OKRs Q&A Podcast Ep. 61: An Insider Perspective on OKRs & The 2022 OKR Marketplace Outlook | Jenny Herald, Gtmhub
In this episode of the OKRs Q&A Podcast, Tim Meinhardt interviews Jenny Herald, VP of Product Evangelism for Gtmhub. Jenny and Tim discuss a very broad set of topics including the current state of the OKR market, what’s going on in the enterprise space with OKR adoption, Jenny’s personal philosophies on OKRs and the key drivers for OKR success in larger enterprises. Jenny also discusses some very interesting and fantastic articles/resources in this episode, so be sure to check them out at the links below.
To learn more about Gtmhub, please visit https://gtmhub.com
Additional Articles/Resources:
Hybrid Work
https://hbr.org/podcast/2021/06/hybrid-work-is-here-to-stay-now-what
Every company is a tech company (McDonalds & AI) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/business/mcdonalds-tech-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-fast-food.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/26/tech/mcdonalds-drive-thru-artificial-intelligence/index.html
OKR Market
On Mergers and Acquisitions and OKRs
CONSTRUCTING PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT MODEL FOR THE M&A INTEGRATION PROJECT – OBJECTIVES AND KEY RESULTS (OKR) https://jyx.jyu.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/67688/1/URN%3ANBN%3Afi%3Ajyu-202002031952.pdf
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) as guidance for successful post-merger integrations https://ma-review.com/objectives-und-key-results-okrs-as-guidance-for-successful-post-merger-integrations/
Balanced Scorecard
https://hbr.org/1992/01/the-balanced-scorecard-measures-that-drive-performance-2 Performance Prism
Reorgs Happen (Knoster Model)
https://www.camilletalk.com/whilefalse/2015/12/reorgs-happen.html
Measure What Matters
https://www.whatmatters.com/the-book/
Hyper Automation
https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/hyperautomation https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/hyperautomation
If you are interested in working with the Atruity team or have a question you would like addressed on the show, please email contact@atruity1.com or visit our website at www.atruity1.com
Tim Meinhardt:
Welcome everyone to another exciting episode of the OKRs Q&A Podcast, also known as the OKR Corral, where OKR insight is the king. I’m your host, Tim Meinhardt, President and CEO of Atruity, an OKR consultancy headquartered in our nation’s capital.
Before we begin, if you’re an OKR fan and enjoy our podcast, please subscribe, leave a review, and explore our website at www.atruity1.com. And finally, should you have a burning question you’d like addressed in future episodes, please drop us a note at contact@atruity1.com.
In this super exciting episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Jenny Herald, Vice President of Product Evangelism for Gtmhub. This is the second time I’ve had a chance to interview and have Jenny as a guest, and we are in for a real treat. Jenny and I discuss a very broad set of topics, including the current state of the OKR market, what’s going on in the enterprise space with OKR adoption, Jenny’s personal philosophies on OKRs, and what are the key drivers for success in larger enterprises? This is just a terrific discussion with Jenny and one you’ll not want to miss, regardless of your understandings of OKRs or goal setting in general. Also, Jenny discusses some very interesting and fantastic articles in today’s episode, so please be sure to check them out on the show notes as they are fantastic reads to further not only your OKR insight, but managerial insight as well. So please everyone, buckle up, put in those earbuds, and grab that coffee and enjoy my extraordinary discussion with my good friend Jenny Herald.
Well, Jenny, welcome back to the program, this is such a delight to have you join us again. And I would love for you to take a minute or so and tell our audience a little bit about yourself and now what you’re currently involved with at Gtmhub.
Jenny Herald:
Yeah. So, I’m an expat, Filipino American. Proud of it. I have a partner that I’ve been with now for 20 years. No kids. Most people don’t know, but I’m over 40. They look at me, they’re like, “There’s no way you’re over 40. There’s no way…how are you that old?” Thanks, guys and gals. What do I do now? Well, my journey is kind of a smattering of all kinds of things, so I really enjoy what I do now. You know, I’m a host of my own podcast Dreams with Deadlines.
Tim Meinhardt:
Yes, I want to make sure that we get that in before the end. I want to make sure people know all about your podcast.
Jenny Herald:
Thanks. Yeah. So, and now I’m on your podcast, which is really fun. As I do evangelism work for Gtmhub and a lot of people are like, “What the heck is that?” And really, it’s just getting the word out. And imagine if you’re a Christian, that there are evangelists for the word of God. Similarly, there will be those kinds of evangelists to talk about, you know, what’s the next thing? Apple had evangelists early on to get people really kind of religious, almost fanatical about Apple products, and I think it paid off. And surprisingly that’s something that happens with a lot of product and tech companies as well. So yeah, it’s yeah, lots of content creation, lots of community building, lots of education and just meeting the people. It’s fun.
Tim Meinhardt:
That’s fantastic. And you know that kind of leads into maybe my next question is there seems to have been some marketplace changes in the OKR software landscape, and I would love to get your thoughts not only personally, but what Gtmhub thoughts are about the recent market changes in the OKR software landscape.
Jenny Herald:
Yeah, and probably the big one that you’re alluding to happened in October of this year, right? With Ally being acquired by Microsoft. What that really meant was now we have validation for this category. I think you and I for the longest time have been really focused on education, like what are OKRs? And guess what kind of mainstream folks know what this is now? They know its objectives and key results. So that opened up a lot of things specifically probably hype, right? We’re seeing new entrants into this market, either from a coaching consultancy side of the house where maybe you had agile lists or people from previous methodologies like balanced scorecard or whatever, now entering the space on top of platforms, and that is where we’ll probably I would predict we’re going to continue to see is a consolidation of things. Microsoft has done other things like this. For example, back in the day, May 2011, Microsoft bought Skype for business or the Skype team that they spun off Skype for Business, which is now Microsoft Teams. And then we saw Salesforce buy Slack. We’re going to probably see similar things, and we are already starting Microsoft bought Ally. We’re going to see things happen in our category, I think.
Tim Meinhardt:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, what are you seeing in the…and I’ll call it the enterprise landscape, as OKRs are becoming more visible? They really are becoming more prevalent in boardroom discussions. So, what are you seeing? What are your thoughts on this?
Jenny Herald:
I think that we have long heard that strategy execution was important. And I think that is now elevating, I saw a Forbes article about this becoming, you know, higher on the agenda now for lots of executives and board members. And why could that be? I think with all of the things that have happened in the last two or so years has accelerated, I mean, you and I can agree we’ve seen an acceleration in things that were already happening—digital transformations, for example. There are a lot of manual processes and well, guess what, everybody, you have to work from home because everyone needs to be able to stay safe, but we still need to be able to deliver, what do we do? And then on top of that, we’ve also known because almost every company has become like a tech company of sorts. I think I saw McDonald’s buy an A.I. company so that they can accelerate and make more efficient people ordering at a takeout window. We’re going to see more companies incorporate technology into their solutions and their delivery of their services and products. Well, what does that mean? I think agile practices and that’s already been happening, agile transformations, and we’ve already discussed there are going to be some winners and losers in the market. There have been already. What does that mean? Then we’re going to see mergers and acquisitions continue. And so, they’re going to be looking at strategic fits and organizational fit, like how are merged companies going to create value better together in terms of capability transfers and resource sharing. And then the cultural aspect of this is going to have to be blended. Well, how do you measure the success of any of these things? Digital transformations you’re trying to conduct, agile transformations where you’re focusing on the customer more, and like increasing the level of learning and the velocity of learning across the organization. If you’re in an M&A kind of situation, how do you make sure that the merged companies actually produce additional value without slowing down if you can help it? How do you measure the success of that outcome? I mean, they used to have different models, you know, we’ll land on M&A for a while. Used to do the balance scorecard. That was a very popular model to measure successes of M&A. And then there was performance prism. Unlike BSE, there were different perspectives, stakeholder satisfaction, contribution, strategy, processes, capabilities. Guess what? There’s research that’s starting to emerge that OKRs are probably a better way.
And why is that? Well, the simplicity of the methodology, right? It explains the desired direction in which the company wants to go as individual entities, what needs to be achieved where, and then if properly designed and deployed, they actually help companies avoid the confusion that comes with blending things together and navigating a new normal, which is seemingly happening a lot these days, to navigate towards the company objectives, as Doerr would say. John Doerr, the author of Measure What Matters, which I think at this point, if you know anything about OKRs, that probably was a seminal book that kicked off a lot of this stuff. So, what’s happening in boardrooms? They’re trying to figure out what are the business outcomes? How do we ensure that whatever strategy we have formulated—which may have included an M&A or not, doesn’t matter—but whatever strategy is out there to do all of these things, how do we know that we’re making progress? And so, it’s going to become more and more, I think, boardroom conversation because they want to understand what’s happening. If you’re a conglomerate, what’s happening with all your businesses? If you’re in venture capital and you’re looking at your portfolio, what’s happening with all the investments you’ve made, what progress are they making? And I think that needs orchestration and we talk about OKRs as being a results orchestration thing, like it’s important and the enterprise landscape is starting to wise up to this stuff because honestly, it’s probably really hard, otherwise; I’m trying to think how would they orchestrate for alignment and focus and all the things that are supposed to be beneficial that comes with the methodology.
Tim Meinhardt:
Extraordinarily well said. I love that comment about results orchestration because, you know, really when you talk about, OKRs, it’s that simplicity, it’s that getting the teams to operate as a team, setting those North Stars correctly to where an organization understands, you know, we’re also having what I call the great resignation, we’re still going through it. Now granted, you know, organizations that will lose people sometimes based on salary. But you know, all the studies that have been done out there, Jenny, say people don’t leave for that. They leave because their voice isn’t being heard or they don’t know the direction of the organization and how they’re playing a role in that. And I find OKRs to be a very compelling conversation when organizations are looking at something like this, and look, big companies are built by good people, you know? This is a talent war, attracting and retaining great talent is a really, really big deal. And you know, and then you talk about the setting of direction. You know, I think sometimes people get confused like, you know, why do we have a mission? Oh yeah, we have a mission statement. Let’s check it off. But those North Stars and vision are truly important because they begin to fold in that culture that you want to be able to not only talk the talk but walk the walk. And so that’s where I think, you know, you start looking at these borders and saying, OK, fine, we’ve made some acquisitions, we’ve got everybody together. How do we get everybody to play symbiotically? Alignment is something that we talk about all the time. Everybody looks at alignment and it feels like alignment is so vertical, you know, we’re all aligned in our organization. Well, what about horizontally? And people give you the “What?” you know, so that horizontal alignment that you know, unduplicating of efforts or the streamlining of efforts or the collaboration that needs to take place? And that communication that all of a sudden desperately needed to happen is suddenly happening when you have a solid OKR program. So, yeah, yeah, it’s great stuff.
Jenny Herald:
Could I just like riff off what you said there? So, a lot of people think even like to your point, the alignment of people, right? And the alignment of activity and orchestrating all of these results. I really loved how, I think it’s Jonathan Trevor and Barry Varcoe. I hope I’m pronouncing their names right. They actually wrote an article for the HBR a while back about the interdependent components that make up a strategically aligned enterprise, and they had five things that they defined. The first, to your point, was enterprise purpose, right? What are you trying to fulfill? Like, what are you trying to do right? And then the next that you want to align to is your strategy. How are you going to fulfill your purpose? So then how well does your business strategy fulfill that enterprise purpose? But then you have capabilities. Those are the human beings. So then how well do those human beings support the delivery of that strategy? And then you have a bunch of resources. I would say those are tools and platforms rather than people. How well do all of the things that you have purchased enterprise, help enable your people to do the stuff that supports the strategy. And then on top of all of that, you have to think about, well you’ve got to manage all the stuff, you’ve got to manage people, processes, you know, all of the stuff, well, how do you make sure that your management systems drive the performance of those people? And this is where I think people conflate, you know, performance management, and we can talk about that and OKRs and that’s not a good place to be, but alignment really in my mind goes beyond the vertical and horizontal. It is why do you exist? Your strategy supports why you exist. The people support what you’re going to go do to make sure that that happens, the things that you’re using to help you deliver that value. And then the management of all of these things, like all the processes and all of the things that go into orchestrating those results. And if you have all five—enterprise purpose, the strategy, organizational capability, your resources and your management systems all up, you’re in place.
Tim Meinhardt:
Yeah, and that is that is complete alignment. That’s so well said. You know, and I look at management, you know, we find people putting in, OKR programs and they don’t necessarily…like they’ve got it mostly right, you know, but this management element of it, you know, we’re a big advocate of making sure that you know how to put this in. And really, what is the investment that you need in make a person or organization that helps you do this correctly because it is agile based, it does reset itself. And if you’re not prepared for that type of agile arrangement, you need to be because that’s where programs fail. Hey, we can do it right for a couple of quarters, but hey, we’re real busy or we got something going and oh gosh, we never thought, “Oh yeah, we’re a little late this time,” and the next thing, you know, it’s a slippery slope where the management element of it begins to slip. So, and you know, I just like the way you lined that up there, the purpose, strategy, capabilities, resources and management. I think that’s very well said, Jenny. Very well said. So, kind of leads to my next question, you know what, helps OKR adoption in large organizations? And maybe it is this alignment that we just were talking about.
Jenny Herald:
I think that’s part of it. You and I also know if we’re going to like, hone in or look really directly at, OKRs specifically, and this happens with any change management that you’re trying to do, because let’s be honest, this is a change. You can scale businesses in one of two ways—you can still scale them with people, or you can scale them with processes. I would argue the larger an organization, the more apt they are to add more processes to what they do to ensure governance and oversight. What OKRs I would suggest do, is flatten this. Like you kind of remove processes. You know why? Because it doesn’t matter. I mean, I’m going to scare a bunch of people by saying so. What matters, though, is you have expressed to everyone in the organization directionally where you need to go as a business, and everyone has a part. So, you’re scaling people with OKRs. Now, because we’re talking about organizational management change, which is why I think companies like yourself matter. You need to be able to help people along. Now there are five components in the Knoster model, which came up a long time ago.
I read it the first time by, I think, Camille Fournier. She wrote it, she used it as a model to discuss why reorgs happen. And I thought it was really interesting. I was like, “Wait, this Knoster model actually could be applied to any change.” And I looked into it more. And in fact, it is, and there are five components. The first is vision, right? If you have no vision as if you’re a Christian out there, people perish. Like, that’s biblical. People will die if there is no reason for them to exist, like it’s bad. Then you have skills, right? You need skills. That means people need to be trained up and what you want them to go do. This is why you train on OKRs and the methodology and why you would go do that. The next, which I think makes it very difficult for a lot of organization, is incentives. What’s in it for them? It can’t be, you know, we’re doing this and it’s my way or the highway. It will be perceived as another monitoring, reporting mechanism rather than what we believe it to be, which is an enabler for people to be able to come up with their ideas and really tap in, I think, to the strengths of whom you have hired and their collective intelligence to solve big problems.
Tim Meinhardt:
That’s a bingo.
Jenny Herald:
That’s it.
Tim Meinhardt:
That’s a big deal, right? No, I mean, it really is. Jen, I’m sorry, I’m just going to add one word. That empowerment, you know, of…and John Doerr uses a great example, and one of his videos that we actually use for training. But he says if a doctor told me I had to run a marathon, the chances are I probably wouldn’t have done that. But when I got a chance to choose my goal, what was most important, and I chose the marathon, I was invested in this because I knew of the greater purpose, I saw the vision I had. You know, we’ve been given the skills and that empowering of that employee is…it goes back to what I was initially saying earlier that that feeling of “I have a say in the direction of this organization,” and I think that that to me is an absolutely…it’s a huge deal. And so, I agree with you, incentives, it’s fantastic.
Jenny Herald:
We need to think about that more, like what is in it for them? And it needs to be clear to the extent where I had a really great person who came…Mike Lowsky, shout out to him. He expressed to me, I was like, “How do you actually encourage adoption of OKRs? Like get people to really think about it and internalize it?” One thing is what we discussed. Let the people decide what they’re going to do. You’ve already ascertained these are the outcomes you want to achieve. Let them figure out how they’re going to go get there. There’s no greater, I think, incentive for the modern-day knowledge worker than that, because nobody wants to be told what to do anymore. That’s just not how it goes. Managers shouldn’t do that. That’s just crazy. But then when I talk to Mike, he said, “We actually allow the teams at the end of every cycle to recognize which team had actually killed it, like really achieved their goal.” And it wasn’t always necessarily based on progress, which I thought was interesting. It could be based on progress or better yet, the team horrifically failed, gloriously failed. But there was an amazing amount of learning, an amazing amount of learning, and that learning contributed and enrolled into the next cycle. And teams were allowed to decide for themselves who it is that they would nominate as the winner. What was interesting is they set aside budget for this, like culture budget and whoever won obviously got that monetary reward. But what they found was what was really interesting with their people team was that sometimes people forgot to actually use their monetary reward. They were much more incentivized by being recognized by their peers.
Tim Meinhardt:
Right, isn’t that true? You know, I talk about recognition all the time, and sometimes people wake up during our training sessions and people say, “Gosh, we need to do more of that.” And you know, that makes people feel great. Everybody wants to be recognized. And you’re right, it’s how do you recognize, you know, it could have been a big failure, but you know, they took the shot, they went ahead and did what they really needed to do, and they went all in. That all in is we committed to this, and we put our heart and soul into this. And, you know, even though we didn’t succeed, we took the shot. And to me, that that’s a big deal.
Jenny Herald:
I think so, too. I mean, that is probably just as important. We focus a lot on the setting, but I think we need to…if you’re an agile-ist out there, they’ll tell you that the end of period reflection, I think that it’s a huge deal. The other thing I had learned recently, too, and this is this is coming from a pilot program that I had heard about, is this one person said, “You know, we have decided to give such emphasis to this,” and they got support from their senior leadership, to make being an OKR champion a career path in their organization. That this is how serious they’re taking it, which I actually think I can see, maybe, hopefully predict that this would continue to be a pattern elsewhere. Here’s why. There are enterprise portfolio or program management offices, EPMOs at the enterprise level. There are strategy offices. Like I can imagine OKR championing and being able to orchestrate these results cross functionally with other teams and seeing those results. That is a skill. It should be a valued skill. And to put that on a performance track again adds a layer of incentivization and seriousness like this gravity, on behalf of the organization and its senior leadership to suggest we believe in this, we’re investing in it, we’re going to make this a part of our lifeblood because, you know, it is kind of, as Jeff Gothelf would say, is the gateway drug to agility. If you want to be an agile organization, OKRs might be a really good entry point for you.
Tim Meinhardt:
Before we continue with the interview. We’d like to tell you a little bit about Atruity.
Voiceover:
At Atruity we understand the challenge of implementing a successful OKR program. While the methodology may be straightforward and easy to understand, the implementation and execution of the program can seem daunting. Your team is concerned because you’re unsure how to properly implement or manage your OKR program. You are not alone. This is where Atruity comes in. We know how to implement an OKR program and are experts in OKR implementation and management. By using our proven methods and implementation structure, we can help you to successfully implement OKRs within your organization in as little as 30 days. If your organization is considering implementing OKRs or struggling with the management of the program, do not hesitate to reach out to us at contact@atruity1.com. Remember, no plan succeeds on its own—execution is everything.
Tim Meinhardt:
That is such a wonderful statement, because let’s take the opposite. OK, imagine if you said this is how we’re going to run our business and we bring on somebody to run the program, and they leave. What happens, you know? So, you know, we do, you know, we run programs for organizations because they said, “Tim, if you can create a center of excellence for us where we have continuous learning, where we have those videos and things that are necessary to educate,” you know, it’s a living breathing organism, an organization. People leave, people come, people get promoted. And to have that focus with a champion program or a champion’s office, I think really does allow a program to be long lived. And that’s where I think people, you know…this is a long-term investment. Yes, it’s a sprint to get things up and running and cycling. But this is this is really a long-term investment. And so how do you manage that long term investment? We mentor people, and I always coach and recommend. Look, I’ll mentor anybody you want to learn how to become an OKR champion. We even do a certification process for an OKR champion. But I want you to understand that you need to make a commitment here as well, because if not, if that person is in critical path for this agile process that is repeating itself in your organization and they choose to leave and you don’t have something in there that’s established, you’re now running the very thing that you brought in to drive your business, you’re creating chaos, and that’s really what you truly want to avoid. So, I’m so glad to hear that. That’s fantastic.
Jenny Herald:
Yeah. I mean, furthermore, I think if you carve out a role like an OKR champion, I’m more hearing this among our customer base as well. And this is a key learning, is that this is not a bolt on job. This is the job.
Tim Meinhardt:
It is. It is the job.
Jenny Herald:
It is the job. Which is why it makes sense that there would be a career path for this one because then it signals again to the rest of the organization that this is a valid role. It has a set of responsibilities. It provides key value things for the business. And so again, this is in a sense, why should I care? What’s in it for us? Well, guess what? Here’s what’s in it for you all. This is an established role. We have a career path for it. Other teams can recognize other teams, you know, that have been exceptional. There’s all kinds of different ways, on top of which, guess what? You get to decide what you’re going to do with your professional life. So long as we agree to the outcomes and everyone is accountable, those, you’ve got lots of incentives for this to be successful in my mind. What then, is the next part, which you alluded to is resources. If you have the vision and you’ve been trained up, you’ve up leveled, you’ve got incentives and then you don’t give the folks what they need to be successful, they will be frustrated, right?
Tim Meinhardt:
No doubt.
Jenny Herald:
So, make sure that they have the resources if you need to create an OKR playbook, which I’ve heard OKR champions do, so that your teams can reference it, or new hires can find it or video content that perhaps Tim and team have created. They need resources to stay fresh on what’s going on, on how they can apply the skills that they have learned or incentivized to do and get the vision. And then lastly, which is what I think all of us focus on, probably more than anything else is you need an action plan. If you do not have an action plan, you will have a bunch of false starts. So, to recap, you need a vision because that’s, I mean, otherwise, why? Why are you doing this? You need the skills for this, otherwise you’re going to have a bunch of anxious people because they’re like, “I want to do it, but I don’t have the skills to do it well.”
Tim Meinhardt:
I don’t know how to do it.
Jenny Herald:
I don’t know how to do it. You need incentives, otherwise you’ll meet resistance because if it’s not clear what’s in it for them, they’re going to resist. That’s clear, right? We’re humans. And if they have all of that, but they don’t have the resources, they’re going to be frustrated. And like I said, if you don’t have a plan, then you’re just not going to start, it’s a nonstarter or you’re going to false start a bunch of times. So, make sure you avoid confusion, anxiety, resistance, frustration, and false starts. You need a model for this, it’s called the Knoster model.
Tim Meinhardt:
Exactly. You know, and I took statistics from you; we’ll use this in our everyday training and education organizations that you know, most of these OKR implementations, they don’t succeed, and they don’t succeed for very consistent reasons, which several people have heard me on this podcast talk about them forever. But I want to touch base just on something else you said about roles and responsibilities, because, you know, OKRs are a tool, right, but there are roles and responsibilities for the champion. What are they responsible for? And then equivalently, there’s a role and responsibility for the participant.
Jenny Herald:
Absolutely.
Tim Meinhardt:
So, they need to understand as well. And I think putting those together, and we teach this vigorously, is that this is a contract between, you know, someone that’s running this and someone that’s participating. And that role and responsibility gives the ability for the program to be managed successfully. And I just love the way you stated this and so…excellent conversation, Jen, as they always are with you.
Jenny Herald:
Thank you.
Tim Meinhardt:
Your conversations are fantastic. So, let’s talk innovation for a second. So where do you see in the OKR software space, innovation over the next twelve to 18 months?
Jenny Herald:
I think in broad strokes, we’re going to see kind of a bifurcation, like Gtmhub would suggest, and we’ve held this as a long truth. We are an OKR-first company, like we believe in this methodology. The entirety of our solution is built around goal setting. I mean, of course, they’re going to be different flavors and we can see, perhaps even in a future evolution, OKRs themselves or evolution of MBOs, you and I know that, but then we also see innovation elsewhere, where OKRs are added in as a bolt-on. Like that’s increasingly becoming clear. For example, you might have portfolio management, you know, software and OKRs are a component. We have seen different technology, you know, product delivery, engineering, development-type software solutions have OKRs added as a component. We’ve also seen project management software have OKRs as a component. So, I think the innovation we will see is going to go on those two parts. Either this is going to be about adaptive strategy and execution of that strategy as a holistic thing for the business to coordinate for those results. Or you’re thinking about it and you’re seeing it in a specific vertical or a specific discipline within the business where OKRs sadly feel like an afterthought rather than, you know, a forethought.
Tim Meinhardt:
Right, right. No. And you do see that, and I think that, you know you’re going to see a little bit of both. You know, I think that, you know, maybe someone will adopt an OKR platform and maybe they’re…OK, now let’s work to integrate the other pieces, use that as a, you know, kind of the hub and spoke mentality where you bought something, now that consider that as a software hub and then you start bolting things on, you know, maybe OKR software will also play a hub spot or a hub place where they can then begin to have bolt-ons as well. So, I’m fascinated by my last question because I’d love for you to talk more about this, is why is Gtmhub so uniquely positioned in this OKR software space?
Jenny Herald:
So, you know, I’m going to take a moment to be able to just brag, I’m an evangelist. I have to brag about that. This is what we get to do. I think on the one end, we see ourselves as the first to market as an end-to-end strategy planning tool. Strategy, planning, and execution tool, right? And the one key example which you’ve used before is Whiteboard. Of course, we know that Whiteboard exists. You know, the companies that do this well, but in our specific use case, it supports ideation and collaboration. Whereas for other products, you’re going to have to document and visualize those outside of the tool, and then some poor soul has to migrate those in. Like, we built that end to end so that you can also conduct retrospectives at the end of the period as well, so that your teams can kind of go into a deeper dive on what went well, what didn’t go well, why, how, what we’re going to do better next time. So that’s one. Two, and this might feel like a very trivial point. It might sound very trivial, but no one else, as far as we can tell, actually supports the limits on objectives and key results. Now, why is that important? A lot of businesses find, especially the ones that are very new to the methodology, that everyone gets so gung-ho, and they start documenting, mistake number one, all of their business-as-usual stuff as OKRs…it really is a task list of things that you want to accomplish, and you’ve just repurposed them and shoehorn them into OKRs. This is not how you’re supposed to do it. And then the further sin, if I’m going to use this evangelism type of language, is that they decide I’m just going to list everything. I’m going to list a lot of things. And you end up in a situation where you have basically overleveraged yourselves.
Tim Meinhardt:
Where’s the priority?
Jenny Herald:
Where’s the priority? Where’s the focus? I have no idea. There’s like 70 things that we’re supposed to do, and it’s like, “Why are you doing that?”
Tim Meinhardt:
Right, focus on everything.
Jenny Herald:
Which means you’re not really focusing on anything, right? And so, to be able to basically have one place where you can look at the methodology and you can say, “You know what? We’re going to limit this. Everybody gets one, one OKR.” People freak out. But if you read Christina Wodtke’s stuff, she talks about this.
Tim Meinhardt:
The Power of One.
Jenny Herald:
Right, The Power of One, radical focus, and then the next is the ability to configure. Here’s the thing. And again, I’m going to go all in with this evangelism language. In the same way people make interpretations around different passages, I would suggest that because John Doerr has written this book, and it is the seminal book, it’s guidance. And so, every organization has its own interpretation of OKRs, I think. And to be able to support whatever interpretation might be, I think, is valuable because as you continue to learn and grow not only as a person in the business about what do we do to make to deliver more customer value, you’re going to learn and grow in the OKR practice. And you may realize, oh, this thing that we did last quarter, you know what? That didn’t really serve us well, so maybe we need to configure it this way. Well, I would suggest having software to be able to provide governance and adaptation on how you configure and interpret OKRs would be useful to you, no matter the size of business. Something we’ve long been proud of is the number of integrations. So, like, we have over 160 plus different integrations. The closest competitor I think we’ve seen was 65. Now why? Why does this matter? At the end of the day, I imagine that if you are actually working on the business, like you are, you’re building the product, you’re, you know, making those marketing, you know, assets, whatever it is that you’re doing, you’re actually doing the work, right? You have a lot of systems that you need to enter stuff into. And then you’re going to say, “Oh, I also need to figure out how all of those are integrated with the outcomes I want to deliver, and I need to type in more stuff for reporting.” No one wants to do that.
Tim Meinhardt:
No more work.
Jenny Herald:
And furthermore, and everyone says this about, “Well, Jenny, how is this any better than Google or Google Sheets or Excel?” And it’s fine. I’m going to hear a bunch of people probably tell me, “But you can do it that way,” and I’m like, “Yeah, I know.” But what I’ll tell you is mid-cycle, you will see comment boxes everywhere that says, “When was this number last updated?”
Tim Meinhardt:
Right? Well, yeah.
Jenny Herald:
I will tell you, you will see that comment more than anything else. “Is this number up to date? When was this number last updated?” If you have all of your stuff integrated, this is not a question you should have. And let’s take this a step further. We’ve talked about agile transformation and digital transformation. Kind of what’s happening with enterprises now. What’s on their list is what everyone kind of dubs as hyper automation. Whatever can be automated should be automated.
Tim Meinhardt:
Should be automated.
Jenny Herald:
Why? Because we make sure that whatever it is is accurate. We reduce human error. We make sure that things are as efficient as possible. We make sure that everything is up to date in near real time. All of these things are good. So, if you can integrate all of your business systems to be able to see all up what the results are on any given moment and give that to everyone, can you imagine what kind of decisions they can make?
Tim Meinhardt:
It’s extraordinarily powerful.
Jenny Herald:
It’s powerful.
Tim Meinhardt:
I would say, yeah, it is very powerful, absolutely.
Jenny Herald:
And so, we’ve talked about the platform. Let’s talk about the solution because we think we are a solution. And here’s where I think it’s exciting. And probably for others are like, you all are crazy. We serve and support any type of business, any type of size. Like, we don’t really focus on the enterprise segment. We don’t focus on mid-market. We don’t focus on SMB as we focus on everyone. Any size of business because we believe everyone can benefit, one. Two, there is benefit in being able to create an enterprise product and have that kind of configuration, strength and all the things we just talked about whilst also being mindful that people don’t got time for this to try to figure out really difficult user experiences. Which means if we can know our customer at the SMB mid-market level where I mean, they really want turnkey, super easy to use stuff, you know how it goes. You work with enterprises; you use enterprise tooling a lot of times. I mean, it’s less so now, but it used to be like, “Oh, I have to use this tool, and it’s so hard. Why are there seven different clicks to get to the thing, right? Something as simple as I need to just put in my receipts from my last trip?” You know, this is this is enterprise grade software like the fact that we are able to support all the segments to benefit from our learnings from smaller scale up startups, mid-market enterprises helps us both deliver good results across the board, I think, and support those different needs and jobs to be done as the engineering product teams like to talk. And then lastly, support in general, right? We need to be able to build up our people. We do that through our partners like yourselves. We have the greatest number of services through our partner network. If you need people to help you with strategy development, we can do that. If you need help with coaching on OKRs, we can do that. If you need systems integrations work, we can do that too. So we’re able to support that customer success.
Our team goes above and beyond what most SaaS companies do, which is they train their users, they have the kickoff, they do that sort of stuff. And then when they build the success plan, it’s like training wheels off, go do your own thing. I think our customer success team takes it a step further. We keep up with you and QBRs. You can have—and we do this with our customers—ask me anything sessions for quarterly insights on what parts of the process is working, what parts of the functionality do we want to turn on and adopt? Maybe it’s integrations this quarter and we’re going to go all in with integrations and we can help you do that through our technical success team, which is another thing. So, we also, and I’ll be very careful here, support the ability to build out bespoke experiences should you need it and different integration points. We really want our customers to be successful and whatever it is that they have stated as their objectives and ultimately their mission. And we believe that by providing an end-to-end solution, being able to serve every segment, every type of company, and support them with our partners and our customer and technical success teams, we have a winning solution and are able to help you out. So, lots of bragging there. But that’s why I think we’re uniquely positioned in the market to really be a player here, and we’re recognized as such, I think.
Tim Meinhardt:
Well, Jenny, I know that that this was an absolutely fabulous podcast, as it always is with you and…
Jenny Herald:
Thank you.
Tim Meinhardt:
This was wonderful insight, and I loved your last piece segment here. Of course, I love them all. But this last segment, I think it’s important for people to really understand what separates Gtmhub and what makes you feel special? And for that, I’d like to thank you and I’d like to thank you for coming on our program. So please tell everyone again how they find your particular podcast because it is really, really popular.
Jenny Herald:
Oh, thanks a lot. Yeah, and you’re a gracious host. I appreciate that. Anywhere you can listen to a podcast, you can find us. It’s called Dreams with Deadlines. But if you’d like to go check out a few episodes, you can go directly to our website www.gtmhub.com/radio. I have recently published an episode with, you know, a few product leaders to include Gibson Biddle, for example, the former VP of Netflix, who took the business from DVD-to-home to what they do now, which is a lot of content creation. And he shares a lot of, you know, knowledge there, so it’s really exciting to see the type of people I get to talk to. Similar to yourself, when you’re doing your podcast and you’re like, “I get to talk to this person who’s amazing.” So yeah, if you’re interested, check us out.
Tim Meinhardt:
Thanks so much for taking a few minutes to listen to our OKRs Q&A Podcast. You know, OKRs provide such an excellent, agile framework which is critical for today’s business needs. It’s such a pleasure to have such wonderful people share their stories and journeys with us. Please, should you ever need assistance with your OKR journey, do not hesitate to reach out to us and contact us at www.atruity1.com, and make sure if you have a minute, to rate our show. Have a great week. Stay healthy. And of course, stay happy. Thanks, everyone.
