OKRs Q&A Podcast Ep. 68: The Roles of HR in Large Enterprise OKR Programs Ft. the Betterworks Team | Dustin Clinard & Spike Hayden, Betterworks
In this special OKR Corral episode, Tim Meinhardt interviews Dustin Clinard, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for Betterworks; and Spike Hayden, Partnerships Manager at Betterworks. Betterworks is an Enterprise Performance Management & OKR Software Platform that is endorsed by John Doerr, author of Measure What Matters and board member of Betterworks. In this episode, Dustin, Spike, and Tim cover numerous topics ranging from large enterprise misconceptions to recommendations for a large-scale implementation, to the criteria needed for a successful OKR program rollout.
They also discuss some of the challenges that HR organizations encounter in implementing successful OKR programs and the employee experience paradigm that OKRs bring to an enterprise. Dustin and Spike provide wonderful insight and examples that really make this podcast unique, powerful, and informative.
For more information on Betterworks, visit https://www.betterworks.com
To download a free copy of Atruity’s free e-book the Seven C’s To OKR Success – click on this link: 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, special OKR Corral episode I have the pleasure of speaking with Dustin Clinard, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for Betterworks, and Spike Hayden, Partnerships Manager at Betterworks. And for those of you that don’t know, Betterworks is an Enterprise Performance Management and OKR software platform that is endorsed by John Doerr, author of Measure What Matters and a Board Member of Betterworks.
In this episode, Dustin, Spike, and I cover numerous topics ranging from large enterprise misconceptions, to recommendations for a large scale implementation, to the criteria needed for a successful OKR program rollout. We also discuss some of the challenges that HR organizations encounter in implementing successful OKR programs, and the employee experience paradigm that OKRs bring to an enterprise. Dustin and Spike provide wonderful insight and examples that really make this podcast unique, powerful, and informative. So everyone, please grab that cup of coffee, plug in those earbuds, and enjoy an OKR Corral session with Dustin, Spike, and myself.
And so, gentlemen, welcome to the program.
Dustin Clinard:
Thanks, Tim. It’s great to be here again.
Tim Meinhardt:
Yep. Great. Great. So, Dustin, let’s lead off with you. What misconceptions are happening in large enterprises as they move towards OKRs at scale?
Dustin Clinard:
It’s a big question to start with, Tim. Probably a lot of misconceptions. I mean, I think OKRs are a game changer. I think there’s also lots of ways that things don’t work out as you hoped for or maybe that you’ve read. We tend to focus a lot on scaled rollouts, larger populations approaching most folks within the company, whether it’s a big company or a small company. And so we think about what that means. If you think about what you’re trying to achieve and how a CEO might sit back and say, “I’m spending money on software, I’m spending money on services, I read the books and everything’s going to be awesome.” What does that mean? And the way, in a simple way, to think about it is “are my are more of my people doing more of the right things more frequently?” And if you boil it down to that, you’ve achieved a lot of the benefits. There are nuances in there, clearly. There are “business as usual” components to deal with. But when I think about an overall enterprise, I want everybody spending discretionary time or time where they have choices to work on A or B, I want them to know what matters. And I want them to know I have a couple different options on how to get there, and I’m going to pick what I think is the best one. And when you can do that at scale, you really unlock the power of how OKRs can impact large organizations.
Tim Meinhardt:
Yeah, completely. You know, that empowering of the employee is a big deal. You know that there’s many ways to take on your duty and responsibilities within an organization, but giving them and empowering them to be able to make those choices, within reason, as everybody says, they’re bought in, they buy into the fact and when they can then see how they’re making a greater impact to the organization, I think that’s where people get excited about what it is that they’re going to accomplish over the next given period of time. Spike, any thoughts on that before we maybe move on to a next question?
Spike Hayden:
Yeah, I think that’s absolutely correct. I think the more individuals and employees that you have that are part of the program, the more engagement and overall value that you’re going to get out from an executive perspective. And looking at just how the overall program is operating, but then as well as from an individual employee, understanding the work that they’re doing is contributing to the actual overall top line business.
Tim Meinhardt:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. So, Spike, let me shift and ask you a question here. What kind of recommendations or suggestions would you give to organizations looking for that large scaled enterprise adoption of an OKR program?
Spike Hayden:
Yeah, that’s another great question. I think, you know, we have seen it all, you know, being at Betterworks for the past five years. There is no real perfect recipe for what is a perfect rollout of a program, whether it’s a large scale enterprise or a small business. What we oftentimes see is having true executive engagement from both the line of business, so someone from strategy and operations, as well as an executive from the HR side of the business, partially because the more executives that you have involved that are part of the program are going to…overall that communication is going to cascade down to individual employees. So the actual individual employee understands that the program that they’re going to be using and whether it’s they’re new to OKRs and they’ve never used it before in their career or if they have used before in the past, like you need that overall communication that’s going to help involve every individual.
Tim Meinhardt:
Right. And, you know, Spike I agree completely here that, you know, communication is extraordinarily important. And having that executive involvement and understanding that, you know, them being involved and listening and understanding and communicating, you know, that everything comes from the top, you know, and having those I’ll even call them North Stars, but sometimes they’re there. It’s why are we doing what we’re doing? Understanding that why and having the executives involved, I think is really, really, truly important. Because if you don’t have executive buy-In, people are at times wondering really what’s the bigger picture? So I couldn’t agree with you more. Dustin what are your thoughts on that real quick? Anything you’d like to add?
Dustin Clinard:
I mean, I think to piggyback a little bit on what Spike said, you’re in larger scale deployments, you’re asking not simply for somebody to adopt a new methodology, like OKRs, you’re addressing the fabric of a business, how people think about what matters, which is very board to executive, to leadership, to managers, to individuals, you know, structure. You’re asking people to think about how they prioritize, what to spend time on, what not to spend time on. There are people, believe it or not, that will sit home on a Saturday night and think, “Am I working on the right stuff when I go into work on Monday?” And having the ability for somebody to think about what matters to us right now as opposed to what mattered to us in the past. And how much time do I have to dedicate to that and what are my options? That’s where you start to see big organizations do really well, and the OKR model plays a significant part of that. But it’s also a lot more leadership buy-in, as Spike said. It’s not a program manager necessarily. If you put all that into one program manager for a bigger company, that person needs a little bit of extra love. You’re starting to get to the DNA of how a company thinks across the board around outcome orientation and alignment, which is, like you said at the beginning, when you get it right is tremendous. Not as easy as it sounds as you know, though.
Tim Meinhardt:
No, of course, in having those sponsors and those people that are bought into the program really help whoever is running and multiple people running programs in large organizations. And, you know, Dustin, you touched on something too, that I really, you know, I kind of hone in on is when you go to organizations sometimes putting in OKRs, it’s all about prioritization. And I take it one step almost further back and say, you know, we look at the KISS theory, okay? Keep it simple because people remember simple. It’s easily communicated throughout a very large organization. And OKRs is a simple methodology of sorts, even though it has its complexities. But that type of simplicity about prioritizing what’s really, truly mattering in your business, as we look forward to what it is that we’re trying to accomplish, I think it is what gives OKRs that distinctive advantage in a very large enterprise organization. And Spike, I’m sorry I interrupted you. What were you going to say? Please.
Spike Hayden:
When you do look at these large scale rollouts, for instance, and you perhaps just want to start with a large department or a team, it is just really important to be able to have that executive sponsorship like Dustin mentioned, starting from the top and then at least understanding how this in theory is going to roll out, not only if this is going to work successfully within our department or within our group. This can then be replicated to other parts and various parts of the organization. It’s only going to get more powerful with the more transparency that you have within the program.
Tim Meinhardt:
Well said. Absolutely. Well said. So, Dustin, what do you think are the differences between and how have you seen OKRs rolled out in very large companies, let’s say 10,000 or more employees versus like a smaller company, say, under a thousand employees?
Dustin Clinard:
Let me go back and say, let me answer a different question, which is it’s difficult for everybody to do this, you know, no matter how big or small they are, right. For some of the reasons you talked about before. But you’re asking for in a lot, you know, with the exception of a company that started in the last couple of years, you’re asking for an organization that’s often output driven to start to think about outcome driven across all the layers. Now, there’s always groups that have been designed like that, but now you’re asking for it everywhere. So I give credit to any company of any size who’s trying to figure this out. There are some differences, though, I think we’ve seen between some of the biggest rollouts for, you know, some of the biggest companies in the world and for companies that are, you know, more midsize, more on the SMB market. I think in the SMB market, OKRs can be seen as a…it is a methodology, but it’s treated as if it’s a methodology. And therefore, getting the methodology perfect is often the way it’s treated. So do we have the right OKR? Is it perfect? Have we written it well? There’s a lot of focus on construction. And therefore, at the end of the day, when you get that right, you have a perfectly constructed OKR tree.
When we think about the practical realities of a 10,000 person organization, the perfectly constructed OKR tree, one is very difficult to actually accomplish. And two, even if you had it, now what? You’re moving towards adoption and execution. And so when we work with the biggest companies, a lot of the focus is on adoption. “How are we going to turn this into an every day…is it visible for me? Does it make sense for me? Do I actually understand what’s three or four levels above me? Not can I see it, but do I understand it enough so that I can actually make a choice? And is there a space for me to have the conversation around that choice?” And so all of those having well-structured OKRs do help. But all of those things are around adoption. And every day it basically it’s dealing with the messiness. Think about your favorite 50,000 person company. You have a really aligned executive team, and then you have a whole bunch of messiness in the middle. And by a whole bunch, I mean like 99% of the business is people figuring out what to do every day. And that messiness is when you get that more organized, and I don’t mean scripted, I mean people, all 49,000 people can say, “Yeah, I should do this and not that today.” Now you start to have scale benefits to something like this where the again the well-structured OKRs really, really help. But it’s an awful lot more than that from an adoption standpoint.
Tim Meinhardt:
I couldn’t agree with you more. The premise behind everything is getting that adoption, you know, and getting people to truly understand, you know what OKRs are. So, Spike, what are your thoughts on that?
Spike Hayden:
Yeah, I think I had a lot of experience selling into this small-medium business side of the space, under a thousand employees. And I think it comes from so many different perspectives of the people who are interested in investing in an OKR platform. It can come from the CEO who’s just getting started, and it’s just a way to organize the strategy. Are they hitting their business targets because the business is in it where there could be an at a hyper growth disrupting phase, or it could also just be we might need to pivot our actual strategy from earlier this year. Other ways in which that we’ve seen, it could be tasked by the HR department and someone from the CHRO might be able to look into OKRs because perhaps the CEO or the [unintelligible] actually asked the head of HR to look into something that can help out in organize business as well as increase overall productivity, engagement and all the above. There are many different ways, and I think that goes back to my earlier point where there is no cookie cutter approach in terms of how you scale out a program. But to Dustin’s point, it really is the overall organize structure—who’s leading that structure within the business itself and with an OKR program?
Tim Meinhardt:
Yeah, you know, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s what we do as an organization. You know, who’s leading the program? Make sure that things are done right. You know, a lot of our work is, as I’ve mentioned in previous podcasts, is triage work, you know, people have tried to put this in. It’s just not working, and they don’t have the fundamentals set up right. So I couldn’t agree with you more having those fundamentals set up right, and getting the mindset correct is where you start to see OKR programs flourish. When you don’t have that, you don’t have the right person involved, you don’t have the right education tools, you lose consistency over time as well. So every quarter people are leaving, people are coming in, people are being promoted. So, you know, to maintain that consistency of education, that consistency of understanding, that consistency of message is a big deal. And it’s how that program is run that that keeps the program running with some level of consistency.
Dustin Clinard:
I think, Tim, if I can add something in there, I think we just touched on this point, but we think of who some of our best, who some of our most successful customers are. They are companies that can see when I’m aligned, when I’m using OKRs well for alignment, I have higher throughput of critical projects, I have less waste on stuff that isn’t one of our priorities right now, and I have a workforce that’s more dedicated to the important things because they know how much their inputs matter. So a stakeholder on the business side, whether it’s operations or strategy or I.T., sales and marketing, engineering, somebody who’s got a PNL that can say, “Yeah, my PNL got better because we did it this way,” that’s crucial. On the flip side, there are many PNLs in the business, and if you have a PNL owner, you kind of by definition don’t have the other PNL owners. Someone like HR, which we are seeing increasingly is tasked with looking at OKRs across the business, may or may not have a PNL, but represents the way that you enable everyone, and you start to think about performance from a business performance and a team and personal performance standpoint. So are we lifting all boats? Are we lifting the PNL performance of the business unit? And are we lifting the performance of individuals at the same time? And we hear sometimes that it’s a one or the other, and I’m not sure that we agree that it’s one or the other. You can lift all of the performance elements. I mean, we’re thinking about this as performance enablement because you’re lifting, you’re enabling better performance across the whole business. And the HR team often plays a very responsible role in adoption and rollout because they sit on the systems that touch everybody across the company. Now that in conjunction with the business side is the way we’ve seen the formula for the best outcomes so far.
Tim Meinhardt:
Thank you. That was well said. So I’m going to change the topic a little bit here. Now, I want to talk a little bit about software. So we’ve got a lot of different people jumping into the software marketplace, I think complicating it a little bit. And I just wanted your thoughts about, you know, how have these newer software players complicated the landscape for adopting—and I’m going to call it the true nature of OKRs—and the ultimate benefit and long term OKR adoption?
Dustin Clinard:
You’re not trying to bait me into saying something about my competitors, right?
Tim Meinhardt:
No, no. But you and I have talked about this, so I thought it was really appropriate to bring up to you because I think that, you know, we talk about the true nature of OKRs and what’s getting lost in all…and sometimes I wouldn’t say lost, but being interpreted maybe a little bit differently. So I’d love to get your thoughts on.
Dustin Clinard:
If you went out and did a software comparison right now, you’d find hundreds of companies that have some type of OKR functionality. It would vary a lot from, we call this old goal methodology, you know, OKRs all the way up to more modern OKR software that gives you flexibility around team structure, cross-functional visibility, ownership, you know, things like setting of end dates, you know, you have thousands of people and they don’t all have the same end date. You’ll see a whole variety of things like that. Some are designed more for the OKR use case, some are designed more for a different use case. I think the thing that we see when we think about our competitors that we appreciate is when they think about some of the topics we talked before around adoption. Setting OKRs, there’s nothing easy about setting OKRs, but doing that really well does not enable the performance outcomes that you’re looking for. And so when you think about the conversations that people have every day, if there’s one thing that people are going to do in an office and over Zoom, they’re going to talk to each other.
And so if you think about the talking point in the conversation, as the part that’s going to happen, what you can start to control is how those conversations are rolling out. Are conversations about setting OKRs? Are they about executing OKRs? Are they about canceling OKRs? If you think about good performance, someone who recognizes halfway through a quarter their OKR is no longer right and stops spending time on it, that’s actually really good performance. And we need a way to recognize something like that. And so when we think of software that’s going to be set up well for success, it’s how you enable the behaviors in the workplace among teams, whether it’s virtual or otherwise, to make the most use of the time and effort they probably spend in too spent setting the OKRs, setting the organizational priorities.
Tim Meinhardt:
Right. And, you know, you mentioned, gosh, there’s so many great tidbits in there. But, you know, there’s an element here, that I have these discussions from time to time that, you know, it’s being able to interpret the data that you’ve seen. You know, I’ll just call it a dashboard of some kind that, you know, how well are we doing with our execution? And sometimes, you know, when people stretch versus people that don’t stretch on an OKR, one person’s going to hit their milestones for the quarter. Somebody else really stretched. And so you look at just without having those effective communication, feedback, recognition, better understandings, you just look at the data, you’re not going to be able to tell who’s done really better work. And so, you know, this is all about at the end of the day, getting the organizations and you touched on it earlier about operational efficiency. How can we do more with the time that we have in a more coordinated fashion where everyone for the for the lack of visual is pushing the rock up the same hill the same way? And so I think you’ve just really hit on a really interesting part there, which is you know, it’s about these conversations, Dustin. You know, you’ve got to have them regardless of the software that you’re using, because that’s where you’re really going to get that really true understanding of the performance aspect of being able to ascertain someone’s ability to execute as much or more than just seeing something on a particular dashboard.
Dustin Clinard:
Yeah, you’re now starting to rely, in this scenario you just described, you’re starting to rely on the manager in a lot of cases to be able to add some opinion into performance. I mean, look at look at the last year and a half. There are a lot of OKRs that were set up in the beginning of 2020 that didn’t end well. That does not necessarily mean the performance wasn’t great. It depends on what happened between there, you know, for an example, did we end the OKR fast enough? That could be great performance. Did we take extraordinary measures to try and do something in light of an economic headwind? The OKR itself as we defined it that quarter may have finished at 50%, but if we hadn’t taken the measures we took, it would have finished a lot worse than that. But the people who generally know that are in the in the weeds, they’re in the middle. And so now you think about moving to the flip side. How do I assess performance of the OKR, of the business ,and of the individual? You can incorporate all of that. And we work, like you said, we work with big companies and small companies. Small companies may have a slightly different approach, especially startups, but bigger companies still need to do a performance assessment. You still have to figure out who gets paid, who gets promoted, who gets compensated. And I know that that brings up a lot—I’m going to get a lot of angry emails after this—but you have to figure out how to incorporate performance, which has multiple components to it. Otherwise you’re not going to actually run a big business effectively.
Tim Meinhardt:
Right. Couldn’t agree more. Spike any thoughts on that yourself?
Spike Hayden:
I think that was really well said. I think there are some advantages and disadvantages to all these different players in the space. I mean, for instance, like some offer from an OKR strategic point of view around like view only licenses. You know, to that point, it’s hard to understand the amount of engagement that’s involved if you only have individuals that are understanding what the goals are, which is one part of an element of using OKRs and transparency. But it’s if you’re not actually understanding the work that you’re doing, I think it gets lost in the shuffle in terms of the actual work that you want to contribute to.
Dustin Clinard:
Can I give one example there, Tim, please?
Tim Meinhardt:
Absolutely.
Dustin Clinard:
And we won’t linger too much. But, you know, I think the big concern with an OKR program is that it doesn’t pick up fast enough and gets classified as a failure. We are working with a large bank right now, let’s just say over 10,000 employees, where the phased approach that they’ve used is a leadership first approach. Sensibly, they want to make sure the leaders are aligned on how they turn their long term strategy and their short term strategy into quarterly OKRs. Hopefully you and most of the listeners are on the same page so far. John Doerr in his book would say the same thing. And as you know, John Doerr is a part of the Betterworks team, and we also agree with that. At the same time, you now then have a hundred or 200 really senior executives, really senior executives at a big company who want to get an OKR methodology perfect before they roll it out to everybody else. The challenge with that is perfection is generally elusive in many aspects of life. And they also have really important jobs to do. And so the amount of time spent on a project like this can get pushed aside.
Now to Spike’s point before it shouldn’t be a project, it should be a big part of the DNA. But you are talking about 200 of the most senior people at a bank. If they don’t release the system to the masses, you are going to end up with people who don’t spend a lot of time on this, and therefore everybody else is observing what’s happening and saying this OKR thing might not work. And so there is a tradeoff between getting the most senior people bought in and saying we are then going to release it to everybody else. One way you can do it is put timeframes on it. This group has three months or six months and then we’ll go into everybody else, as opposed to we’re going to see if it works here, and then we’re going to decide. That’s a case that’s more likely to result in failure especially when working with really senior teams because they’re not in the execution. They’re not making these day-to-day trade offs the same way that somebody in a project management role might be making.
Tim Meinhardt:
Right. Well, that’s a fascinating concept. That’s just a great point because you have these two competing elements of sorts. You know, you’re wanting first, you want to make sure that it is adopted, because if people aren’t into it as part of the senior team, I’ll just say that cancer begins to metastasize as it moves throughout their particular organization. And then at the same time is let’s not let perfect get in the way of pretty good. Remember, I think the thing that we believe in very truthfully is it’s an OKR journey. You’re not going to get it all right when you get started. Okay. That’s the beauty of it is that understanding it’s not a game of perfect sometimes and that, you know, let’s get it, let’s understand it. Let’s understand the power that it can give an organization by giving people that flexibility to figure it out as they go a little bit. And I think those are those interesting dynamics that I think companies, sometimes large organizations, wrestle with. But is getting that adoption, number one. And then number two, letting go. Letting it go a little bit, you know.
Dustin Clinard:
Let it go.
Tim Meinhardt:
Yeah.
Dustin Clinard:
My girls would love the Frozen reference you just made.
Tim Meinhardt:
Before we continue with the interview. We’d like to tell you a little bit about Atruity.
Stephanie Meinhardt:
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:
What challenges and advantages are HR organizations bringing to the OKR landscape?
Dustin Clinard:
I’ll start with the advantages side because it’s similar to what we’ve been talking about. If you think about across an organization, what HR tends to be really proficient at is systems and tools that the whole company uses. The programmatic nature or the cadence that is involved in quarterly cycles, the ownership of a companywide program, the ability to the ability to wrangle in business units and departments into the cycle is something that HR is often really good at doing. One other advantage of that is if you start to turn over this effort to a central, you know, whether it’s a COE or shared services or however you think about it, you start to reduce the risk of key person dependency. If you don’t do it this way and a critical OKR champion leaves, and I think we’ve all seen this in one way or the other, the program can die, because somebody was in charge of it. It was their project and maybe that’s a way to start, but quickly moving to the point where it’s our company thing as opposed to this person’s thing is often where HR can play a really positive role. The drawback, the disadvantages in some ways is that OKR is associated with performance management and performance reviews can become a red herring in the discussion. It’s not actually that nuanced, but sometimes it can seem nuanced. Thinking about the performance of OKRs and how we then have a separate process for evaluating the performance of people. They are not directly correlated to each other, but there is a relationship. The relationship varies company by company, but you do want to make sure that the way you assess people performance has something to do with how they contribute to the business, which is where the OKRs come in. What did you do all year? And have I reflected that on the performance side? So there are multiple models that we’ve seen work really well for doing that. But the perception sometimes when HR is running an OKR program can be that this is for performance management. In the companies we work with, that is rarely, rarely the case. But the nuance out in the public market sometimes doesn’t necessarily correlate. The other misconception is you don’t have HR setting your OKRs. HR has their own OKRs. In the best scenarios when HR has OKRs that also contribute to the overall strategy. Everybody will have their own way to think about this when I say it but think about parts of your own business where the adherence to schedule and cadence and process just doesn’t exist. That’s where HR can really help. Have you set your OKRs? Are they any good? Not are they the right ones? But are you sticking to that model and HR can run that. But the perception that HR sets your OKRs through Work Day or SuccessFactors or Oracle, whatever, that’s not happening.
Tim Meinhardt:
No, an excellent conversation. You know, took several notes there that, you know, one of the big things that when we get started with an OKR program, people are just uncomfortable with taking that stretch, you know, that taking a little bit more. And sometimes when HR is involved, that performance management element comes out a little bit. And you don’t want people to be timid with their OKRs, but at the same time, knowing that that stretch will be interpreted properly, I think is a nuance of sorts that as companies go along, they get better at it. And the other thing that you mentioned, which I think was a really, really important point, was that you need some type of distributed management of sorts in this because you really can’t allow one person, because if they leave, your program can be in jeopardy. This is how you’re running your business. So what are you doing to build in that center of excellence, that consistency of training, those elements that will endure themselves as your program continues to mature?
Dustin Clinard:
Well, one more point and then Spike I’ll turn it over to you. You know, one of the things that we think about is we’ve built in connection into, for example, learning. Learning is often, the HR Team runs the learning program. That’s probably the way a lot of people would classify it. On the other hand, everybody in the business probably has something they need to learn. And so if you are working on a critical objective for your company and you have all of the skills and all the experience to do it, congratulations, because you’re probably in the minority. As businesses become more agile, people get in roles where they often have something that they haven’t…it’s not interesting if you’ve done this a million times. It’s interesting if you’ve done it and you’re confident, but there’s still something you’re learning. And so tying OKRs into a learning platform also says publicly, “I’m trying to accomplish something, and part of my path to accomplishing something is going to develop a skill.” And so we’ve made that explicit link between learning, which is generally an HR-owned process, to some degree, to the business outcomes. And for us, that is exemplifying the cross functional nature of how things at work get done.
Tim Meinhardt:
Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Spike, what do you think? What are your thoughts here?
Spike Hayden:
Yeah, I think almost almost every time when you involve an HR organization into an OKR program or an HR team, it almost always envelops and opens the discussion or the conversation to “now think of this as being a company wide program,” because it takes someone, like Dustin was mentioning, it takes so much more than just the strategy and the business that’s involved, but then talks about learning management, career mobility, being able to then think about “how do we compensate our employees?” and having a program in place can actually tie in so much more of like the HR elements that are priorities for those teams and make sure that the employees are actually feeling like they’re part of the business.
Tim Meinhardt:
That’s fascinating. This is a fascinating conversation for me. You know, the HR ownership of the OKR program, you know, as you’ve mentioned, there’s dynamics to running it, just to managing the day to day program, so do they have a greater understanding of how and what really OKRs are. So, you know, making sure that they’re not, quote unquote, providing information about an OKR program that may not be true to what—and I’m going to compliment John Doerr on that, that, you know, when you listen to his videos, there’s really a good way of doing this. And, you know, that element needs to be there as well. But when it does, I think that company wide program feeling really begins to resonate. And I think that was an excellent point, Spike. You know, Spike, I’m going to finish. I want to ask you the last question here. This has been a fascinating conversation. You know, there’s a lot of talk now about—and I’m using, people can’t see, but I’m using my fingers to put parentheses—”the employee experience.” You know, people are quitting left and right, for example. And so how do OKRs relate to the overall employee experience?
Spike Hayden:
Yeah, Tim, it’s a great question. I think there’s a few ways to answer it, but I think the most simplistic way to kind of start off with that question, is it all comes down to purpose and engagement. I think so many times individual employees can now see the work that they’re contributing to on a daily basis is actually contributing to topline business results, as well as when you think about having the conversations that are that involved, you’re empowering managers then have really thoughtful conversations of the work that they might be sharing on or the projects that an individual employee is working on it, and how can they help be a better manager and help support and help the system collaborate across different teams? I think even from personal experience myself, I started my career off at a large 10,000 person organization. And the ways in which we found about how the organization was performing was attending in-person, of course this is pre-COVID, to public town halls. And that was the only time we ever saw the CEO or the executive was on a big screen in a large auditorium and then it would just talk about the numbers, and then we go back to our desk and we would have no sense of purpose of the work that our team and department were hitting towards our goals actually contributed to the to the numbers and the metrics that were displayed during these town halls. It just felt so disingenuous. And it also came, in fact, with the end of your performance review that I had previously. There just didn’t really feel a connection with what the relationship I had with my manager, and then the overall performance review that I had at the very end of the year just felt so disconnected from the actual process.
And I think now more than ever with employees, you hear about the Great Resignation, you’re hearing about all these individual employees trying taking their talent elsewhere to other organizations. It’s because I think oftentimes those organizations are losing a sense of empathy when it comes to the actual individual employee and how they’re actually doing. Are they receiving feedback? Are they receiving any sort of engagement or pulsing surveys around what’s most important to them? Sometimes there’s so much more to the employee experience than just “are you hitting your actual targets?” Because as we mentioned before, business can change so quickly. So if you’re not continuing to look at your goals on a daily basis and having these honest conversations with your manager saying, “You know what? I don’t think this goal that we set two months ago is relevant anymore with what our priorities are right now.” So I think that’s probably the easiest way to answer that question. Of course, you can go down some of the other paths in terms of how to answer that question. But really, to me, it’s around purpose and engagement.
Tim Meinhardt:
Yeah, well, very well said. And, you know, it’s seeing that impact that you can make into the organization. It gives people that sense of purpose, as you mentioned. And, you know, as I mentioned earlier in the program, you know, empowering your employees. One of the most fascinating examples from John Doerr when he was interviewed was talking about the marathon, you know, and he said if his doctor told him he would run a marathon, he wasn’t so sure he was going to do that. But when he chose himself to run that marathon, you know, he took ownership of it and it felt much more his. And so I think those are things that people are looking for in an organization. I mean, think of the time, energy and effort we go through to hire great people. I mean, give them the opportunity then to know what their duties and responsibilities are. And there are multiple ways to get a job done, but give them the freedom to make that determination. I think that’s what people really want. And then being able to see that play into a bigger picture. You know, Dustin, you’re nodding your head with me, no one can see, but what are your thoughts here real quick?
Dustin Clinard:
I think you’ve just articulated that people are complex beings with their own perspective. I mean, to the extent that I don’t want to reiterate what Spike said, but, you know, there is a lot of complexity that goes into how people think about what they spend time on. And hybrid work has only magnified that; nobody is watching over you. And so your managers are wondering, what are you doing? And you’re wondering “what am I doing?” And to the extent that you can bring those together. You do have a pretty symbiotic outcome if you’re all aligned on what matters most, and not so much how you’re spending your time, but how you’re spending your energy, whether it’s mental energy or physical work. That is really, we think, potentially helping with the Great Resignation issue that everybody’s talking about. And to the point you made around quitting, bigger companies and smaller companies have different dynamics there. But this is a huge part of getting people aligned on things like that.
Tim Meinhardt:
And I give the OKR software community kudos because without those unique visibility aspects of what you all bring simplistically, to the marketplace, regardless of all the other millions of things that you can do with inside your software as well as others, that visibility aspect is where you begin to see it. You know, I age myself when I when I tell people when I used to ask, “Where’s your plan?” And it’s, “Oh, it’s in the drawer here. I’ve got it.” Well, it’s not front and center. It’s not part of your daily routine. And those daily routines, and speaking about these and having that communication and feedback and recognition and talking to people about things and having it visual, those are the things that keep it front and center to your organization. And that’s what drives that wonderful sense of accomplishment that you are working towards. And I think that that having an OKR program with the right principles, true to the nature of OKRs, is where you see amazing things happen with organizations, regardless of their size. And, you know, today we’ve had a chance to talk about really, really large organizations, but the complexities are still the same, they just feel a little bit more complex, I think, in bigger companies because the ones that are even smaller, they’re still challenged with the same things, which is adoption, you know, understanding how those people can work together. Well I want to thank both of you for dropping in today to be part of our podcast. This was really, really terrific. Dustin, it’s high time. Spike, first time on the program. Do you want to leave with any last thoughts Dustin, that you’d like to leave our audience with today? You know, where’s the world going here with OKRs? Maybe we could take a little funny step there real quick.
Dustin Clinard:
I don’t know if I’m prepared to answer that question and inform him. Obviously OKRs continue to grow, and I think that’s going to drive really interesting debates. It’s going drive software companies to explore new avenues. Some are going to do great, and some are going to find avenues that will work so well. I think that’s true in any case. It’s a dynamic world to look at. I know some of your prior podcasts have talked about what what’s going on and I know people like you who help facilitate the dialog about it and openness around what’s working and what’s not, I think are making a huge difference. So thank you for doing all that.
Tim Meinhardt:
Gosh, well, thank you so much. Spike. How about yourself? Any last insight or tidbits you’d like to leave our audience with today?
Spike Hayden:
No, I think to Dustin’s point, I think there’s going to be so much more adoption in this space, especially as organizations are going to realize that working hybrid might be the way in which we can work forever here on out, and finding ways in which you can stay organized, you can find ways that you can engage with your employees through a software or through a program that can help out, I think is only going to be here to stay.
Tim Meinhardt:
Yeah, well said. Well said. Spike. Well, gentlemen, I wish you all the best here as we’re coming out of the winter and into the spring. And I hope to have you on the program again. And thanks so much for joining us today.
Dustin Clinard:
Thank you, Tim.
Spike Hayden:
Thanks so much.
Tim Meinhardt:
Thanks again.
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.
