Setting, tracking, and reporting OKRs is terrible. But what if it wasn’t? In Guiding Star OKRs: A New Approach to Setting and Achieving Goals, Staffan Nöteberg lays out a framework that focuses on heading in the right direction instead of trying to meet exact targets. Unlike the OKRs you may have experienced, Guiding Star OKRs are focused on getting the right results, not the pre-determined results.
In a previous role, management was big into setting cascading OKRs (which Nöteberg says not to do). My objectives were my manager’s key results. My manager’s objectives were my VP’s key results, and so on. The end result was that there was no reward for helping colleagues meet their individual OKR targets. Instead of working together, we all worked individually in the hope that it ended up achieving the company’s broader goals. Spoiler alert: it did not.
I went into reading Guiding Star OKRs expecting to shake my head at a slight variation on a broken system. Instead, I came away enthusiastic about Nöteberg’s approach. Finally, OKRs that are meaningful!
The concept of setting and attracting objectives and key results (OKRs) really took off a Google. As anyone in the sysadmin/DevOps space in the early 2010s can tell you, a lot of organizations copied Google without considering if they need to.
This book is full of practical advice and examples to help the reader adopt the framework to their organization’s specific needs. For example: “never engage in setting objectives or key results when tasks are already determined.”
Guiding Star OKRs is a must-read for leaders who want to achieve results in a sustainable way. It’s now available in print and digital formats from The Pragmatic Bookshelf.
Full disclosure: I provided the publisher with a praise quote for this book and received a complimentary copy as a result. I received no compensation for this review.