Then write a review in your favorite social media platform. Mention my title: Objectives + Key Results (OKR) Leadership; How to apply Silicon Valley’s secret sauce to your career, team or organization.
Please share these testimonials with your team or organization:
“Doug Gray makes the complex understandable. More important, he makes it doable.”
Craig E. Aronoff, Ph.D., author, Chairman and co-founder, The Family Business Consulting Group, Inc.
“Doug builds on the OKR approach with practical and valuable guidance for individuals, teams and organizations. If you plan on implementing OKRs for your organization, you need this book.”
John Mattox, PhD, author, Head of Talent Research, Metrics that Matter, Explorance
“Introducing the OKR framework has not only allowed us to align our company goals throughout the organization, but it has also provided an easy mechanism to give visibility into how we drive operational accountability.”
Justin Jude, Acting President, LKQ Corp, North America
“Finally, a much needed leadership focus on the importance of clear objectives and specific, measurable results. This book will be useful not just for the present but throughout a practitioner’s career.“
Dave Vance, PhD, author, Executive Director, Center for Talent Reporting
My new Objectives and Key Results (OKR) Leadership book (2019)
Please help me promote my new leadership book! The editing is nearly completed… Yeah!
Title: Objectives + Key Results (OKR) Leadership; How to apply Silicon Valley’s secret sauce to your career, team or organization.
1. The e-book digital release is available now. Pre-order here.
2. The paper and audible book releases will be available after 11.14.19. Please forward this page to your friends and colleagues today.
3. Share these testimonials:
“Doug’s leadership training of the OKR process has been received positively by my sales team due to the coaching being simple, engaging and very effective.” Terry Fortner, VP Sales and Marketing, North America LKQ Corporation.
“Doug Gray makes the complex understandable. More important, he makes it doable.” Craig E. Aronoff, Ph.D., author, Chairman and co-founder, The Family Business Consulting Group, Inc.
“John Doerr’s book “Measure What Matters” describes how OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) transformed Silicon Valley. With this new book, Doug builds on the OKR approach with practical and valuable guidance for individuals, teams and organizations. If you plan on implementing OKRs for your organization, you need this book.” John Mattox, PhD, author, Head of Talent Research, Metrics that Matter, Explorance
“The top five companies in Silicon Valley have an economic value as great as the United Kingdom. They must know something. Doug has uncovered their secrets in his OKR Leadership approach.” Jac Fitzenz, PhD, author, Founder Saratoga Institute and Human Capital Source
“Doug Gray provides readers with a ‘moment of truth’ concerning how we can transform lofty objectives into down-to-earth results.” James Dillon, co-Founder, Emerging Step
“Introducing the OKR framework has not only allowed us to align our company goals throughout the organization, but it has also provided an easy mechanism to give visibility into how we drive operational accountability. That visibility now exists for both our employees and supervisors. OKR Leadership has encouraged broader and more in-depth conversations about the right key results to drive individual or team objectives.” Justin Jude, Acting President, LKQ Corp, North America
“Doug’s new book challenges me to be a leader and to practice leadership. This book provides a practical framework that will make you a more successful leader.“ David Cardwell, SVP, IT Operations, F100 company
“Finally, a much needed leadership focus on the importance of clear objectives and specific, measurable results. This book will be useful not just for the present but throughout a practitioner’s career.“ Dave Vance, PhD, author, Executive Director, Center for Talent Reporting
“In his new and exciting book, OKR Leadership, Doug Gray shares how his proven techniques can help you move the needle to achieve the business outcomes you’ve been striving for. If you’re ready for a transformation, then OKR Leadership is a must read!” Sheri Bankston, VP, Alliance Safety Council
“History is littered with the graves of organizations who had the right strategy but were unable to execute. Lack of execution is a very real threat to every organization’s survival. This is a very practical look at the OKR system to accomplishing results. Written incredibly clearly, Doug Gray has brought OKR Leadership to life in a way that would benefit any organization.” Brian Underhill, Ph.D., author, Founder and CEO, CoachSource
4. Share this back cover:
Leaders practice leadership, just as physicians practice medicine and attorneys practice law. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are the secret sauce that drives the largest migration of financial assets and technological innovation ever recorded in human history to Silicon Valley, California, USA, since the 1970s. OKR Leadership — the process for managers and leaders to practice what matters – is the secret sauce that drives transformational leadership, employee engagement and the next generation of management consulting. Join the OKR Leadership movement. See details at www.Action-Learning.com or www.OKRLeadership.com. This practical and valuable book will help you practice OKR Leadership in your career, team or organization immediately.
7. Download Chapter 1 as my gift to you (below.) Then write a review in your favorite social media platform. Then forward this page to your friends and colleagues.
TO: Objectives and Key Results (OKR) practitioners/ leaders/ managers
FR: Doug Gray, PhD, PCC
Goal of the OKR leadership project:
Invite practitioners/ leaders/ managers in any-sized organization to share digital stories of HOW you are applying OKRs individually and organizationally.
Assumptions:
Leaders practice leadership. We can all be better leaders.
We can leverage technology and our organizations. We can use technology to share stories of how OKR leadership can transform individuals and teams.
OKR Leadership matters. When we model relationships that matter, then we increase awareness and learning for other individuals and teams.
Background:
After consulting hundreds of leaders and managers about OKR leadership one theme stands clear. Marketing the value of using OKRs is NOT well defined. Market confusion abounds. This OKR Leadership Project is one initiative to help anyone at any level describe HOW you are applying OKRs individually and organizationally in our global marketplace. Join us?
Process:
(a) share this invitation broadly with other OKR practitioners, (b) schedule a 30-minute session with Doug Gray here or at https://actionlearnin.wpengine.com/ (c) receive the calendar confirmation link and reserve that time in your calendar, (d) prepare your responses to the 5-6 questions below, (e) download https://zoom.us/ software and learn how to use Zoom software on YouTube, if needed, (f) at our scheduled time, Doug will record 5-10 minutes of our video session using the link at https://zoom.us/j/3432485703 (g) Doug will send your MP4 recording to you for your distribution, (h) Doug may post our recording on https://www.youtube.com/user/dgrayful/videos with this invitation to be included in the OKR leadership project.
Possible questions:
Self-introduction: Who are you, what do you do, where are you located, do you have a website or invitation to share with others?
Definition:OKR leadership can be defined as a management methodology that helps people focus activity on the same important issues throughout an organization. Some people focus on internal teams (small or large, formal or informal), some people are external practitioners, and some people focus on self-development. How do you typically define OKR leadership?
Interests: What attracts you to the science or practice of OKR leadership?
Clients: Who do you typically serve in your OKR leadership work? Please share 2-3 of your examples/ case studies/ successful experiences applying objectives and key results.
Trends: What trends or market opportunities do you see in the future for OKR leadership, technology or management consulting?
Referrals: Who else can you refer who (a) is applying OKR leadership with others and (b) may be willing to be included in this OKR leadership project?
You have probably had the experience of teaching someone how to drive a car. If not, imagine the scene.
Your objective is to teach enough basic skills so that your loved one can drive away. You start by teaching safety protocols like “wear your seat belt” and “always keep two hands on the steering wheel at “9 and 3.” Then you explain the functions of the gas pedal, brake pedal, gears and all those shiny buttons on the dashboard. Then you offer encouragement as your loved one shifts into gear and drives from 0 to 30 mph within a minute. Your Key Results (KRs) often follow that formula “from x to y by date.”
Objectives are defined as “what you do.” They are qualitative and each person in the organization can write their own.
Key Results are defined as “how you measure that objective.” They are quantitative and answer the formula “as measured by.”
OKRs are defined as “a management methodology that helps people focus efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization.”
For a 3-minute excerpt of a keynote presentation on OKR Leadership that I provided in December, 2019 to over 700m business leaders in Denver, CO, click here.
The “Father of OKRs” title is attributed to Andy Grove, the founder and CEO of Intel. You may know that Andy literally wrote the textbook on semiconductors in 1967, well before Silicon Valley attracted the largest migration of assets in human history. You may also know that Andy wrote “Only the Paranoid Survive” in 1996, as a reminder of market volatility and the need to measure the details. His father was killed at Auschwitz, and he fled Nazism with his mother at age 20.
John Doerr worked for Andy. John learned how to implement OKRs. Then, in 1997, John made an $11.8M investment in 12% of Google when working as a venture capitalist at Kleiner-Perkins. The co-founders of Google wanted to organize data globally. When John introduced OKRs to Google, Larry Page said, “Well, we need to adopt some management approach.” The rest is history. I recommend John Doerr’s book, Measure What Matters, (2018) for examples ranging from the Gates Foundation to Bono.
Here are my examples of teaching OKRs to leaders in a small business and a large business.
I was consulting the CEO and owner of a $40M retail business that required succession planning to transition the next generation of leaders. At a management meeting I observed that the managers did not describe their business using any metrics. I asked the owner, “Where are the metrics that these managers are using to drive their business?” He sighed with fatigue, like so many small business owners. I provided OKR definitions and templates and a free course on OKR leadership skills that you can access here. Then I worked with several key managers. One manager’s objective was to increase profit margins by 6% Y/Y. KR1 was to identify current measures for sales, expenses, overhead, profit within 30 days. KR2 was to distribute a one-page business summary to all other managers within 40 days. KR3 was to track and reward increased profit margins within 60 days. The result of his OKR leadership was that he modeled accountability, transparency and business results for the other managers within 60 days.
I was consulting the president of a Fortune 500 business with $5B in annual revenue and over 10,000 full time employees in North America. Their 20-year-old company grew quickly as a result of acquisitions. The result was that silos of trust and information sharing were preventing consistent accounting practices. I asked, “How are you measuring your desired results?” He stuttered and said, “Not well. We increased revenue and retained a lot of good people but sometimes I wonder if we’re measuring what we need to be measuring.” I provided some OKR definitions and templates and vendor resources. Then he defined his OKRs and shared them with his top 60 leaders in a training that I delivered. Then I provided team coaching for those top 60 leaders so that they could cascade OKRs throughout their organization for three months. The results were uneven, as we expected. People were experimenting with the OKR language as if they were new vocabulary words. Three months of uneven applications passed. The OKR process gained momentum in the annual meeting when the president spoke to 650 of their top leaders. He declared, “As long as I’m in this role we are going to implement OKRs and increase our profit margins.” He shared his business OKRs. Minutes later, I followed him onto the main stage to introduce OKRs to those 650 leaders. I led demonstrations with 6 of his top leaders. Then I lead workshops to practice implementing OKRs within their organization. His KRs included training, technology, and rewards tied to increased profit margins. We are still assessing the impact of that OKR process.
The challenge of OKRs is not in introducing them as an initiative. Anyone can introduce an evidence-based initiative.
The challenge in the OKR process is adopting an ongoing cadence of accountability and rewards. Learning requires feedback. Managers, by definition, need to maximize the productivity of others. The core skill of managers is coaching. We trademarked the AD-FITTM coaching process to teach managers the required steps to provide feedback to others. Our experience is that those managers who adopt the AD-FITTM process accelerate the performance and behavior outcomes of others. For a free course on how to apply the AD-FITTM process for Managers click here.
Smart managers and leaders typically understand OKRs pretty quickly. The challenge is “in the details” as Andy Grove reminded us. Over 30% of the companies on today’s NYSE and F500 did not exist 20 years ago. There is no reason to assume that your organization should exist 20 years from now.
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