The growth handbook for CEOs

[Music] growth is not something that magically happens it's the result of carefully designed strategies that are being successfully implemented and executed as a ceo you're not just responsible for setting the strategy you're also accountable for the successful delivery of it after all a well-designed strategy has little value if it isn't delivered on time the reality is that 9 out of 10 organizations fail to fully implement and execute their strategies in 70 of these filled cases the problem isn't bad strategy it's bad execution as it turns out delivering strategy and realizing growth is complex with purdue we make it simple this video contains everything you need to know to accelerate your growth and deliver the results that matter starting today this video is supported by the purdue software a simple but powerful goal management platform that helps ambitious leaders grow their businesses faster before you continue watching this video sign up for a free account on purdue.com so you can put the theory immediately into practice at purdue we've developed a simple three-step process that any organization big and small can follow to accelerate their growth the details of each step are explained further in the video let's first have a look at the overall process on a high level step 1 set your strategy there are many definitions of strategy but they all boil down to this strategy is your long-term plan for how to drive growth and realize your organization's ultimate goal the mission and vision this long-term plan is what you need to successfully identify what matters which brings us to the next step step 2 identify what matters once your strategy is set you need to figure out which results matter for the successful implementation and execution of that strategy what matters needs to be written down as kpis and oqrs kpis key performance indicators and okrs objectives and queue results are the two types of goals that you need to deliver your strategy and drive sustainable growth step 3 achieve your goals once you've successfully identified what matters your people need to start working towards those goals achieving goals is the hardest part which is why you first want to make sure that you've identified the right goals to work on which is step two to know that you're working on the right goals you need to have a clear strategy in place which is step one and that's how it all comes together unless you're a one person company you're not going to implement and execute the strategy all by yourself you need resources to do so capital and people if you want your people to work towards your strategy you need to share that strategy with them and make sure they understand it therefore your strategy needs to be clear and measurable as well as easily accessible according to research by willis towers-watson 90 of general employees and 40 percent of managers do not know or understand their organization strategy fix this and you'll be miles ahead of your competition once your strategy is set you enable everyone across the organization to identify what matters most at any point in time too often strategies are vague and ambiguous while it may be comforting to have a vague strategy you cannot really feel that way it simply doesn't work so if you really care about your strategy being delivered on time your strategy needs to be crystal clear and measurable that way it's easy to understand by the people responsible for delivering it managers and general employees the solution here is simple convert your strategy into strategic okrs strategic okrs also enable you to track progress on the implementation and execution of your strategy your strategy is your long-term plan for how to realize your mission and vision so your strategic okrs are your long-term ocrs that will help the organization move closer to its ultimate goal as such strategical qrs provide direction they enable everyone across your organization to successfully identify what matters at any point in time by converting your strategy into strategic okrs the key results force you to make your strategy specific what does it mean to become thought leader in your industry to dominate a certain market or to shift your focus from hardware to services which results do you need to accomplish to consider your strategy successfully delivered most strategies take several years to implement to become a thought leader will probably take more than a year to dominate a specific customer segment to enter new markets or to shift your focus from hardware to services are all strategies that often require several years to fully deliver strategic okrs therefore usually use a three to five year cadence often organizations also use an annual cadence for strategic okrs these annual ocrs are then breaking down the three to five year okrs into a specific focus for each year no matter how elaborate or complicated your strategy is you should articulate your strategy in the simplest and most focused way possible and that's what strategic okrs force you to do keep the document with all the details and rationale of your strategic choices attach it to your strategic okr and purdue for those employees who'd like more context your strategy may change over time new employees may have joined after you explain the strategy at an audience and in general people need to be constantly reminded of the strategy especially when they're deciding what to focus on next this is why you need to make your strategy easily accessible with purdue we make it really simple for you to do so the purdue roadmap presents your strategy in a simple intuitive way because strategy is your long-term plan for how to realize your ultimate goal we put that at the top of your roadmap with a clear strategy in place that is easily accessible you enable everyone at every level to successfully identify what matters most to deliver that strategy once everyone has identified what will matter most for the upcoming period they can start working towards achieving those goals and you can rest assured that they're working on the right ones when it comes to the implementation and execution of strategy achieving results for example closing a new customer matters more than the completion of tasks for example calling a prospect in other words for strategy delivery its outcomes over outputs figuring out what matters is not always easy simply because most people are by nature quite output oriented to successfully identify what matters keep in mind that what matters is almost never a means to an end let's say you want to learn italian most people will start thinking about all the things they should do listen to an italian podcast every day watch their favorite netflix series in italian complete duolingo's italian course these are all things that are a means to an end that is something that is not valued or important in itself but is useful in achieving an aim what if you completed these tasks but you still cannot order a pizza in italian would you consider yourself successful probably not what really matters to you is almost never a means to an end it's the end itself kpis and okrs are both designed to measure outcomes they are two different types of goals each with their own purpose kpi stands for key performance indicator it's an indicator for how a key area of your business is performing such a key area of your business is also called your business as usual hence a kpi defines what your critical businesses usually is and enables you to easily monitor if it's performing well it's important to not confuse kpis with metrics or key results okr stands for objectives and key results okrs enable you to build a roadmap towards your ultimate goal there are two types of okrs each with their own purpose strategic oqrs are long term and provide direction they make your strategy clear and measurable as we've seen in the previous chapter you'll find these strategic okrs at the top of your roadmap in purdue tactical oprs are short-term and actionable they help everyone build improve or innovate important parts of the business in order to implement and execute the organization strategy you'll find these at the bottom of the purdue roadmap let's imagine your organization is a car and you're driving the car towards the destination your organization's ultimate goal your okrs are mapping out your path towards that point hence the name roadmap in purdue but as you're driving towards your destination you also need to keep an eye on your car's dashboard to make sure for example that you don't run out of gas and that the engine doesn't overheat it doesn't matter where you are on your journey these are the things that you always need to keep an eye on the things that you constantly need to watch are best measured through kpis simple indicators that instantly tell you if something is going well or not if you'd focus just on kpis you would never get to your destination and if you'd focus just on okrs you'll run out of gas and you also won't get to your destination setting kpis is relatively simple first of all they've been around for ages so certain standards have been developed second they don't change very often so you only have to set them once though you may want to revisit them every now and then to ensure you're still working on the right kpis of course especially when your organization is growing when setting up kpis keep in mind that those kpis not only measure how key areas of your business are performing they also define what the key areas of your business are with your strategy and kpis in place everyone in your organization will have all the contacts they need to create good tactical okrs tactical okrs as opposed to strategic okrs are the okrs that your people will actually work on every day together with kpis they drive the implementation and execution of your strategy you can use tactical okrs to build improve or innovate an area of your business either to fix the kpi or to help bring the business to the next level setting tactical okrs is the hardest part first of all tactical okrs are very unique to each company so your organization really has to figure out themselves what are the right technical okrs to work on second tactical okrs have a relatively short time span so they constantly change several times a year you have to go through the process of defining what tactical okrs you should work on next tactical okrs are usually quarterly a quarter gives everyone enough time to make a real impact in a certain area whilst keeping the organization agile enough to rapidly respond to changing circumstances setting tactical okrs is the responsibility of team leads they know exactly what's going on in their teams and what their next priority should be nonetheless the executive should review and approve the tactical okrs of the teams that report to them this is to ensure that everyone is on the same page as the ceo you should also review all the tactical okrs at least for the next level down you want to be sure that the tactical okrs are aligned with your strategy team leads can use the following framework to create good technical okrs together with their team the easiest place to add tactical okrs is to purdue roadmap as this gives you all the required strategic context that you need when setting tactical okrs to help you and your organization set goals here are a few best practices put kpis over okrs remember the analogy kpis keep the engine running so that you can continue your journey towards your destination without a running engine you'll never get to where you want to be make sure the engine is always running and put kpis first estimate how much time there is to work on tactical okrs for some teams maintaining kpis will require a significant amount of time support and sales teams are teams that typically have a lot of kpi related work closing deals resolving incoming support tickets and so on every now and then it can happen that they don't have time to work on any tactical okrs and that's okay when setting tactical okrs it's important to estimate how much time everyone will have to work on them the sales team at purdue estimates that they spend 70 of their time working on their kpis that means that they only have 30 of the time available to work on other things such as okrs the question then is how are they going to spend that time and that's what a tactical okrs should answer less is more as with many things in life less is more the less goals you have the more focused you are with too many goals you're avoiding the hard question what really has priority kpis especially are often misused by organizations where some have hundreds of kpis in place when that happens you're not looking at kpis anymore you're looking at pis performance indicators in purdue we restrict you to a maximum of six kpis for the company and for each group this forces you to focus on these few performance indicators that are really key take your time setting goals your goals will define how everyone in your organization will be spending most of their time hence setting goals is pretty much the same as deciding how to invest a significant amount of money you don't want to rush this lastly make sure your organization structure supports your goals every now and then you want to review how your organization is structured to ensure your structure supports the completion of your most important goals remember structure follows strategy you've put a great strategy in place made it clear and measurable and shared it with your organization that enabled everyone at every level in your company to identify what goals they should be working on to help deliver that strategy never before did your organization have such a good understanding of your strategy and never before did everyone have it so clear what they should and should not be working on as the ceo you have reviewed and approved these goals so on top of that your organization is now also perfectly aligned there's only one thing left to do achieve your goals achieving goals is the hardest part and will take by far the most time hence you first want to make sure that you're working on the right goals and which is why this step comes last to ensure that the goals that you and your teams have identified in step two will be achieved you need to do two things make someone responsible and keep that person accountable when you have identified an important goal for your organization you need someone to look after it in other words you need to make someone responsible as the ceo or manager you should not be responsible for all the goals of your company or team you simply don't have the time instead you should delegate responsibility and act as a coach that is help your direct reports achieve their goals in the purdue software we call the person who is responsible for our goal the lead only one person can lead a goal the saying goes if multiple people are responsible no one is it's important that the responsible person also has ownership over the goal ownership is your ability to influence the outcome first of all it's frustrating to be responsible for something when every decision or effort that could possibly influence the outcome of that goal has to be approved by someone else second if responsibility doesn't match ownership you simply reduce the chances that the goal will be achieved obviously the responsible person must work towards the goal whilst staying aligned with the company's strategy and the company values and some decisions or efforts will have to be approved for example when a certain budget is required but give as much ownership of the goal as possible to the person who you've made responsible for it you can't just tell people they're responsible and then leave them to it yes it may work for some but definitely not for all you need to keep the lead accountable accountability means that you judge the person responsible for how well he or she executed on a goal keeping people accountable should run along the reporting lines everyone who has people reporting to them that is executives and managers keeps their direct reports accountable you keep a lead accountable by asking them to regularly update progress for example weekly and by asking managers and executives to review the direct report's progress in their 101s there are many reasons why the lead should regularly update progress the most important one is by benjamin harkin of the university of sheffield he conducted a meta-analysis of 138 studies comprising in total 19951 participants he found that prompting participants to monitor their progress increased the likelihood that the participants would achieve that goal the more frequent the monitoring the more likely they were to succeed harkin said monitoring goal progress is a crucial process that comes into play between setting entertaining a goal regularly updating progress also keeps other stakeholders such as yourself in the loop the goal is important so you want to be able to see how it's progressing sometimes a progress update requires more context which is why you can add a note to a goal as well for example when a kpi turned unhealthy you want the lead to research the issue and explain why it turned unhealthy ideally he or she also has some ideas for how to get it on track again and for when they should be a priority these answers you want to have logged on the kpi in purdue so that you keep a good historical record and you keep the organization informed at purdue we've developed the check-in feature which makes it really simple for leads to update their goals once per week it will only take three to four minutes per week which is considering the importance of those goals not too much to ask if it is too much to ask you may want to find a different lead for that goal when goals are not progressing well it's important that the lead adds context when checking in this forces the lead to analyze the problem and find a solution it also builds a good historical record and keeps the organization up to date everyone should be able to look at a goal and see exactly what's going on the lead should answer the following questions and lock the answers in purdue why is the goal of track what is your plan to get it on track again how can the organization help the lead can add mention colleagues who he or she needs help from the colleague will then automatically be notified through purdue most managers and executives already have regular that is weekly or bio-weekly one-on-ones with their direct reports they just have to make a review of goals and goals progress part of these one-on-ones this serves three purposes one it lets the direct reports know that they are being held accountable for the goals that they lead two it gives the manager the opportunity to provide support if needed and 3. it offers the manager the opportunity to give praise and encouragement to motivate people to go even further when things are going well with purdue we've made it super simple to review the goals and their progress of your direct reports in a one-on-one first of all your direct reports are automatically added to your home view on your home view you can see if they've checked in that week and click through to their latest check-in report pull up this check-in report in your 101 to review your direct reports goals and their progress your direct report should of course check in prior to the one-on-one you can configure purdue in such a way that all leads will receive a reminder to do their weekly check-in one day before most managers have their one-on-ones with direct reports growth is never permanent due to constantly changing circumstances continuous growth requires constant work new competitors are entering the needs of customers are changing new technologies enable new solutions and so on as a result you need to regularly refine your strategy and re-evaluate what matters most before everyone starts working again on achieving their goals i call this the circle of growth as you see growth is an ongoing process hi at purdue our commitment has always been to help organizations grow faster and become successful with okr which is why we offer our content for free we've decided to go one step further and make our software free as well our free plan includes all core functionality and allows you to track an unlimited number of goals head over to purdue.com to set up your own free purdue account

Channel: Perdoo

Views: 1,562

Keywords: okr, kpi, strategy, execution, goals, free okr software, free okr tool, business success tips, business growth strategy, objectives and key results (okrs), key performance indicators, ceos

Id: DDgLh9CnzLs

Length: 25min 25sec (1525 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020