Two Truths ​ & One Lie

Welcome, Tech Check & Setup

Cameron | 00:00–02:30
All right, let’s go ahead and get started. So Ryan, we can move on to the next slide. Please let us know if you have any issues viewing Ryan and me or the screen. We have a screen share going on with our slide deck, so we want to make sure everyone can see that.

We’re trying a slightly different setup today and want to make sure it’s working for all of you.

So with all that said…

Introducing “Two Truths & One Lie” and Today’s Topic

Cameron | 02:30–05:00
So yeah, thank you. We’ve stepped back one real quick, right?

Oh, yep, sorry. So yeah, most of you have already seen this, but thank you for joining us for Two Truths and One Lie.

If you have never played the game before, we will be playing the game today where we tell three things: two of them are truth, one is a lie. We’ll be playing that during this webinar, so thanks for joining us.

And then beyond that, we are obviously—the topic that that game will be surrounding is OKRs. So thank you. I saw in the chat someone can’t hear, but please let us know it’s working for you. We want to make sure that’s obviously working.

So thanks for joining. Ryan and I will go on to the next slide.

Cameron | 02:30–05:00
Ryan is from Pittsburgh. I am from Raleigh. And both of us work for the Productside. Ryan is a principal consultant and trainer here at Productside. I’m the director of content.

Luckily for you, you won’t hear as much from me. Ryan’s going to be leading this today, but we hope to have a fun conversation with all of you. So I’m going to go on to the next one.

About Productside & Outcome-Driven Product Partner

Cameron | 05:00–08:00
So if you don’t know much about Productside, just some real quick notes for you: we are your outcome-driven product partner.

And what that really means is our goal is transformation. We transform product management teams and product managers into the better and best versions of themselves with training from our industry-leading experts like Ryan.

So we have people like Ryan who come in and they have this great expertise and years of experience in the field of product management, and we bring them on board here at Productside and we marry their skills and their knowledge and their ability with our incredible outcome-driven framework.

We have a blueprint and a Playbook and all these incredible courses. We take their knowledge and those courses and we marry those two things, and we train product management teams to be the best versions of themselves.

And you can see some of the core values that we train and also that we live by. Those are:

• Outcomes over outputs
• Being truth tellers (which is very apropos to today’s conversations)
• Being one team, being united as a single cohesive team

So thank you for joining us.

Housekeeping, Recording & LinkedIn Leadership Group

Cameron | 08:00–10:30
Some quick housekeeping here: please feel free to ask questions.

Now, the easiest way—because things can get lost in the chat—is to use the Q&A. So we would love for you to use that. But if you drop it in the chat, we’ll hopefully see it; Q&A is the easiest.

And you can watch this later—that’s a question we always get and we’ll get throughout. We will send out to all registrants a link to view the webinar later.

So the last-minute notes here: we have our Product Management Leadership group on LinkedIn that we’d love for you to join. It’s a private group. There’s the link; you can join us. It’s a great place for us to continue conversations, for us to talk about product management, leadership, all of those things, and to of course network with your peers. So please join us there as well.

With all that, I think we’ve got most of our housekeeping out of the way. So let’s move forward here and get into the actual content that we’re here to discuss today.

Why We’re Here: OKRs & The Two Truths & One Lie Format

Ryan Cantwell | 10:30–15:30
Awesome. Well, thank you, Cameron. I couldn’t be more excited to be here with all of you today talking about OKRs, and we’re going to do it hopefully in a fun way.

I see some familiar names in our participant list that have had class with me before or other engagements with me, and if you know me, you know I don’t like boring. I don’t want things boring; I want them to be fun. If they’re not fun, we’re not learning anything.

So that’s what we’re going to try to do today. We’re going to do that through the little fun party game of Two Truths and a Lie. We’re going to play it, as Cameron said, throughout. It’s going to kind of be woven through the topics that we talk about.

So we’ll introduce how it’s going to work and what OKRs in fact are—these things that we’re going to be talking about today—before we go through some of our big ideas on OKRs, whether it’s:

• Achieving alignment
• Outcomes over output
• Or performance management and how it relates to OKRs

Before we do some question and answer at the end. And I am looking forward to your questions throughout, so make sure you do put those in the Q&A feature of Zoom.

So let’s get started, everybody, and we’re going to talk about why we are here talking about party games and objectives and key results.

If you’re unfamiliar with the game Two Truths and a Lie, it’s one that you often see in icebreaker activities. The way the game works is you have one person that tells a group three “facts” about themselves. Two of those things are true, one of them is a lie, and the goal is for the person to trick the others into thinking the lie is in fact true and the truth is a lie.

So we’re going to play and we’re going to see how this works as we go throughout the day. It should be a fun way for us to engage with the topic of OKRs.

History of OKRs: Drucker, MBOs, Andy Grove, John Doerr & Google

Ryan Cantwell | 15:30–22:30
But before we really get started, I want to better define OKRs. What are these things and maybe a little bit of their history.

So while our focus does shift quickly to the two fellows you see here on the screen, in fact our story starts with another guy altogether: Peter Drucker, the godfather of modern management.

Peter identified something called the activity trap that businesses were falling into. Today we’d probably call it the feature factory, everybody. And he tried to break his way out of that by introducing something called MBOs—management by objectives.

In the ’50s, in his day, these were revolutionary things. But they had some gaps.

And in walks Andy Grove, we see Andy here on the slide in the ’70s. He learned from Peter these things of MBOs and he said, “I can make them better.” He was the CEO of Intel, and he upgraded them by introducing these things called key results. And voilà, the OKR was born.

His idea was elegant, everyone, and it filled a critical gap within these MBOs. The key result was intended to measure the achievement of the objective, which the MBO didn’t really do.

Key results reduced subjectivity. They prevented shortcuts and they measured outcomes. As I always say, you do what you measure. So measure the outcomes. We’re going to focus on that, in fact, later on in the presentation.

But next I want to introduce another figure, and that is a leader at Intel learning from Andy Grove: John Doerr. He later left Intel and became a very successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist. So successful, in fact, he became an advisor to Google—but this was Google in 1999, when they had 30 employees.

He introduced the idea of the OKR to Google, and Google took this basic concept and they cut their planning cycles to quarters and they shifted to a much more iterative approach—one that I think we as business people are much more familiar with today, like the kind of agile philosophy of iteration and incrementalism.

Since that point, OKRs have been a central part of Google’s culture and they’ve taken Silicon Valley and business by storm.

What OKRs Are For & Maslow’s Hammer

Ryan Cantwell | 22:30–29:30
So as we look at OKRs—what are they for and how do they work?

From my perspective, OKRs are aspirational. They are not only aspirational but clear and concise, with links to vision and strategy for your organization. They help push teams beyond their comfort zones, perhaps allowing calculated risk-taking and the kind of reach for achievement we want to see.

Key results are very, very clear measures of progress towards achieving our objectives. They become quantifiable things that, when done right, orient teams towards achieving an outcome, not an output.

An outcome—for example, a key result—should not sound like “We released feature X on July 13th.” Rather, it should sound like “We increased customer satisfaction by X percent by the end of the third quarter.” That’s what we hope to hear.

OKRs also help focus our teams. They’re meant to cascade from the top down and connect teams towards a common goal. They should be right-sized for the teams in our organization so the OKR is within their scope of control. They encourage collaboration, coordination and shared accountability.

They also bring a little bit of inspiration. They motivate action because the connectedness of them, and OKRs from the top down, is directing teams. They’re bringing a natural transparency to an organization both from the top down and even across, and that’s promoting a level of shared responsibility that delivers context and purpose to the people that use them.

But there’s something we have to keep in mind, everybody: it’s time for some real talk.

OKRs are a trendy topic and have become big business. In fact, there are entire consulting firms dedicated to working with other businesses to deploy OKRs—that’s what they do. And there are even more people like me with opinions on how best to use them.

So because OKRs are trendy and a tool that’s been used to great success in a lot of businesses, it doesn’t mean it’s right for every single situation.

Do they work? Yes. But we need to ask: are they right for us?

I’m here hopefully to give you a toolbox, raise your knowledge, understanding and awareness to see and make the decision: are these things right for me and my organization, or are we using them in the appropriate way?

Because this trend, if it is in fact a trend, can lead to the slippery slope that was best illustrated by Abraham Maslow’s quote:

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

This quote refers to the law of the instrument, or Maslow’s hammer. It references an over-reliance on a familiar or favorite tool.

So just because OKRs are “the thing” doesn’t mean they fix everything. Don’t let OKRs be the hammer and think it’s the magic bullet that’s going to solve every problem.

In fact, using OKRs can be helpful, but alone, and without some background support and help—or more particularly, a robust structure of communication and know-how and buy-in and time— their full benefits can’t be realized.

So before embarking on your OKR journey, ask yourself a few key questions:

• What’s the problem we’re trying to solve with our business?
• And, better yet, make sure your problems are clearly understood and prioritized. What’s the most important thing that we need to check off the list?

With that understanding, you can select the tools that best address your specific need. If you identify communication gaps or underlying issues, you may want to fix those first before deploying an OKR.

For example, strong communication is really required to make OKRs a useful tool. So build that foundation before you build the house.

And then we can ask: Are OKRs right for us? Does this work for us and our company at this moment in time?

Perhaps your organization has a mature process for goal setting that fits well with your culture—and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can stick with it. But perhaps you can learn something from OKRs and their benefits that you can incorporate into that philosophy, rather than making a wholesale change.

And then I think what we’re going to talk most about today is: how do we make them work? That’s the trickiest question to answer. I’m going to do my best throughout the webinar to give you some ideas—some food for thought—on how we can make OKRs work well for you.

Poll #1 – How Would You Describe Your Relationship with OKRs?

Ryan Cantwell | 29:30–32:00
So with that, Cameron, we have our first poll.

Cameron | 29:30–35:00
We do. I want to hear from all of you: how would you describe your relationship with OKRs?

And the answers here to the poll question come straight from the mind of Ryan Cantwell—scary place to be. They’re fun though, which means he loves them. So they’re fantastic.

But yeah, we want to know how comfortable, essentially, you feel in your relationship with OKRs.

When I read the first one—“we’re like Batman and Robin, making goals and crushing them together”—that’s just so perfect.

And yeah, I love we have “It’s a complicated love-hate thing.” It reminds me of that status on Facebook back in the day, right? When you watched your relationship status shift to “It’s complicated.”

Ryan Cantwell | 29:30–35:00
It’s complicated. I immediately thought of the same thing, Cameron. I guess that shows we’re on the same wavelength—or maybe a similar generation.

Cameron | 29:30–35:00
That’s right. Okay, we’ve got most of our participants here have joined in, so I’ll give it a few more seconds here so you can get your answers in. I know it takes a little bit to read through them.

But essentially, the top is you feel great using OKRs, and the bottom is you feel terrible using OKRs, in terms of your comfort level.

I’m going to close this down in five, four, three, two and one. And let’s share the results.

Aha! Look at this.

Ryan Cantwell | 29:30–35:00
Yeah, anything surprise you here?

Cameron | 29:30–35:00
Not necessarily. I think I would have expected just to hear “It’s a new relationship,” like we’re maybe experimenting a little bit ourselves and trying things out.

And then the second being “acquaintances,” like we’re familiar but okay.

And I like that Evan says it’s a pretty decent bell curve here, and he’s right.

Ryan Cantwell | 29:30–35:00
Yeah, it really is. Look at that.

Cameron | 29:30–35:00
That is true. That’s amazing. Yeah, and almost precisely the answers at the top and bottom are exact: two and two.

Ryan Cantwell | 29:30–35:00
I’ve got two of you who are Batman and Robin…

Cameron | 29:30–35:00
And the “It’s complicated.”

Ryan Cantwell | 29:30–35:00
But I would say this is about what I would have expected. I couldn’t have scripted it better myself.

This is really good as we look ahead and go forward with our topics. Those of you who are considering this to be a new relationship and you’re getting used to the idea—we’re going to look at some ideas and how best to maybe take the next step in that relationship. Like, how can we go from “It’s complicated” to “committed,” sort of thing, for sure.

Cameron | 29:30–35:00
Relationship, that’s right. All right, I’m going to stop sharing and we can move on.

Big Idea #1 – Alignment, Communication & The Outcome Tree

Ryan Cantwell | 35:00–44:00
Cool. All right, thank you, Cameron.

So let’s take a look at our first big idea, everybody. Now for our first two truths and a lie as we go along. I want you, as you see slides that look like this one, to see if you can pick out which is which.

Big Idea Number One: OKRs help an organization achieve alignment.

And just like anything else, OKRs need a “why.” This is where the context for achieving your objective comes from—the “why.”

Imagine this: it’s like watching children play with blocks. They build with no clear purpose and the end state is a jumbled kind of thing that’s likely to topple over as soon as people walk away.

But what if we simply told them, “Hey, specifically build a skyscraper,” or “Build a base that is larger than the top.” Give them that direction. And better yet, what if we told them, “Your goal is to build a skyscraper that can stand on its own, and if you do, everybody gets a treat.”

Ah, okay. So the result might actually look like a tower instead of that messy thing.

If there’s confusion about an objective or the underlying reason for achieving it, or it’s not well understood, the goal is going to be really difficult to accomplish.

Take the children playing with blocks example. What if I walked up to a group of five-year-olds and said, “Okay, build the Burj Khalifa.” They’d look at me like I had two heads. Maybe one kid knows what that is, but others might not. And confusion ensues.

Now their goal—building a tower that stands on its own—isn’t really well understood. In these situations, our teams are going to lose motivation or achieve a goal they don’t really understand. They don’t know what they’re shooting at, and their investment isn’t there.

That’s where communication is key. It’s not good enough to tell people “why” once. In fact, take the statistic you see as proof: communication is everything when it comes to OKRs.

The most successful companies, in fact, have a 28% higher communication intensity—not just in how often they say it, but also the channels they use to say it.

And it needs to be repeated and reinforced with rigor. This is where leaders need to be invested, as they play a massive part in enabling communication and, in fact, communicating it themselves.

But you know who else plays a big role in motivating teams? The product manager. That’s what we have to do.

Product managers have so many relationships, and it’s up to us to communicate the “why” at every possible opportunity. We need to understand it and articulate it. We see the big picture and the tactical at the same time, and it’s up to us to help others see it, to connect the dots.

To do that—aligning the organization—this is how the Productside does it, and hopefully this is something you all can use to your advantage as well.

I want to introduce the Productside Outcome Tree. This is a simple tool that will give you a way to connect the dots, find your “why” and articulate OKRs that motivate everyone—from the top leaders to the developers that generate the outputs.

The outcome tree kind of works like this from a high level:

• Start by identifying a business outcome at the top. This is the goal your business is trying to achieve.
• Then you define your product outcome. You have a little more control over that. What are we trying to do to the user through our product? What outcome or result does our product deliver to that customer?
• Once we understand that, we ask: How might we deliver this product outcome? What solutions will we develop to do it? What features can we develop that will move the product outcome needle?

And it all links together. The outputs from the bottom—up to the product outcomes we want to achieve—all the way up to the business goal that we’re striving for. It’s all very clearly connected from the top down. And it’s the connections that define our “why.”

So let’s put it together and take a look at how this works.

We have: “Okay, you’re maybe thinking, ‘So what, Ryan? How does the outcome tree help me with OKRs?’” This is how I prefer to visualize things—that’s the beauty of the outcome tree. It’s flexible.

An objective is another way to state an outcome. OKR is another way to state an outcome. The key results become an extension of that by measuring progress towards achieving our objective—“as measured by…”

What you see here is how I would visualize that relationship between objectives and key results—and then how we track progress towards achieving those objectives along the way.

So whether we’re talking about OKRs or the outcome tree, it’s important to emphasize that we need to measure progress—and that progress only matters if it’s outcome-based.

Game #1 – Two Truths & One Lie on Alignment (Plus Outcome Tree Q&A)

Ryan Cantwell | 44:00–47:00
So let’s put it all together with an example so we see how the visual works.

Let’s put it together with a fun example, in fact. If you’re like me, your childhood included regular viewing of a certain coyote trying to capture a clever road runner in the American Southwest.

Episode after episode, the coyote went about this fruitless task with help from the Acme Company—makers of anvils and rockets and roller skates and other devices that often backfire, explode or just flat-out don’t work.

But let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a new product manager at the Acme Company. Imagine that we were just hired and we need to show some results.

First, we need to understand our customer, Mr. Wile E. Coyote, and his problems. He needs to capture his dinner.

Second, we go talk to our leaders and we gain understanding of our business objectives. They tell us, “We need to increase rocket division revenue by 10 percent.”

That’s our business outcome. Then we list a couple of key results that will allow us to track progress towards that goal. We see that connection.

Next, we go look at our product line and identify outcomes we want to create for our user—the coyote. Increase target accuracy of rockets by 33 percent. We measure that outcome through an increase in customer satisfaction and maybe feature usage depth as well, because we want specific user behavior changes to occur. The coyote needs to use the targeting system. We don’t know that it’s working unless he actually uses it—which is what we try to measure.

That indicates to us progress towards achieving that product objective.

Finally, once we have that understanding and measures in place, we define our outputs: what features will we develop to drive the product outcome which, in turn, achieves the business outcome that we want.

So you can see how everything comes together through a silly example like this: outputs, product objectives, business objectives—it all comes together. And OKRs are a means for us to do that. OKRs give us that vehicle to track the particular outcomes that we want to achieve.

So OKRs, if I put the summary together, are about alignment. And that alignment isn’t automatic. Communication and context and the “why” behind your objectives are paramount.

Make sure OKRs—if you use them, and you’re early in that relationship stage—are linked and cascaded from the top down. Ensure there is a lot of transparency in this process, too. Transparency and communication go hand in hand.

And definitely celebrate those collaborative moments or those creative moments toward achieving outcomes. That’s really what we want. We should be high-fiving those who are taking the steps and inspiring others to reach for those objectives as well.

Ryan Cantwell | 47:00–49:00
So with that, Cameron, it’s our first time to play the game. Who’s ready to play Two Truths and a Lie?

Let’s do it. Everybody take a look at these three things; see if you can identify the lie.

Cameron | 47:00–49:00
All right, here we go. This will be in the form of a poll, which I will launch now. Tell us—we want them to identify the lie, right?

Ryan Cantwell | 47:00–49:00
Identify the lie, yes. So choose the lie.

Cameron | 47:00–49:00
Okay, got a lot of answers coming in quick.

We’ve got 60 percent participation. Get a few more of you here and then we will reveal what the lie is. And we do have close to a full agreement on it, but not a hundred percent.

All right, I’m going to close the poll here shortly in about five, four, three, two and one. Let me share the results.

Aha, look at that.

Ryan Cantwell | 47:00–49:00
Yes, 92 percent of you correctly identified the lie. That is the lie: “OKRs are like a work plan; it tells you everything you should do.”

Not exactly. It’s a little more aspirational than that. It’s not the tactics that go into executing the plan or the strategy; it’s more about what is the end-state objective, and then how we measure our progress to that goal.

So definitely, “Regular and rigorous communication is key if we’re doing OKRs” is a truth—communicate, communicate, communicate.

Also: “OKRs work best when they link and cascade.” There needs to be that transparency and connection—that’s where the outcome tree helps. It’s helping us define how things connect to one another. OKRs definitely work best when connection happens. That’s kind of a bit of their secret sauce.

Cameron | 47:00–49:00
Ryan, we have a quick question. I’m going to stop sharing the poll. Thank you for participating, everyone.

We have a question from Richard about the outcome tree. He says: “Why in the outcome tree did you describe features as outputs, and how do you measure—is it from customer feedback?”

Ryan Cantwell | 47:00–49:00
Aha, great question, Richard. So in the outcome tree, I describe features as outputs because outputs by their definition are the activity or the work that we do that creates a result—the outcome.

The output—developing a feature—is what I mean when I say “feature.” The feature should have a tangible outcome; there is an outcome linked to it. I think that’s kind of what you’re picking up on there.

But I will say the activity—and I think we’re going to talk about this a little bit next, too—so Richard, I don’t want to completely go deep because I’m going to really define the difference between outcomes and outputs next.

Because look at this: this is what we do next.

Big Idea #2 – Outcomes vs Outputs, Dinner Party Example & KPIs vs OKRs

Ryan Cantwell | 49:00–58:00
Our second two truths and a lie—big idea number two: OKRs are outcome-focused.

To help drive this definition, everyone, I want to use another example. I want us to all pretend for a moment that we are hosting a dinner party.

You’ve been preparing for days. You have recipes, ingredients, a killer playlist, and maybe a game or two to play with your guests. The meal prep’s all done. The night of the party your guests arrive, festivities kick off.

After the party ends, you sit down and do some analysis and answer the question: “Was my dinner party a success?”

Well, yeah. And I’ve got to admit, everybody—we are product managers, after all. My wife always rolls her eyes when I want to make a spreadsheet for something. I have to ask the question, right?

So we start by making a list. I do that by completing the sentence: “How might we measure the success of the dinner party?”

So I’ve learned that about seven or eight things, and I start sorting them into columns: “Ah, these are outcomes; these are outputs.”

And I distinguish the difference between these two things by asking: “Is this a result—an outcome—or was this part of the work of preparing or hosting—an output?”

As the list takes shape, things start to sound like this:

My outputs:

• How many courses were served?
• Was the food served hot?
• Did the guests have conversation?
• Was the meal served on time?

If I ask any of those questions, it’s not really indicating an outcome. Those would be like feature development, Richard, if we were developing a feature:

• How many features did I develop?
• Did I release it on time?
• Did we release it to the right group of people?

It’s not telling me a lot. It’s just telling me I did the work. But I don’t care only if I did the work. The work is important, yes—we need outputs, we need to develop features—but what’s more important are the outcomes, the results of my work.

Now I have my outcomes—the metrics that matter. For example:

• Did the party guests enjoy themselves?
• Are they satisfied with the food and did they take a second serving?
• Would they accept an invitation back if I had another dinner party in the future?

Because what if I said, “I’m measuring the temperature of the meal.” What if they didn’t care if it was hot? What if I served the finest dish in the world but I got it wrong and added too much salt? I said, “I served it”—I didn’t say how good it tasted or how happy the guests were with it.

That’s the difference.

So outcomes are the metrics that matter. Let’s build some further definition in context relative to OKRs.

Here you see some inputs of the words inputs, outputs, outcomes and impact. They’re all important things, but relative to OKRs, the objective centers us around outcomes—the results we want to create for our end users and for the business.

See our star there by “outcomes.” The key results measure impact toward achieving an outcome—the progress we are making towards the objective.

The inputs and outputs are like doing the work:

• What are we putting in—what resources?
• What is the thing that comes out at the end?

That’s good—we need that to then create outcomes and impact.

Ryan Cantwell | 49:00–58:00
I see a question, Cameron. I want to hit it right away: “What’s the difference between KPIs and OKRs?”

I’m going to be quick about this one—or try to, at least.

A KPI is a metric that matters to you, your business and/or your product. That’s it. It is just an important metric that you track to say, “Are we doing well here?”

It’s related to OKRs. We use a KPI, in fact, to track our progress toward achieving an objective. It becomes kind of a part of—maybe some key results are KPIs. But key results of the OKR relate very particularly to the objective of that OKR.

A KPI: there’s fewer of them, and often they are just the ones that are most important to us. And maybe they might not be squarely linked to a specific objective; it maybe is like a health KPI for your product, like:

• “Are we still growing?”
• “Is there anything going wrong here that we need to problem-solve for?”

You maybe have some KPIs like that. It’s still a metric that matters—hopefully outcome-focused in and of itself.

Cameron | 49:00–58:00
And there is some difference. So KPI—it can be part of an OKR sometimes; it’s different or separate from your OKRs.

Ryan Cantwell | 49:00–58:00
Thank you, Tom, in chat: your key results should help you define KPIs. They do. They direct you towards that metric that is important. Remember “key”—the word “key” in KPI is key. It’s telling us what is important. That’s why we use KPIs.

I think in a lot of cases, a lot of people could consider them to almost be the same. But to your point, the idea of the KPI is to attach it to that objective—right? Am I saying that correctly? Am I making sense?

Cameron | 49:00–58:00
No, I think that’s right, because KPIs can get you focused on outputs—is I think what we’re kind of saying, right? They can get you going down the wrong road at times, where a key result essentially can be a KPI but it’s more focused and driving you towards the outcome.

Ryan Cantwell | 49:00–58:00
Yep. Very good.

So let’s just look at a quick example here of the difference between maybe an output-focused OKR and an outcome-focused OKR—kind of like the do’s and don’ts.

Notice how the output-based OKR is not really a result. There’s nothing there; it’s all about activities. The outcome-focused OKR is different: the objective is very aspirational and motivates us toward action—maybe delivering a great experience, that’s what we want.

And the key result is aligned to track progress in the outcome-based example towards achieving that objective.

So as you use OKRs, everybody, ask yourself the question: Is this an activity or is it a result? If it’s an activity, it’s an output. Switch the conversation by challenging yourselves and others: What will finishing this task do for my user? And that’s how we get closer to an outcome in that regard.

By using OKRs—and because they center us around outcomes—outcomes matter and they drive focus. OKRs drive focus toward them, if we do them correctly. It’s preventing us and our teams from doing work for the sake of doing work—the dreaded feature factory that just churns out feature upon feature with no real purpose.

OKRs help us maintain focus on our customer and give us a clear and motivating vision to anchor against. That’s what an OKR is good at.

Game #2 – Two Truths & One Lie on Outcomes (Plus Questions)

Ryan Cantwell | 58:00–65:00
All right, so let’s play another quick game, Cameron.

Cameron | 58:00–65:00
Awesome. All right, game time number two: identify the lie.

“OKRs are just another way to articulate an outcome.”

“Outputs get in the way of achieving an outcome.”

“There are different types of outcomes: business and product.”

Which is the lie?

We have some more diverse results on this one.

All right, give everyone a chance to answer here.

All right, I’m going to close this poll in just a few seconds here. Get your answers in in five, four, three, two and one. And I will share the results.

Ryan Cantwell | 58:00–65:00
Look at this—there is more diversity. So, the lie, everybody, was: “Outputs get in the way of achieving outcomes.”

You can’t have one without the other. You need outputs. We have to have them. We need to create these outputs to achieve our outcomes. They are connected, but what we measure and where we focus is on the outcomes as product people, because we want to measure what we’re doing to the user.

We want positive ways to measure engagement.

I saw a question from Roberto: “Is Net Promoter Score an example of a key outcome?”

Okay, so Net Promoter Score—it could be a KPI, in fact, because it’s telling you satisfaction. It’s a little more broad, though. NPS isn’t maybe measuring a specific thing in my product or my feature; it’s looking more at broad interactions across the company. But yeah, it can be a KPI, and it could be a key result that we track satisfaction toward, to achieve a particular outcome. So we can use it that way, Roberto.

Cameron | 58:00–65:00
So, but it is not a key outcome, to his question.

Ryan Cantwell | 58:00–65:00
So I guess it depends. Maybe it’s not the overarching outcome in and of itself. Maybe we want to drive a specific user behavior—if it’s a product outcome—and it’s hard to correlate that to: “All right, if I measure this thing, what is that doing?”

So we want to track behavior. A business outcome—this is going to lead me to one of the three answers here—there are different types of outcomes.

There are business outcomes: is our business succeeding? These are tangible measures of business performance: is revenue going up, are we profitable, are we seeing reduction in cost or churn?

There are product outcomes: what are we doing for the user?

Relative to our first example: “OKRs are a way to articulate an outcome.” It’s a way to express an outcome in a way that we can measure: objectives and key results. It’s just one way we can talk about it.

Big Idea #3 – OKRs and Performance Management (And Why That’s a Lie)

Ryan Cantwell | 65:00–73:00
Finally, big idea number three, everybody, in our two truths and a lie series. Let’s explore this third one: Performance Management.

“OKRs can be used as a personal performance management tool.” I’ve seen them used this way before.

As we consider OKRs, we must be clear: What are we using them for? Are we trying to use them across different use cases? If we do, that might blur lines.

I want to define quickly: this is what OKRs are.

They focus on company and product-related goals more often than not. They center us around an outcome, as we just learned—maybe, have I mentioned that before, Cameron? A few times.

They align and inspire teams while promoting an environment of collaboration and creativity. And it’s something that is very adaptable, in fact, allowing us to celebrate this kind of culture of experimentation and iteration in our workplace.

Conversely, personal performance management is a very individual thing, with goals and aspirations that are separate from the business and the product. They’re yours.

It’s about how we apply our own skills and inherent strengths that we bring to our team, and call out opportunities we have to develop and grow.

So personal performance tracks and celebrates our strengths and helps provide a path for that personal development that we want.

The metrics we select are aligned with our personal goals, not the company’s goals necessarily. OKRs don’t consider those personal hopes. We can’t apply a formula to personal performance either. It’s naturally nonlinear.

The right way to develop is through continuous feedback from your manager, your peers, direct reports or other stakeholders.

Finally, it can be difficult to correlate personal performance to business success. Often business success is the result of many people and teams and systems. It’s hard to attribute it to an individual overall.

So it’s here where I tip my hand: “OKRs as a personal performance management tool” is the lie, everybody.

When OKRs are used as a personal performance tool, they can overwhelm individuals with red tape, promote feelings of a loss of control. OKRs need to sync teams, not work in the opposite direction.

An individual may feel like they have no control over a big objective or larger team-related goal. By their nature, OKRs are aspirational. It can give you that helpless, demotivating feeling, because others may be very involved in helping achieve that thing and you can’t control them.

Maybe they create many unnecessary check-ins or report-outs and updates for these individuals, and you have to ask yourself, “Okay, when are we doing the actual work if this is the way we’re operating?”

It may even lower your standards because individuals feel overwhelmed. They’re not going to push—or maybe they do push to lower the standards. That aspirational nature of the OKR gets tamped down.

Cameron | 65:00–73:00
He says if you try to use OKRs as a means of personal performance, you cause people to set less ambitious OKRs.

Ryan Cantwell | 65:00–73:00
Yeah, I’ve heard it called the sandbag effect—people start sandbagging a little bit, where you start to set more reachable or easier goals. It’s kind of taking away from it.

Personal growth is then left out as a key component, if we’re using OKRs that way—which it needs to be for personal performance. Personal growth and development needs to be something, but it’s something different.

Because everybody’s unique, with their own aspirations, their own developmental needs. And how can an OKR—which is team-based—meet the needs of every individual? That’s what it comes down to.

I just want to cite Spotify as an organization that very famously tried this. They tried to use OKRs for personal performance management and they ditched it in 2013. There are some writings out there on this.

They cited using OKRs as a personal performance management tool as slowing them down, not adding any value. It was focusing the individual too much on the “how” and distracting them from the “why.”

Remember we talked about the why as being an important thing.

So as you consider using OKRs, this is just a little bit of advice: make sure we’re tracking business success and personal performance separately. Those are two separate processes.

Do this by clearly defining the difference with your leaders and setting expectations with your teams. OKRs are about the team and the business. Don’t go beyond that and try to fit square pegs in round holes. Remember, it’s not the hammer to solve all problems.

Personal performance, again, is all about you: How will you leverage your strengths and develop your weaknesses to meet your goals—your goals—and then how do those goals align with the business’s needs? There is alignment there, but it’s different.

Game #3 – Two Truths & One Lie on Performance & OKRs

Ryan Cantwell | 73:00–78:00
So our final Two Truths and a Lie game, Cameron. Let’s get it up here and see if everybody can pick it out.

Number three: can you correctly identify the lie?

• Performance evaluations should be based on feedback from peers, managers and other collaborators.
• OKRs are about the company and team achieving a goal, not personal performance.
• Individuals should be disciplined when an OKR target is missed.

Which is the lie?

Cameron | 73:00–78:00
There’s a little more consensus on this one than we had on the last one. This one’s a little on the nose.

So we’ll give it about 30 more seconds or so here—maybe not even that long. We have people answering here pretty quick.

All right, give it about five, four, three, two and one, and I will end the poll and share the results.

Ryan Cantwell | 73:00–78:00
Look at this—well done, everybody. I love it.

“Individuals should be disciplined when an OKR target is missed” — absolutely not. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about motivating the team, not discouraging them or saying, “You, it’s your fault.” No. We don’t want to do that.

OKRs are meant to inspire and give us motivation.

Our middle option there, we had a couple of votes: “OKRs are about the company and team achieving a goal, not personal performance.” That is true. It’s not about personal performance; it’s about the company and the team. That’s what an OKR should focus on. That’s what we’re looking for.

Product Management Starter Pack & Productside Playbook

Ryan Cantwell | 78:00–80:00
So let’s look at this. We had the big reveal—I’ll kind of do it again. OKRs do a lot of things well, everybody. They are a wonderful tool.

If you’re in this in-between of where you want to start using them, be very deliberate. Learn, educate yourself. See how we can apply them to our organization. Ask yourself the tough questions about why: Why do we need these? How could they help us? What gaps do we have? Any underlying things?

Because they do help us align teams, break down silos, create clear communication. And they center us around outcomes—those metrics that matter.

Can they be used as a performance management tool, Cameron?

Cameron | 78:00–80:00
It’s a lie.

Ryan Cantwell | 78:00–80:00
It’s a lie. We don’t want to use them as a performance management tool, because that needs to be a separate thing. Remember the individual—it’s not about them when we talk about OKRs. We want to separate those things very clearly, draw the lines in the sand, if you will.

Cameron | 80:00–84:00
Awesome. So Ryan, with that, I don’t see any questions in Q&A. I’ll give it a—we’ll give it last call if anybody has anything that’s on your mind you’d like to put up now.

Even if you have to drop off, we understand that many people do. We will get you that link to the group in the chat.

But yes, if you have questions and if you have to drop off, we can get those questions answered later if need be. So please feel free to share or ask those questions.

I want to also share our special offer here: we do have a Product Management Starter Pack, which talks a great deal about outcomes and strategy and can get you and your organization aligned to make sure you’re creating the right outcomes and aiming toward those outcomes to get towards the OKRs—the right OKRs—and creating the objectives you want.

I’m going to share the link for that. It is absolutely free, and it’s three free plays out of our brand new Productside Playbook, which just came out about two weeks ago. It’s a Playbook full of 20-plus “plays,” as we call them, which are really guides and templates to help you make the right decisions.

And not just you; it’s really for your team. That’s why we called it the Playbook—it’s meant for a team. So please take advantage of that, get that for free, get started on your outcome journey here, and create the right OKRs.

Upcoming Trainings, Final Q&A & Closing Remarks

Cameron | 84:00–90:00
Beyond that, we have one other thing we’d like to share, if you could go on to the next slide, Ryan, and that is we do have a couple classes coming up.

These are just our two most upcoming classes, but we have Agile Product Management with Dean Peters and Digital Product Management with Bill, and you can enroll in either of those courses. We have far more than that happening throughout the year—please check those out.

These are live trainings. These are not pre-recorded or anything like that. These are live trainings where you get to meet with the instructors, like Ryan, and have these incredible and engaging sessions.

Ryan Cantwell | 84:00–90:00
Yeah, I just want to give honorable mention too, Cameron. If anybody’s in the Chicagoland or Madison–Milwaukee, Wisconsin area, there’s an in-person class happening in Brookfield, Wisconsin. It’s coming up at the end of August. So make sure to check that one out.

We’ve got a lot of cool and exciting things going on.

Cameron | 84:00–90:00
And we do have a few minutes here. Any further questions before we conclude?

I have one for you, Ryan, that I wanted to ask. Should objectives be a metric? That’s something that I think has been confusing to people at times. I’ve heard that before and I wanted to ask: should objectives be a metric?

Ryan Cantwell | 84:00–90:00
My opinion says no.

Objectives themselves—I would say objectives themselves are a little more, like I said, aspirational in nature, reflective of an end state. They’re kind of more meant to motivate and inspire than just be a simple metric: “Okay, we’re going to try to do this thing.”

That’s what the key results are for. The key results are the metrics. They tell us what progress we’re making towards achieving that objective. That’s how I interpret it.

Cameron | 84:00–90:00
That’s fair. And on the flip side of that, what happens when an objective is almost too aspirational? Because I’ve heard that as well.

Ryan Cantwell | 84:00–90:00
Oh my gosh, yeah. Many of you here may be facing an issue like that. I know I’ve seen that happen in business before, where people title “stretch goals” or these things that are like—it’s almost demotivating to see something that says, “How on earth are we ever going to do that?”

So it does take some care as we’re looking at these things. We don’t want to pick something that’s maybe unrealistic.

Like, “We’re going to set up an encampment on Jupiter.” Hold on; it’s not even possible—start with Mars.

We need to, as we’re building objectives, ask: are we going a little far? What are the boundaries? Within our mission, our vision, our corporate culture and our expertise and who we aspire to be as an organization—those things help guide what might be unrealistic or out of scope.

Cameron | 84:00–90:00
Awesome. Any further questions before we wrap up here?

Thank you all for joining us today. We appreciate you taking the time. I know it’s an hour out of your day—we really, really appreciate it.

We have the end-of-webinar survey, so please fill that out, let us know how we’re doing. If you, again, have any last-minute questions, drop them in the chat or drop them in the Q&A.

We will be sending out a video—a recording of this—to all the registrants, so please look out for that as well.

So thank you for your time and, yeah, I guess we’ll drop off.

Ryan Cantwell | 84:00–90:00
All right. Thank you, Cameron. Thank you, everybody. It was great to see you all here.

Cameron | 84:00–90:00
All right. Thanks, Ryan. Thank you, everyone.