
reality widens by the day.

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OKR Superpower #4: Stretch for Amazing

• “At the beginning of each cycle, distinguish between goals that must be attained 100 percent
(committed OKRs) and those that are stretching for a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (a BHAG, or
aspirational OKR).”
• “A BHAG is a huge and daunting goal--like a big mountain to climb. It is clear, compelling, and
people ‘get it’ right away.
– A BHAG serves as a unifying focal point of effort, galvanizing people and creating team spirit
as people strive toward a finish line. “
• “Aspirational OKRs very often start from the current state and effectively ask, ‘What could we
do if we had extra staff and we got a bit lucky?’
– An alternative and better approach is to start with, ‘What could my [or my customers’]
world look like in several years if we were freed from most constraints?’
- By definition, you’re not going to know how to achieve this state when the OKR is first
formulated--that is why it is an aspirational OKR.”

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Cont’d

“Google is propelled by our moonshot culture. The very ambitious is very hard to do...But
when you set a measurable objective for the year and chunk the problem, quarter by quarter,
moonshots become doable. that’s one of the great benefits of OKRs. They give us clear,
quantitative targets on the road to those qualitative leaps.” - Sundar Pichai

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Conversation, Feedback, Recognition

• OKR’s that aren't followed up with CFR’s are soulless.

• Ongoing CFR's in conjunction with structured and transparent OKR's make coaching more:
– relevant and concrete
– day-to-day work on point
– genuinely collaborative.
• Suggestions:
– In performance-driving conversations, allow the contributor to set the agenda. The
manager's role is to learn and coach.
– Make performance feedback two-way, ad hoc, and multidirectional
– Strengthen connections between teams and departments with peer-to-peer feedback, in
conjunction with cross-functional OKR’s.
– Employ peer recognition to enhance employee engagement and performance. For maximum
impact, recognition should be frequent, specific, highly visible and tied to top-line OKR's.

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The Importance of Culture

• Healthy culture and structured goal setting are interdependent.

• You can’t fear screwing up. That squelches innovation.
• An OKR/ CFR culture is above all a transparent culture.
• Vision-based leadership beats command-and-control.

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Testing if OKRs are good

• If you wrote them down in 5 minutes, they probably aren't good.

• If your objective doesn't fit on one line, it probably isn't crisp enough
• If your KR's are expressed in team-internal terms, they probably aren't good. What matters
isn't launch but impact.
• Use real dates. If every key result happens in the last day of the quarter, you likely don't have
a real plan.
• Make sure your key results are measurable, it must be possible to grade at the end of the
quarter.
• Make sure the metrics are unambiguous.
• If there are are important activities in your team that are not covered by OKR's, add more.
• For larger groups, make OKR's hierarchical - have high-level ones for the entire team, more
detailed ones for subteams. Make sure that "horizontal" OKR's (projects that need multiple
teams to contribute) have supporting key results in each sub-team.

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TYPICAL OKR CYCLE

• 4-6 weeks before cycle - Brainstorm annual and Q1 OKR's for company, brainstormed by
senior leaders.
• 2 weeks before quarter - Communicate company-wide OKR's for upcoming year and Q1
• Start of quarter- Communicate team Q1 OKR's (teams develop based on company OKR’s)
• 1 week after start of quarter - share employee OKR's (negotiation between contributors and
their managers)
• Throughout quarter - employees track progress and check in (measuring and sharing their
progress, checking in regularly with managers, assessing likelihood of achieving OKR's,
possibly recalibrating)
• Near end of quarter - Employees reflect and score Q1 OKR's

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Examples of OKRs - 1

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Examples of OKRs - 4
Objective: To build the world’s tallest
building.
The tallest building in the world is the Burj
Khalifa in Dubai, so to achieve our objective, the
building we are constructing needs to be taller.
Our first key result would be:
• building has more than 163 floors and is taller
than 2,436 feet.
To ensure our project moves on time, we add
more key results:
• plans to be complete by November 2018
• environmental review complete by March 2019
• construction begins by December 2019
• and “building opens by January 2022
• When written out, the OKR would look
something like this:
• Objective: To build the world’s tallest
building
• KR: Building has more than 163 floors and is
taller than 2,436 feet
• KR: Plans to be complete by November 2018
• KR: Environmental review complete by March
2019
• KR: Construction begins by December 2019
• KR: Building opens by January 2022
•
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Examples of OKRs - 2
Objective: Develop better prospecting skills.

Description: By improving prospecting skills, I will get into more initial presentations and win
more business!
Key Results:
• Review training materials from our online coaching resource.
• Do 2 60-minute game tape reviews with the sales manager, reviewing 20+ prospecting calls
for coaching on what’s working, what’s not working.
• Do a role-playing session with Allie, who has our team’s top connect-to-meeting rate.
• Test 5 new “compelling reason” pitches on prospecting calls to introduce humor, rapport and
other techniques.
• Increase my weekly connect-to-meeting rate from X% to Y%.

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Examples of OKRs - 3
• OKR EXAMPLE FOR A START-UP
COMPANY RAISING A FUNDING ROUND
• Company Objective 1
Finish raising capital for growth needs within 6
months [47% complete]
• Key Results 1-4
• Email and phone 100 venture capital and seed
funds (65 VCs contacted) [65%]
• Get at least 30 follow-up contact meetings or
conference calls (15 follow-up meetings
completed) [50%]
• Solicit at least 3 term sheets of our minimum
required terms (1 term sheet solicited) [33%]
• Close an investment round with a minimum
$10 Million pre-money (4 million raised) [40%]
• Individual Objectives for Key Result 1
The objective is to email and phone 100 venture
capital and seed funds. This will be distributed
across one or more individuals. Then they will
own individual key results.
• Individual Key Results
Note that completion of these lower key results
roll up to the higher level key result.
• Bob Smith research and identify 100 VC and
seed funds (100 VC and seed funds identified)
[100%]
• John Doe email or phone 4 VC or seed funds
every week (3 VC’s contacted this week) [75%]
• Bob Smith research and identity 50 Angel
Investors (25 Angel Investors identified) [50%]
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References

References:
• https://businessbookreviewer.com/2018/08/28/review-measure-what-matters/
• https://www.wired.com/story/when-john-doerr-brought-a-gift-to-googles-founders/
• https://medium.com/startup-tools/okrs-5afdc298bc28
• Measure What Matters: John Doerr

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