Cracking the OKR Code: A virtual consultation with an OKR Coach
I know the first meeting with an Objectives and Key Results coach can be intimidating.
Last week, I started building a virtual consult experience through my website and other technologies, because I know a lot of people want to learn more about working with an Objectives and Key Results coach or working with new ways of strategic planning, and not everybody wants to schedule a meeting right away. Ultimately, this expereince will allow you to do a self-guided virtual consultation.
I recorded a video to support that and then thought, well, this is actually great information for a podcast episode, too.
Here, you’ll find answers to the three questions I’m asked in almost every consult I do with a prospect.
You’ll get a huge head start on your confidence when seeking support from an OKR coach or other OKR professional.
So, give it a listen!
I can't wait to hear your questions, and if you'd like a personalized virtual consult, visit findrc.co/virtcon, and that'll take you to my coaching portal where you can complete an intake form that kicks off your personalized virtual consult.
As you're listening, jot down your thoughts about what questions you think I should answer in a virtual consult, and then send them my way. I'd love to address them either in my Frequently Asked Questions or in future versions of this virtual consult.
I hope you enjoy the episode, and again, I can't wait to hear your questions. This episode is packed with practical advice and answers to common questions about OKR coaching and implementation.
Episode Highlights
What are OKRs?: Understanding the basics of Objectives and Key Results.
Virtual Consultation Simulation: Sara simulates a consultation, explaining her methods and answering common questions.
Top-Level OKRs: Starting with senior leaders to establish best practices.
Senior Leadership Onboarding: Ensuring leaders can model OKR behaviors.
Organization-Wide Communication: Sharing OKRs with the entire organization.
Localization/Scale Phase: Adapting OKRs to different organizational levels.
Common Questions:
Implementation: How to start or reboot OKRs.
Localization: How to cascade OKRs through the organization.
Integration with Personal Goals: Aligning OKRs with individual performance management and incentive systems.
Notable Quotes
“OKRs are a goal-setting framework used to increase focus, clarity, and alignment within organizations.”
“We start with those top-level OKRs with the senior-most leader so that we can establish what the best practice is going to look like for the rest of the organization.”
“The localization approach that I use with clients is a little bit different. We establish those awesome best practice top-line goals at the top of the organization, and then we do a first level localization to the functional orgs that report into the top-level.”
Links and Resources
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Episode 21: A Virtual Consult with OKR Coach Sara Lobkovich
© Sara Lobkovich, Red Currant Collective LLC (2024). All Rights Reserved.
[00:00:00] Sara: Welcome to the Thinkydoers podcast. Thinkydoers are those of us drawn to deep work where thinking is working. But we don't stop there. We're compelled to move the work from insight to idea, through the messy middle, to find courage and confidence to put our thoughts into action. I'm Sara Lobkovich, and I'm a Thinkydoer. I'm here to help others find more satisfaction, less frustration, less friction, and more flow in our work. My mission is to help changemakers like you transform our workplaces and world. So let's get started.
Hello, and welcome to a solo episode of Thinkydoers. It's just me this time, although we do have some incredible interviews that we're getting recorded in the next couple weeks, and I can't wait to share them with you. We've got a really diverse range of guests. Along that [00:01:00] lines, if you or someone you know might like to be a guest here on Thinkydoers, drop me a message. You can find more information at findrc.co/pod_guest.
Alright, in today's episode I'm just going to dive right into the content. I have been trying to create a virtual consult experience through my website and other technologies.I know a lot of people want to learn more about working with an Objectives and Key Results coach or working with new ways of strategic planning and not everybody wants to schedule a meeting right away. So, I'm working on creating an experience where people can do a self-guided virtual consultation. I recorded a video to support that and then thought, well, this is actually great information for a podcast episode. So, give it a listen I can't wait to hear your questions, and if you'd like a personalized experience with this virtual consult, you can visit findrc.co/virtcon, [00:02:00] V I R T C O N, and that'll take you to my coaching portal where you can complete an intake form that kicks off your personalized virtual consult. As you're listening, jot down your thoughts about what questions you think I should answer in a virtual consult, and then send them my way. I'd love to address them either in my Frequently Asked Questions or in future versions of this virtual consult. I hope you enjoy the episode, and again, I can't wait to hear your questions.
[00:02:28] Sara (2): Want to learn more about working with an Objectives and Key Results coach or consultant without actually scheduling a meeting? I've got you.
I'm Sara Lobkovich, a strategy coach and OKR professional, and I help leaders and their organizations set clear goals, stay focused, and build cultures of growth, learning, and high performance. OKRs are aligned goal framework used mostly within organizations to increase [00:03:00] focus, clarity, and alignment. OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, where Objectives are our small number of strategically aligned directions we aim to improve on, and Key Results help us align on what progress and success mean for a given Objective. Now, I know talking to a coach or consultant can be a little bit intimidating. Signing up for a free consult isn't always where you want to begin. So, I thought I'd do a simulated consultation here. You can have a self-service taste of what working with an OKR professional might look like to begin with. Before we do, though, I have a one-pager that I'd love for you to download that shows the steps in a successful onboarding. So you can pop on over to findrc.co/inaboxos to get that download. Now, if this were a live consult, I'd ask you some questions first about why you're considering implementing Objectives and Key Results or OKRs, what some of the challenges that you're [00:04:00] experiencing in your business are, and what job you might be hiring Objectives and Key Results or a new approach to strategic planning and goal-setting to achieve. If you'd like me to have that information for your virtual consult, you can pop over and fill in my information request form; that comes right to me. I'll review it, and then I'll reply with either an email or maybe an adaptation of a video like this to speak to your specific scenario. What we'll do instead for now, until you have a chance to fill out that information request form, is we'll start with the three questions that I get asked in every consult I do with a new prospect.
First, tell me a little bit about your approach. How would we actually implement OKRs? Or, how would we reboot an OKR implementation that's not successful now? When I get to design an implementation from the start, or when I'm rebooting an OKR [00:05:00] implementation, the place that we almost always begin is working with the senior-most leader to create a really solid set of best practice Objectives and Key Results for the company-level or whatever the top-level of the organization is that we're working with. When I say "best practice", I don't mean according to an external standard. I, of course, bring best practices to the organization, but working with that senior leader to develop those top-level Objectives and Key Results lets me know what the culture around the shared goal-setting and strategic planning approach is going to be in the organization and if we have a spectrum from a traditional or conservative OKR implementation to my style of OKR implementation, which I call No-BS OKRs, which are helpful for high change, status quo challenging organizations that really have to drive human outcomes, working with the senior-most leader directly, sometimes [00:06:00] their key reports or their right-hand person, helps me determinewhere culturally on that spectrum, the OKR implementation approach is likely to land for that client. I sussed that all out during the pre-sale phase as well, because clients who don't need the rigor of the approach that I use might be better served by someone else in my network. I'll make a referral if that's the case, but for clients who are looking to really increase their outcome on major performance metrics, especially on important human outcomes, Then that's where it's really important that we assess that senior leader and get them on board with the approach to OKRs so that they can walk the talk and model best practices for their organization. because there are very few things that set OKR implementations back more than having a senior most leader who's not properly modeling the OKR mindset and [00:07:00] core skills, including words and meanings of objectives and key resultsSo in an ideal case, we start with those top-level OKRs with the senior most leader so that we can establish what the best practice is going to look like for the rest of the organization.
The next step, which sometimes happens concurrently, is onboarding other senior leaders, and in any senior leadership team, there is typically a bit of a bell curve in terms of adoption readiness, So we might have some really enthusiastic early adopters, but we also might have some skeptics.
Working with the senior most leader, their right hand person or people and their reports helps us make sure again, that that whole leadership team can walk the talk and model the behaviors and the skills that they expect from the rest of the organization.
Once we've got best practice, top-level objectives and key results, and the senior leaders are onboarded to them, then we can share the [00:08:00] OKRs with the rest of the organization. We typically provide communication support around that step because how the organizations are presented and explained to the organization, either at that first town hall meeting or at the first post-OKR-reboot town hall can really set the tone for the success of the methodology adoption going forward.
Once OKRs are shared with the rest of the organization, sometimes that's where my work with clients end. They just want to get that top-level OKRs established. But many clients I work with are really focused on the Localization or cascading process.
So how can they then take the company-level OKRs and move or translate those down through the organization to improve clarity all throughout the organization?
I call that the localization or scale phase. And that looks different for every organization. We're going to talk about some localization approaches in just a minute.
[00:09:00] But we have all sorts of options for that localization or scale phase, ranging from hands on, coached workshops, one on one with key teams or individuals, all the way down to large, fully independent, self paced, Online learnings that facilitate people through the creation of OKRs.
And then we've got lots of options in the middle that combine that hands on coaching approach with live or asynchronous workshops that let people learn OKRs as they actually create them.
Backed with things like an online community for your OKR center of excellence or office hours where people can schedule time to get help from an OKR coach when they need it.
With a lot of clients, we start with those top-level OKRs and senior leadership alignment in the first quarter.
Get them through working with OKRs for a quarter. Work the hitches out of the gitalong, working together with that senior leadership [00:10:00] team, and then at the end of the first quarter of the implementation or reboot, we assess what we've learned. We make any changes necessary to the top-level
OKRs. And then that's usually when we begin the scale process is at the end of the first quarter. Some organizations need to do that more slowly. If you've got a really established, strategic plan that the organization is used to working in line with, or if we have to line up with something like individual evaluation or individual goal-setting details and reconcile the systems, we'll talk about that in a minute too.
in some cases then if we need to stagger the onboarding or arrange it differently, sometimes we link the strategic plan to objectives in the first quarter and then layer in key results in the second quarter before we begin scale.
And in other cases where we do have those individual goal alignment questions to work out, we make the calendar work for whatever the organization's [00:11:00] actual reality is.
the second key question that I almost always get asked, it's that scale phase or the localization phase, where Most companies are implementing OKRs not just so they have that clarity at the top of the organization, but so clarity, focus, and alignment can roll down through the rest of the organization and increase our alignment from top to bottom.
I use a bit different approach to localization than some other practitioners. Traditional approaches to localization or cascading or connecting OKRs tended to work sequentially from the top of the organization down through the layers of the organization. That can work great for some organizations in some settings.
The fast-moving, high change orgs that I work with mostly tend to need a little bit faster and more nimble approach. If they try to do that sequential localization down through multiple levels of the organization, they might find themselves spending a lot of [00:12:00] time on goal-setting that could be spent on achieving goals.
The localization approach that I use with clients is a little bit different. We establish those awesome best practice for your organization top line goals at the top of the organization, and then we do a first level localization to the functional orgs that report into the top-level. And this is a little different if you've got a large global organization where the next layer down is regions, or really independent programs that takes place in some organizations where that second layer is like individual little mini companies. So in that case, we do company-level or top-level OKRs at the top-level. And then we do a mini version of those at that 1. 5 level down is what I call that.
But if we don't have that structure where we need to accommodate that 1. 5 level, and we're just rolling down to functional organizations
like product, customer [00:13:00] support, finance, marketing, and other corp functions, engineering, those functional disciplines. so then I typically support creation of those L2 or the functional objectives and key results working with each of the functional leaders. Sometimes we have cross functional OKRs at that level, but a lot of times it's working with each of the individual functional leaders and sometimes some of their key staff in alignment with our senior executives.
Because again, we want those L2 OKRs to model the organization's best OKR practices.
Achieving that with that L2, we can do in a number of ways. Sometimes those are hands-on live coached workshops with our L2 leaders. And I'm talking about in a matter of a couple hours, not days or weeks.
Sometimes we can handle those in a workshop setting or a cohort based setting where people are learning OKRs as they create them with quality assurance from me.
We've got our top line OKRs and our first level of [00:14:00] localization to those functional organizations. from there, localization varies by organization. Sometimes, in large orgs, we do one more layer of localization, but I find that to be fairly rare, even in really large organizations, because if we've done our job well at the company-level and the functional level, we don't always need another level of OKRs.
A lot of teams and people in the organization can look up at the company-level and functional level OKRs and get the clarity they need to know what they need to focus on.
Sometimes we have individual metrics that need to roll down to level three.
When there are real impact metrics for teams that might roll down from the upline OKRs to the level three teams, then we might localize OKRs. But what I find way more often is if we've got solid top line OKRs and then strong level two functional OKRs is that from [00:15:00] there, the OKR creation process can become bottoms up so teams and people in the organization can be enabled -- and again, we've got a variety of ways to do this, to create objectives and key results for their teams, for their initiatives, for other major important projects in a bottoms up way that then align their team or initiative OKRs to the company and functional OKRs.
This approach to localization simplifies everything about OKRs. It means for most clients, we can focus on methodology adoption before we're having to do extensive tooling or deciding on an OKR platform.
I love my friends at platforms. I've got lots of friends at platforms, but we do want to make sure that the methodology is really firmly established before we start thinking too much about tools.My reason for that is you're in a way better position if you have people get [00:16:00] frustrated we can't do the dashboarding we need, or we need to expand our OKRs deeper into the organization, and clamoring for that expansion and saying, Oh my gosh, we need software to help with this, then if you start with software, then people tend to just not use it.
Or they're really resistant to it. I like to create the demand for software by having a really strong methodology adoption,
because then when they're banging down your doors for OKR software, you've got a great problem to have. And you also know what use cases you need your software to accommodate.
That's a little bit about my approach to localization.
And the third question I get in almost every intake meeting is, We're struggling with how OKRs reconcile into personal goals or individual goals or into our performance management or incentive pay system.
Sometimes this is the first question out of the gate from [00:17:00] prospects.
I go into more detail on this in some of my other blog posts and videos, but
without getting into all the technical details is we do that reconciliation with clients all the time. Almost every engagement I do has a reconciliation between the group goals in the OKRs and then aligned individual goals that dictate performance management or incentive pay. We don't use the language of individual OKRs or localizing OKRs down to the individual because if we do that, the term key results tends to get diluted and lose its meaning.
So instead, we talk about group objectives and key results, and we make sure that our key results are objectively measurable. And then we talk about our aligned individual goals, that people can look at the upline system of goals, and then ask themselves, what are the goals that I need to set for myself to align [00:18:00] up?
to the upline objectives and key results or strategy.
I've got a whole bag of tricks around how mechanically you can design rubrics or evaluation criteria that take into account both the group goals and effort toward the group goals and performance on those aligned individual goals so that we wind up with a fair incentive and compensation system that doesn't disincentivize aggressive goal-setting or stretch goal-setting, because we want our people to feel safe and excited to set big, bold, ambitious goals and then try their best to achieve them.
All right, so that brings our virtual consultation to a close. Those are the three main questions I get asked in almost every consult, but I really want to hear your questions. So post your questions in the comments here, or complete my information request form, ask me your questions so that we can continue this virtual consult with information about your [00:19:00] actual business and scenario.
if you'd like to learn more, download my No-BS OKRs In A Box one sheet at findrc.co/inaboxos or you can visit findrc.co/youtube_freebies to access all of my free resources in one spot, including an OKR assessment tool, a strategic achievement scorecard quiz, my WTF are OKRs guide
or
[00:19:32] Sara: I can't wait to see your information request form in my inbox so we can continue this virtual consult. I'll see you there soon. All right, friends, that's it for today. Thank you for joining and listening. I really can't wait to hear from you about what in this episode resonated, where you got stuck or confused. And remember, that's always on me, not you, so I would love to hear your [00:20:00] feedback.
Also, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter at findrc. co slash newsletter, or we have a master waitlist at findrc. co slash waitlist. If you want to receive the one email that includes everything that's about to launch around here, so you can hear about everything happening all at once before the general public.
If there's anything I said today that you have questions about, you can find me at Sarah Lobkovich pretty much everywhere. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one. It's S A R A L O B K O V I C H. Nope, nothing here is easy to spell. You'll find a shortcut to the show notes for today's episode via ThinkyDoers. com. You're always invited to contact me by email. The easiest one to spell is sarah, S A R A at thinkydoers. com. If you have other [00:21:00] Thinkydoers in your work world, please pass this episode along. We really appreciate your referrals, your mentions, your shares, and your reviews.
Thank you for tuning in today. And I look forward to hearing the questions this prompts for you.
