If you don’t know where you want to go, then it doesn’t matter which path you take
How to stay focus and achieve great things
Several years ago, I was part of a small fin-tech startup company; we’ve tried to disrupt the financial market with a peer to peer approach to loads.
At the time, I was leading the development group (among others), and we used to have a weekly leadership meeting. Many of the topics discussed during those meetings revolve around the priority of development tasks.
One of those meetings that I vividly remember went like that:
CRO (Chief Risk Officer): We must launch our new Risk Engine, it’s the main roadblock in our ability to evaluate potential loan request according to the KPI we’ve defined.
CEO: Nir, this should be our highest priority.
CFO (Chief Financial Officer): We still have a gap in the automatic reports we’ve promised our institutional partners. If we don’t get those done ASAP, those partners will stop financing the loans we sell, and we won’t be able to fulfill any transactions at all!
CEO: Nir, this should be our highest priority!
CMO (Chief Marketing Officer): We are fl ying blind, our new marketing campaign generates leads, but we have no way to analyze which keywords are working better than others.
We practically throwing money for nothing, I must have those fannel dashboards ready so that my people will be able to optimize our spending!
CEO: Nir, this should be our highest priority!!!
When we finish the roundup, I’ve marked that we currently have three “highest priority” tasks, which means we don’t have priority at all.
Its all about maintaining the focus
There is a known misconception, one that says that as you go higher in the managerial hierarchy and you’re involved in more projects, you have more resources you can influence.
That influence makes it easier to make things done.
This observation is only part of the story, and in my opinion, it’s the less important one. As my experience taught me, the higher you get in the hierarchy, and you have oversite on more people and projects, your most important role is telling people what not to do, what to leave behind to maintain focus.
Focus through Objectives
One of the ways an organization can stay focus is through the Objectives setting process. As far as I see it, there are three different ways Objectives candidates can be found, in a healthy environment, all three ways must accrue to achieve great things.
1. Top to bottom
2. Bottoms up
3. Peer to peer
Top to bottom is the easiest one.
In every company, every year, top management sets business goals for the coming year.
Those goals are then passed down to the divisions, which breaks them down according to the division areas of ownership and expertise if its Marketing, R&D, or Product. Almost all companies have the tops to bottom flow of objectives, as its the traditional hierarchal way.
Bottoms up is a different story, many times, especially in complex environments, knowledge resides within the people who work day-to-day in the field, know the customers or the situation thoroughly and can identify opportunities, gaps, and technical debts.
The bottoms-up way of adopting objectives means that we have a process to get feedback from our people and push up topics that need to be addressed, sometimes even raised them to be company-wide Objectives.
The last one, peer to peer, is critical, especially as the organization grows.
Big organizations that tend to organized according to areas of expertise gain a higher level of professionalism but, most of the time, pay in lack of synchronization. When we’re talking about Objectives, often an objective of one group could not be accomplished without the help and participation of another group. Other times you might find several groups working on the same Objectives without even knowing that.
To ensure that our Objectives achievable, dependant parties should be aligned and embrace those objectives as their own.
The art of setting Objectives and achieving them
Now that we’ve defined the origins of organization Objectives, We should discuss several steps that I find crucial to define and achieve them.
Focus and Commit to Priority
As we discussed earlier, it’s necessary to collect the candidates from all stakeholders, upper management, teams, individuals, and peers that depend on us to achieve there own goals.
Then comes the hard part, decide what we’re not going to do. All organizations can quickly end up with a 20x overcapacity amount of Objectives.
An organization that can not determine what not to do will end up achieving nothing. Such an organization will be burning most of its efforts on context switch and endless discussions on resources and priorities.
It’s essential to focus on a small, yet challenging Objectives. Some may even say that every individual shouldn’t have more than 3–4 Objectives in parallel.
Make sure the priority is clear and that you can write those Objectives on a small piece at any time.
I try to adopt a habit of opening every morning with a glance on those objectives and a question: “Does the activities I’ve planned for today relates directly to my objectives?” if not, it means something needs to change.
Aligning the teams
The alignment part is even more challenging, as a group can easily commit to an Objective its essential to map all dependencies ahead of committing to it, then make sure that the dependent groups are aligned as well.
In a case where the dependant group cannot commit to that Objective, it means that we need to dump it. There is no value in committing to something we cannot achieve in full.
Another important aspect of alignment is publishing the goals; research shows that people who publicly commit to working towards specific Objectives tend to achieve them more frequently.
Tracking and accountability
Choosing Objectives and aligning the teams is only the first step; without executing, its just another line in some system or document.
The next step after defining the Objective is to set Key Results.
Key Results are specific measures used to track the achievement of that Objective. It’s essential to put down several Key Results throughout the year so we could easily monitor if we’re on the path to achieve that goal or not.
A critical rule regarding setting Key Results is that they should be deterministic. We should write our Key Results in a way that all can quickly agree if that Key Result has been achieved or not.
Besides, each Key Result should have a specific owner that will be accountable for achieving this milestone.
Focus on the agenda
Setting up Objectives, marking down a plan with Key Results means we set the stage for the year to come. Now you need to start and work toward achieving those goals.
If you are a manager, you have to help your direct reports achieve their Objectives as well; if you’re starting in doing that, it might be a great Objective to adopt!
The PDC angle
Within PDC, we have several processes of setting up goals and yearly plans.
Within the SW organization, we’ve worked hard in aligning all of those goals together, including our KPIs, Score Card, and development plans to make sure we’re choosing the right goals that will give a real and significant impact.
Besides, we’ve set several processes to get everyone on board, both tops to bottoms and bottoms up, usually through groups offsite and open discussions.
For each Objective we defined, we set Key Results to align side owners and dependencies. Getting those external dependencies aligned is a crucial part of the process. For tracking those Objectives, we’ve created a quarterly cadence within the SW organization of reviewing them, and we’re planning to publish our objectives once we finalize them.
As a personal Objective, I’ve decided to make this process as my Objective, making sure my group focus on the goals we’ve defined, reviewing them regularly, and focusing on the essential things that will move the needle.
Where can I read more?
OKR’s where first introduced by Andy Grove (Co-founder and CEO of Intal) and used in many companies around the world. Google’s short, yet practical guide to OKR can be here. John Doerr (Inventor and VC) written a great book about that subject, Measure What Matters, where many of the top leaders in today’s economy discussing their approach to OKR and how it helped them transform their companies. Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation give real-life examples that I’m sure can benefit every leader who wants to achieve something great.
As always I’ll be happy to hear your comments, thoughts, and suggestions, we’re all in a constant process of learning and improving :)
Nir Sagiv
