50 Tips for Outcome-driven Teams
50 points around goal-setting and OKRs that you can discuss with your team.
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50 points around goal-setting and OKRs that you can discuss with your team.
1-10
Why be outcome-driven?
10-20
What does an outcome-driven team look like?
21-40
How do you become outcome-driven?
41-50
The things you should not do
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No one gets motivated by the idea of hammering nails repetitively into a board. But people will power through if the blueprint is exciting.
If you tell your team what to do, they'll only go as far as you can see. But if you explain what you're trying to achieve, they'll be able to carry you further.
Without clear goals, remote workers will waste countless hours waiting for their colleagues to wake up. Give them a clear picture of what success looks like, and they'll be able to do great things while you sleep.
It takes weeks for discussions to trickle down through the layers of an organization. Give teams outcomes rather than ideas, and let them run autonomously. They might not do things your way, but they'll get to the same results faster.
Getting everyone's best effort won't mean much if they're running in different directions. Focus your company's attention on 2-3 topics to be able to swing much harder.
Stop hoping for good things to happen. Be clear about where you want to be and plan for it. You can't know if you're doing great if you have no idea of what good is supposed to look like.
It might be necessary to have frequent check-ins when your team is new. But as your organization grows, this becomes a tax on productivity. The value of managers should be measured by how well their team can run without their input.
"Gut-feel" is a word often used to assert authority under the pretense of intuition. Make it go away, and replace it with clear expectations.
Having a big signups target doesn't make you a user-focused company. Caring about specific aspects of the user experience (happiness, retention, satisfaction, onboarding...) and being intentional about improving things is what makes you customer-driven.
It's much easier to retain people when the future is exciting. If there's nothing to look for, you'll lose your team to the first competitor that has a compelling story.
Rather than controlling what everyone is doing, the leadership team makes sure that people understand why they're doing it. They learn how to be great storytellers.
There's a public document outlining the purpose of the organization, what the top priorities are, and how success will be measured. Everyone has seen that document and understands what the North Star is.
Output-focused companies do a bunch of work, and then hope for good results. Outcome-driven companies work the other way around. They pick projects based on the impact they will have on the business.
Leadership sets the general direction, but teams contribute to the details of the plan. People are engaged and accountable — they work to create a future they envisioned themselves.
The entire leadership team can be sick, and things would still be running smoothly. Squads have a clear understanding of their companies priorities, and they can start projects or drop new ones to get better outcomes.
Rather than obsessing on individual performance, people can rally around higher goals. Outcomes are shared, and groups work together to achieve great results.
It doesn't matter how many Jira tickets you closed, how many calls you made, or how many blog posts you wrote if it doesn't result in happier customers. The organization values impact over throughput.
From top to bottom, you can see what everyone is working on, and how much progress they've done. Things are public by default, and restrictions are the exceptions.
Big yearly plans are broken down into smaller, achievable milestones. You know how to use metrics to drive improvement on specific parts of the user flow.
Getting qualitative and quantitative data is part of the routine. Defining success metrics and estimating impact are part of writing the pitch for every project.
You can't have goals without a clear purpose. Resist the temptation of throwing numbers in a spreadsheet. Start by writing down what you want to be, and then make a plan for how to get there.
Repeat the vision as much as needed. Make it the first slide of the monthly review. Your team is busy getting things done and putting fires out, so it's only normal that they forget. Help them remember what matters the most.
Don't kickstart goal-setting with your entire company. Leadership needs to be comfortable with it before expanding the practice. Get a feel for the best way to track goals with a dozen of people before asking hundreds to follow.
A common mistake is to think goal setting is about numbers. But goal setting is first and foremost about making sure everyone is looking in the same direction. Knowing how far you've come is secondary to that.
Explain the expected impact in simple words without using numbers. Your team will have an easier time deciding what metrics to focus on to measure success. And they can still focus on the right priorities even if your analytics are down.
Use the SMART model to write your goals and don't be afraid of setting clear targets. Don't overcomplicate things with sophisticated formulas. The more parameters you have, the more noise you're introducing.
Don't organize your goals and OKRs around people (CEO > Director > Team Lead...). Organize them around teams (Company > Function > Team). The former has people pleasing their bosses, the latter focuses on the business.
People should not be afraid of reporting bad news. Tracking goals only works if your team can share their concern early. Hearing about difficulties is an opportunity to fix things. That's how you make your business more agile.
Distractions will start to come in right after goals are defined. They're the meetings, emails, tasks, calls, bugs that your team has to deal with to achieve these exact goals. Check progress by answering 5 simple questions in your weekly check-in to keep in mind the top priorities.
(We use Tability to automate check-ins)
Being outcome-driven requires structure, and progress is never linear. Don't drop the ball as soon as something goes off-track. Give time for your team to commit to projects, and observe things for a couple of weeks before changing your plans.
All goals and OKRs should be accessible. Avoid secret plans, don't mask difficulties. An open company makes it easier for people to help each other. A leadership team that admits being off-track sets the tone and creates trust.
Nothing can sap morale faster than not meeting any of your targets. It helps to have some ambitious goals but keep things within reach. That's especially true at the beginning when people will wonder if bad outcomes will be used against them.
Avoid complex linkages of goals, objectives and key results. It will look great the first day of the quarter, but you're in agile markets and priorities will change. You'll die by a thousand clicks when you have to update your plan mid-quarter.
Reduce the number of competing priorities so that your team can maximize impact. The more goals people have, the less impact they can have. If people spend hours each week updating progress, it will leave them little room to move the needle.
Broadcast progress on the top company goals. Don't expect your team to pull that information - they're busy. Push it to them via email, chat, or during monthly updates. Not everyone will be able to help, but everyone should care.
A simple way to ensure alignments across an organization is to make sure you all have the same objectives. "Delighting customers" can be a common focus for engineering, sales, and support. Then their KRs can differ.
Quarterly OKRs are great, but you will need a set of core metrics to monitor the health of your business. Pick 5 KPIs to track. Quarterly goals help you improve specific parts of your organization, KPIs make sure that there are no emergencies.
Don't jump straight into planning the next quarter. Sit down with your team to talk about what worked and what went wrong. Learn from your past experience to create a better plan.
If a goal or OKR doesn't bring joy to the business, thank it and let it go. Markets are continually changing, and what looked right a month ago might not be the best thing to do anymore. Be ok with that.
But careful! Don't abandon OKRs when you start seeing misalignment – it might be a sign that your process is working.
There are many goal-setting frameworks to pick out there, and OKRs is one of the best options. But make sure you take into account your team's DNA when implementing it. Don't push too hard for practices that aren't a good fit.
Don't jump straight into OKRs if you're getting starting with goal-setting. Start small with simple KPIs, and focus on building the right culture to manage by outcomes.
Stop replacing values in a spreadsheet. Make sure you keep historical data. Seeing the trends in your journey is as important as knowing where you are today.
Sure, you can get help to think differently, but you can't ask consultants to write down your purpose. It's better to start with a basic statement and iterate by getting feedback. Learn from your customers and ask them to describe their problems.
Tying OKRs to bonuses will stifle innovation rather than motivate people. People will be afraid to take risks and will go for conservative targets. Keep things separated if you want your team to do big things.
Analytic tools can come with a lot of noise. Make sure that the debate is about outcomes rather than slight differences in scoring. Metrics don't tell the whole story and data can't capture all improvements.
If a goal or OKR is off-track, seek first to understand what happened. Here's a preferred order for questions: 1. Was it the right metric to track? 2. Was the target too ambitious? 3. Did we do the right job?
Never start a discussion by blaming the owner.
A goal that lasts one week should be considered a task. Being outcome-driven is about having a handful of goals that drive your focus for the next 2-3 months. Keep your tasks (the how) in a different place than your objectives (the what).
At Google 70% (or 0.7) is considered great, and scoring 100% should be a rare achievement. That's confusing for most people. Keep scoring simple and consistent across your organization. Make sure that you all share the same definition of completion.
Don't let things get worse as soon as you switch focus to a different set of OKRs. Goal setting helps you work on specific muscles, but the whole body needs to stay in shape.
Once you have achieved a specific key result, you still need to maintain some effort to keep the gains obtained.
Advice is always contextual, and this list is mostly here to give you some things to think about. Talk to your team, and see what points you agree and disagree with. Make your own recipe for success, and iterate.
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