Hi team! 

I hope you had a good take-off with your OKRs in Q1. Now that we’re a month into Q2 — welcome to cruising altitude!

Given the uncertainty of the last year, don’t panic if you feel you’re behind — that happens to the WhatMatters.com team too. The start of a new quarter is a great chance to take a deep breath, review, recalibrate, and move forward. 

If you’re joining us for your first quarter — welcome! For newcomers and regulars alike, don’t forget, you can always review the entire OKR cycle here.

📅 This week: Let’s talk about teams

Welcome to May! By now, your OKRs from last quarter should be in the rearview mirror. How you performed may have led to eliminating an OKR, recalibrating others, or carrying Q1 Objectives into this quarter. That’s totally normal.

Team OKRs are not a list of the team’s everyday tasks. They’re a set of goals that merit special attention and once completed, propel the team and, thus, the company, forward. Team OKRs link your team to the larger company purpose and influence individual OKRs. Since everything is written down and every KR has an owner, everyone knows what the team is doing to achieve its Objectives. OKRs eliminate confusion, duplicated effort, and often, politics.

Your team should now be aligned on its priorities for the next 90 days and know what’s important. These will cascade to the individuals on your team who will ultimately decide how to get there by setting and sharing their own Key Results.

Keep in mind, as with any Key Result, team Objectives must be succinct, specific, and measurable. Generally, 3 to 5 quarterly team Objectives are ideal. Try to avoid the temptation to cram more Objectives onto your team’s quarterly timeline — it can blur your focus.

It’s okay to stretch, but stay practical.

💬 Making the Most of 1:1 Meetings with CFRs

You may have learned this already, hopefully not the hard way, but individuals cannot be reduced to numbers. As mentioned in Measure What Matters, Albert Einstein once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

To reach your highest goals, your team must be managed at a higher level. This is where CFRs, Conversations, Feedback and Recognition, the sibling to OKRs, come in.

OKRs on their own tend to be a very black and white process. At the end of the quarter, we’ll ask, “Was the goal achieved or not?” and the answer, typically, will either be, “Yes, we did” or “No, we did not.” CFRs allow you and your team to go beyond “yes or no” questions and when combined with OKRs, can lift an organization to a whole new level.

In the book, John describes CFRs as:

• Conversations: an authentic, richly textured exchange between manager and contributor, aimed at driving performance.
• Feedback: bi-directional or networked communication among peers to evaluate progress and guide future improvement.
• Recognition: expressions of appreciation to deserving individuals for contributions of all sizes.

CFRs champion transparency, accountability, empowerment, and teamwork for your team. If you think of Os as the goalposts and KRs as the yard lines, then CFRs are the huddles, plays, and coaching that carry a team from kick-off to touchdown. OKRs and CFRs are a complete delivery system for measuring what matters and together form the process of continuous performance management. As John eloquently says, “CFRs give OKRs their human voice.”

In our experience, individuals are more likely to feel fulfilled when they have clear and aligned goals that allow them to see how their work connects and helps the wider organization. Use your conversations to help answer critical questions such as:

• Are any goals turning out to be harder to achieve than originally thought?
• Are they the right goals in the first place?
• What support do you need to succeed?

🗓️ Your May OKR To-Do:

Make sure your team and 1:1 meetings for the quarter are set and in the calendar for Q2, if not the rest of the year. Andy Grove once estimated that 90 minutes of a manager’s time “can enhance the quality of your subordinate’s work for two weeks.” The amount of time you put into these meetings can lift your team to new heights.

Take advantage of these opportunities for real conversations to create a safe space for your team dedicated to talking through specific situations and challenges.

This quarter will go by quickly. Next month, we’ll talk about mid-year reflection as we maintain our cruising altitude through the year. 

Keep up the momentum — you're doing great!

The Measure What Matters OKR Certificate on Coursera 

Ready to Stretch (Your Goals)? 

Going from Good to Better

Objectives and Key Results complete each other. If, at any point in the quarter, you see that accomplishing the Key Results won’t quite add up to achieving the Objective, now is the time to make a correction.