OKR Forecast 2025: Insights From The Experts
What’s next for OKRs in 2025?
As goal-setting evolves, organizations are rethinking their approach to strategy, execution, and performance. In this episode, Sara sits down with OKR experts Natalie Webb and Maria Rowcliffe to unpack the latest trends—from the role of generative AI to the shifting landscape of OKR localization and performance management.
Whether you’re an OKR veteran or just getting started, these insights will help you stay ahead of the curve.
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Episode Highlights:
How generative AI is reshaping OKR creation and workshop efficiency
The shift away from rigid OKR cascading toward functional team-level alignment
Why OKRs should not be directly tied to performance evaluations or compensation
The biggest mistakes organizations make when implementing OKRs—and how to avoid them
The evolving role of OKRs in strategy execution and business impact
What to expect from the future of OKRs in 2025 and beyond
Key Concepts Explored:
Generative AI in OKR Practice
Role of AI in data analytics and predictive modeling
AI as an enabler vs. driver of outcomes
Practical applications in OKR workshops
Limitations and considerations
Modern OKR Localization
Shift from cascading to hybrid approaches
L1-L2 alignment strategies
Bottom-up contribution methods
Functional team focus
OKR Integration
Separation of delivery work and outcomes
Project management integration
Performance management considerations
Leading indicator identification
Implementation Strategy
Starting points for organizations
Common pitfalls to avoid
Methodology vs. tool selection
Change management considerations
Notable Quotes:
"Generative AI is an enabler, not a driver. It’s a tool that supports goal-setting, but the real work still comes down to humans collaborating, making great decisions, and executing." – Maria Rowcliffe
"If we set our OKRs well, teams should feel empowered to say no to work that doesn’t align. Prioritization isn’t real unless it hurts." – Natalie Webb
"One of the hardest parts of OKR creation is identifying leading indicators. AI can help generate ideas, but the real challenge is getting teams to think beyond the obvious KPIs." – Maria Rowcliffe
"Not everyone needs their name on a Key Result. This isn’t a participation trophy—what matters is understanding how the work contributes to the bigger strategy." – Natalie Webb
"If you tie OKRs directly to performance evaluations, you create a system where people set safe goals instead of ambitious ones. That’s not what OKRs are meant to do." – Sara Lobkovich
Chapters:
00:00:00 - Introduction and welcome
00:01:00 - Book announcement: "You Are a Strategist"
00:04:00 - Guest introductions
00:08:00 - Generative AI's impact on OKRs
00:17:00 - Using AI tools in OKR workshops
00:21:00 - Evolution of OKR localization
00:33:00 - Discussion of individual KRs
00:41:00 - OKRs and performance management
00:47:00 - First steps for OKR implementation
Guest Information:
Natalie Webb is an OKR expert with nearly eight years of experience in the field. She currently works with Aramco in Saudi Arabia, supporting their digital transformation and AI initiatives. Natalie specializes in helping organizations implement effective OKRs that drive real business impact.
Maria Rowcliffe is an organizational behavior specialist with over 30 years of experience in management and strategy execution. Passionate about how organizations and people achieve success, she has worked extensively with OKRs and other strategic frameworks to help businesses align goals and improve execution.
Natalie’s & Maria’s Resources Mentioned:
Maria Rowcliffe via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariarowcliffe/
Natalie Webb via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliejwebb/
Sara’s Links and Resources:
No-BS Strategic Achievement Intensive: Join our mailing list for waitlist information at ck.redcurrantco.com
Join Sara’s Email List: Get updates on OKRs and strategy at ck.redcurrantco.com
Book Website: Stay updated on You Are a Strategist at youareastrategist.com
Connect with Sara via LinkedIn, Bluesky, Threads, or Mastodon
Podcast Home Page: Thinkydoers Podcast
Find full show notes and the episode transcript via https://findrc.co/thinkydoers !
Full Episode Transcript:
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 your host, Sara Lobkovich. I'm a strategy coach, a huge goal-setting and attainment nerd, and board-certified health and wellness coach, working at the overlap of work-life well-being. I'm also 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.
Sara: Hello, friends, and welcome to this week's Thinkydoers episode. [00:01:00] I am super excited to get into this one for you. This is a replay of a LinkedIn and YouTube live that I hosted a couple weeks ago with my two OKR besties, Maria Rowcliffe and Natalie Webb. They are both brilliant practitioners in their specialties, which we talk about in the episode, and I am just so excited that they decided to join me for this conversation. It went so well, we're going to do this again, probably quarterly. We've already got the next one set up for Q2 because we had so many questions we couldn't answer in this first one. So if you want to be the first to hear about the Q2 State of OKRs with Natalie, Maria, and myself, join my email list at ck.redcurrantco.com Now, before we get into the episode, if you're a regular viewer, you'll notice things look a little different around here today, maybe even sound a little different on the audio version. That's because I am literally [00:02:00] today recording the audio book for You Are a Strategist: Use No BS objectives and Key Results to Get Big Things Done. It's not, of course, going to all happen today, but we are starting the audio book recording today. And I am super excited. We have an ebook launch date set. We have a print launch, hopefully the same day. It might trail by a week. And then I'm getting the audio book done as quick as we can to try and get it out at the same time. We'll see if that becomes impossible. But it's really important to me that this book is as accessible as possible, and you're able to choose the format that works for you the best. So we're going to get them all done as close to the same launch date as possible. And you can find out more about that book coming up at youareastrategist.com. From there, you can sign up to be part of the street team, which is the folks who will help get the word out when that book is available. [00:03:00] Because friends, I can't do this alone. I need your help. So visit youareastrategist.com. You can sign up for the advanced team. You'll get some extra special access beforehand. You'll be the first to hear about all the dates and everything that's coming up with the book launch. And I really just can't wait to have your help in getting this book to the people who need it. In other news, the 24, or it was actually 28 hour approach to the No BS Strategic Achievement Intensive was a massive success. So that is how I'm going to deliver that material live from here on out. So if you might wanna join me in Q2 for this intensive packed, it isn't actually 24 consecutive hours, it's not a marathon. We work for a couple hours. We take the night off, have dinner, get some sleep. We get back together the next morning and we go until either noon or early afternoon,depending on if you stay for the bonus time. If you would [00:04:00] like more information about that intensive, the best way to find out about it is to join my mailing list. And again, that's ck.redcurrantco.com. All right, without further ado, I can't wait to get into this episode with Natalie and Maria. I just cannot thank them enough for doing this live with me. And I really can't wait for you to join us for the next one.
Sara: So, before we dive in, I'm Sara Lobkovich. I'm your host today. I'm the host of the Thinkydoers podcast and the creator of No-BS OKRs. I am super excited that these two said yes to this. So I'm going to let Natalie introduce herself and then Maria, and then we'll dive right in with our conversation.
Natalie: Who am I? Natalie Webb. I've told a few people about this podcast live stream, and they've referred to us three as the dream team. So I'm super excited to be here with you gals. I've been in the OKR space now for almost eight years, I guess. So, it works. [00:05:00] I think that's why I stick with it, because it's great to see results with clients. So, that's me
Sara: I don't know if you can tell us where you're located right now.
Natalie: I am currently in Saudi Arabia. I'm working with Aramco and the very smart people there in the digital transformation and Aramco AI groups.
Sara: Well, welcome and Maria, welcome.
Maria: Thank you so much. You know, I love that No-BS OKRs because that you speak in my language. But thank you so much for having me. A little bit about me. So, I have been seriously passionate about understanding how organizations and people in them, actually more probably so, become successful. And, back in the day when I was getting my MBA, we had to choose what to study for a whole semester. And the two options were finance and capital markets and [00:06:00] organizational behavior and management. And out of my whole year, there were 16 of us that chose to study management and organizational behavior. And I was obviously one of them. And that was very much around how do organizations make decisions and how do they execute them? And ever since then, this is kind of what I've been passionate about, and just like Natalie, I've used a lot of different frameworks in the past. And OKRs, I would say, has the potential of having the most transformative changes. But there's a lot of ways and making it go wrong and also a lot of ways of making it go right, which is what we're going to talk about today. But that's what I've been spending over 30 years at this point. And I think between the three of us, we have just a ridiculous amount of experience of this. Hopefully, there's going to be some useful stuff we say. So that's a little bit about me. The last thing I just want to say, because I always get this question, "Where are you from?" because of my accent. I'm Swedish, but I've [00:07:00] lived in the US now for 35 years. And the fun fact is my dad's name is Leif Eriksson, and so it doesn't really get more Swedish than that. And it was his birthday.
Natalie: Aw.
Sara: Oh my goodness. Well, happy birthday ,pops! I always love the conversations we have
Maria is like the chief of staff person. I mean, there's so much more to you, you're one of the folks that I look up to for chief of staff support and chief of staffing and the life of chiefs of staff and the role of a chief of staff as a leader strategist, not just the ops and admin side. So Maria's a champ there. And then, Natalie, is like a super smart, sciency patentee. There's so much more to you. So beyond just being incredible OKR experts, I am just really excited to introduce more folks to both of you because you've got such incredible experience in OKRs. And then, like a lot of [00:08:00] us in this field, OKRs are the only thing we do. Like we're drawn to OKR so that we can be more effective in what we do elsewhere. Let's start with Natalie, since you're kind of in this space. How do you see generative AI and, potentially other emerging technologies. But right now, generative AI is what is on everyone's minds. How do you see generative AI affecting or reshaping goal-setting practices?
Natalie: Yeah, and a common question I get all the time. I'll tell you, my answer to this question has changed just this year, honestly, and that's really because of the technology that's come out around quantum computing. Google came out with the technology to do that. Being able to look back at all of this data and to decipher what all that data means for predictive analytics, for machine learning, for creating [00:09:00] models that work and ones that don't is just crazy. This idea, of course, I'm working with a very talented folks at Aramco. But Forbes is calling this ability to search through history of data the new black gold, which is an interesting play on words given where I am in the world. Data as a service and providing quick business decisions based on decades and decades of data to the element level. I'm a nerd about data visualization and the quantum computing piece of it. The ability to learn quickly from all of that history and turn that into predictive analytics for generative AI is mind-blowing. Long ago are the days of ones and zeros. And doing it In the old way, being able to do it simultaneously and quantum computing is just amazing and amazing place to be. I'm I'm super excited about it because of that aspect. I will say I've I've seen some [00:10:00] trepidation with health care related clients. They're afraid, yeah, you guys have to. But in the technology sector, preparing for digital disruption is an opportunity, and not a fear. So that's what I'm seeing.
Sara: Yeah, that's awesome perspective. And Maria, what have you seen in your practice?
Maria: So, I'm a little bit of Tigger and a little bit of Eeyore, right? The Tigger kind of agrees with what you said, Natalie. There's a huge opportunity around data analytics, data insights, tracking proactively, managing progress. That's the Tigger part. The Eeyore part is that this is a tool, right? This is a tool and an enabler, it's not a driver. All of this needs to land on humans, collaborating well, making great decisions, and execution. That hasn't changed. I think very little of the human condition, and the way we show up, and we interact with others has changed. And that's still going to [00:11:00] be there.I know that we're going to talk more about the hype around this, but I don't think that this has, this changes the heavy lifting in terms of how people work together. I think that's the risk when you get too excited about a technology, which I'm sure all of us have experienced, both ourselves and, with clients. Me as having been a chief of staff and head of business operations in lots of companies, I've certainly been part of that on both ends. But I always end with, you know, that goes back to what I have been excited about all along, which is how do people actually make decisions? And so it's a huge enabler and a tool, but it really isn't the driver, I would say.
Sara: I love that spending time with you two makes me smarter because even when I wrote that question, I was thinking about what I've seen. I've seen a lot of attention on generative AI for creating OKRs, for filling that gap of easing the difficulty of creation. I'm not even thinking about the predictive analytics part [00:12:00] or the lack of impact that generative AI might have on the actual "how" of how we work together. That always just comes down to humans. I wrote a blog post a couple of months ago that is now really outdated. Natalie, I've had a shift just in the last couple of months where, wrote a blog post a couple of months ago saying it's just not ready for prime time. Like generative AI can't create OKRs as well as humans. And then I have to say, with the models having been trained more, and getting smarter, and then prompting getting better. I've been playing with tools, and trialing tools and I wish I had recorded my first login to a tool called Tability, which the podcast know Tability because I've, interviewed them. I'm a fan of them as human beings, but I logged into the tool and I saw their, AI-facilitated [00:13:00] OKR creation. And I was like, "Oh, let's see how bad this is." And I gave it a prompt and I was like, "Oh, wow, that's actually quite good." I think the outcomes from generative AI are only as good as the prompts and the training. In the right hands, they're a enabler. For me, they can speed things up. And far as the impact of the actual work with people, like for me, they helped me take my verbal processing and turn it into something that humans can digest and understand. For me to be more clear, concise, or ease up more easily, simplifying concepts, things like that, I find them really valuable. I just still really struggle with trust with the platforms, I'm still a lawyer, so I've read every word of every agreement and I still had a conversation yesterday with some of the folks in my class about, they asked if I'm using generative AI and they asked if [00:14:00] I'm training a model on my work. And I was like, I mean, for me, certain things, but there have been some hard line. while we were talking about it, I was like, "Well, if I don't train a model on my work, someone else has done it." So it's just like the ethics and the environmental impact. There's so much to it, but I also went from being a pulled out, not going to use it to now I really do see the utility in some parts of especially OKR creation with a well-trained model and a well-set up prompt.
Maria: Can I ask the questions for either of you? Have you guys used it with your clients? How did that show up? How are you generate it? Because I certainly have not today. I have used it, and I don't know the number of times I have written back to is that is not a KR, right? Because it gives you back milestones and tasks, right? I started training my own [00:15:00] also, because it's like, "No, that's not an objective, that's a project." It still gives back a lot of that, but I would love to hear how you guys have actually used it in sessions or with clients or organizations you work with.
Natalie: I'm using it every day with clients now. That's changed just since really like December. But even as far back as October, many of my clients have their own version. If they have a large technical presence they have their own version of AI, but I'm finding, even myself, I'm using Claude and ChatGPT more than I use Google. And I see it in my sessions, where it's usually to your point where they get to like, "Hey, I want it to be this," but instead of going to a thesaurus, they go to ChatGPT or some sort of AI tool and they look for words, and it does help with the creativity, but to your point, Maria, it still [00:16:00] has to be vetted that it's going to drive the result, right? You still have to have somebody say, "Okay, it may be written accurately, but is this really what you want to focus your people's time and dollars on?" And then that goes into the conversation of, is this really our critical strategy path? So yeah, I think it can be helpful. It can also be distracting because then they get like five different examples and then they are more confused on which one they like. Yeah.
Sara: I've had clients, like clients always want examples. A marketing client wants, "Can you just show me an example of marketing OKRs?" And I'm like "No,I don't want you to look at those." It's too easy to look at the example and say, "Okay, that looks good," and then adopt it as opposed to doing the work of actually thinking about what is most important for your business and your timing. So the way that I'm using generative AI in my practice is I'm finding it's helping me speed up my OKR workshops, especially things like [00:17:00] objective forming. Where my approach to objective forming is lightning fast. We don't spend a lot of time deliberating. We do a quick ideation. What's important? Why does it matter? We put them together. That's your objective But even with that, what I'm finding is I can get clients to where they have concepts for their objective. So I can get them to concepts and then instead of having to take the time to actually get it to a single statement in the room, I can say, "If it's okay with you, I'm going to take these concepts, feed them into a model, and give you some options." So, my workshop efficiency on objective creation has gone way up. Once it spits out a couple options, clients can make a decision of what they want to keep. takes that objective deliberation out of the workshop and lets us do it in the final finishing. And then what I always hope, and this is why I'm training my own model, is I [00:18:00] hope that we can use these tools to help enable people's critical thinking about creatively creating Key Results. Thinking beyond the obvious KPIs they have available, or thinking beyond what they see in the examples. Some of the approaches to Key Results I work with are pretty out there. I'd love to be able to help enable people's creative thinking about what Key Results could be beyond the examples that most people usually see. But I have the same thing, sometimes when I'm preparing a training, I'm like, "I just need an example set of OKRs." And so I'll type in, "Can you give me an example set of OKRs for a software engineering team or for a marketing analytics team?" And it spits it out, and I'm like, "No, now I have to train the model. Now I have to teach you what an OKR is." I think in expert hands, the tools are an incredible enabler, efficiency [00:19:00] source. I just worry about we already struggle enough with methodology understanding and quality of methodology adoption. And so I do worry about people putting too much faith in the training of the models if they don't the expertise.
Maria: So one thing that I have done, I've used it more as an example, which is to help identify leading indicators. Because we, I think we all know what the general kind of KPIs are and the lagging indicators, because those are the metrics that we all know, and maybe not love so much. But it's the leading indicators that you actually can actively manage throughout the quarter. I mean my experience both in my own thinking as well as working with clients, that's still the hardest thing to do. Because that requires more thinking than what we typically want to spend on stuff like that. That's why we get milestones and kind of those KPIs that you can measure twice in a [00:20:00] quarter as KRs. So I use ChatGPT primarily and I have got it to actually give me pretty good leading indicators that may not be what organizations actually should be managing, to your point, Natalie, just because it's there doesn't mean that it's actually the right for you. But I think you just seeing examples of what those leading indicators could be, that is a bit kind of out there, like you said, Sara, right, can actually help people think about it, what it is that they really should be managing kind of day over day.
Sara: I am so glad you brought that up because I would agree, the hardest part of OKR creation and methodology adoption in my practice, is leading indicator identification. That's where I see people struggle the most. So I don't think I've used it for that, but that's a really awesome insight that continues to be one of the big barriers, even for those of us who do this every day and have really finely honed [00:21:00] approaches to use with clients, clients still struggle with the leading indicator piece, partly because it also means instead of having the whole quarter to make progress on their outcome, it's moving up their accountability to a nearer time horizon. So it increases the anxiety. That's brilliant, Maria. I think using those tools as a way to get ideas for leading indicators is really good.
Natalie: it is. I agree, too. And one other thing I've seen recently is a shift in accepting functional team-level sets of OKRs versus, you know, like everybody gets a KR. Like the Oprah, not everybody should have a KR not everybody gets a KR. This is not like a participation trophy thing. And I think making sure everybody understands how they contribute to this strategy, but don't have to have their name on [00:22:00] it. It can be at the functional team level, and they should still know how they're contributing to overall company strategy. That's another shift that I've seen. Is stripping out layers where we can. So instead of everybody having specific Objectives and Key Results that are cascaded, how we used to see them blown out, seven layers or levels, functional teams hovering with like sub-KRs under the top level care because they're spiky and fast and smart and moving quickly and startups and they don't have time for the layers. So that's one thing I'm noticing too, cause back in the day we used to give everybody their own individual cares too, and they were like duplicated everywhere with just names on them and it, was too heavy. And so I like that we're stripping out some of those layers to make it spiky.
Sara: I'm really glad you brought that up Natalie. And Maria, I'm curious because we all work with kind of different types of [00:23:00] organizations, different sizes. I'm also seeing what Natalie is, that the localization or cascading or connecting OKRs looks really different now than when I started working with OKRs. But Maria, what are you seeing in your practice?
Maria: I think it's the same. It has always been the biggest problem. It's the easiest thing is for the leadership team to set OKRs, even though of them still struggle with that because it's like they have the top-level metrics to choose between. And that as you go down, it's harder and harder. I know that we have all created these descriptions of what localization looks like and it is so damn hard to describe it without getting all complicated about it. And so not surprising, that's also what organizations struggle with. So finding middle ground, how to do it because OKR is still not about the leadership team setting it. It is about how people spend their time actually [00:24:00] doing and driving towards it that happens further down in the organization. So coming up with good ways for making that live, not to the leadership team, not even a level down. The third level, typically in larger organizations, is where most of that goodness happens or not. And so, and creating them to be aligned with each other. Because if everybody just had their KRs or their OKRs and they're kind of wildly, kind of not, in alignment, it's, it's not going to do an awful lot of good for the organization anyway, or solving the problem, which is the reason why people implement OKRs in the first place. And so I think it's still a struggle for organizations to figure out how to do that at a lower level and, and especially creating alignment. I don't know about you guys, but I work a lot with organizations that, have implemented OKRs already and are not seeing the value that they were hoping for. And inevitably there's a couple of things I see. One [00:25:00] is you ask them, why did you implement OKRs? And they don't necessarily have a good answer to that other than, "We want to be more clear a lot," like they've read a book essentially, right? But they don't have a why that is a problem to solve that is relevant and kind of resonates with the people in the organization and they don't necessarily have an intentional kind of structure around the goal-setting process and the alignment, how they actually going to help their teams get aligned and clear. But it's more about the leadership team have set OKRs. And so that means that three levels on everyone's clear, which we know isn't true.
Sara: We've got a great question in the comments that we'll come back to in just a sec. So folks who are tuned in, if you have questions at any time, send them through. I can see them in two different places, and we'll answer as many as possible while we're live. It always surprises me how hard clients struggle. I would say at this point, I'm probably [00:26:00] doing about maybe 30% fresh-from-scratch implementations, and about 70 percent reboots,or we're struggling and we need help. A lot of the demand I see is. for help with localization to the individual. Like they've gotten started or they're adopting OKRs because they want to localize to the individual or because they've read the book that shows the six layers. The first conversation I have to have is that's just not how I do it. Partly because of the amount of time it takes, partly because of the degradation of the, methodology quality if we go too many layers, and then partly I was working with a very large, very deep organization and had the privilege of working with them quarter over quarter for a couple of years. And so what I saw was they were doing a [00:27:00] cross-functional L1 at the company level, and then a functional L2 localization at the org level. And as they did that, we had high-quality OKRs at the company level and at the functional level, we didn't need to localize anymore downward. Like Natalie said, there were some KRs that would roll down from there, but we didn't see any gain from doing full localization at like L3, L4. What we started to see instead was that teams could bottom-up from there. So instead of the systemic, everybody has to go down, we'd have that downward flow from L1, L2, and then at L3, L4 for initiative teams, for individuals, they could look up at L1 and L2 and get the direction that they needed, either to create work plans and [00:28:00] then do their delivery, or to create Objectives and Key Results, or Objectives, Key Results, and milestones, and work plans. I still see some orgs do the downward localization and cascading. I see it in, control-based leadership cultures, where it degrades down to activity micromanagement really quickly. And I also see it in organizations where the L1 leaders aren't creating OKRs, they're creating something and calling it OKRs, doesn't actually fit the definition of OKRs. Then L2 does their best to compensate, and then L3, Maria, you said the magic happens at L3. that's where the happens at L3. Because then L3 is like, "Well that's a bunch of hooey. So what are we actually gonna do?" And then they get it. So, I screen out every once in a while, I [00:29:00] wind up working with one of those, like, the magics at L3. I struggle in that environment because my and my way just isn't compatible with those kind of leaders who are OKRs for everyone else, not for me. That just doesn't, it's not a culture fit to work with me in that style, but I see it. But more and more, it's just L1, L2, and then everyone else is bottom up.
Maria: So I think that's fine. But As long as there is actually some kind of structured and formalized process that says, "Okay, these are the initiatives that we are working on." This is how we're spending our time and planning on spending our time." Can we articulate how it actually is contributing to the goals that we have set or that the organization have set? It's always scary, right, when people are working on initiatives and they actually do not have a clue, or are not very clear on they would say it's important [00:30:00] or it, but they can't like clearly articulate how it is supporting the strategic priorities of the organization. And I mean, then the sad part of it also is oftentimes they then work on things that don't move the needle on anything that matters. I mean, they're done and they work really hard. And so it doesn't create purposeful work. And so I still think, even if the full-on localization process that we have all done in our careers isn't necessarily the most effective way of doing it. I still think that having a structure and a process where most teams can articulate how the work that they are doing contribute to strategic priorities and the metrics, and know if they're doing that or not, is still really important for any kind of goal-setting process to result in something that matters. I've spent most of my time with OKRs and strategy planning as the driver of it internally in an organization. I think about this differently than if I am a coach or a consultant where I don't have the same [00:31:00] skin in the game in terms of thinking about all the aspects of execution, including management practices and readiness and capabilities and integration with other stuff. If you're overseeing all of that, you just think bigger. And you think differently about things than if you're coming in a more narrow lane to set just the goals and maybe trickle it down a bit.
Sara: I think the distinction I would make is, it's not that we don't have that clarity deeper in the organization. For me, it's just about the directionality. In the conventional or older style, we would localize downward the whole way down. I had one client where we localized for an entire quarter. And so what we're doing different now is, instead of doing that sequential team by team down the org, we're doing L1, we're doing L2, and then we're doing a localization cycle where everyone else does their bottoms-up. [00:32:00] So important initiatives create OKRs or work plans, you know, if it just has to get done, it's delivery planning. If it has to yield an outcome, they create OKRs. The shift isn't that we're not using OKRs elsewhere in the organization. The shift is just on the timing and that everything below L2 or L3, sometimes we go to L3, but everything below that is in a big cloud. It all happens at the same time, and then we can do a quick alignment instead of taking all order to do the sequential localizing.
Natalie: One thing I used to say, that I still say to this day, is if we're setting our OKRs up well, teams should be empowered to say no to other things that get thrown at them. I still firmly believe in that because it is disheartening to folks, especially that horsepower, you know, the L3s and fours and five levels, that are just really crushing the work. If they have two lists, if they have like [00:33:00] the work that leads up to OKRs and then all the other stuff, and they're just over capacity, stretched too thin, and that's just not visible. I call those misses, really, because we have to make sure that they're not spread too thin. I love working at the detailed level with folks. I love traversing L1s all the way to L7s and back again and catch those misses. I think that's good stuff. I like doing that.
Sara: So we've got a couple good questions I want to ask. Stacey ask some execs expect to see that even individuals have KRs, or that everybody's work ties to a KR. So this kind of gets at what we've all been talking about. But sometimes that's not realistic. So in the situations in your practice where everybody has a KR, do you have any tactics you use? How do you handle that when a client is focused on that "everybody has a KR"?
Natalie: It's interesting because everyone in the company contributes to the [00:34:00] strategy. Honestly, even if it's facilities, keeping the facility safe and secure for people to come and do work, they're contributing to the strategy. So even though their name may not be tied to a KR, it is tied to a body of work that is showing that the operation is happening, that the lights are on, doors are open, business is happening. I like to involve everybody that we can in those conversations, especially when they're contributing to the top level, so they don't feel left out. But also, the follow-up question I get to this is, do you tie compensation and performance management to individuals with KRs? Because then it feels weird, and it feels like Big Brother, and it feels like you're gonna see some sandbagging if people have any compensation tied to their Key Results and they're at the individual level. So, it does get weird. I like to hear the functional teams and carve out that critical bodies of work [00:35:00] is the words I've been using with them, to make sure they know how they contribute, but it's not a participation trophy kind of thing. Not everybody is going to have their name on a KR.
Maria: The logic that I try to use sometimes, more successfully than others, is the whole concept of focus and prioritization. So, one of the best leaders I've ever had the pleasure to working with used to say, "It isn't prioritization unless it hurts." And the fact of the matter is, if everybody has a KR, that is never anyone's definition of focus. Because then the organization ends up with how many KRs that they're supposed to be driving towards, right? And so, it's more around being able to articulate how the way I'm spending my time and the decisions that I make are contributing to those. I am perfectly fine with saying, "Which of these KRs do you contribute to?" It doesn't mean that you own them, that you are the only one who's owning that, because that's the other concept. Very [00:36:00] few things important in an organization is done by one person. Because if it is, it's probably not all that strategic. And so it's all about the people working together to make it happen. So I'm perfectly fine with having lists that says, "This KR, who are the people that are the most important contributors to that based on the daily work that they do?" Or even the teams?
Sara: Yeah, this kind of dovetails into another question we got from Elena. Understanding that OKRs are not a project management tool, how do you integrate them without losing the scope that each should have? My answer to both questions is connected. One of the first education steps I do with clients is that there is a difference between what just has to get done. And if getting it done is success, in my model falls under delivery. That gets project managed, it gets planned. There might be some KR 's identified for [00:37:00] change initiatives, for improving something. But there's a lot that just has to get done in our organizations. And the old language of OKRs, that we need an OKR for what's most important in the business, doesn't apply. Paying the electric bill, and getting payroll out on time, those fundamentals that just have to get done are as important as any innovation initiative we have. So that's one of our very first education points: If it just has to get done, it doesn't need an OKR. And if you don't have OKRs for delivery, for if it just has to get done. And then, if just getting it done isn't success, that's where OKRs come in, where we need to aim for an outcome, or some kind of impact, or success criteria. Even with that breakdown, it's still hard for clients to wrap their heads around. But I find when I start with a new org with that [00:38:00] model that hasn't implemented OKRs, and we can get ahead of the what's important goes in the OKRs, so everyone feels like they have to be visible in the OKRs, it's working pretty well. People get recognized through delivery and project management for the stuff that just has to get done. And we have smaller sets of OKRs because we can really zero in on what does this just have to get done, if so, give it a milestone. if we have to achieve some sort of success criteria, then what is it? So, Elena, that's for me. kind of the split that we can project manage what we do and what we plan and what has to get done, then we can use our stretch thinking and our more expansive thinking around what's possible on that OKR side.
Maria: So, Natalie, you said you had a project management example.
Sara: Oh yeah. So, I think it's important if you have a lot of milestones that you're trying to get accomplished through a project plan. Whatever project tool you [00:39:00] have, the way I like to show that is say, the KR is deliver all 100 milestones for Project Rocket Ship by the end of Q1, instead of listing out the milestones. Yeah. The body of work. So then, they can manage the milestones, and a big number that they're tracking, and it's also leading. that's one way, but then the milestones are tracked in another tool or a robust OKR tool that does tasks, actions, and milestones beneath the KR. That's really cool. Because then it also gives the visibility
Maria: Yeah, the approach is, I think that the fact that we call it OKR is part of the problem. Because it's actually not just OKRs, it's also the, work that comes after that. So if it's OKR-A actions, or I-initiatives. And so I think if you stop the planning on we the KRs without them saying, "Okay, what work is actually going to drive us there?" I think that's one reason why these problems occur, because you have project planning over here [00:40:00] and you have OKR planning over here, and they're not clearly connected. I think that connecting the two is important. Quite honestly, If you identify the KRs that are milestones or activities and you go, "Okay, so out of, let's say 15 KRs, 12 of them are actually activities, and milestones, and actions," then you know that that's not strategic drive. And they'll say, "Are any of these things in a platform or on a plan somewhere else, then why are you doing KR then?" You're duplicating work. And the fact is, that I would say that is one of the main reasons why teams, especially further down in the org, don't like OKRs, because they feel like, "Why are we doing this? We're duplicating things that we already do in some other platform." And they're right. I think it's part of the educational thing that we can help to highlight initiative, but the current KRs, and how much they [00:41:00] are projects and that actually manage somewhere else. I have templates when identifying KRs that also includes a box for "What's the work that's going to drive it?" And that could be existing initiatives and projects or new things that we need to do, so that you help people see "turtles all the way down," as they say.
Sara: I love that. Turtles all the way down is awesome. Okay, fantastic. Now I have a million questions, and we have, 11 minutes if I'm doing my math right, so we're going to have to do this like quarterly. So, the two things that I want to make sure we get to first is the other question I get every time a client calls, which is: How do we connect OKRs to performance management? What would you two say when you get that question? How do you respond?
Natalie: Well, I can say it always makes me a little nervous to understand their "why" about that. Is it because you want to really drive operational efficiencies or process re-engineering? [00:42:00] Like, what is it that you want to drive? If they think people are not working hard enough, I struggle with that. It's tough for me because you run into all kinds of nuances around, how do you measure one person compared to another, and then do you compensate on that? And then It gets really weird with money. And so, I say at the functional team level, you're absolutely going to look at how that team has performed against their Key Results. And did they meet their goals? Were there wins? What could they do differently? And would you factor that in a performance evaluation? Absolutely. But would you also factor like 15 other things? Yes. Are they a good leader? Do they learn well? Do they apply themselves? You know, how are they showing up each day? And so there's lots of other factors. I would say the bodies of work that they complete are one of the elements in performance evaluation, but OKRs are not for performance.
Maria: So, the other point that I make is with OKRs, I at least try to say, "You shouldn't just focus on setting [00:43:00] OKRs around things you have control over." No team or individual has control over an awful lot of stuff that's strategic. You might be able to influence it, highly influence it. And if you can't influence it, then having a KR around it isn't particularly useful. I think performance management or goal setting is the complete opposite. You have to set goals for people that they actually have control over or more influence than things you set around KRs. And so if you try to marry the two, you end up either with KRs that aren't necessarily strategic or broad enough, right? Because you're going to say, "One person can do it," or you're going to end up with KRs that no person actually can, you know, influence. And it's unfair to have them be accountable for that. And then you're going to have other problems to solve, right? With people being held accountable for things that just aren't possible. And so I think it comes down to conversations between a manager and their direct [00:44:00] report to say, okay, this is what we need to accomplish this quarter or half-year or whatever cycle they use for doing this and say, what is it reasonable that you will do or contribute or accomplish in this period of time? And to your point, Natalie, both in terms of the outcome that they do, but also how they do their work route, which is a key thing with performance management, including what are the new things, skills, and the new things you want to get better at, which also is completely unrelated to some KRs because it's part of how you do your work.
Sara: Yeah. Yeah. I wrote an enormous chapter for the book on why I'm in the we don't connect OKRs. We don't connect attainment of OKRs to performance management or incentive pay because — and we had to pull it out and I'm sharing it as a blog post because it was like, it was the longest book chapter in the history of OKRs. but [00:45:00] I think you two covered it really well. There is a perspective even among OKR experts. There is a group I, there's a position paper out there. If I can find it afterward, I'll add to the comments, by one of the trade orgs where, you know, when everybody started working together on it the assumption was that the industry would say we don't connect OKRs to performance. In the creation of that position paper, at least the last time I saw it, there were two camps. There Is a camp that says, here's how you do it, and then there's the rest of us who's like, for me, when clients say they want to do that, I say, okay, let me tell you a couple stories about what I've seen. Is this what you want system to look like? You know, where people who are ambitious and set stretch goals, get penalized terms of incentive pay compared to people who set conservative [00:46:00] goals and fully achieve them. you know, so there are a couple scenarios where I can say, here's what happens when you connect attainment to incentives. This is what happens. This isn't, you know, a fable, like it's what happens. If you look at the system design of it, here's the system you're setting up. Is that what you want? but, uh, but we have, you know, we've developed scheme that factors OKR contribution into performance evaluation, but not attainment. we never ever link it to attainment.
Uh, I think, I think the problem, right, is that, you know, when we say it shouldn't be connected, people think that the work that people do shouldn't be actually connected to KRs, which is obviously not what we're saying. It's just that it shouldn't be a one to one, right? That you own the KR. And if that's not achieved, that [00:47:00] means that you, your performance weren't good or wasn't good. So let's do a speed round. Cause we're almost out of time and we've got one other great question. What is the very first step and unfortunately, it just shows me linkedin user for this one. So I can't say who's asking the question. But what is the very first step for an organization to implement OKRs?
Maria: Ooh, I would, I would say have a strategic roadmap in mind, at least an idea of the critical bodies of work. Yeah. So, mine is know your why. What problems are OKR supposed to solve. Because if you are not clear on the why, and the why now, in a way that resonates with people, they're not going to be successful. And not because people are bad, but people are busy. And it requires a new way of thinking and in order for people to take the time and energy to do that, there has to be a compelling reason and benefit to them to do it just for themselves as well as the organization.
Sara: You guys made it hard for me to think of one, because you gave the two best answers, but, I'll give a [00:48:00] spicy answer. .First step I would say is to look beyond the paid search results from OKR software platforms. To learn about what's happening in OKRs today. Because organizations would do themselves well to start with a strong methodology focus, and then figure out what tool they need and it's like we can create tools successfulness if we get methodology established well and get participation high with methodology. But so much of everything is dominated by information from platforms.
I would recommend folks find me on YouTube, or Ben Lamorte, you know, there are like methodology Every time we talk to each other I'm surprised at how much we agree on. And how much we agree on is different from what was in some of the original books, or some of [00:49:00] what we hear from platforms. So that would be my first step. All right. there's another couple really good other angles to that question, but we've got a hard stop. So, LinkedIn user, the rest of your questions, I'll make sure we get an answer to you, either in the comments or in follow up. You two, I want to thank you so much. This exceeded my hopes and dreams so much. I knew we were gonna have fun, but this was just fantastic. So, Natalie, can people find you if they want more information?
Natalie: I'm on LinkedIn. Of course. I work with all the, you know, the, pool of OKR experts is fairly small who have been in this over eight years. Uh, of course I work with Ben, OKRs. I I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me, I think Natalie Webb and maybe put in, Colorado or Wyoming, because I think there's a few.
Natalie Webb, find Natalie on LinkedIn and then Maria, where can folks find you?
Maria: Same thing with me. LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to find me as well, as long as you spell my last name [00:50:00] correctly,
Sara: Yeah, I'm in that boat too. Awesome. And then I'm Sara Lobkovich. You can find me at, findrc.co or at my book website of You Are A Strategist, yeah, coming soon. Um, youareastrategist.com. So you two, thank you so much.
Natalie: Let's do it again! Yay!
Sara: All right, friends, That's it for today.
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A promotional graphic for Episode 37 of the Thinkydoers podcast titled "OKR Forecast 2025: Insights from the Experts." The design features a blue background with bold white text for the title. The Thinkydoers™ logo is in the top right corner, along with "Episode 37" in white text.
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Maria Rowcliffe (Guest) on the right, a blonde woman wearing red-framed glasses and a white top, smiling warmly.
