WEBVTT 00:00.640 --> 00:04.240 Excellent. So I'm so excited for you to be joining me here. Let's get started 00:04.740 --> 00:07.840 on this course because this is going to be action packed and we've got so 00:08.340 --> 00:10.680 much ground to cover. Before I get into it, I just want to set a 00:11.180 --> 00:14.520 little bit of context around why objectives and key results. Why should we even be 00:15.020 --> 00:19.400 thinking about this kind of thing? Let's get on with it. So this 00:19.900 --> 00:23.920 is Seth Godin. He's one of the world's best marketers and he has a 00:24.420 --> 00:28.000 huge following. Been a very successful businessman in his own right and as 00:28.500 --> 00:31.910 an individual as well. So great, great story behind him. He's got a really 00:32.410 --> 00:35.390 important quote that I think really drives home why goals are important. 00:36.110 --> 00:39.390 He says the thing about goals is that living without them 00:39.470 --> 00:43.190 is a lot more fun in the short run. It seems to 00:43.690 --> 00:46.830 me though, that the people who get things done, who lead, 00:46.990 --> 00:50.670 who grow and who make an impact, those people 00:50.830 --> 00:53.950 have goals. So he certainly knows what 00:54.450 --> 00:58.400 he's talking about and he understands the importance of goals and something that I've appreciated 00:58.900 --> 01:01.400 my whole life, but it's taken me a while to get there and actually get 01:01.900 --> 01:05.160 it right. And objectives and key results was a really key part of 01:05.660 --> 01:09.440 that for me. So what's the problem with traditional goal setting 01:09.940 --> 01:13.560 anyway? Why do we even want to bother looking at something that's arguably not new, 01:14.060 --> 01:16.240 but something that is different to what a lot of us are using today? 01:17.440 --> 01:20.640 Generally, there's a whole heap of reasons that will be different by your 01:21.140 --> 01:24.160 own business. But let's talk about some of the common patterns that I see. 01:26.120 --> 01:29.520 For starters, most goals are not outcome focused. They're based on 01:30.020 --> 01:33.400 activities. So the goals might be about running a certain event, 01:33.640 --> 01:36.840 doing certain training, delivering a certain feature or product. 01:37.560 --> 01:40.280 They're about making something or doing something, 01:40.600 --> 01:44.760 but they're actually not creating value in themselves. There's no big 01:44.920 --> 01:48.320 event or outcome that achieves by doing this kind of 01:48.820 --> 01:52.180 work. And so for me, we can always have goals on trying 01:52.680 --> 01:54.700 to achieve things. And this has been part of my personal problem that we have 01:55.200 --> 01:58.260 a list of stuff to do, but does it actually make the impact that we'd 01:58.760 --> 02:02.700 hoped? The next is misalignment across the organization. 02:02.780 --> 02:05.780 Generally these goals are focused on what I personally need to do. 02:06.280 --> 02:09.220 What's my to do list? When we actually pick it up a level and think 02:09.720 --> 02:13.260 about what do we need to do as an organization, the conversation starts to change. 02:13.820 --> 02:17.220 Now, a lot of goals today, they focus on the individual and they are part 02:17.720 --> 02:20.950 of a traditional mindset around management from a Tayloristic 02:21.450 --> 02:24.550 era Which I won't get into here, but it's from the early sort of industrial 02:25.050 --> 02:28.550 revolution where we need to measure and track people individually rather than as 02:29.050 --> 02:32.550 teams. And Morbon researchers pointed out to us that we want to be seeing how 02:33.050 --> 02:36.310 teams perform. We want to encourage a team to perform and people to engage and 02:36.810 --> 02:39.590 work with their team rather than trying to optimize their own particular work. 02:39.830 --> 02:43.590 OKRs draw and connect people. That actually lifts them 02:44.090 --> 02:47.720 to a higher order of purpose. So that's another really key part of why we 02:48.220 --> 02:51.880 see challenges in today's goal setting. Finally, this is 02:52.380 --> 02:54.760 a pretty simple one. No one knows what the hell is going on. A lot 02:55.260 --> 02:59.320 of businesses are really bad at communicating their vision, their purpose, their strategy, 02:59.820 --> 03:03.200 and their goals. So how do we know that? 03:03.700 --> 03:07.360 Well, there's a lot of good research to this, but there is a particular piece 03:07.860 --> 03:11.510 that was done by Franklin Covey where they found that 15% 03:12.010 --> 03:15.910 of people can't name one business goal. So when they're looking at organization, about 15% 03:16.410 --> 03:19.710 of people don't even know what one of the business goals are. Now, 03:20.210 --> 03:23.750 if that's not scary enough, they found that more than half the remaining 03:23.830 --> 03:27.430 people actually could name a couple of goals. 03:27.590 --> 03:30.670 Got them totally wrong. So while they thought they were actually working on something that 03:31.170 --> 03:33.990 was important or driving towards something that was important, they got it wrong. 03:34.630 --> 03:37.790 The rest kind of meandered through and got approximate correct 03:38.290 --> 03:41.510 sort of goals. So some further away from the truth than others. And they found 03:42.010 --> 03:45.390 that the further you are from the leadership team, the more vague and 03:45.890 --> 03:48.710 inaccurate your goals were or your understanding of the goals were. 03:49.030 --> 03:52.910 That's pretty scary. So this is all about how do we actually connect people with 03:53.410 --> 03:53.990 the goals day to day. 03:57.270 --> 04:00.790 And my biggest challenge that I find with organizations 04:01.290 --> 04:05.030 is doing that in a meaningful way. So it's important to repeat our messages 04:05.530 --> 04:08.990 so that people understand what we're saying and the message really sinks in. But at 04:09.490 --> 04:11.710 the end of the day, you can't be repeating the same thing all the time. 04:11.790 --> 04:15.070 You need to think about a framework that can help people live their 04:15.570 --> 04:19.030 vision, purpose, and strategy every single day. And that's where 04:19.530 --> 04:23.230 objectives and key results come in. They link your goals to your 04:23.730 --> 04:27.470 strategy and your vision and your purpose in a meaningful way where you're 04:27.970 --> 04:31.710 continuously tracking your progress against delivering those sort of outcomes. 04:32.590 --> 04:35.430 Most teams, and we'll delve into this a little bit later, will be checking in 04:35.930 --> 04:39.920 on their progress against okrs. And every single week, if not every single day, 04:40.720 --> 04:43.880 the metrics that you use as part of an objective and key result are a 04:44.380 --> 04:48.240 leading indicator. So they tell you that you're making progress as you go throughout 04:48.740 --> 04:51.520 the time that you're running with your okr. Often that's quarterly. 04:52.480 --> 04:56.320 This is a major difference. It brings it down into the high attention zone. 04:56.820 --> 05:00.080 Your goals, which even so generally are a little bit vague and behind the scenes, 05:00.580 --> 05:03.040 it brings them right down into core and central focus. 05:03.680 --> 05:04.880 This is really critical.