Leading with OKR
OKR: The Objective Management System Proposing a New Leadership Model
It would greatly benefit the competitiveness of Spanish companies to adopt a new leadership model that has been promoted for years in areas such as agile methodologies and objective management with OKR. We would then shift from the leader who tells people what to do and stays ahead—often at the risk of leaving people behind if they lose focus—to the leader who advances alongside their team members as they grow professionally.
We’re talking about a leader who acts as a mentor and coach, who remains the boss and makes things clear when needed. However, the perception of the team members will be very different. They will stop focusing on justifying their actions and only asking for help as a last resort, and instead start valuing the advice of someone who guides them in decision-making and trusts them to fulfill the commitments they’ve made.
The skills that OKR suggests we develop when working with this objective management system clearly reflect this situation:
- Starting with focus, it involves prioritizing what’s important and stopping activities that only take up time but don’t add value, which requires the ability to let go.
- Next is collaboration and teamwork, not just in executing tasks, but especially when it comes to making decisions, prioritizing, and choosing what important areas to focus on.
- Then there’s responsibility, because it’s true that sometimes people shirk their duties. We all feel lazy at times, but being able to set it aside and work on what we’ve decided will help us achieve our goals is a sign of the maturity needed in these uncertain times.
- Finally, we arrive at discipline, the fourth skill to develop. As business angel Luis Martín Cabiedes says, OKR was invented and developed primarily in the USA, where “baskets are made from above.” Here, too, we have examples of people who push themselves to excel, particularly in basketball: the Gasol brothers, José Manuel Calderón, Amaya Valdemoro, Ricky Rubio, or Elisa Aguilar, among others.
Developing these skills gets us halfway to victory, but there are still other contributions that OKR can make to build this new leadership model. Transparency, which helps prevent communication errors, and alignment, which naturally occurs when everyone in the organization knows each other’s objectives, although it also needs to be proactively fostered. This is precisely where the role of the OKR Champion comes in, coinciding with the leader who facilitates and mentors the team working with OKR.
What are Objectives and Key Results?
Now that we have the foundation for building this new leadership model based on OKR, let’s take a closer look at what Objectives and Key Results, invented by Andrew Grove and improved by John Doerr, actually are.
Let’s start by saying that Objectives should be qualitative and Key Results quantitative, but be careful not to confuse them with tasks, no matter how measurable they are. Also, beware that when we attach a metric to a result, people tend to give it too much importance, eventually turning it into an objective in itself.
Key Results: The Best Data to Help Us Understand if Our Work is Truly Adding Value
This is one of the major contributions of OKR: Key Results are not mere performance indicators like KPIs; they are the best data that can help us understand if the work we are doing is truly adding value. In other words, KRs help us determine whether the tasks are actually bringing us closer to the Objective we set. An objective that, in turn, should be aligned with the organization’s Purpose so that everything together, from bottom to top (tasks > key results > objectives > purpose), leads us into a process of continuous improvement, generating a virtuous circle that propels us towards success. But there’s one piece missing to complete the puzzle, and I dare say it’s the most important, especially if we’re talking about how OKR can help us build this new leadership model. I’m referring to CFR.
CFR: Levers that Drive People’s Motivation Toward Achieving Their Objectives
CFRs would then be the cornerstone that upholds the structure of this trust-based leadership model. The conversations we have, the feedback we give, and the recognition we offer become levers that drive people’s motivation towards achieving their objectives, those of their team, and of the organization as a whole.
So now we have the complete model—a results-focused objective management system centered on people, popularized under the acronym OKR. It’s much broader and more comprehensive than its predecessors, MBO and KPI, now making perfect sense in the context of working towards objectives and measuring progress toward them. However, we must keep in mind that what we ultimately seek in the long term is the alignment of all individuals with the strategy defined to achieve success.
This is the role the leader must play in a new generation of companies—a leader who places people at the center of the strategy and adopts the role of mentor and coach, using CFRs as the primary tool to secure people’s commitment to the team’s plans.
Training in OKR
To delve deeper into implementing OKR and other innovative methodologies in your company, TecnoFor offers specialized courses where you’ll learn to apply this objective management system and take on the role of an effective leader:
