Hi team!

It’s now March — the last month of the quarter! I hope OKRs are starting to come to life for you and your team and that you’re seeing progress in your weekly team OKR check-ins.

By now, you should have a pretty good idea of how Key Results are coming along and what movement is being made — or, in some cases, NOT being made — towards your Objectives. As we’re approaching the end of this OKR cycle, and if you’re using the WhatMatters.com team’s templates and tools, you should have OKRs that are “on track” (green), “need attention” (yellow) or are “off-track” (red). 

It happens to the best of us, so be honest, do you have any Key Results that are consistently off-track? If you’re “seeing red” each week, what should you do?

🚩 Recalibration (a.k.a. What to do when an OKR isn’t working)

As you’ve probably noticed, OKRs are not traditional, fixed business goals. They’re not something you set at the beginning of the year — or the beginning of a quarter — and forget about. They’re meant to be flexible and truly great OKRs are often the results of many iterations and amendments. 

There can be a myriad of reasons that an OKR is off-track or not working, including a change in workflow or, and it happens, a goal has outlived its usefulness.

📝 Change the Key Result first, not the Objective

A Key Result that’s consistently off track at this point in the quarter is a red flag, plain and simple, so don’t ignore it! You have three options for handling problematic Key Results:

• Update: You can (and should) modify a Key Result to respond to changes within your team or in your organization. Based on what you’ve learned, does the OKR require a revised timeline? Are you measuring the right thing?
   

• Keep:  If you don’t change the Key Result, what can you do differently to get the goal on track? Are there other, lesser, initiatives that can move to the back-burner to move resources to this item?
   

• Stop: When a Key Result has outlived its usefulness, becomes obsolete or impractical, you should consider ending it mid-stream. If it’s no longer relative, strike it from your list and move on. 

While OKRs are a powerful tool for forward motion, they can also be an important indicator that you may be heading in the wrong direction or pursuing goals that will not lead to progress. As author Stephen Covey notes, “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”

Hopefully, over the course of your 1:1 meetings, utilizing CFRs and by tracking your OKRs for continuous feedback, you won’t have many late-in-game surprises. But they do happen. Good news or bad, reviewing your progress and revising or stopping an OKR is an opportunity to understand what went wrong and learn from it for future cycles.  

✅ Green flags can lead to red

We recently had a question from a team whose OKRs are currently tracking all green, all the time. They asked if it’s okay, as they are so on track, to check in on their OKRs every now and again, instead of each week. 

If you’re on track because you’re making progress, that’s great — keep going! But, evergreen Key Results can be a red flag, too. 

Have you ever put something on a to-do list that was mostly done JUST to have the satisfaction of crossing it off? It’s an easy trap to fall into with OKRs too. If your team breezes through OKR check-ins and you’re not finding it helpful, have a look at your OKRs. Sandbagging happens when we under promise on an OKR and therefore over deliver. 

If you have a sinking feeling that you’ve set goals that don’t require you to stretch, it’s okay to iterate them now to be more ambitious. It’s better to fail on a goal just out of reach than to only attempt what you know you can definitely achieve. Free yourself from the incremental, unremarkable, or merely attainable — and stretch for amazing!

✔️ Your March To-Do

If you’re considering changing or dropping an OKR before the end of the quarter, it’s important to ensure that everyone depending on that OKR is aware of the change. It’s also a good time to reflect, with your team, on what you wish you knew at the beginning of the quarter and lessons learned from the situation to take forward. 

My next email will coincide with the end of Q1, so we’ll talk about what happens at the end of an OKR interval and how to grade and reflect on your Q1 OKRs.

Keep up the momentum — you’re doing great!

The Measure What Matters OKR Certificate on Coursera 

Looking to level up your OKR skills in for Q2? Now is the perfect time to enroll in our Coursera course. Over the course of four weeks, you’ll learn directly from us how to write and use transformative OKRs within your organization. It’s the most comprehensive OKR training ever made!

Building Successful Models Through OKR Transparency

CareMore launched its Hospital At Home program with the aim of providing higher patient care, lowering costs, and reducing repeat hospitalizations. Through robust KR tracking and company-wide transparency, the OKR framework helped them achieve more than they thought possible.

What Do We Do with Plans for Next Quarter

In a recent episode of CFRs with OKR Coach Billy Casey, we had a question from a team about what to do with plans for Q2 and beyond. This can vary by team, some like to use a Google Doc as a parking lot or a whiteboard in the office. But, don’t ignore items that are critical to address now.