Dear Andy,
We are a medium-size business that is exploring OKRs and inside our first year of really trying to learn from the implementation of OKRs. One area of concern is the movement into a new quarter with perhaps a key OKR still open.
What is the best practice for juggling anything still open and anything new to deliver for the next quarter? Departments are tempted to abandon current OKRs, utilize the whole of the next quarter as an extension, or reduce it down to the minimum possible delivery for the current quarter. This last variety leaves achievements as “stretch-less” activities that do little for growth.
Sincerely,
Paul
Hi Paul!
Thanks for writing in. As you wisely assessed, OKRs that don’t result in or encourage growth are fruitless. They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same exercise over and over and hoping for the same results, right?
Let’s say you coach a football team and determine that you need to develop a strong passing-focused offense to win more games. You put the work into improving your passing game, but halfway through the season, you recognize that this strategy hasn’t improved your record the way you’d hoped. You then have to decide if allocating your time and resources to the passing game is the right decision. You decide yes, and keep passing the priority with an increased practice schedule for the quarterback and receivers. At the end of the season, however, you see that all that extra work still hasn’t improved your record. What do you do then?
I’ll give you three choices: Coach A keeps trying to focus on passing, simply adding more practice, but not altering the approach substantially. Coach B keeps trying to focus on passing, but decides to radically rethink the approach. Coach C thinks it’s time to pivot strategies and say, “Hey, maybe we’re not a passing team — maybe we’re a running team.”
Which coach do you think would have a better shot at improving the team’s record? Hint: Not A. Answer: B or C. Coach B rolls over the Objective but changes the KRs meaningfully to see if it gets the team closer to the Objective. Coach C changes the Objective.
The same is true for OKRs. When deciding whether or not to roll over an OKR, do a gut check with your team and ask yourselves if you still feel that a particular Objective would get you closer to achieving your mission.
If the answer is yes, keep the same Objective the next cycle. If you go this route, make sure to take the learnings from the cycle and reassess, potentially revising the OKR. Are you measuring the right thing? Would rewording the Objective provide greater clarity? Have you correctly determined why progress is limited? If so, consider switching up your OKRs.
If the answer to that question of whether the original OKR will get you closer to achieving the mission is no, there’s zero shame in scrapping that OKR and moving on to a different priority. There’s still a lot of wisdom to gain from incomplete OKRs. Learning what doesn’t work is a good step towards learning what does.
And don’t just take my word for it. Google’s OKR playbook uses OKR type to delineate when they should and shouldn’t be rolled over. Aspirational OKRs are often expected to take more than one cycle to complete because they’re intentionally designed to “exceed the team’s ability to execute in a given quarter.” Committed OKRs, however, require a “postmortem” if they’re not achieved in the cycle, ensuring teams understand what happened in the planning and/or execution of the OKR, which then allows them to do better the next time around.
So, roll incomplete OKRs to the next cycle, if that decision is made with deliberation. If you find yourself with a “zombie” OKR, rolling it over automatically several cycles in a row, then these OKRs aren’t serving you, and it’s time to give your strategy a rethink.
Thanks for writing in, Paul, and best of luck to you and your team on your OKR Journey.
Sincerely,
Billy from the What Matters Team
