OKR part-II

OKR-Part-II
Objective Key Responsibilities

“Some signiﬁcant percent
of people are working on
wrong things. The
challenge is which ones.” -
Aron Levie- CEO, Box

The Same Page
- According to Harvard Business Review, companies with highly aligned
employees are more than twice as likely to be top performers.
- Unfortunately. Alignment is rare.

Example Top-Down: The
Sand Hill Unicorns
Fantasy Football

General Manager
Objective: Make $ for owner
Key Results:
1. Win Super Bowl.
2. Fill home stands to 90%+.

Head Coach
Objective: Win Super Bowl.
Key Results:
1. Passing attack amasses 300+
yards per game.
2. Defense allows fewer than 17
points per game.
3. Special teams unit ranks in top
3 in punt return coverage.
Offensive Coach
Objective: Generate 300-yards per
game passing attack.
Key Results:
1. Achieve 65% pass completion
rate.
2. Cut interceptions to fewer than
1 per game.
3. Hire new quarterback coach.
Defensive Coach
Objective: Give up fewer than 17
points a game
Key Results:
1. Allow fewer than 300 rushing
yards per game.
2. Increase number of sacks to 3+
per game.
3. Develop a Pro Bowl cornerback.
Special Team Coach
Objective: Improve to top 3 ranking
for punt coverage team.
Key Results:
1. Allow fewer than 10 yards per
punt return
2. Back 4+ punt over the season.
General Manager
Objective: Make $ for owner
Key Results:
1. Win Super Bowl.

SVP of Marketing
Objective: Fill home stands to 90%
capacity.
Key Results:
1. Upgrade team branding.
2. Improve media coverage.
3. Revitalize in-stadium
promotion program.
Marketing Director
Objective: Upgrade team branding.
Key Results:
1. Target two colorful players to
new marketing campaign.
2. Create a more compelling team
slogan.
Merchandise Manager
Objective: Revitalize our in-stadium
promotion program.
Key Results:
1. Contact 10 souvenir companies.
2. Price out 5 options.
3. Present 3 ideas for stadium
giveaways by august 1.
Publicist
Objective: Improve media coverage.
Key Results:
1. Arrange for players to attend
two charity events per season.
2. Invite 20 sports reporters to
meet and greet.
3. Share photos of events on
social media.
General Manager
Objective: Make $ for owner.
Key Results:
1. Win Super Bowl.

Adverse effect of Top-Down Approach
- A loss of agility.
- A lack of ﬂexibility.
- Marginalized contributors.
- One dimensional linkage.

Solution: Bottom Up!
- Objective from CTO → Individual rather than CTO → Team → Lead →
Individual.
- The higher the goals, higher the performance.
- Cross-functional Coordination

In God we trust; all
others must bring data. -
W. Edwards Deming

Setup
- Make everyone’s goal more visible
- Drive engagement.
- Promote internal networking.
- Save time, money and frustration.

Midlife Tracking
- OKRs are adaptable by nature. They’re meant to be guardrails, not chains or
blinders.
- As we track and audit our OKRs, we have four options at any point in the
cycle:
- Continue: If a green zone (“on track”) goal isn’t broken, don’t ﬁx it.
- Update: Modify yellow zone (“needs attention”) key result or objective to respond to changes
in the workﬂow or external environment.
- Start: Launch a new OKR mid-cycle, whenever the need arises.
- Stop: When a red zone (“at risk”) goal has outlived its usefulness, the best solution may be to
drop it.

Wrap-up: Rinse and Repeat
- Objective Scoring
- Self-assessment
- Reﬂection

Scoring: 0 to 1
- 0.7 to 1.0 = green. (We delivered.)
- 0.4 to 0.6 = yellow. (We made progress, but fell short of completion.)
- 0.0 to 0.3 = red. (We failed to make real progress.)

Self Assessment
OKR Progress Score Self-assessment
Bring in ten
customers
70% 0.9 Due to a slump in
the market. The
OKR was significant
tougher to achieve
I’d thought. Our
seven new
customers
represented an
exceptionally good
effort.

Self Assessment
Bring in ten
customers
100% 0.7 When I reached the
objective only eight
weeks into the
quarter. I realized I’d
set the ORK too low.

Self Assessment
Bring in ten
customers
80% 0.6 While I signed eight
new customers. It
was more luck than
hard work. One
customer brought in
five others behind
her.

Self Assessment
Bring in ten
customers
90% 0.5 Though I managed
to land nine new
customers. I
discovered that
seven would bring in
little revenue.

Reﬂection
- Did I accomplish all of my objectives? If so, what contributed to my success?
- If not, what obstacles did I encounter?
- If I were to rewrite a goal achieved in full, what would I change?
- What have I learned that might alter my approach to the next cycle’s OKRs?

If companies “don’t
continue to innovate,
they’re going to die - and
I didn’t say iterate, I say
innovate.” - Bill Campbell

BHAG BIG Hairy Audacious Goals

Two OKR Basket
Committed Goals
- Product Release
- Bookings
- Hiring
- Customers
Aspirational Goals
- Bigger picture
- Higher risk
- Future-titling ideas

Stretch: The Google Chrome
Story

Rethinking the Browser
Objective: develop the next generation client platform for web application.
The main key-result: “Chrome reaches 20 million seven-day active users by
year’s end”.
FallBack:
- The Mac version fell way behind schedule.
- Only Windows users would count towards the 20 million.

Digging Deeper
- In 2008, Larry and Sergey wrote beautiful OKR that truly captured people’s
attention:
- Objective: “We should make the web as fast as ﬂipping through a magazine.”
- Sub-OKR: “Turbocharge Javascript” - By Pitchai
- Result: Project “V8”
- Always looking for the moonshot.

Try-Fail, Try-Succeed
- In 2009, We set another stretch OKR for Chrome - 50 million seven-day
active users- and failed again, ending the year at 38 million.
- For 2010, undeterred, I proposed a target of 100 million users. Larry believed
we should be pushing even harder. 111 million of users.
- End of Q3, our total user had serged from 87 million to 107 million, and
shortly after we reached 111 million.

In a world where
computing power is
nearly limitless, “The true
scarce commodity is
increasingly human
attention.” - Satya N.

A better metric
- YouTube had ﬁgured out how to make money, but they still weren’t sure how
to grow viewership.
- Most satisﬁed viewership (watch time) begets more advertising. Which
incentivized more content creators, which draws more viewership.

A Big Round Number
- In Nov 2012, We took objective of “A billion hours of watch time per day by
2016”
- Objective: Reach 1 billion hours of watch time per day [by 2016], with growth
driven by:
- Key Results:
- Search team + Main App (+XX%), Living Room (+XX%).
- Grow kids’ engagement and gaming watch time (X watch hours per day).
- Launch YouTube VR experience and grow VR catalog from X to Y videos.

Getting Up to Speed
- Policy to stop recommending trashy, tabloid-style videos - like “World’s
Worst Parent”.
- By Feb 2014, YouTube was nearly a third of the way through the four-year,
mega-stretch OKR.
- The billion-hour OKR was a religion at YouTube, to the execution of nearly all
else.
- We wanted new users and so did our advertisers.
- By early october, daily watch time were growing well beyond our target rate.
And then one glorious Monday that fall, I checked again - and saw that we’d
hit achieved the stretch OKR many thought impossible, ahead of schedule.

OKR part-II

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OKR part-II