Full disclaimer: This note is not your classic motivational spiel about using time in your personal life and the fact that we all have the same 24 and you need to use it to the best of your ability.
In the next few paragraphs, I want to narrow it down only to the time we spend at work, and only if one of the phrases you hear most frequently from your team is “I don’t have time to take care of the OKRs as well.”
I encourage you to read on only if these two aspects, time and strategy, are important to you.
I will try to avoid clichés as much as possible and improve the situation through the tools of MAKE PROGRESS. If you would like to give these techniques a chance, you can read my book and access the entire OKR Toolkit, or download it separately.
OKR are no longer work: they are THE work
If you have the feeling that OKRs are generating more work than necessary, you have made a mistake in writing them and I urge you to revise them before it is too late.
“OKRs indicate priorities so by definition they are the priority themselves.”
The concept of not having time to do OKRs-and to think about strategy in general-means nothing. With all due respect to your job, no one does important things all day long.
It would mean to say that everything in one’s agenda is more has the highest priority than strategy.
It may also be true for those who do manual and repetitive work and who cannot choose how to manage their day (I will return to this in a moment).
But certainly not for a corporate leader who is paid to devote his intellectual power to improving the organization itself.
At any given time, there will be low value-added activities that you can eliminate to make room for strategic thinking. Start here.
Staying focused on priorities
Instead of using the expression “I don’t have time for this” try “this is not a priority.”
If we do not know what our priorities are, we will never know if we are focusing on them.
Where are the priorities in your company?
Is there a document that describes them?
Have your staff ever read it?
It is amazing to observe the fact that even though we are in the 21st century, with incredible technologies at our disposal, we persist in passing on this information orally as primitives around the fire…
How do you identify priorities in MAKE PROGRESS?
MAKE PROGRESS is a strategic execution acceleration system and is equipped with tools to filter business priorities, measure them, and most importantly, execute them.
The first tool must priorities emerge is the Strategy Focus Onepager (SFO). Here the leadership is sent to map the corporate strategy and distill the priorities in the next 12 months and the next 4 months.
How do you identify priorities? Try answering this question, “what can we not fail to do in the next x months so as not to jeopardize strategy execution?”
Can you describe a complex strategy in a single page? The simpler the strategy, the greater the chances of executing it; moreover, the complexity of the strategy does not necessarily ensure better results.
A strategy that does not take into account available resources, such as time, is a useless strategy because no system-be it a living being or a company-travels on infinite resources.
A simple strategy, contained on one page, and aligned with key numbers, allows you to move from ideas to action in a very short time.
Here you will find a video training explaining how to do it using a case study of an airline.
When and Who chooses what is a priority?
When
There are two moments in which is priorities are decided
- When updating the strategy
- When planning the next execution cycle
And these two activities are in a loop. Strategy is not an activity with a beginning and an end. It is an always-on process that cannot be turned off.
rove a moment to update the strategy from emergent to distributed. It’s not true that many companies don’t have the strategy, it’s that it has never been codified. And that makes it neither executable nor delegable or measurable.
The second moment in which priorities are decided is at the end of each execution period. In this note I tell about the importance of staying in execution mode as long as possible and how to build moments of uninterrupted focus for your team. Express summary: You can only stay focused if you know your priorities.
Who
In the company, not everyone has the resources to influence strategy, which is why it is the people in the highest positions, usually that narrow rose around the CEO, who have the resources to decide priorities. And without these resources, the concept of accountability cannot exist either.
What are these resources? There are three:
- Time. They can influence how teams use their time
- Budget. They can influence spending decisions
- Talent. They can influence the evolution of people’s skills
It all starts with leadership. If the strategy and priorities are not clear at the highest point of the organization, it will not be clear anywhere else.
MAKE PROGRESS with OKRs offers a strategy delivery system that is based on two principles:
- People always want to give their best in all conditions
- Those who make the decision are more likely to carry it out
This is why we talk about self-alignment. If the strategy becomes visible and understood then everyone is perfectly capable of executing it.
In theOKR toolkit you can use a template called Project List that allows everyone to self-align and self-plan activities.
It is the reason why OKRs are scary
A functioning organization needs fewer levels of control.
OKRs bring a small organizational earthquake. Many roles are inserted to control lower levels, and their cost is a representation of strategic debt, certainly not of organizational maturity. If everyone can finally manage resources independently and for the common good, what is the role of controllers?
For example, all too frequently, project managers are called upon to be watchdogs of projects that are behind schedule as early as the day there is kick-off because they are deprived of resources to influence outcomes.
If a project derails, what tools do they have besides pointing fingers at those who are lagging behind? Hire new people? Train them? Modify the project?
At MAKE PROGRESS project managers are critical allies for leadership because they are called upon to protect time, not consume it.
How do they do it? They look at the numbers the way sailors look at the stars. And after each check-in they reschedule the backlog to make sure teams are focused on priorities.
They get what I call “the liquid backlog” or the decision to schedule activities frequently not just by deadline, but by impact.
In Brief
Priority vs. Time: The “I don’t have time” excuse reflects more a matter of priority than actual available time. Recognizing this can radically change the way you manage your daily activities.
Time Control: stating that you do not have time is equivalent to not wanting to make room for certain activities, rather than an actual impossibility.
Evaluation of Activities: sincerely analyzing how time is spent may reveal that some low-value activities could be eliminated to make room for more meaningful ones, such as those related to OKRs.
Eliminate Excuses: eliminating the phrase “I don’t have time” from the vocabulary can help develop greater personal discipline, prompting everyone to make more conscious choices about what is important now.
Reassessment of Priorities: when you avoid saying “I don’t have time” and can align activities with strategy you force yourself to reflect on what is really important. This self-analysis exercise can lead to better alignment between your actions and results.
