Who Does What by How Much? — Book Summary (Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden)

Summary of Who Does What by How Much?

In Who Does What by How Much? by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden, the authors introduce a compelling approach to solving a common issue in organizations: the misalignment between the work teams focus on and what their customers truly need. This insightful guide explores how Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) offer a solution, providing a framework for aligning teams with customer needs and business strategy to drive meaningful results.

The book breaks down how OKRs help clarify high-level goals and track progress through measurable outcomes. By focusing on who the customer is, what behaviors need to change, and how much those behaviors must shift, Gothelf and Seiden offer a practical, customer-centric approach to goal-setting. Through real-world examples and actionable strategies, Who Does What by How Much? is an essential guide for organisations seeking to improve efficiency, adapt to evolving market needs, and achieve strategic success.

Here is our book notes and overall summary:

Introduction

The Problem: Why Do People Work on the Wrong Things?

People often work on the wrong tasks not because they are lazy or incompetent, but because they lose sight of what their customers really want. Many organizations lack a clear understanding of who their customers are and what they need. This misalignment leads to inefficiency and missed opportunities.

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) offer a solution by helping teams align with customer needs and company strategy. They create clarity, aid in prioritization, and ultimately drive results.

In this context, “customers” refers to anyone who consumes your work, whether they are end users or colleagues. The behavior of these customers—how they respond to your work—directly impacts your success. Whether they buy your products, subscribe to your services, or refer others, their actions are the key to achieving your goals.

Who Does What by How Much?

“Who does what by how much?” is, in a nutshell, your value equation. It has three parts.

• Who? represents your customer.
• Does what? reflects their behavior.
• By how much? quantifies the change in their behaviour.

Objectives define the high-level goals, while Key Results measure success using this value equation. OKRs ask essential questions: Who are our customers? What do they want to do? How can we help them? How can we measure this impact? These questions ensure customer-centricity, focus, and clarity, making OKRs a practical tool for achieving results.

Part 1 – What Are OKR’s

Chapter 1 – What Are OKR’s

OKRs: A Goal-Setting Framework

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) form a simple yet powerful goal-setting framework. The framework is divided into two key components:

1. Objectives: These are the goals you aim to achieve. A well-crafted objective is inspirational, aspirational, qualitative, time-bound, and specific. Objectives should connect the team to a broader purpose and create a sense of urgency. Depending on the level in an organization, objectives can range from broad and strategic to narrowly focused and tactical.

2. Key Results: These are the specific, measurable criteria that track your progress toward the objective. While objectives may be lofty, key results ground them by providing clear indicators of success. They answer the question, “How do we know we’ve achieved our goal?” Effective key results measure the value by tracking changes in behaviour. They tell us exactly what behaviours we’re looking for: prospective buyers showing intent to buy the vehicle, operators learning to use the vehicles safely, and travelers shifting their choice of transportation toward our flying vehicles.

Together, objectives inspire and set direction, while key results quantify success, creating a straightforward and easy-to-communicate framework for achieving goals.

What Do OKRs Leave Out?

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) intentionally exclude solutions. They define the problem and outline what success looks like, but leave the development of solutions to the individuals doing the work. This empowers teams to use their expertise, creativity, and initiative to solve problems, making OKRs a powerful tool.

Everyone Has a Customer

You might think you don’t have a customer, but in reality, everyone does. Whether you’re designing products, creating policies, or running campaigns, you are doing it for someone—your customer. Your goal is to positively influence their behaviour, benefiting both them and your organization by creating value.

Who Does What by How Much?

OKRs focus on outcomes—valuable customer behaviour. These outcomes are defined by three key components:

• Who? Whose behaviour is being targeted?
• Does what? What specific behaviour is being measured?
• By how much? What is the numerical target for this behaviour?

OKRs Are a Process

Implementing OKRs means using them regularly—daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually—to guide decisions on what to work on.

OKRs Are a Culture

In organisations that effectively use OKRs, you’ll notice that each one adapts OKRs slightly differently. OKRs help shape culture by focusing on changing what people do, making them a powerful tool for driving organisational behaviour and success.

Chapter 2 Why Use OKRs?

The Benefits of Using OKRs

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) offer several key benefits that help organisations navigate the complexities of modern work:

1. Customer-Centricity:OKRs place customer value at the core of goal-setting. They ensure that the primary focus is on delivering value to the customer, which is crucial for any organisation’s success. Unlike simply completing tasks, OKRs help measure the true impact on customers by setting objectives aimed at improving their experience and key results that track the value delivered.
2. Adaptability and Autonomy:OKRs encourage a culture of learning and autonomy. Leaders define the objectives, but it’s up to the teams to figure out how to achieve them. This approach empowers individuals to explore, experiment, and learn, fostering an environment where key questions are continuously addressed: Do we understand the objective? What solutions should we test? How do we know if our approach is working? This autonomy allows teams to adapt and innovate effectively.
3. Transparency Through Measurement:OKRs use data and measurement to create transparency across the organisation. By providing clear metrics, OKRs help everyone understand how their work contributes to larger goals, enabling better communication, collaboration, and alignment. Measurement not only tracks progress but also fosters better discussions about successes, challenges, and areas for improvement. It also pushes organisations to enhance their data collection and accessibility.
4. Anchoring Goals to a Larger Purpose:OKRs help teams connect their daily work to the broader purpose of the organisation. The objectives within OKRs are designed to align work with the organisation’s mission, making it clear why specific goals are pursued. This alignment fosters engagement and ensures that everyone understands how their work fits into the bigger picture. The collaborative nature of OKR setting—combining top-down and bottom-up processes—ensures that teams are not just handed goals but are involved in creating them.
5. Alignment and Focus:OKRs articulate the organisation’s most critical goals and the strategies to achieve them, creating a clear direction for all teams. They help prioritise work by clarifying what is essential and what can be deferred. By adopting OKRs across all teams, organisations achieve the alignment and focus necessary to stay on track and make informed choices when faced with distractions or new opportunities.

Principles for Using OKRs

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are a versatile framework, but they must be adapted to fit the unique needs of each organisation. While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, adhering to key principles can help ensure their effectiveness. If you encounter challenges with OKRs, revisit these principles to adjust your approach. Below are the core principles of OKRs:

1. FocusNo team can tackle everything simultaneously. OKRs help teams decide what to prioritise by answering, “What have we agreed to work on together?” and, by extension, “What have we decided is not a priority?”
   Anti-pattern:Attempting to express all work as OKRs, leading to too many OKRs and unclear prioritisation.Solution:Use OKRs only for current strategic priorities. Other tasks should be considered “business as usual” or deferred until they align with strategic priorities.
2. AutonomyTeams closest to the work are best positioned to determine how to create value. OKRs acknowledge this by allowing teams to set their own objectives and define how to achieve them.
   Anti-pattern:Leaders set OKRs for the entire organisation without input from the teams.Solution:Teams should set their own goals, ensuring they align with higher-level objectives.
3. AlignmentAlignment and autonomy are complementary. Teams must coordinate to ensure everyone is working towards the same overarching goals.
   Anti-pattern:Teams working on similar projects become siloed, focusing only on their own goals and neglecting coordination with other teams.Solution:Teams working on related projects should share an OKR, fostering unity and transparency across teams.
4. AccountabilityAutonomy must be balanced with accountability. OKRs provide a mechanism for teams to declare their goals and measure progress, ensuring they remain responsible for delivering results.
   Anti-pattern:Teams focus on tasks that don’t create organisational value, often with good intentions but misaligned priorities.Solution:Teams use OKRs to transparently set goals in collaboration with peers and leadership, ensuring alignment with organisational objectives and tracking progress.
5. TransparencyFor effective alignment, teams must consistently share their progress. High levels of transparency across the organisation are crucial.
   Anti-pattern:Limited communication leads to duplicate efforts, conflicting priorities, and misalignment.Solution:Share OKR progress publicly and broadly within a central system accessible to everyone in the company.
6. AgilityAgility involves the ability to change direction based on new insights and learning. OKRs should be adaptable to respond to customer feedback and evolving circumstances.
   Anti-pattern:Treating OKRs as static, failing to regularly review and adjust them based on new information.Solution:Teams should regularly check in—weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually—to ensure goals remain aligned with strategic and market priorities.
7. Customer-CentricitySuccess is achieved by focusing on the customer, whether they are external clients or internal colleagues. The goal is to create outcomes that benefit the customer.
   Anti-pattern:Writing OKRs that focus solely on producing outputs, rather than delivering value.Solution:Write OKRs where both the objectives and key results focus on achieving a better outcome for the customer, as evidenced by changes in their behaviour.

Chapter 3 OKRs and Outcomes

Redefining Success: Focusing on Outcomes

We often equate success with completing tasks or launching products, marking them off our to-do lists as accomplishments. However, simply finishing a task or launching a product doesn’t always equate to success. True success lies in creating valuable outcomes.

What Are Outcomes?

An outcome is a measurable change in your customer’s behaviour that generates value. To put it simply: Who does what by how much?

• Who? The customer or person you’re targeting.
• Does what? The valuable behaviour you’re aiming to influence.
• By how much? The specific, measurable target for that behaviour change.

In essence, an outcome occurs when a customer takes a valuable action that can be observed and measured. For OKRs to be effective, key results must be expressed as outcomes.

The Logic Model

The Logic Model framework teaches us that outputs lead to outcomes, which in turn contribute to long-term goals, known as impacts.

• Outputs are the products, policies, content, or any tangible item created.
• Outcomes are the measurable changes in behaviour resulting from these outputs, and these should be your key results.
• Impact refers to the long-term success measures, such as revenue, market share, customer satisfaction, or mission-driven goals like improving public health.

How They Work Together

Leadership defines the desired high-level impact and strategy, expressing these as organisational OKRs. Teams then create their own OKRs by identifying key results in the form of outcomes that align with the organisation’s goals. These outcomes are linked to the company’s objectives, and teams then figure out and deliver the necessary outputs to achieve those outcomes.

By focusing on behaviour-driven outcomes rather than just completing tasks or making products, OKRs help identify and target the customer behaviours that indicate true value. This approach naturally prioritises the most valuable work, regardless of seniority level, and aligns team efforts with the organisation’s overall objectives.

Key Takeaways

1. Output is what we create or do—whether it’s a product, service, or policy—to generate an outcome.
2. Outcomes are the observable, measurable changes in customer behaviour that result from these outputs.
3. Key results should be framed as outcomes because actions without desired results will not achieve your objective’s success.

Part 2 Writing OKRs

Chapter 4 Strategy and OKRS

When OKRs Work: Aligning with Strategy

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are effective when they help your organisation focus on the right priorities. In other words, OKRs work best when they reflect and express your strategy.

What Is Strategy?

Strategy is a deliberate and coherent approach to addressing an important challenge. It involves identifying a significant problem and defining how to address it. Challenges are everywhere, whether in a new job, personal wellness, or raising children—each of these requires a strategy.

Strategy and OKRs

When you set OKRs for your team, you’re inherently using strategy. You make decisions about the key challenges (which form your objectives) and outline how you’ll approach your goals through key results, which express what success looks like.

Understanding Strategy

• Addressing Important Challenges: Strategy focuses on significant challenges that lack obvious or easy solutions. The first strategic decision is selecting the right challenge to focus on and understanding why it’s more critical than others.
• Being Opinionated: Strategy involves making choices about what to do and, just as importantly, what not to do. Without making deliberate choices, you’re simply reacting, not strategising.
• Coherence: All parts of your strategy should align and reinforce each other. For example, team strategies should be aligned with the broader organisational strategy to avoid contradictions, such as a luxury brand using budget suppliers.
• Approach, Not a Plan: Strategy is more than a plan; it’s an approach that combines planning with guiding principles or policies. This helps in making decisions when unexpected challenges arise, ensuring that your strategy remains flexible and adaptable.

Creating a Strategy: A Lightweight Process

1. Identify Your Biggest Challenge: Start by identifying the most critical challenge you face. This could be at the organisational level, where leadership focuses on overall success, or at the team level, where you consider how your team can support organisational goals.
2. Identify Your Market: Determine who you will focus on—your target market or audience. Understand where they are, what they value, and how you position your product or service to meet their needs.
3. Propose Your Competitive Approach: Define your unique approach to addressing the challenge. This includes the actions you need to take, the guiding principles you will follow, and how you will deliver and capture value in the market. Consider what sets you apart from competitors and how your strategy supports the larger organisational goals.

Here are some more useful questions to consider when defining your strategy:

• What value will we deliver to our market?
• How will we capture value from the market?
• How does this address our biggest challenge?
• What is the differentiator that our competitor can’t or doesn’t want to match?
• How might we leverage an existing or unique asset of ours?
• How does this support the larger organisational strategy?

Internal Teams Have Competitors, Too

Even internal teams face competition, often from existing processes or systems within the organisation. For instance, if you’re trying to implement a new system but employees prefer the old one, your “competition” is the old system. Understanding this can help you strategise more effectively.

Storytelling: Making Strategy Visible

Once you’ve created your strategy, it’s essential to communicate it effectively to stakeholders. The best way to do this is through storytelling. A clear, compelling narrative that outlines the challenge and your approach to solving it will make your strategy easier to understand and share. Don’t underestimate the power of storytelling—it’s a crucial part of aligning your team and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Chapter 5 Who Does What?

Practical Steps for Defining Your Outcomes: [Who] + [Does What]

To figure out your outcomes and create effective OKRs, follow these three key steps:

1. Identify What Your Team Controls: Your OKRs should focus only on the aspects of the business, product, or service that your team can directly influence. Determine the specific elements within your scope of control, and base your OKRs on those.
2. Choose Your Target Customers: Within your scope of control, decide which group of customers your team will focus on first. Start by creating a list of potential customer groups or roles. Aim to identify three to six plausible target audiences, and then narrow down your focus.
3. Determine Key Customer Behaviours: Identify the customer behaviours that directly drive business results. Consider the customer journey and any obstacles that may prevent your target customers from exhibiting those behaviours. These behaviours will form the core of your OKRs.

Tips for Working with Other Teams

If your team’s progress depends on other teams, it’s essential to coordinate your OKRs with theirs. Consider working from a single, overarching OKR or using complementary OKRs to ensure alignment and collaboration.

Who: Targeting the Right Customers

To effectively target customers, get as specific as possible without becoming too narrow. Create a list of potential customer groups or roles to focus on. This list will help you determine the most relevant group for your OKRs.

Does What: Focusing on Key Behaviours

Once you’ve identified your target customers, determine the behaviours you want to influence. This involves understanding the customer journey and identifying behaviours that are critical to success.

Exercise: Mapping the Customer Journey

1. Tell the Customer’s Story: Describe the journey your target customer takes with your product or service.
2. Identify Key Behaviours: Focus on three to six important behaviours that create value for the customer and your organisation.
3. Use the [Who] [Does What] Format: Write down these behaviours using the [who] [does what] format. This ensures each behaviour is clearly defined and measurable.

Helpful Tips for Defining Outcomes

• Tip #1: Use the [Who] [Does What] FormatThis format keeps the focus on human behaviour, which is crucial for defining outcomes and key results.
• Tip #2: Stay Within Your ControlEnsure that the steps in your customer journey story are within your team’s scope of control. This keeps your OKRs actionable.
• Tip #3: Identify ObstaclesInclude both positive and negative factors in your story. Identifying obstacles helps you address potential challenges and refine your strategy.

By following these steps and tips, you’ll create focused, customer-centric OKRs that drive meaningful business outcomes.

Chapter 6 Writing OKRs

Understanding Objectives: Key Qualities and Practical Steps

A strong objective in OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) should have four essential qualities:

1. Inspirational: Connects the team’s work to a broader purpose, motivating them to pursue the goal.
2. Qualitative: Describes a strategic aspiration without using numbers.
3. Timeboxed: Includes a deadline for achieving the objective.
4. Specific: Focuses on a key element of your strategy rather than being overly general.

Example: If you’re trying to improve customer onboarding, your objective might be: “We can set up our customers quickly and easily because there is almost no manual or custom work involved for each customer.”

Focus on the Most Important Work

At the organisational level, aim for two or three OKRs that represent different aspects of your business. At the team level, it’s best to focus on just one OKR. Each objective should have two or three key results to maintain focus and prevent overwhelm.

Creating Your Objective: A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Gather Information: Collect your organisation’s strategy, team strategy, high-level OKRs, scope of control, and potential customer outcomes.
2. Identify Your Biggest Obstacle: Determine the most significant challenge that stands between your team and success. Write a brief description of this obstacle.
3. Turn the Obstacle into a Positive Statement: Transform the obstacle into a positive outcome. For example, if the obstacle is “slow customer setup,” the objective could be “We can set up our customers quickly and easily.”
4. Self-Check Your Objective: Ensure your objective is positive, inspirational, qualitative, timeboxed, specific, and free of solutions.
5. Align with Organisational OKRs: Make sure your objective is connected to a higher-level OKR within the organisation.

Creating Your Key Results

1. Identify Key Behaviours: Reflect on the customer behaviours you’ve identified during your story-telling exercise. These will form the basis of your key results.
2. Write Key Results Using the [Who] + [Does What] + [By How Much] Format: Define whose behaviour you’re trying to change, what those people will do differently, and how much change you’re aiming for.
3. Self-Check Your Key Results: Make sure your key results are outcomes, not solutions, and confirm that achieving them will lead to accomplishing your objective.

Setting Numbers for Key Results

Key results should include specific, measurable targets. Consider what’s possible and what’s valuable when setting these numbers. For example, instead of “Increase customer retention,” specify “Increase customer retention by 35%.”

Scoring OKRs: A Simple System

Scoring OKRs can help track performance. Here’s a straightforward system:

1. We Exceeded Expectations: Surpassed the ambitious goals set.
2. We Delivered: Met the ambitious goals.
3. We Fell Short: Made progress but didn’t fully achieve the goal.
4. We Failed to Deliver: Didn’t create the intended value.

While scoring can be useful, it’s important not to let scores overshadow the focus on achieving real results.

Key Takeaways

• Objectives should inspire, be qualitative, time-bound, and specific.
• Focus on the most critical work with a small number of OKRs.
• Align your OKRs with broader organisational goals.
• Key results should be specific, measurable outcomes that reflect changes in behaviour.
• Use scoring to track performance, but keep the focus on results, not the scores themselves.

Chapter 7 Setting OKRs Through Collaboration

Collaborating Top-Down and Bottom-Up to Set OKRs

When goals are handed down from executives without team input, it often leads to resentment and a feeling that leadership is out of touch. OKRs offer a way to replace this command-and-control approach with a system that emphasizes alignment and autonomy through collaboration.

The Benefits of Collaborative Goal-Setting

Collaborative OKR setting involves both leadership and teams working together to create goals. This process gives teams a sense of ownership over their work and recognizes their expertise and understanding of their specific areas.

A Practical Process for Collaborative OKR Setting

Here’s an ideal process for setting OKRs collaboratively:

1. Top-Down: Leadership establishes the organisation’s strategy and high-level OKRs. These are communicated clearly to every team and individual.
2. Bottom-Up: Teams create their own OKRs within their areas of influence. These OKRs should align with a higher-level “parent” OKR and contribute to the organisation’s overarching goals.
3. Collaboration: Teams present their OKRs to leadership and peer teams, explaining their choices and how these goals will help the organisation achieve its high-level objectives.
4. Revise and Publish: After discussions, teams refine their OKRs as needed. Once finalised, the OKRs are published for the period.

This process ensures that OKRs are not just directives from above but are shaped by the people who will execute them, leading to greater alignment, commitment, and effectiveness across the organisation.

Chapter 8 Common Questions About Writing OKRs

General Questions About OKRs

1. How Many OKRs Should We Have? Focus on one main objective per quarter with two or three key results. It’s rare for a team to successfully manage more than one OKR, as multiple OKRs can dilute focus and make prioritisation difficult. At the organisational level, aim for two or three OKRs that cover different business dimensions, or one OKR per major division.

2. Should Everything Get an OKR? No. Distinguish between OKRs and Business as Usual (BAU) work. OKRs should focus on the most important strategic priorities, while BAU metrics handle ongoing operational activities, such as website reliability or call centre performance. This separation helps maintain focus on what truly matters for growth and improvement.

3. We Can’t Measure a Key Result We Want to Write. Should We Write It Anyway? Yes. If the key result is important, write it down. Even if it seems difficult to measure, it’s crucial to capture the intended outcome. The organisation can help you figure out a way to measure it or find a suitable indicator in the meantime.

4. Does Every Key Result Have to Be an Outcome? Absolutely. Key results should always be expressed as outcomes: Who does what by how much? Avoid the temptation to define key results as outputs (tasks or deliverables), as outputs alone do not guarantee value creation.

Questions About Teams

1. Should We Have Individual OKRs? No. OKRs should be set at the team level or higher. This encourages collaboration and ensures that the goals are aligned with the organisation’s broader objectives.

2. Does Every Team Need Its Own OKRs? Not necessarily. Dependent teams can share OKRs, working together to achieve a common goal. This approach reduces the number of OKRs an organisation needs to manage and fosters alignment.

Questions About Customers

1. I Make Internally Facing Products. Why Do I Need OKRs? Even internally facing products have customers—the employees who use them. OKRs help focus your work on improving their experience and helping them do their jobs better, just as you would with external customers.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Writing OKRs

1. Writing Key Results as Task Lists A common mistake is writing key results as tasks or actions your team will take, such as “launch the marketing campaign.” These are your team’s behaviors, not your customers’. Instead, focus on the outcomes these actions are meant to achieve, like “Increase brand awareness by X%.”

2. Reverse Engineering Key Results to Fit Your To-Do List Avoid creating OKRs that simply reflect your existing tasks. This approach lengthens your to-do list and undermines the effectiveness of OKRs. Instead, let the desired outcomes guide your OKRs, and then plan tasks to achieve those outcomes.

3. Writing Key Results as Measures of System Behaviour Key results should measure customer behaviour, not system performance. For example, instead of focusing on a system metric like “50% of products on our shelves will be store-brand products,” focus on the customer outcome you want to achieve, such as “Increase customer preference for store-brand products by X%.”

Always frame your key results in the [Who] [Does What] [By How Much] format, ensuring that the “Who” is always the customer. This approach keeps your OKRs focused on creating real value for your customers and your organisation.

Part 3 Using OKRs

Chapter 9 The OKR Cycle

Using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) involves integrating them into your daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual work processes. It also requires adopting a more iterative approach, with short cycles of testing, learning, and measuring results to ensure continuous progress.

The OKR Cycle

The OKR Cycle is a rhythm that guides how OKRs are implemented within an organisation. It includes the following steps:

1. Organisational Strategy and OKRs:The process begins with setting the organisational strategy and goals annually.
2. Setting Team-Level OKRs:Teams set their OKRs annually and revisit them during quarterly check-ins.
3. Execution:Execution is timeboxed, meaning teams work on tasks until the next check-in meeting. This approach minimises time spent on ineffective work, as teams regularly evaluate and adjust based on results.
4. Learning:During execution, teams may need to test ideas and learn what works best. This phase involves understanding customers better and adjusting tactics accordingly.
5. Checking In:Regular check-ins (monthly and quarterly) allow teams to review progress, adjust OKRs if necessary, and ensure alignment with organisational goals. These meetings foster transparency, keep teams aligned, and enable leadership to stay informed and supportive.

Key Benefits of Consistent Communication

• Transparency: Facilitates faster, informed decision-making.
• Alignment: Ensures team efforts align with organisational goals.
• Leadership Awareness: Keeps leadership informed, building trust and support.
• Shared Insights: Enables teams to benefit from collective knowledge, enhancing alignment and agility across the organisation.

Chapter 10 Working with OKRS

OKRs don’t tell you exactly what to do; instead, they guide you to figure it out by working backward from the key result, which is a desired change in human behaviour. You start by asking: How might we create that behaviour change? From there, you list options, execute them, test, learn, measure, and adjust. If your work generates positive results, you continue; if not, you pivot. This iterative process—executing, learning, and refining—is the heartbeat of the OKR Cycle.

Creating Value Sooner

Traditional project management ends when a task or product is completed. With OKRs, the goal is different: it’s about changing customer behaviours and creating value as soon as possible. The key question shifts from “When are we done?” to “How soon can we start creating value?”

Adopting an Experimental Mindset

Working with outcomes often involves uncertainty. In most workplaces, admitting doubt or uncertainty can be uncomfortable. However, when it comes to changing human behaviour, there is a lot of unpredictability. The best approach is to adopt an experimental mindset: putting ideas into action with the goal of learning from the results.

The Process of Working with OKRs

1. Review the Problem: Start by reviewing the problem you’re trying to solve, which is embedded in your key result: [who] + [does what] + [by how much]. This defines the behaviour you want to influence.
2. Brainstorm Solutions: List multiple ways to achieve your key results. Don’t rush to the first idea; generate a variety of options.
3. Turn Directives into Hypotheses: Instead of saying, “We know we need to do this,” frame it as, “We believe doing this will achieve the desired outcome.” For example: “We believe that running ads in the local newspaper will increase breakfast buyers entering our store by 50%.” This approach allows you to test and adjust based on real data.
4. Decide What to Work on First: Prioritise ideas based on their potential to create value and their associated risks. Focus first on ideas that have the most impact on customer behaviour.
5. Execute with an Experimental Mindset: Carry out your chosen ideas, but do so in small, testable increments. Measure results as you go to ensure you’re on the right track.
6. Measure Progress: As you execute, gather both quantitative data (e.g., metrics, numbers) and qualitative data (e.g., customer feedback) to see how close you’re getting to your key result.
7. Evaluate and Reflect: After each cycle of work, evaluate the results. Did your actions bring you closer to achieving your key result? Use this reflection to inform your next steps.

Continuous Execution and Learning

• Execution for Outputs vs. Execution for Outcomes: Traditional work often focuses on completing tasks (outputs), but with OKRs, the focus is on outcomes—actual changes in customer behaviour. This may involve delivering smaller, testable increments of work to see if they generate the desired outcomes.
• Learning Quickly: As Amazon founder Jeff Bezos noted, many decisions are reversible and should be made with about 70% of the information you wish you had. Move quickly, and be prepared to course-correct if needed.

Measure and Share Data

Measure every part of the OKR Cycle by collecting data that tracks progress toward your key results. Quantitative data helps you see what’s happening, while qualitative data explains why it’s happening. Sharing this data across the organisation ensures transparency and alignment.

Continuous Improvement

Execution and learning are continuous processes. Regularly assess your work to ensure it’s driving the desired outcomes. Avoid long periods focused solely on learning or execution; instead, keep both in motion to ensure steady progress toward your key results.

Chapter 11 Checking In

Check-ins: The Core of OKR Success

Check-ins are regular meetings where teams review data, assess their progress, and decide on next steps. These meetings are crucial for aligning team efforts, ensuring transparency, and maintaining agility in the OKR process. Here’s how they work:

1. Weekly Check-ins:A quick, 30-minute meeting to monitor progress, share learnings, and address any immediate issues. It helps keep the team aligned and transparent.
2. Monthly Check-ins:A more in-depth review where the team, along with stakeholders, discusses progress, learns from recent activities, and evaluates obstacles and opportunities. This is also a time to confirm or adjust OKRs if necessary.
3. Quarterly Check-ins:A comprehensive review to assess if the team has met their OKRs, make any necessary adjustments, and plan for the next quarter. This meeting often includes peer teams and senior leaders.
4. Retrospective Meetings:These focus on the process rather than the results, allowing teams to reflect on how they worked and identify areas for improvement.

Key Elements of Check-ins:

• Primary Focus on Outcomes:Progress is measured by changes in customer behavior, as outlined in the key results. The goal is to assess whether the work is driving these changes.
• Secondary Focus on Confidence:Teams gauge their confidence in achieving the results, sparking discussions that can reveal potential issues early.
• Consistent Rhythm:Regular check-ins ensure consistency and predictability, helping teams stay focused and agile.

Running a Check-in Meeting:

• Opening:Review progress and share data on key results.
• Middle:Discuss learnings, obstacles, and opportunities.
• Closing:Set next steps, assign owners, and plan follow-ups if necessary.

Adjusting OKRs:

If data indicates a need for change, it’s okay to revise OKRs. This flexibility is part of the agility that OKRs are designed to foster.

Roadmap Reviews:

During check-ins, review and adjust roadmaps based on new learnings and changes in strategic priorities, ensuring that your work continues to align with organizational goals.

In essence, check-ins are vital for keeping teams aligned, informed, and adaptable, ensuring that OKRs drive meaningful progress throughout the organization.

Chapter 12 Planning with OKRS

Planning with OKRs: Embrace Flexibility and Focus

When using OKRs, traditional long-term, fixed planning is replaced by a more flexible approach. Here’s how to navigate planning when you’re unsure of what will be most effective:

1. Plan in Short Cycles:Instead of annual plans, plan for one OKR cycle (typically a quarter) at a time, allowing for course corrections and adjustments.
2. Filter Your To-Do List:Reevaluate ongoing work by filtering it through your OKRs. Create four lists: Keep Doing, Maybe, Stop Doing, and Start Doing. This helps prioritize what aligns with your current goals, even if it means saying “no” to ongoing work.
3. Outcome-Based Roadmaps:Shift from traditional roadmaps focused on outputs to ones driven by outcomes. Instead of asking “What will we build?” ask “What results are we seeking?” and “What outcomes are we trying to create?”
4. Embrace Learning Activities:Incorporate learning activities into your planning. These are essential for solving real problems and should be included in your roadmaps.
5. Iterative Roadmaps:Roadmaps should be living documents that evolve as you learn from each quarter. Start with your key results and potential work items, but be ready to adjust based on what you learn.
6. Continuous Review:Regularly review your roadmaps at the start of each cycle during check-ins. This allows for continuous adjustment based on evidence and learning.

This approach ensures that your work remains focused on achieving meaningful outcomes, rather than simply completing tasks, while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to new insights and challenges.

Part 4 Making OKRs Successful in Your Organization

Chapter 13 – Start with Why

Framing the Problem and the Solution for Change

1. What’s the Problem We’re Solving?When introducing a new way of working, such as OKRs, it’s crucial to clearly explain the problem this change is addressing. Before implementation, make sure your team understands why the current system needs improvement.

2. What Will the Future Look Like?After defining the problem, paint a clear picture of what success will look like. Describe how the organization will behave differently and what positive changes will occur as a result of the new system. Share this vision to align your team with the future goals.

3. How Will We Get from Here to There?Leaders must present a hypothesis for how the organization will transition from its current state to the envisioned future. This hypothesis should include clear success criteria, expressed as outcomes, detailing what actions and behaviors will change once the new system is in place.

This approach helps ensure that everyone understands the rationale behind the change, the goals, and the path to achieving them.

Chapter 14 – Supporting OKRs from the Top

Leadership’s Role in OKR Success

1. Continuous Leadership Support is Crucial:The most important factor for success during any organisational change, including the adoption of OKRs, is consistent and continuous leadership support. While OKRs can start with grassroots initiatives, lasting success requires active and ongoing support from leadership at all levels.

2. Shifting from Command and Control to Aligned Autonomy:OKRs shift leadership from a command-and-control approach to one that emphasises aligned autonomy. Leaders set the strategic direction and outcomes through OKRs, allowing teams to decide how best to achieve those outcomes. This shift requires leaders to change their management style, moving away from prescribing solutions and instead trusting teams to leverage their expertise.

3. Training and Reinforcing Learning:Leaders must train teams in learning methods and continuously reinforce that adapting strategies based on new evidence is not only acceptable but encouraged. Teams should be celebrated and rewarded for making data-driven changes midstream.

4. Radical Transparency:To avoid the temptation to micromanage, leaders should demand radical transparency from their teams. Teams should regularly communicate about their work, progress, learnings, and any changes they plan to make based on new insights. This open communication helps maintain trust and alignment without the need for micromanagement.

5. Balancing Evidence and Educated Guesses:In an OKR-driven environment, work is viewed as a series of hypotheses to be tested. Leaders must embrace research and data to test ideas, setting ambitious goals while acknowledging the uncertainty of how to achieve them.

Key Takeaways

• Data Access: Make data easily accessible to everyone, ensuring it’s simple to track customer behaviour at any time.
• Foster a Learning Culture: Leaders must create a psychologically safe environment where learning is valued, questions are encouraged, and experimentation is celebrated. Teams should feel safe to make mistakes, share ideas, and adjust their approach based on what they learn.

Chapter 15 Managing Up, Changing Responsibilities

1. Managing Up with OKRs: For successful OKR implementation, managers must effectively manage up, working closely with senior leadership to gain the support needed. This involves understanding the connection between leadership directives and OKRs. If that connection isn’t clear, initiate conversations to clarify how new tasks align with existing OKRs. It’s crucial to ensure that leaders understand the impact of new work on resources and timelines.

2. Communicate Your Work Consistently: Regularly update leadership on your progress, using OKRs to provide transparency. Whether through check-ins, emails, or other communication channels, keep leaders informed about what you’re working on, what you’ve learned, and any changes made based on evidence. This builds trust and ensures alignment with organisational goals.

3. Practice Customer-Centricity with Leaders: Treat your leaders as internal customers. Understand their perspectives and how your work can help them meet their objectives. Align your requests and updates with their priorities to gain their support more effectively.

4. Changing Middle Manager Responsibilities: OKRs shift the role of middle managers from taskmasters to facilitators. Instead of assigning tasks, managers now ensure that their team’s OKRs align with strategic goals, clear obstacles, set boundaries, and provide guidance when needed. Success is measured by results—specifically, how actions change customer behaviour—not by whether tasks were completed.

5. Adjusting Performance Management: Do not use individual OKRs for performance management. This can lead to conflicting goals and misaligned incentives. Instead, evaluate individual performance based on how well they embody the seven key principles of OKRs: focus, autonomy, alignment, accountability, transparency, agility, and customer-centricity. This approach fosters collaboration and ensures that everyone is working towards the same organisational objectives.

Chapter 16 Scaling OKRS

Building OKRs from a Strategic Foundation

1. Start with Strategy:A clear organizational strategy is essential for effective OKRs. Without it, alignment at all levels—team, business unit, and organizational—becomes challenging. Strategy should guide the creation of all OKRs.

2. Think of OKRs as a Family Tree, Not a Cascade:Each OKR should have a “parent” OKR that it supports. This ensures three things:

• Every goal aligns with the overall strategy, creating a clear connection up the hierarchy.
• Each goal has a designated owner, driving accountability.
• Leaders maintain top-down discipline while allowing flexibility and creativity from the bottom up.

3. Set Team-Level OKRs:After leadership sets high-level OKRs, each department and team should create their own OKRs that support those above them. This ensures alignment across the organization.

4. Manage Dependencies with Shared OKRs:In cases where teams are interdependent, they may need to share OKRs. This fosters collaboration and ensures that success is linked across teams. Shared OKRs can be short-term or longer-term, depending on the scope of the work.

5. Emphasize Transparency:Be radically transparent with your OKR efforts. Over-communicate your team’s actions, progress, and challenges through all available channels. This builds support and alignment as the work progresses.

6. Start Small:Begin with a small pilot, such as one team or a small group of teams. Focus on one OKR—one objective and three key results—and limit the timeline to one quarter. This pilot will provide valuable data and insights that can guide broader implementation.

7. Use OKR Tools as You Grow:For small organizations, simple tools like a paper sheet on the wall can suffice. As you scale, consider implementing tools that enhance transparency and improve the quality of work related to OKRs. These tools become critical as the organization grows.

By following these steps, you ensure that OKRs are strategically aligned, effectively managed, and supported by the right tools and transparency practices, setting the stage for successful implementation and scaling.