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Creating OKR Alignment With a Results Map
OKRs are described as a management methodology for aligned goal setting and tracking, to achieve the things that matter most in an organisation. But it's not uncommon to struggle with exactly how to build an organisation-wide system of strategically aligned OKRs that can drive organisational success. Is the OKR methodology purposefully simple, or overly simplistic?
One thing about OKRs that can be challenging is getting alignment among all the OKRs used throughout the organisation, from top to bottom. Naturally, we want alignment because we want everyone working on the same things that will contribute to the organisation’s priorities and overall success. It's one of the five superpowers that OKR expert John Doerr promises:
- Focus
- Alignment
- Commitment
- Tracking
- Stretching
"OKRs are how you track progress, create alignment, and encourage engagement around measurable goals."
whatmatters.com
It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that if OKRs are not aligned to the organisation’s priorities then time, energy and resources will be significantly wasted, and the organisation won't achieve the success it should.
In the OKR literature a distinction is made between cascading OKRs versus aligning OKRs, to avoid this problem. These both offer a process of how every part of the organisation should go about deciding on their own OKRs, such that they are consistent with and supportive of achieving the corporate level OKRs.
Cascading versus aligning OKRs
Cascading OKRs is a process whereby the Key Results of a higher level OKR become the Objectives of lower level OKRs, with new Key Results. This cascading of Key Results can continue down through departments, business units, teams, and to each individual employee. The appeal of this approach of cascading is its additive simplicity. It would appear that the achievement of the lowest level Key Results leads to the achievement of higher-level Objectives and Key Results, all the
way up to the corporate level Objectives and Key Results.
However, there are several downsides to additive thinking. Firstly, organisational success is not the result of the sum of its parts, but rather the result of the unique contributions of each of its parts to the whole. Secondly, cascading Key Results into lower level OKRs means that cascaded OKRs tend to be only action oriented. This focuses teams too much on ticking off tasks without the opportunity to think about the results or the impacts that they contribute to organisational
success.
A side thought: This method of cascading higher-level Key Results as lower-level Objectives also presupposes that there's no logical difference between what an Objective is and what a Key Result is. If they are different entities, then how can a Key Result become an Objective?
We can notice these downsides to additive cascading in several ways. One sign is that teams don't feel particularly engaged with their OKRs, because they feel as though they've been delegated to them. Another sign is that progress toward goals is equated to ticking off tasks and milestones, and there's little to no evidence of impact and therefore no opportunity to learn if these tasks are working or not. And yet another sign is that teams are focused only on their own activities, which
reinforces the silo thinking that prevents cross-functional collaboration.
Without ownership, result-oriented thinking, evidence-based learning, and cross-functional collaboration, how could any organisation expect to achieve excellence?
Aligning is better than cascading
Some of the OKR literature talks about aligning OKRs rather than cascading them. Aligning OKRs is a process where each department, business unit, team or individual sets their OKRs based on their contribution to corporate priorities or higher-level OKRs, without having to copy or adopt any part of higher-level OKRs.
This approach is much more consistent with systems thinking and acknowledging the unique contribution that each different part of the organisation makes to the overall success of the organisation. It also has the potential to allow for relationships between OKRs that cross the organisations ‘silo’ boundaries, allowing for important collaboration. The approach of aligning OKRs also has potential to allow much more ownership, result-oriented thinking and evidence-based learning, through how
each OKR is designed, tracked and achieved.
What's missing, however, from the OKR literature is a clear and detailed enough instruction on how exactly to build an organisation-wide system of strategically aligned, result-oriented and evidence-based OKRs.
Three missing pieces to get OKR alignment
OKR literature doesn't, in fact, need to build this clear and detailed instruction on how exactly to align OKRs to achieve organisational success. It already exists in a complementary methodology: PuMP. It’s also the case with so many other strategic performance management methods, that details on how to write measurable goals and craft evidence-based quantitative measures are typically missing, but always able to be supplemented by PuMP.
Discover more at PuMP Academy
Watch Our Free Educational Videos...
Here is one video that builds a little on this month's Measure Up topic:
How to Make OKRs Measurable. To make OKRs measurable, and thereby fulfil their promise to measure what matters, we need to solve 5 common problems in writing OKRs...
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