Ep. 65: How To Save Your OKR Program From Wipe Out – Part 1 | Atruity Team

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OKRs Q&A Podcast Ep. 65: How To Save Your OKR Program From Wipe Out – Part 1 | Atruity Team

This week on the OKRs Q&A Podcast, host Tim Meinhardt, Jeff Sweeney (Senior OKR Consultant with Atruity), and Stephanie Meinhardt (Director of Business Development for Atruity) discuss how to save your OKR program from the numerous challenges seen with champion resignation and champion turnover. This episode is the first in a series of five episodes (featuring numerous members of the Atruity team) discussing how to save your OKR program from the five largest OKR program challenges. All of these hidden challenges impact the success of an OKR program long term and every OKR program will face them at one time or another.

If you would like early access to this E-Book or a copy of The Seven C’s Of OKR Success, sign up for our Atruity Newsletter by clicking here – https://atruity1.com/seven-cs-to-okr-success-e-book/

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 exciting episode, we’re going to go a bit off script and are doing an OKR Corral. On today’s Corral we have the pleasure of featuring a couple of Atruity team members along with myself, and this is part of a larger, five-part OKR Corral series which we’ll be doing over the next several months, covering five large, hidden challenges of running a successful OCR program long term. We provide powerful insight today into a somewhat obscure, but truly challenging topic which impacts the longevity of everyone’s program. If this has happened to you or is happening to you, or you feel it might happen to your organization or you are concerned about your program in general, please don’t be shy about reaching out. The only bad question is the one that’s not asked. So please everyone, grab that cup of coffee, plug in those earbuds, and enjoy a rare Corral with our Atruity team.

Stephanie Meinhardt:

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to a fun and exciting episode of the OKRs Q&A podcast. This quarter, we’re going to be releasing an e-book discussing the five hidden challenges that every organization is going to face through an OKR program at some point or another. And while we are writing about these in our e-book, we thought, “Why don’t we make podcast episodes about this?” There’s so much to talk about with this topic. And we were like, “We have to bring it up.” So, on today’s episode, we’re going to have Tim Meinhardt, common guest and host and CEO of Atruity, and Jeff Sweeney, senior OKR Consultant with Atruity, and myself, Director of Business Development, talking about the first hidden challenge—champion resignation and champion turnover. So first, let’s talk about an OKR champion. How would you define an OKR champion Tim?

Tim Meinhardt:

Well, at first it has more than just one name. I’ve seen it referred to as a shepherd, a program manager, and a champion. But essentially this is about really who’s running your program. And so, you know, we talk a lot about this in our workshops about what it takes to be an OKR champion. But that’s really what it is. An OKR champion is the person that’s running your program, who’s responsible for its consistency and for its long-term adoption within the organization.

Stephanie Meinhardt:

Couldn’t agree more. Jeff, do you have anything to add to that definition?

Jeff Sweeney:

Personally, I like the term, OKR Sherpa. I tend to think of the OKR champion as the person who’s leading you to the mountain summit. It’s the person who is ultimately driving adoption.

Stephanie Meinhardt:

I love that.

Tim Meinhardt:

I like Sherpa too.

Stephanie Meinhardt:

Me too, a big fan of Sherpa. So now that we know what an OKR champion is, or an OKR Sherpa, let’s talk about why it’s such a hidden issue. Tim, why is this a hidden issue? Why aren’t people talking about champion resignation more?

Tim Meinhardt:

Right? Well, champion resignation happens, and I know Jeff is going to speak a little bit about this as well. From his perspective, having been in the software environment prior to joining Atruity. But you know, when you have somebody who is running your program and they leave, your program simply becomes in jeopardy. And there’s a variety of things that take place. And realistically, most of them are not good, okay? But no one ever says anything about it, and no one talks about it because it’s just considered a “Next up, and let’s go at it again.” So, Jeff, what are your thoughts on this?

Jeff Sweeney:

Well, great question, Tim. So, what I’ve noticed coming from the software industry, and you would see it all the time, that programs would all of a sudden just start to go silent. And a big reason for that was people would leave the company and I would see a program that I would help to start. I would be working with their champion, everything’s looking great for the first quarter, they’ve been making great progress, and all of a sudden, I see no one’s chiming in, no one’s logging on. And what would happen? I’d have to get to the bottom of it. I’d reach out and I’d hear, “Oh, well, Greg left the company and the program started to turn to rubble.” It’s a big problem. I’ve noticed that people plan for everything in companies, but they rarely plan to plan. And for OKR champions, it’s something that there’s contingency plans for about every other position in the company, but the OKR champion is rarely one that’s consistently planned ahead of time.

Tim Meinhardt:

Yeah, no, I mean, that’s a great point, Jeff. And you know, succession planning and contingency planning is a normal operating procedure in most organizations. However, sometimes people don’t do this with their person who’s running the program. Quite honestly, they haven’t thought about it. And when somebody does leave, it’s a rude awakening, to say the least. And you know, there’s a broader concept here that that I think we should talk a little bit about, which is, you know, the “who’s up next?” OK, well then, we’re going to have to find somebody. And I think the biggest element of this is that…objectives and key results, there are sometimes different interpretations of how an organization is run. And you bring somebody in that is not truly skilled at it, but has said, “No, I’ve gotten the certification.” And yet really, what does that mean? And all of a sudden, your program goes off in a different direction. That only creates further confusion in the program itself. So, you know, I think it’s that interpretation of how an OKR program should be run that also begins to wreak havoc within an organization.

And typically, the other thing that we see is somebody left who’s been running the program, and they’ll either go out to the marketplace and look for something and notoriously you see this in job requirements is that we want them to have their day job and we also want to have them run the OKR program. So, I just had this conversation yesterday with an individual that that the discussion was that, you know, it’s OK to have somebody from the outside running your program. What’s really difficult is to have somebody internally running the program that really has a day job that they were assigned to run the program. And we could go down that rat hole a little bit as well. But I think it lends to the different interpretation on how an organization should be run.

Jeff Sweeney:

Yeah. And Tim, I think you bring up a great point, one that’s rarely discussed. And one of the bigger risks about OKR champions in general is it’s the nature of OKR. Most people, when they understand OKR, a lot of people, it is a mostly codified format. But there’s so many different ways to adopt and implement OKRs, different interpretations, and a big challenge as well as you might hire in OKR subject matter expert, an OKR program manager. It’s great to see companies are starting to take this more seriously, not just Barb from accounting, but really hiring dedicated people. But depending on where you learned OKRs and how, you’re going to have a different framework most likely than the person before you, potentially the person after you. And I think that’s a huge risk, and something people don’t consider when implementing their programs is “How do we actually want to implement OKRs, and for our champion, do we have a consistent and clear rubric of what this means that someone can come in and actually help manage and implement our program in the way that we’ve been doing in the passion and the way we want to do moving forward?”

Tim Meinhardt:

I couldn’t agree with you more. You know, we’re big advocates of having the right framework. As Jeff, you and I speak about all the time, we talk to clients and say, “You need the right framework in order for your OKR program to be built upon,” because you know, these things fail, and they fail very consistently for the same reasons. And we’ve talked about this on some of my podcasts before, but we’re speaking here very clearly about the mismanagement of a program and the lack of buy-in. I’m going to use the word now, the Sherpa sure believes, and the next thing you know, people aren’t so bought in anymore. “Hey, this isn’t really what it’s shaped up. It’s not the way we learn things.” So, you know, we’ll talk later about this in the podcast, but you know, you got to have that right framework in order for things to be able to be done consistently over the long haul because, you know, the biggest question we get is, “OK, so how does all this work?” And it’s when we show them how it works and how a program goes in. What we’re really showing them is how this stays, and how it has a long-lived approach in your organization.

Jeff Sweeney:

So, Tim, with that in mind, for different companies that have their own internal OKR program, what can they do to help build or solidify their OKR program? What steps can they be taking?

Tim Meinhardt:

Oh wow. That question really has a lot of, I’ll say, a lot of tentacles to it, but first and foremost, I think they need to be adequately trained. And when I say that I want to go back one more step, that they need to have the prerequisites in order to be able to truly run this program. Are they’re excited about it? Are they willing to evangelize? Are they organized? Can they present? Can they drive this type of program? Do they have program management skills, and are they personable and can they relate to the organization as your program continues to grow? So, if you have all that, then let’s look at how we’re going to train that particular champion. And they need a framework in place because one of the things, Jeff, another hidden area that people don’t think about, is every quarter there’s staff turnover, it seems, in organization. So, being able to have that foundation of them being able to train anybody coming in kind of, you know, can the OKR Sherpa—can they train the next person coming in? And that person may have come in from the outside or what sometimes we see is somebody going from an individual to a manager in OKRs, OK, now they’re driving the process, so getting the right training and having the right training early on is what drives consistent programs. And you know, Jeff, we had on our program a few episodes ago an individual that did a fantastic job at becoming an OKR champion for a program. But what he and I actually talked…I offer an hour of free consulting, and Billy took me up on this and we talked for about an hour about what his program had and what he thought he needed some answers for. And to his credit, he was really close. But we shored up a couple of things that he took a fresh view at and said, “Wow, we do need that. And yeah, that would be great.” And we went in that we did some retraining for their entire organization, which you can listen to Billy’s podcast, Billy Pearson’s podcast, but that was a great example of someone getting it almost right. Okay. And yet getting the organization truly excited to build that re-buy in of sorts that organizations need for longevity of a program.

Jeff Sweeney:

Yeah, Tim, I think that’s a great point. It’s something when it comes to training that most people don’t consider is being able to get that external help can be a great way to get a better overview of the overall program. Really tying in to “Are they doing the right things?” especially from the podcast you mentioned with Billy. It’s getting that external guidance of “Are we in the right direction?” Getting that additional support to really make sure that moving forward for future quarters that they really are going down the right path? I think that’s definitely underrated.

Tim Meinhardt:

Yeah, I agree completely.

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.

Stephanie Meinhardt:

I think it’s really important with training too to emphasize that a lot of times when it comes to the champion, when they take training, really, it’s just them that are trained. Not the whole organization. And something that we do with our organizations that we work with is we’re not just training the champion, we’re training everybody. So everyone is on the same page. And you mentioned earlier where if you have somebody new come in that hasn’t had that same training or has had outside training or different certification from someone else, you’re not going to be on the same page. You want everyone to be on the same page. And so when it comes to training, it’s so important to make sure that everybody’s ready for the program. Everybody’s had time to understand it. It’s not just a matter of, “Oh well, someone in the program has kind of maybe watched a little bit of the training.” It’s making sure that everybody’s on the same page.

Tim Meinhardt:

Yeah, they really do get a chance to—and we speak a little bit about this—but there’s roles and responsibilities for the person running the program. And yet there are also some roles and responsibilities for people that are involved in the program. So, knowing how they complement each other is a real advantage that your program will have over the long haul, if done correctly and done in a consistent manner.

Stephanie Meinhardt:

For sure

Jeff Sweeney:

And Steph, I think that’s actually a really terrific point as well, by making sure that the whole group is trained and not just the champion. It does ensure as well you are mitigating long term risk because if the champion for any reason had to leave the organization, there’s a number of trained and certified individuals that hopefully could be able to step up. But say, for example, one of the champions is a department lead. Well, if he goes, you still have several different team managers that are going to have that experience that they can still be leading their OKR process for their own individual teams.

Tim Meinhardt:

Yeah, you know, it’s a great point. And, you know, I kind of chuckle because it’s like, “OK, who wants to add to their day job?”

Stephanie Meinhardt:

Yeah.

Tim Meinhardt:

But it does happen. And sometimes there are people that say, “Hey, listen, I really, you know, I’m a big believer in this, and I would love to be able to take over the program.” But at times you see people…it reminds me of, you know, when you’re in a classroom and you know, there’s a question and you see the people that really don’t want to answer the question, their heads kind of fall a little bit, they’re looking a little bit in the corner, “Jeez, look at the time,” you know? So, but absolutely. The more people that know and understand the methodology that’s working in an organization, the greater likelihood of maintaining that consistency quarter over quarter.

Stephanie Meinhardt:

Yeah, it also plays to also increasing the number of champions. I mean, we talked about having one large OKR champion, someone who’s running the whole program. But if you are part of a large organization, having a champion within each department, someone who is running it within each department that is trained, that does know what they’re doing. If you lose your main OKR champion or you lose another champion from another department, you have that many more people that are still going to keep the continuity and the consistency of the program alive and going forward. You’re not going to lose the buy in, the culture change, everything that’s happened since you put in the program. So, increasing the number of champions you have as well is a great way to add extra insurance to your program.

Tim Meinhardt:

And I hope it comes naturally with organizations, because I don’t want to overthink the issue that, you know, there isn’t somebody there that could actually, you know, take the program over. So, I’m going to ask both of you a question. So how does Atruity—how do we—help mitigate the risk internally and properly prepare an OKR champion to prevent challenges that are ultimately going to be faced? Jeff, what are your thoughts on that?

Jeff Sweeney:

Tim, really good question. And I think the largest area I go back to, and it’s what we discussed previously was building that consistent framework. Where Atruity is able to provide the greatest value here, whether it’s training or some of our other resources, is being able to make sure that this organization has a clear, consistent framework that everyone can agree upon. A big part of that, as we discussed, was that training; making sure that the whole organization or their respective OKR champions are all trained in the same way, within the same format. Now something else Atruity does that really is unique for me is what we call the Center of Excellence. It is a centralized tool that Atruity runs and operates and optimizes over time. And what it tries to do is be a framework that companies, when they’re adopting the OKRs, can actually have centralized resources, information, as well as training, to make sure that when people are being trained as champions, when new staff is being hired and brought into the OKR framework, that everyone is learning with the same tools with the same resources. Not that Bob is teaching Jim who’s eventually going to teach Sarah how to do OKRs and you’re playing a game of telephone. I think that’s really important, making sure that everyone is learning with the same resources in the same way, so that the program has consistency over quarters, over years, to make sure that everyone learns the right way and is working together and ultimately achieving the same problems, right?

Tim Meinhardt:

Stephanie, what are your thoughts on that?

Stephanie Meinhardt:

Well, first of all, I couldn’t agree more with Jeff. Everything you said about the Center of Excellence, I agree wholeheartedly with. When it comes to Center of Excellence, part of what makes ours very unique is that we have boatloads of training. There’s so much training in it. When you use our Center of Excellence, we have outlined training for every position within a company, at every level of an OKR program, whether you are the champion, whether you are in the C-suite, whether you’re a manager, whether you are someone who’s new to the company and you have no idea what you’re doing. We have that. If you’re new or if you have new employees come on that are unsure of the OKR program, or you cascade it down and you’re ready to bring on another level. We have all the resources there, ready and available to you, and that flows exactly with what Jeff was talking about—the continuity, the consistency of the program. Everyone’s on the same page. There is never a different conversation happening about OKRs. Everybody is talking about it the same way. The culture change is still there. And when you go into our Center of Excellence, it’s not just training, either. I mean, there’s certifications, there’s information, there’s resources, there’s so much to keep your OKR program running and running well. So regardless of what’s happening with your champion, you have a centralized area of resources to make sure and to ensure that your program is going to be successful no matter what. It’s always there.

Tim Meinhardt:

Yeah, you know, having an evergreen strategy for an organization I think is critical—it’s why we developed the Center of Excellence, because it’s going to happen. People are going to, I mean, people leave, people come, people are promoted. And so, their area and role and responsibility change. And as we opened our podcast, you might have a champion leave as well. So, inside our Center of Excellence is really, how do you become that Sherpa? I love that word. So how do you become the Sherpa or the champion or that program manager? And what are the things that you’re actually going to have to now be responsible for? So that’s all in our Center of Excellence which I think is really critically important.

Stephanie Meinhardt:

Well, speaking of Sherpas, say you choose Atruity to be your Sherpa. Say you choose an outside organization to run your OKR program. What is the advantage of choosing, say, an outside organization over an internal champion?

Tim Meinhardt:

Well, great question. And people, we’re asked that all the time. You know, why would we want to consider continually using you versus just having somebody trained internally? Now, truth be told, I don’t know many organizations that wouldn’t want to have ownership of running their program after a given period of time. But there are organizations that choose to say, “Look, we don’t have time for this, OK? We know how valuable this is to our organization. We don’t want to be involved in necessarily going through the trials and tribulations of running a program. We just want to make sure it’s done because we’ve got bigger plans that we want to be able to address.” And I speak about return on investment for outsourcing versus insourcing. And it’s just like anything that that your organization does to be able to thrive. You outsource your accounting, you may outsource your legal. So, organizations that are more comfortable with outsourcing may want to look at this as a nice return on their investment overall, because if you’re not giving, you’re not getting an amazing return on investment by implementing OKRs, then something might be wrong.

And so, what we do is help ensure that all the discussions that we’ve just had during this last 20 minutes or so aren’t going to take place. But it’s not for everybody. And I think that’s what’s really critically important. Organizations do want their own ownership. And so, you know, one of the things we recommend is that that we take our time with this, that remember, unless you’re bringing in somebody specifically to do this kind of work, you’re asking someone that has a day job to take on another role and responsibility within your organization. And again, once that takes place, then you’re in this position where we’ve just talked about for the next 20 minutes. So, I think it just takes good sound management judgment and what they’re comfortable with as an organization. Jeff, what are your thoughts on this?

Jeff Sweeney:

Hey, Tim. That’s a great point. And what I want to touch on a bit more is the notion of resource management. So, it’s something that when firms are implementing OKRs, especially when they are giving people dual roles. So, is your engineering department head also going to be leading the OKR program? Well, this means that he’s going to have to do half his work with the program, half his work, his normal responsibilities. Ultimately, it’s pushing him to try to do the best in both worlds. But when one priority becomes greater than the other, one of those will have to drop. So, a big part about that, is the other alternative is firms can hire specific OKR individuals, OKR program managers, subject matter experts. But then we go back to the same problem we mentioned 20 minutes ago. What if they get hired from underneath you? What if they decide to leave it? It’s a big way to manage resources…is mitigating that risk by having that dedicated OKR expert, that is an external resource, that is going to be someone or a company, in the case of Atruity, that can help manage that program consistently over time. This way, you’re not relying on someone, just one or two individuals, or you’re forcing one of your staff to be, let’s say, inefficient in two different positions rather than an expert in one.

Tim Meinhardt:

Right, I agree. And we’ve been asked before to come on it and supplant turnover with organizations that we’ve worked with. And, you know, at least they have the right framework that we’ve been working with. And so, we can generally pick those programs up and almost run as an interim individual or interim champion as they go through whatever, and however they’re going to go through to be able to put somebody else in this position. The other thing I wanted to mention was that, you know, because we do a lot of virtual instructor-led training, that if they do bring in a new champion, you know, and they do have somebody that we can help them with our Center of Excellence tools to be able to give them a kickstart into the program because that mentoring, I think, is truly important. And one final piece on this is that some things that companies have considered with us is they keep us on from a support perspective, not for necessarily, other than to check up and make sure everything’s still running right, but that we don’t lose touch with their program. OK, so that if there is a situation that takes place that you know, they want a little bit of insurance, that we’ve been still supporting the program, we know what a little bit about what’s going on, we understand their business, because no matter how much industry expertise you have, each company operates in its own particular vacuum with its own strategy because OKRs is about executing. And so, everybody sometimes has a little bit of a strategy. So for us to stay involved, I think it makes logical sense just so that in case something happens, that we need to come in on an interim basis and continue the program, that we’re prepared to not miss a beat, so to speak.

Jeff Sweeney:

Yeah, I really like that, Tim, and I think that’s a bit underrated, is being able to make sure, first and foremost, that as you’re building your program, that you really get the program to a position that you want. I think that’s where Atruity is definitely helpful to help come in, build that framework, and be able to provide those resources, and get it to a point that companies can feel comfortable if they want to ultimately own the process internally. Well, let’s make sure that you have the right foundation, that it’s as strong as it can be, so that when it is released back internally that they have all the right resources and information to take that forward to make sure that program can run long term.

Tim Meinhardt:

Agree. And you know, I want to finish with just a concept that we run into periodically is we do get calls from folks that have said, “Listen, our program is just not on track. We’re not getting out of it what we wanted to. We started it. We’re not sure if we’re doing it right. Gosh, we don’t have people that are really bought in. We may not have some departments involved because they said they didn’t want to.” And so, you know, I would be remiss if I didn’t speak a little bit about our triage services that, you know, we come on in and we’ll take a look and we’ll assess your organization, kind of see where things are. And that’s beneficial because it’s kind of the old checkup from the neck up. What are you doing right? Where are your challenges? And then be able to build them a game plan and a roadmap, and then slowly for us to begin to put in that framework that we know works consistently regardless of the size of your organization or what organization that that that you actually are involved with our own.

Stephanie Meinhardt:

Yeah, I cannot agree more. So thank you guys so much for being on the show today and sharing your lovely wisdom on OKRs. We look forward to the next episode. Part two will be coming very soon, and we will be discussing the next hidden challenge. Tim and Jeff, thank you so much for being on the show today, and we look forward to the next episode.

Tim Meinhardt:

And I would be remiss if I didn’t say this was a wonderful OKR Corral, okay?

Stephanie Meinhardt:

Quite the corral.

Tim Meinhardt:

And that it’s always nice to have somebody else host every once in a while. So, Stephanie, thank you very much. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us today. You do wonderful work with Atruity, and your insight is invaluable. So, thanks, everyone!

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.


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