Sunday Rewind: The good, bad, and ugly of OKRs by Jenny Herald

This week’s Sunday Rewind is a 2022 ProductTank Heidelberg talk from Jenny Herald, then VP of Product Evangelism at Quantive, in which she talks about her experiences of working with OKRs (objectives and key results) and runs through the groundwork needed to get started with them.

Start with KPIs (key performance indicators), Jenny says. You can form these by analysing your vision, purpose, strategic priorities, and strategic results. KPIs are usually department-focused and don’t allow cross-collaboration, which is where OKRs come in. OKRs are all about growth, they have an element of stretch and are intended to drive cross-functional behaviour.

The challenge of OKRs is having to balance what you measure. Jenny says you need at least two key results for each objective. Every qualitative measure needs to be balanced with a quantitative measure.

Jenny then runs through some common mistakes when putting OKRs together. These include: tying OKRs to compensation, doing too much, lack of executive sponsorship, and failure to trust.

She says you should ask these four questions when crafting OKRs:

• What will make a difference to our customers?
• What will make a difference to this business?
• What will make a difference to this team?
• What are the outcomes we want?

Watch the original talk: The good, bad, and ugly of OKRs by Jenny Herald