Natalija Hellesoe - Implementing OKRs is not the goal - Agile Lean Ireland Meetup

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) as a concept has been around for a while. Many companies set out to work with OKRs and implement the seemingly simple idea in their organization - often enough without a clear answer to the most important question: “To what ultimate end?”.
So it’s time to dig a little deeper! In this meetup, Natalija will invite you to look at OKRs in the context of current business challenges and complexity and broaden your perspective around the “simple idea”!
Through examples, case studies and discussions, we will explore;
> OKRs in the context of complexity
> Different development patterns of OKRs in organizations
> how to link actual business problems to OKRs
> Making an informed decision whether OKRs are worth pursuing for you > Designing an OKR System that works for your organization
And of course we will leave enough time at the end for all you Q&As.

Speaker's Bio:
Natalija is an organizational development coach and OKR expert. She supports companies wanting to increase focus, autonomy, and value creation to identify and prioritize their challenges, set valuable goals and continuously improve. She has been working within People Development and Transformation since 2010 before starting her own business offering an entire ecosystem of training and coaching focusing on Leadership &
Responsibility, Objectives & Key Results and Agile HR & Learning.
In 2020, she published the practical book “OKRs at the center: How to drive change with goals and create the organization you want” together with Sonja Mewes via Sense & Respond Press. Today the learning and development programs supporting organizations with OKRs and more are united in the OATC Academy!

Find us here: www.agileleanireland.org

Transcript

Our speaker today is Natalia. Natalia is an organisational development coach and she also specialises in Okr's objective key results for those who don't know what that stands for. Natalia also recently released a book which is titled. Occurs at the scene. How to drive change with goals and create the organisation you want? I had a pleasure to read that book recently and the book is full of practical examples and case studies very very looking forward to learn from you Natalia.

Yeah. Thank you very much for the invitation, Joanna. So our topic of today is. Implementing occurs is not the goal, and that might be. A little counter. Intuitive, so implementing occurs is not the goal. Might be a little counterintuitive and at the same time I think it's an important topic to discuss right now, since Okr has become such a trending topic, not just in the agile world. But across different organisational aspects and in the whole sector of transformation. And so when I work with many clients in the field of organisational development, they often come to me asking the questions. So how can we now best implement occurs for us? We heard about it, we read about it. We have seen all the success stories and now we want to do it to improve also our way of working towards the best way now to. And So what they're trying to do is to take the simple idea of OK years. So as some of you might know, the idea is to just use objectives and key results to bridge the gap between the long term vision, the goals, the strategy and what you do on a day-to-day basis. So the daily execution. By setting intentional, inspiring steps so that describing the next inspiring steps in an objective and combining that with measurable key results. To combine the objective with the measurable key results that look at the objective from different perspectives and measure a change in a relative. Or absolute value. And since Okr's are not just something that kind of changes the way that you define goals, but it changes the way that you work with goals, you also look at an iterative cycle to work with OCR. So you start with the definition, you set the goals for your team or your organisation. You regularly check progress and track. Progress in the check in meetings and then you reflect back at the end, learn and adjust, and then of course that's totally similar to some of yeah, the principles you might find in many other agile ways of working. So it would be scrum or anything else. And what customers or clients that I work with normally want is to take this idea and apply it not just to a team, but to a certain department, even the entire organisation. And when they ask me the questions, how can we now best implement okrs? Five years ago, I would have to say, OK, let's dive in there. Let's look at your organisation and find out what the best approach is, because I always believe that there is no just single unique approach to do that. But it's of course dependent on the context that you work in your organisation. That was how I would have treated that five years ago today. I totally believe that this is the wrong question to ask. Because in my opinion, implementing Okr's can and should never be. The goal occurs as so many other frameworks and concepts out there are just a means to an end. And so the important question to ask and to dig into should always be so to what ultimate end for our organisation, for this moment in time. And So what I would like to invite you while I'm giving some input is to really reflect little on yourself. You signed up for this meet up, so you're obviously, somehow interested Emino Chiara. But to kind of dive into So what is okr for you? Is it just kind of a trend topic? Is it something where you hop on the bandwagon because all the other companies are doing that or is it maybe something that actually gets down to the root causes of why your organisation maybe doesn't succeed in the way it should be or does it really solve some of your problems? And so I will walk you through a couple of examples here and share a lot of questions that I also ask when I work with my clients and my invitation for you would be to just maybe grab a pen and paper and go along the questions and just think for yourself and for your organisation of what possible answers might be. And then I'm happy to share some conclusions. And get into the discussion afterwards. So what we're going to do is to look into how can you actually intentionally use occurs to solve your business problems, not just to implement okrs. And so for that we will not start with the question of what is the starting point in your organisation and what are your next steps and how can you implement it. But we will actually dig deeper into, OK, what is it that you want to achieve with okrs? So that could be the typical why question but to not stop there but to actually go all the way back into so which problem do you actually wanna solve with that? And to do that, to give you a certain background on how I look at the topic, I actually have a background in HR and transformation and I guess that's why I look at topics like objectives and key results, not just as kind of a concept in the toolbox, but a lot on. Yeah, what does that actually mean for the organisation? Why do we want to get into that? What are the consequences when we think about implementing these ways of working, and so that's also something that I would like to share with you today. So I think the last 12 months have been the best example ever of this whole unknown space. You know, the complexity, the uncertainty, everything that we already know existed. But it just kind of came crashing down. So obviously right in our face that we couldn't deny it anymore in our organisations. And of course, many organisations then ask a question. So what do we then now need to thrive in this complex, uncertain, fast-paced environment? And I guess the answers that many organisations find and that probably the bigger part of you who work in the agile space always find is something that could maybe be yes, summarised. In certain principles like these. So it's always about how can we create a strong focus? How can we faster, better alignment? How can we actually drive value creation in our organisations? How can we increase meaningful contribution of every single employee in the organisation and enable decision making autonomously where it makes most sense for what we're trying to accomplish? And of course, to invade fast learning cycles in everything we do to actually be have the necessary flexibility to meet these. Demands of the unknown. We all know that the interesting part though, is that as soon as something like a possible solution offers itself, we often in organisations fall into something that I like to call the simple cure paradox. So we have all the knowledge about complexity. We know that there is no easy solution. We know that we need a lot of experimentation. But still then we read about our cars and think, oh, this could be something that actually helps and even better. OK, cars themselves are inspired by the agile principles. So it takes into account fast learning cycles, fast decision making. Autonomy isn't that great. That must be the thing that. Actually really helps us. Maybe you recognise some of the behaviour in your organisation, So what we actually do is we already climb up the tree and we find ourselves at the place of the solution and it's really comfy there. We have a great overview and it's just a question. So what is next? But the invitation I always try to speak out, then to my clients when we talk about a possible care implementation is. To actually pack up your gear and climb all the way down with me back into the problem space first and really dig deep into, OK, does this actually make sense or are we kind of falling into the trap of this new shiny object syndrome that okr sometimes stand for? And so the first important question would be, of course, which problem is. It that you want to solve. So how can you maybe go about that? There are of course many variations to do that. I mean the science prints and all these kind of thing have many methods in there as well. What I like to do when I'm talking about Oprs is to start with what are currently the biggest problems and challenges in your organisations. What are you facing? Here. And if you now think about your own organisations, could you name the biggest problems and challenges, not just in your department, but on a grander scale? So what is it your organisation is really struggling with? If you. Want just write that down to take your thoughts a little further. And maybe you find yourself in a similar position like one of my clients last year, so they wanted to implement occurs and of course they came up with the question how can we now go about that? And since I as a dependable coach wanted to dig deeper because I know that just implementing Okr's will not bring the solution that they expect. I started to ask questions like. Why did she get into the okr space? Why did she even look for a solution? What is the background of that? And then you might also hear in your organisation things like well, we're not aligned across the functions, we need more focus. We need to improve the strategy execution and things like that. So kind of a merry yeah meta level problem description of what is actually going on. And I think one of the most interesting questions you can ask whenever you are. Presented with the challenge of your client of your organisation or even yourself is why is this actually a problem? And I found that so interesting, because you could say we are not aligned across functions. So what? We could just keep it that way and maybe not everything runs smoothly, but why is it an actual problem? Why is it something where we need to put effort and resources and energy into actually solving that and then you might get a little closer towards? The actual. Problem that you're looking at, so maybe you find something like, well, we would actually need aligned goals to focus on our resources because we don't have enough employees at the moment or we're not actually getting things done because we do too many things at once. And so products are shipped too late and things like that. Hopefully you get a little closer to the problem, but you're probably not there yet. So through a series of questions or other methods like what what I'm trying to get out of a customer is an actual problems. Treatment and one way that I found helpful to kind of yeah, trigger that discussion is something that is inspired a little by organisational behaviour science. So I try to kind of dial it down into a problem statement of this sort. So first of all, I try to distinguish is the problem. Something that you want to change. So is it more like an opportunity that you see or is it something that you actually need to change in order to be successful or to even survive? As a company. And then to find some kind of verbal expression. OK, if that is something that we need to change, then what is kind of the aspect we want to do? Is it something we want to improve, we want to grow, we want to increase. What does it actually mean? And just a side note here, this is also I find a great practise for writing okrs to actually try to formulate things in a whole sentence where you need to really name the person and find the verbal expression of the activity you're doing and so on. And so once you know that the question is OK, what what aspect of the organisation are we looking at? Is it a question of effectiveness? Is it a question of efficiency? Is it a question of quality? Like, what is it actually that we're trying to change here? And lastly, the most important aspect probably based on what? Why are we actually having a problem? What brought this problem to our intention? Was it a market demand? Was it something that our employees brought up to our attention? As it just resulting from some business trends on the outside or part of an organisational change problem that we started. And that leads us to another important question. And when you look at the problems you identify in your company, the question could be so for whom is it an actual problem? Who is kind of the address and of that problem and that can lead you to something else. And that is the distinction between internal and external references. What do I mean with that? I mean many problems that we often come up with are linked to something that only happens internally in the organisation, so it might be linked to the structures we want to improve. Or the way that people lead or take responsibility in our organisation or the way that we pay our salaries or something like that. But the question is if we want to change these things in the organisation, here again, to what ultimate ends? Why would we even want to put a certain level of energy and resources into changing our structures? What would it actually improve outside the organisation? So for our customers, for our clients in the market? For our competitive situation, So what would the external reference be and why is that then? And there are of course whole books written on OK, should you always have an external reference? And is it only an actual problem if it connects to an external reference? I guess there are different opinions here, but I think what is important here is that you come to your own conclusion where you can say, do I have the reference that I'm looking for? And if you're striving towards actually getting external references, then your problem should have a connection to an actual reference an actual. External reference. And let's say, just for the sake of that call and this talk that you now have a pretty good idea of your problem. Your opportunity. Then of course now is the time to look into possible solutions. So what can we actually do in order to solve that problem or to create that opportunity or what kind of preconditions do we maybe need to establish in the company? To be able to actually address that problem. And then, of course, we come back to what we already know about the complexity and experimentation and think in many different directions. So if we're talking, for example, about organisational effectiveness, we could think about structural changes or changes of course, in the way we set our goals or in our task management. In the way that we address competitors or whatever it might be. And this might be the first point where actually our okr journey comes to a dead end before it even starts, because we might look into then what is the desired future state if we actually gonna solve that problem. What does that actually look like? What is then different? To get a little closer to yeah, actually knowing what does that mean in our content. And so this could lead to this first end of occurs when we might realise that in our context, what might actually solve the biggest problem at hand is not a change in the way that we work with goal, but is something completely different. Of course, it could also be the opposite, and we come to the conclusions ended well, OK, ours might actually help us to solve that that biggest problem and then the journey can continue. And when you now look at the desired state that you came up for, that might already give you some clues of where Oprs might actually be of help to solve your problem. So the question can I be OK? What do I want to achieve with our peers? But always in order to help solve that problem that I identified. Or to reach the desired future state that identified not to go into an argumentation of saying OK, why is OK are the greatest concepts ever? Because I will always find arguments for that. But to really connect it to the problem that you yeah kind of define before. And So what? Companies then often come up with is, OK, what do we want to achieve with our cars? We're kind of back to the start. It's a lot about focus and alignment and autonomy. But I think also here the important question is what does that mean in your context? And to really dig deep into. What does that mean for us? What does focus mean for us? What is this thing that we then call focus or alignment and what is then different when we actually have that in place in our? And so, for example, that could also mean that we come to another dead end sink and then when we have the clarity of what it means in our context, it also might lead to the conclusion that OCR is maybe not the best concept. To solve that. On the other hand, in the case of my customer, for example, this is what they came up with for their desired stage. For part of the problem. Now that they wanted to work together, meaning they wanted to really work aligned on a shared vision that was in place with clear priorities to make the best use of their resources and on the right things. And their context supporting the strategy. So these were the kind of the three priorities that that I find in terms of these being the preconditions to actually be successful and solve some of the problems that they had at hand. And so that led them to the conclusion that Okr might actually be of help in terms of aligning them. But of course not alone, but together with. The vision that they need to create first, they could be of help to set clear priorities and to work on the right things. If the strategy is really incorporated in working with okrs in the process. And so when you dial down from the problem you want to solve to what you want to achieve with occurs, then of course the next question might be So what is now my starting point and how can I go about it in my company? Because we said in the headline that we want to intentionally use it and not just intentionally towards the problem but cause. Also intentionally to your starting point and the starting point can mean a lot of different things. First of all. It can mean to find your personal way, and that is something I cannot strive enough when it comes to OCR, because there's a lot of great material out there. But what is not out there is the one right way, the one correct way. The one only way to do OK ours and the one description is saying we need four key results. We need to do it every three months. And we need to. Do it this and that, but what is out there is a lot of different variations on how to best apply the underlying principles in different context. So what you need to do is to look at your context first. Where does your organisation stand now? How do you live leadership? What structures do you have in place? How does compensation and all that for you work? Because when you want to introduce something like OK ours, they are not introduced in a vacuum, but they actually need to be integrated. To what you currently have in your organisation. So to have clarity around your context, is the one part and the other part is what it might then lead to in terms of all chaos. So what I often see in practise is companies starting to use OCR and they're really focused on creating transparency, improving their performance, maybe gaining a little goal. Flexibility and a little learning pace, but really narrow it down to focus, transparency and performance. And the outcome of that often is that they write or chairs. Look in something like this. So very what you could call output focused okr's looking at results giving very clear instruction. And normally that also happens in a very top down approach creating a very clear okr tree of what people need to do. Of course, here you could ask the question. Are we doing OK hours right? Is that even doing OK hours or is that something else or something in between? And here again, I don't think are we doing OK ours, right is a really helpful question, but the more helpful question will be, are we solving our problems with the way we're doing our care? Are we creating opportunities that we're looking for when we create our cars? And so, for example, for these types of company, creating a shared focus and actually having transparency over the goals might be a necessary first precondition and a huge win already. It might not be what we call the best occurs ever. But if it helps them to set the necessary preconditions for the next. I wouldn't say it's the wrong thing to do, but of course there are other things people looking for outcome to be one and many companies are starting to use okr to get more into an outcome space. Unfortunately Okr's do not come with build in outcomes. I know that's a bummer. That's one of the expectations. Many people have when they start using okrs, but also here you as an organisation you need to make a conscious decision. We want to focus on outcomes and we also want to integrate it in our okr process. So when we're looking for more an outcome space, so it's about value driven goals, value driven structures and processes and probably also focusing on motivation than your cars might look something like this. So more focusing on the effect you're trying to achieve on measuring changes in for example, customer user behaviour. And probably also defining them more in the top down, bottom up aligned approach. And then we also find companies who do it totally differently, and that's what we call also in the book the autonomy stage. So companies who already might have focus, who might have transparent goals for them, outcome orientation is just ingrained in all their processes, and they find. Maybe we even need. A totally different structure in a different way of working to even now better identify and solve the needs of our customers, and so they might come up with something that looks like this. So totally autonomous okr structure that is not linked to the classic okr tree, but where they actually say we have autonomous teams that create their own purpose, mission or vision, and then create their own okr sets. The rived from that. And here again, this is not a wrong or right question. It's just. Where does your company currently stand? What makes sense as a next step, and what are you trying to then achieve and how can then the concept of okr be helpful in that regard? But if you wanna sum it up, you could put it in a picture like that. So what we often see is that companies roughly go through these. Ages one way or the other. That's of course not linear, because we're still living in a complex world, so there are no easy linear graphs as well. But maybe they can give some orientation to where your company currently stands and what might be a good way to look for an okr setup, but also to look for OK what are we actually trying to do? Here and the interesting thing and I actually looked at the graph again after going into the problem. Space a lot with my. Clients and that was that. I realised that when you go through this phase, it might also just be. A problem development from an internal to an external view because once you start off with just focusing on transparency on performance, that is something that is normally really internally focused for the company. So you're kind of still looking a lot for internal problem references and the more you move to the right. But the more you actually focus on external problems references and try to solve problems for your users and your customers, and then adjust the way that you structure your company or the way that you do goals according to these external problem develop. And so the book that Joanna mentioned beforehand, if you want to get deeper into these case studies, feel free to have a. Look there, there. It's explained in a little greater detail, but I want to share something else with you today because once you have. A clarity around the problem and what you want to achieve with occurs and your starting point. Then you have of course a good foundation to think about. So what is now the next possible step and to design your individual okr approach? Of course, disclaimer without sacrificing the underlying principles, I am total believer that it's not the idea of OK or to then. Say oh it. Fits fast that we do it just every 12 or 24 months and that we don't use iterations or anything like that. But to really think about, OK, what from this beautiful palette? Of options in terms of how often we do occurs when we write into the occurs or who participates in the set definition. What kind of maturity on the development scale we. Looking at and how do we want to go about your care cycle? To really make use of these variation based on your starting point and especially the problem that you're trying to solve and then go back again into experimentation mode with these different approaches so with different cadences with different variations of okr sets. And the like. And the important part here I find is. No matter which decision you are consciously making for your company, it will always be a trade off. I don't believe that there is then the right solution for your company, but there are different trades off that you can make. For example, going back to this very famous picture, but. The point here is OK are often described as this great solution of how can we then combine alignment and autonomy? So what is then kind of? The best solution to fit. And I believe that there is always a trade off that you still need to make in order for how much do you then go into the alignment or the autonomy or the learning cycles or setting up your structure for complexity or all the other factors or even a trade off, not just between the alignment and the autonomy? But also the internal and the external references. So there are a lot of conscious decisions for trade-offs that you need to make when you work with. Yes. So I think instead of just focusing your efforts on finding the right solution, the discussions about what trade-offs makes sense for our company based on the problem that we're trying to solve is the better. Way to go. And so making that conscious choice based on your problem to solve and not the solution at hand is what I cannot just only recommend for okr's, but I guess for every concept that you're going into. And so that's also something that I'm trying to do in the trainings that ioffer. Really getting into that. OK. Does okrs make sense for us and in our context and how can we make this decision upfront, whether we want to pursue that, we wanna take the effort and the energy into that. And so if you want to join us, we also have a monthly meet up talking about all these. Yeah, difficult. And at the same time really interesting aspects of okre. But coming back to the essence of today, it really is that implementing Okr is not the goal. It might be that shiny nice object that you stumbled across in a talk in a conference in the book or heard from colleagues. But it is always just a means to an end. And so the question is to what? Ultimate end for your company? And what is it for you? You're gonna hop on the bandwagon and kind of justice meet the trend wave and implement all cars? Or do you wanna climb down the tree with me and get into the root causes and your problems to actually find something that OK ours can help you with? Let's take it that far and then I'm really interested to hear your comments, your questions and anything else that you want to share.

Thanks very much. Natalia, that was really inspiring and it's really interesting to hear because now Oka I became so trendy. It's really nice you're driving this conversation. Is it really the tool for us? And do we really need it? So personally, I very much enjoyed the talk. Thanks very much. We have few questions. Yes. And actually before I will start reading the. Questions anybody who would like to ask the questions we have around 20 minutes for them. Please type them in the chat and I will go through them. And also just for your information, the talk is recorded and you will be posted on the meet up in the comments after this this meet up and mural link to mural will also be shared. On in the comments you can exchange the link and then profiles there for all those who are interested in Nokia R topics. And also somebody asked me the last question. Natalia was. Ohh yeah. Somebody already replied. The link to your meet up and somebody already provided it so perfect. Thank you very much. OK. So the first question, OK, ours can be defined at different levels, strategic, tactical and operational. Is it a good practise to define two to five objectives per level?

Yeah. Good question. Thank you for that. Going back to to what I just tried to offer here is yes and no. I would say yes, it's a good practise and it works for many companies to define two to five objectives per level. But then again, I would like to kind of turn the question back. So what is it you're trying to accomplish? You're with your peers, and if, for example, one of your most important topics is focus. I would highly recommend to at least try to dial it down into at least two or three objective Macs, so to really have these hard discussions in terms of OK, what is it that we want to focus on right now because I find in the OCR definition, it is important to have a commitment on what we wanna focus on in our objectives. But it is just as important to have a commitment. What do we not focus on for the next? OK, cycle. What are we actually sure. And what do we commit to in this team on this level that was not part of our focus for the cycle. And so the more objectives you allow, of course the more you room you might have. Have at the same time to give out a rule like we need 2 to 5 objective and it cannot be six or one. In my personal experience that doesn't really help, but it's more about OK what are we trying to accomplish and to give that out as a principle we wanna focus it down as much as possible because we wanna focus our resources. On the most important project and then a rule of thumb could be two to five. So kind of set that into context a little more instead of just writing down good practises with how I would go about it.

OK. Thanks very much, Talia. The next question is can we use other management tools like EBM, evidence based management together with OKRS, are they complementary?

Let me answer the question like that. I haven't gotten that deep into EBM, to be honest, but maybe on a broader scale is of course you can use many different management tools together with OK here. I think 2 questions I would ask myself is OK, are they kind of trying to solve the same problems? Are we moving in the same direction? Them, or might they be of conflicting nature and therefore we might need to look into OK, is it really useful to keep both of them or can we maybe also get rid of 1 or the other, use them in different context? X whether or not EBM and ORS are totally complementary is something I would love to look into further, but I don't have a sufficient answer for you yet, so I don't even wanna try. But if there's anyone who is a professional in EBM who has an example, then feel free to share here as well.

OK.

Thanks very much and thanks for being hours very much appreciated and another question asking open right questions. Is that the main approach to better define occurs start with a problem, use root cause analysis 5 wise 5 wise and sampling tools.

I would say when I add the final QRS with teams or with all organisations, I use a lot of open questions, yes, because I find okrs are then most beneficial. If you actually take the time and give the space for people to think what might be the most important problems to solve. That might be the most important topics. And I think only with open questions you actually open up the space enough for people to get away from what is maybe already said. What are the other products that we're already building, what is already maybe lined out in the road map. So to really create a different thinking space, that's what I always call it. To have a foundation for rockers and so it's kind of similar to what I showed you today on, yeah, kind of going into the discussion of whether or not to use okr is a similar approach. And what I use in the workshops and especially 5 Y is is something that I use a lot to identify also overlying objective. Maybe on different flight flight levels and also get people to think about. Yeah, the connection then to the bigger strategic topics. So short answer would be yes, that would be my approach.

Thank you. And Natalia, I think the next question is a little bit linked with our previous question, but I think sometimes you know, we need to repeat the message number of times before it, you know settles well. So can we can we again can you again reply. So outcomes outputs activity capability. At all, at any level.

So what? What is the question? Sorry I didn't.

So outcomes, you know. So if that's how it goes, outcomes outputs activity capability at any level, so should be doing that at any level basically the question.

Ohk. OK. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying. I would say there I have a similar opinion of what you might find in, for example, just side's book on on outcomes over output that when we talk about high level of okrs, we're often talking about more the the impact or the outcome level and the further down in the organisation. Go the harder it might be to define outcome or impact related or cars and I would say that's totally fine. I think the important point for me would be to actually have a discussion with the teams on all level of what the the differentiation between output and outcome actually is. What that looks like in the company and to at least try and get. As close to outcome definition in the OKR'S as possible in your. Your team, as I said, it might be a little harder in the lower levels of okr, but to have that general distinction I would say yes, that's valuable for all the levels and that's something that I would include in kind of the, yeah, the basic okr foundational trainings or workshops or whatever you have just to get people thinking in that direction. Because I think that's the more important step than just clearly defining. OK, you need to have outcome. OK, R's also on your team level, sometimes it might not be feasible, but the knowledge about what the difference is, I think that's important for all the levels, yes.

OK. Thank you. And next the next question is, it's a statement, but it has a question mark and. And so I guess we are looking here for validation, so alignment and autonomy in huge organisation with multiple departments and areas start in one area, for example marketing. Obtained a quick wins results in certain period, for example six months and then spread into other areas of work question mark so. Can you validate or can you correct that statement? Thanks.

So thanks for that statement, Carlos. If I understand it correctly, but please say if I don't, the question would be, is it a good way to then start in a certain area without cars for example, and then obtain the quick results there and then spread the concept in other areas of work. And I would say yes, that's definitely something. To to look into in companies. But here again, when you start to experiment with OCR's, I would ask myself different questions. One be OK, where do I actually find an environment in my company that is open towards or QRS? The other thing is what kind of hypotheses do I want to test in the experimentation phase? Is it just? Whether it works in my companies, is it to just experiment with it in teams that have an actual need right now for okrs? Or is it for example, if okrs can work outside of the product department or anything like that. So just to be clear, before you think about an implementation or a pilot approach, what is it that I'm trying to find out here? And the other important aspect I want to mention is. I don't think that when you start using OCR in marketing, yes it might give you a good idea of what it might be like in your contacts, but I don't think it will give you a good idea of what it might be like in the IT department or in sales or in finance because they might just be very, very different in your organisation. So just spreading it into other areas. Like in a classical implementation approach might not work, but you might need to have to look into different forms. The other thing, and I'm not sure if you're getting at that with that question, but just maybe to add on that alignment and autonomy, when we think about classic multiple departments in areas might actually be something where okr's have a severe downside and that is when you use okrs for functional areas or for the silos that you have. Establishing your companies. It might actually lead to bigger conflicts than you already have, because you then engrain kind of the functional silos into the occurs by trying to define okr's for marketing and for sales or for it. So you. Kind of reestablish the silos, the dependencies and kind of the yeah, the problems that you already might have there. So it might be a good idea. Then after the experimentation phase to think about could we maybe work with virtual okr teams? Could we work with shared OSRS? Could we work with something that goes more into the direction of what we're trying to accomplish? With aligned autonomy, meaning bringing people together that actually solve problems in the best way that might be not directly linked to the organisational structure we have, but then no cars can maybe be a means to an end to get a little closer to a structure that might actually be beneficial for the value create. But call us, let me know if I tapped on some of the aspects you wanted to get in there. If there's anything missing.

I have already read the book. Have I exchanged some message with Natalia and I'm just trying to to clarify. Yeah. Thank you very much for your explanation.

OK. Thanks a lot.

Guys, thank you. And Natalia, thanks very much for also bringing our awareness to the common pitfalls, because that is also a great lesson learned we can get from others. What you know, what are the potential risk of doing it? One way not the other. OK. The next question is, I agree that OKRS is not. The goal what? Other frameworks are available for goal settings as effective as okrs. Would you be able to advise on this one Talia?

That's an interesting question, especially with the last part of the question. So as effective as OKRI would say, I don't have an answer to the question because what is as effective as okr in your context? Like I could never tell you what that might be. If you're looking at other frameworks in terms of OK. In similar principles or having similar solutions for goal setting, I mean some companies for example look into hosting country and frameworks alike, but also here I would look into OK. Is it goal setting that you're trying to solve here? So is that really your need? And then what about the goal setting? Is it that you're trying to? Change. So is it that you're looking into something that serves for short iterations? Is it something that creates transparency? So what are kind of the requirements for goal setting frameworks in your context based on your problems, that might then be a good fit, or possibly something that you can experiment with. Because OK. Might be super effective in one company or another. Framework might be super effective but might not have anything to do positively for your problems in your organisation, so as effectively as yeah, there's probably tonnes out there, but depending on what you're trying to change in your organisation.

Thank you very much.

Yeah. I just want to ask about Okr's and strategic change, so obviously, OK. Ours can help with alignment, but do you think that the framework can support where a strategic change happens quite suddenly the company and then we need the people within that company to be able to pivot and to? Deal with that. Whole thing.

So if I understand the question right, is the background is that you have actually a strategic change to kind of a shift in the way that you go about, yeah, how you actually work, what you're trying to accomplish and what the best way is to accomplish that on a strategic level and whether or not yours can support that? So I would say. Since OKR's are mainly based on the long term goals and the strategy, if the shift there happens, I would see some potential in O PR's helping with that because they kind of bring the attention to the strategic change and then try based on the new strategic direction to find out what is there now. The most important next step that we need to undertake, so I think it can be something that helps to clarify the strategic change to build the next steps based on the new strategy and is also kind of enhance the whole communication and commitment. That, on the other hand, I don't believe that it's sufficient to just then do OKR's for the speeding change, but of course we would need some some other yeah endeavours in terms of of change facilitation. But yes, I would see a lot of potential to help on that journey.

OK, cool. Thanks, Natalia.

And Natalia, we have another question here. What is the best way to identify the status performance outcomes autonomy and apply regular assessments?

Yeah, good question. I love that well. For me, the best is to actually share it. So how I do it with my clients, maybe that is helpful is I talked to them about the stages, about the things that I see in companies happen on a daily basis and that we came up with this model to kind of, yeah, just the simplified version put it into the. These stages and what we see happening there and what we see in terms of okr assessment and how they write okr's and then I let them do a self-assessment. So I would never go about to say, OK, this is what I see in your company happening. So you might be somewhere here on the scale, but I think the important point is that they reflect on, OK, what do we see happening, what kind of discussions are we having? What are the aspects that are mentioned when top management for example talks about others, what is it actually about? And then maybe take that as a stepping stone towards, OK, when we see ourselves maybe between the performance and the outcome stage, is this actually where we wanna be or wanna do we wanna be something else and what could then be the next important step so. Kind of getting into an OCR type of mindset. What is the next important step that we would need to undertake to move further if that's what we're looking for? And so of course a regular kind of self-assessment might be helpful just to see what is going on. Have we made an improvement? But that being said, at the same time, the goal is not to just be as far to the right on that little graph that we made as possible, because having this autonomy kind of stage is not better or worse than the performance stage. It's just a different goal and a different. Set up so I think when you know where you want to be with your company, then you can of course do regular self assessments to find out where are we right now and what might be a next possible step.

Natalia, I will download the chat and I will let you to share the chat later. Lots of compliments going your direction if anybody would like to send more codes to Natalia or give a feedback, please share that feedback is very valuable. It's valuable for us as a team to know what what works, what doesn't work. But also it's very good for Natalia. How do you find that approach that I want to say, challenging, challenging. I think it's a right word. Sometimes people don't like that word, but it's a constructively challenging the the usage of OCR's and questioning yourself first. Is it something what you need rather than blindly following? The prescriptive approach, so we have I think we can conclude here. So Natalia, so the last question I had, so what's the right approach?

There is no right approach, but I'm happy to find that out with my clients. And thanks everyone for being here today and kind of bringing all your thoughts into the discussion because I think that's what the right approach is about. To just keep experimenting, keep looking, keep questioning and then seeing what the potential in Okr's can be that you bring to your company, but also to make a conscious decision if that might not be the right thing to do. At that moment in time, maybe later. Maybe never. But I think it will definitely keep things interesting to look into these concepts.

Thank you very much. Natalia, that was a pleasure and I hope everybody enjoyed it as much as I did.