Hey, happy Monday!
Before we start: how are you?
I didn’t write to you on Monday because I had just concluded a cycle of four emails (one per day) with the Action Plan for 2022. Each email contains precise directions on how to strategically address each of the 4 strategic levels. If you want to catch up you can read them all in one go here: ●Profits, ●Products, ●Processes, ●People.
We started at the end because as in a journey, to design a good strategy it is important to choose the destination first. And although it may seem venial, profits are the metric by which strategies are measured.
But didn’t it start from the vision?
Of course! It always starts from there. But profits are the only way to make sure that you can have the resources to achieve that vision. To continue to serve the people who are counting on you to make that version of the world you believe in happen.
This is not the stuff of corporate villains who only think about making money.
Good people need money too (perhaps all the more reason why), and the strategy for making it must also have Greenpeace, Telethon, Emergency, and… your project.
That Action Plan may seem to be written only for entrepreneurs. It doesn’t.
The problem is just that. If you’re working on product, process, or people and it’s not clear how the organization creates value, how can you be sure you’re making the right decisions?
That Action Plan is written to mend a rift (in whatever role you are in). It is the tear between strategy and execution, between progress and commitment, between motivation and duty. It is not enough to bring the two edges of the wound closer together and hope that it will heal itself.
Something more is needed. Like the OKRs.
You might think it is yet another medicine that cures everything. That’s not the case at all.
OKRs are rather like the zipper of the best performance suit you’ve ever worn. The one to use to break all records. Each tooth is perfectly engineered to weld the two parts together, effortlessly, safely, and faster than any other management technique.
OKRs are simple but they are not easy. Like zippers, you can fix them yourself, but if you don’t have the right tools then you’re going to get reopened (or worse yet, you’re going to pinch yourself-what a nuisance!).
If you are deciding to implement OKRs in your work group I would love to meet with you. Pick a time from my calendar to allow me to show you how to do it, in 90 days or less, with the right tools and avoid awkward conversations.
Or sign up for the launch list on the manual I am writing on the subject.
I could have written you a newsletter full of nothing about the$75bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft (FT) and about 4 reasons why you should care but the truth is that this news will not have the slightest impact on your business except to distract you from the important things and further reduce the time you have to spend on your of strategy.
I’ll leave you with a practical example to get started right away.
STAY FOCUSED, MAKE FIRE ☀️🔎🔥
-Antonio
● OKR / The STRTGY Way
OKRs and Project Management
These are two things that must remain distinct but complementary. This is one of the main difficulties to be faced in any program.
It comes naturally to divide the road to a goal into several stages, but in doing so we identify project milestones instead of measuring progress toward the goal.
Practically.
I never recommend writing goals like this one that I copied and pasted from the site of What Matters The one that makes everyone want to use OKRs!
OBJ: Extend Coursera’s reach to new students.
KR1: Perform A/B tests, learn, and iterate on ways to acquire new students and engage existing students.
KR2: Increase mobile monthly active users (MAU) to 150k.
KR3: Create internal tools to track key growth metrics.
KR4: Launch features to enable instructors to create more engaging videos.
Error 1. Never write KR as the first.
It is not clear what needs to be measured. How many A/B tests do you need to do to reach new students? Also, what does “learn, and iterate on ways to acquire new students and engage existing ones” mean?
It’s kind of like saying to the growth team, “come on now do a little bit more experimenting!”
Error 2. Leave milestones on the roadmap.
KR4 probably refers to features in the roadmap by assuming that engaging a different type of user (instructors) means reaching new students. This is a good assumption but written in a KR is a requirement for the team, not an option.
Error 3. Defocusing.
KR3 is a stand-alone project. It is unclear how implementing an internal tool will allow one to understand that new students have been reached.
If the Coursera team had been in the program. OKRs Road to Black Belt of STRTGY they probably would have gotten a more accurate OKR like this:
OBJ: Tripling Coursera’s acquisition of highly engaged students by the end of Q1-2022
KR1: Increase Weekly Sign-up from 10k to 30k users
KR2: Reduce CAC to €15 from €25
KR2: Increase mobile monthly active users (MAU) to 150k (38k/Week)
KR4: Increase Weekly Watching Time from 20min to 60min,
This means. Managing by Numbers™.
Benefit 1. Clear and unambiguous ambitious goal.
We need to triple (not simply more) the acquisition of engaged students, not just any students (defined by KR4), by March 2022. It means there is a clear strategy and teams know who their ideal customers are.
Benefit 2. Adherence to business, but freedom of action.
OKRs don’t tell you what to do, people take care of that, but they make progress toward success unmistakable. Tripling means from 10,000 to 30,000 new members per week. It is up to the team to figure out how to do it, precisely “learn and iterate.” I provide one more clear direction for this: the CAC must shrink. So among all the possible options such as “triple the ads budget” teams can choose only the compatible ones.
Benefit 3. Focus, focus, focus.
The definition of highly engaged seems to be users who watch courses from mobile. It is an unmistakable signal for project managers to reprioritize tasks in favor of those that impact these two numbers: Mobile MAU and Weekly Watching Time (could these be the KR3 key growth metrics from the original example?).
Which of the two versions brings crystal clarity to the table?
Do your team a favor ..
