Creating OKR Alignment With a Results Map

OKRs are described as a management methodology for aligned goal setting and tracking, to achieve the things that matter most in an organisation. But it’s not uncommon to struggle with exactly how to build an organisation-wide system of strategically aligned OKRs that can drive organisational success. Is the OKR methodology purposefully simple, or overly simplistic?

One thing about OKRs that can be challenging is getting alignment among all the OKRs used throughout the organisation, from top to bottom. Naturally we want alignment because we want everyone working on the same things that will contribute to the organisation’s priorities and overall success. It’s one of the five superpowers that OKR expert John Doerr promises:

1. Focus
2. Alignment
3. Commitment
4. Tracking
5. Stretching

OKRs are how you track progress, create alignment, and encourage engagement around measurable goals. – whatmatters.com

It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that if OKRs are not aligned to the organisation’s priorities then time, energy and resources will be significantly wasted, and the organisation won’t achieve the success it should.

In the OKR literature a distinction is made between cascading OKRs versus aligning OKRs, to avoid this problem. These both offer a process of how every part of the organisation should go about deciding on their own OKRs, such that they are consistent with and supportive of achieving the corporate level OKRs.

Cascading versus aligning OKRs

Cascading OKRs is a process whereby the Key Results of a higher level OKR become the Objectives of lower level OKRs, with new Key Results. This cascading of Key Results can continue down through departments, business units, teams, and to each individual employee. The appeal of this approach of cascading is its additive simplicity. It would appear that the achievement of the lowest level Key Results leads to the achievement of higher-level Objectives and Key Results, all the way up to the corporate level Objectives and Key Results.

However, there are several downsides to additive thinking. Firstly, organisational success is not the result of the sum of its parts, but rather the result of the unique contributions of each of its parts to the whole. Secondly, cascading Key Results into lower level OKRs means that cascaded OKRs tend to be only action oriented. This focuses teams too much on ticking off tasks without the opportunity to think about the results or the impacts that they contribute to organisational success.

A side thought: This method of cascading higher-level Key Results as lower-level Objectives also presupposes that there’s no logical difference between what an Objective is and what a Key Result is. If they are different entities, then how can a Key Result become an Objective?

We can notice these downsides to additive cascading in several ways. One sign is that teams don’t feel particularly engaged with their OKRs, because they feel as though they’ve been delegated to them. Another sign is that progress toward goals is equated to ticking off tasks and milestones, and there’s little to no evidence of impact and therefore no opportunity to learn if these tasks are working or not. And yet another sign is that teams are focused only on their own activities, which reinforces the silo thinking that prevents cross-functional collaboration.

Without ownership, result-oriented thinking, evidence-based learning, and cross-functional collaboration, how could any organisation expect to achieve excellence?

Aligning is better than cascading

Some of the OKR literature talks about aligning OKRs rather than cascading them. Aligning OKRs is a process where each department, business unit, team or individual sets their OKRs based on their contribution to corporate priorities or higher-level OKRs, without having to copy or adopt any part of higher-level OKRs.

This approach is much more consistent with systems thinking and acknowledging the unique contribution that each different part of the organisation makes to the overall success of the organisation. It also has the potential to allow for relationships between OKRs that cross the organisations ‘silo’ boundaries, allowing for important collaboration. The approach of aligning OKRs also has potential to allow much more ownership, result-oriented thinking and evidence-based learning, through how each OKR is designed, tracked and achieved.

What’s missing, however, from the OKR literature is a clear and detailed enough instruction on how exactly to build an organisation-wide system of strategically aligned, result-oriented and evidence-based OKRs.

Three missing pieces to get OKR alignment

OKR literature doesn’t, in fact, need to build this clear and detailed instruction on how exactly to align OKRs to achieve organisational success. It already exists in a complementary methodology: PuMP. It’s also the case with so many other strategic performance management methods, that details on how to write measurable goals and craft evidence-based quantitative measures are typically missing, but always able to be supplemented by PuMP.

In this case, of how to build an organisation-wide system of strategically aligned, result-oriented and evidence-based OKRs, PuMP offers three specific techniques that provide the detail.

The first piece is how to write result-oriented Objectives

The first technique from PuMP that supports successful OKRs is called the Measurability Tests. The Measurability Tests systematically guide you to transform an Objective into very clear, specific, result-oriented, and measurable statement of what you’re trying to achieve. This keeps teams focused on the difference their contributions make, which boosts engagement and ownership.

The Objective in this OKR is currently written as a project or activity, with no clue of the intended result or impact:

The Measurability Tests transform the action-oriented Objective into a clear, specific, result-oriented and measurable Objective:

For more detail on how to write measurable Objectives, see this article: How to Make OKRs Measurable.

But, you might ask, isn’t the Objective supposed to be action-oriented, as per John Doerr’s instructions in his book Measure What Matters? You’re right. But an important distinction needs to be made between action-oriented and actionable. If an Objective is written as an action then we too easily lose sight of the impacts or intended results of our actions. But if an Objective is written as a result that is actionable then we can be more confident that when we do take action, we have it aimed at a very deliberately chosen result or impact. Starting with clear results helps us choose the best actions.

The second piece is how to craft evidence-based measures

The second technique from PuMP that supports successful OKRs is called Measure Design. The Measure Design technique logically guides you to craft quantitative measures that are direct evidence of your Objective, so that the Key Results focus on quantitative measures that track the Objectives through time. This gives us the feedback we need to correct our actions if they’re not working and to stay on track to achieve our intended results, and their contribution to organisational success.

The Key Results from the previous example are action milestones, and not evidence of achievement of the result-oriented objective:

But after applying Measure Design to the result-oriented Objective, we get Key Results that better describe the quantitative changes that mean the Objective is being achieved:

For more detail on how to design quantitative measures for Key Results, see this article: How to Make OKRs Measurable.

Again, you might ask, isn’t the Key Result supposed to be about progress in achieving our Objective? It sure is. But what we often see in Key Result statements are actions or milestones, not quantitative evidence of the degree to which the Objective is being achieved over time. In other words, there’s a lot of confusion about whether Key Results should verify changes in performance or completion of actions or milestones.

Completing actions and reaching milestones are vitally important for making the changes in performance happen, but they can’t perform the role of monitoring performance. To keep actions on track to achieve our Objectives, our Key Results need to be quantitative measures that give us direct feedback about those Objectives.

The third piece is how to align OKRs organisation-wide

The third technique from PuMP that supports successful OKRs is called the Results Map. The first two PuMP techniques help every team formulate meaningful OKRs, and the Results Map makes sure they are all aligned to the corporate direction. The Results Map is a different way to visualise each individual OKR as well as how they all align to support achievement of the corporate direction.

An original PuMP Results Map has layers that correspond to levels in the organisation (inside is purpose and strategic direction, and outside is operational), bubbles that capture each priority performance result at each level, measures that evidence each of the performance results, and links that show the contribution of every performance result to the ultimate purpose of the organisation:

When we take a closer look, we can see how individual OKRs are implicit in this Results Map. To see this, first just notice the second-from-top orange performance result in the zoomed-in Results Map below. This result is “The world is fascinated by the story of chocolate’s potency” and it’s three measures are Total Content Views, Average Content View Time, and Invitations to Feature:

Along with the targets for these measures, which are chosen using other PuMP techniques, we can quickly construct an OKR for this orange bubble, like so:

These PuMP-driven OKRs are not action-oriented, but they are actionable, as you can see from the rose-coloured boxes around the outside of the Results Map. These boxes describe the projects that were chosen to achieve the OKRs they link to. The OKR above will be achieved through the actions of the “Story Brand” project, which will design a new branding around chocolate as medicine, not confectionary.

And it’s in this way, with the PuMP Results Map, that every performance result and its measures can be expressed as an OKR. And then every OKR is aligned in a cause-effect story of how the organisation’s overarching strategic direction will be achieved, from the result-oriented and measurable contributions of every team (and individual, if you wish).

Leverage the simplicity of OKRs with the rigour of PuMP

It’s certainly much easier to rally the organisation behind a single corporate direction with a framework that promises ease and simplicity, as OKRs do. The risk, however, is that easy and simple frameworks can be overly simplistic if they lack the rigour to deliver the results they promise. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can enjoy the simplicity of the OKRs framework at the same time as building in the rigour with those techniques of PuMP.

If your OKRs implementation is falling short of your expectations, feel welcomed to contact us for complementary Discovery Discussion to explore if PuMP’s techniques can get your OKRs back on the path to success: