Productivity — does it have to start with a list?
Love them or hate them; lists can be useful, groceries, Christmas presents and perhaps holiday packing. However, I don’t think they are much used in managing personal or business goals, yet you will find many lists on the internet that promise the earth.
In the next month nearly every newspaper and most magazines will be full of lists, but, they are all eclipsed by the most depressing list of them all, New Year’s resolutions. It’s a list that sets you up for failure, all the things you didn’t get around to last year are now crammed on to one record for the New Year. What makes any of us think that next year is going to be different from the last.
So, do yourself a favour and don’t make one. Why not try something different, and don’t wait until the New Year, set yourself some Outcomes you want to achieve, only three or four, and make them SMART:
- Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
- Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
- Achievable (agreed, attainable).
- Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
- Time-bound (time-based, time-limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).
Here is the secret sauce that will help you succeed, for each of these Outcomes, create three Key Results that will help you stay on track.
This process is known as Outcomes and Key Results (OKR). Here is a common personal OKR for this time of year.
Outcome: By April 2021, my weight will have reduced.
Key Results:
- I have walked 5000 steps on more than three days in a week
- I have weighed myself on Saturday morning for the last three weeks
- I have recorded everything I ate for six meals in a week
You may think that these Key Results and the Outcome is easy to meet, (you can find more about Minimum Viable Effort here)but if you are honest with yourself, you will know how hard it can be to lose weight. The point here is that the Key Results are not about losing weight per se. The KRs are relatively easy to achieve, and in performing each of them, you will become more conscious of your current weight. That consciousness will enable you to reduce your weight. By keeping to the Key Results, the Outcomes will follow.
So far, so good, but there are other advantages to using Key Results. In this case, they are repeatable; if you miss one week, you get to try again the next, they do not pass/fail. That’s the issue with a list of things to aim for, you have no sense of progress or changed anything to achieve the goal.
Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result is, of course, a sign of madness.
Changing our behaviours through meeting the Key Results delivers the Outcomes, but it also embeds those habits in our life. Hence, a different result becomes entirely possible because we are no longer doing the same thing repeatedly.
For real success, try it at work.
January can be a time of business renewal with people returning to work with a sense that the New Year brings new energy. However, that may be less so this year many dealing with another lock-down. For some, it’s the final quarter of the financial year and those targets that were set last Spring come into stark focus.
The use of OKR in Sales Management
OKR can be used to track the progress to achieving those end of year “numbers”; they also provide some additional control and stimulate a behaviour change around the sales process. The reality is that the last quarter of the financial year can be chaotic, and the final number can emerge as a bit of a surprise out of the dust of the fiscal year-end. Some luck is always good, and the odd bluebird will happen as customers discover budget underspends in their own FY. Effective use of OKR will provide sales managers with a better understanding of the progress teams are making in the last quarter and set teams up for success in the new financial year.
Even at this late stage of the year, it’s possible to think of those targets as the Outcomes. Setting some final quarter Key Results beyond just more financial objectives can provide progress milestones for personal, team, and other business Outcomes. The last quarter OKR may look something like this:
Outcome: Meet sales revenue target of £1,500,000 in Europe Territory by Apr 30 2021
Key Results:
- High pipeline sales figure to show 120% coverage of the end of March target by Jan 19
- No new deals added to sales forecast (without sales lead approval) after the end of Feb 19 (this KR aims to reduce surprise deals (bluebirds and or sandbagging of revenue).
- Customer Relations Management information updated for all significant and mid-tier customers by the end of Jan 21 (this will improve sales administration).
In this example, the OKR provides the overall sales Outcome required by the business. The Key Results support the monitoring of progress and introduce some new behaviours to the sales process; this will also set the sales team up for success in the next financial year.
Do yourself a favour, dump the lists and think up some Personal and Business OKR sets, you never know you might be more productive and lighter by this time next year!
