Earlier in March, our COO, Aaron McKenna, was an expert panellist on “The High-Impact Strategy Playbook: A Blueprint for Strategic Clarity”, a webinar hosted by OKR Mentors, where we are Collective Members and Accredited Trainers. The session was designed to support the launch of the playbook of the same name, co-authored by Aaron and five other international OKR Experts; Daniel Montgomery, Tristan Pelloux, Thomas Dusart, Francesca Nardocci, and hosted by Francesco Redolfi. The panel featured experts from across the the USA, UK and Central Europe, offering diverse global perspectives on strategy execution and OKRs.
Hear Our Expert Advice
Here are some of Aaron’s key insights from the discussion:
Q: What are some of the biggest mistakes organisations make when implementing OKRs without a solid strategy?
Not getting the right or potential value out of their OKRs. Without a solid strategy, OKRs can become disconnected from the organisation’s vision and long-term objectives, which means that the OKRs can feel like a checkbox exercise, transactional and not transformative, as OKRs can and should be. During an OKR Assessment for a client recently, one respondent went as far to describe the OKRs as mercenary in some cases. I see this quite often when organisations get OKRs mixed up with Business as Usual (BAU) work or their KPIs.
Q: What are some of the best practices for ensuring strategy communication leads to real organisational buy-in?
Treat your people and teams like children! Not in a patronising sense – humans remember, love and are inspired by stories – not spreadsheets or targets or numbers. So we need to learn to get good at telling stories, just as we do with children. Weaving the strategy into a compelling story that resonates with people can help illustrate the positive outcomes and value the strategy will bring.
A colleague of mine introduced me to how he applied the SUCCESs Model from Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and applied it to help us refine strategies so that they persist. We used this to make sure that when we communicated our strategy it was Simple to understand, had an element of surprise that was Unexpected, it was Concrete and action orientated, was Credible, tied into the Emotional side of humans articulating the what’s in it for me (WIIFM) and crafted as a Story.
In addition, don’t underestimate the power of involvement and feedback. Involving employees in the strategy definition process and leaving room for feedback can significantly increase buy-in. Treat your strategy as a series of revolving doors and present the strategy as a starting point for discussion.
Q: Where does artificial intelligence (AI) add the most value in the strategy refinement and definition process?
This is a huge topic that we can’t possibly cover in this webinar!
In my opinion, AI can be a very valuable strategic tool and a thought partner but not a substitute for human judgement, passion, inspiration and creativity. Strategy is about humans inspiring humans.
Think about any of the great, inspiring speeches you might have heard:
- Could AI have inspired Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream speech” to change a nation?
- Could AI have excited a nation as JFK did when he declared “we chose to go to the Moon”?
- Could AI have inspired a generation with the famous “I want to put a ding in the universe” in the way that Steve Jobs did at Stanford University in 2005?
The answer to those three is probably not.
Day to day, I use internal AI tools at the start of an OKR engagement to help inspire leaders to show them what their strategy and OKRs “could” look like using a series of prompts that draws on publicly available information from their organisation and competitors. This is a great way to kick off executive workshops to help them crystallise what good looks like before applying a similar approach to the real problems to solve.
Q: One piece of advice for organisations looking to improve their strategy execution?
Start with a pilot team or project and build a small, cross functional team focused on a particular OKR or Key Result depending on the size of the organisation. Get this team working in an agile way, using small batch sizes and short feedback cycles to rapidly test and learn to validate the best approach for your organisation. It’s not always about doing OKR right, but about doing OKRs right for your organisation.
What About the Other Experts?
Here are some key insights from the other panelists:
- Consider a single, longer term OKR to support the long-term strategy. This helps to validate that the work that we are doing quarterly and annually is still taking us to where we want to go.
- Without a defined strategy, teams will create misaligned OKRs, leading to conflicting priorities.
- Use your reviews as an opportunity to assess the wider, external markets and PESTLE factors (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental) such as climate change and tariffs, and adjust your strategy as needed.
- The 10C’s Framework by Thomas Dusart states that a well-defined strategy is: Correct, Co-created, Constrained, Clear, Consistent, Comprehensive, Crisis-proof, Connectable, Communicated and Committed.
- How do Values, Purpose, Mission and Vision fit in?:
- Values — The foundational beliefs that define who you are as an organisation.
- Purpose — The specific reason your organisation exists
- Mission — The roadmap to achieve the purpose, influenced by shared values.
- Vision — The destination, a visual representation of the impact of fulfilling the mission.
- The Minimal Viable Strategy by Daniel Montgomery helps organisations to answer:
- Who are we?
- How is the landscape changing?
- What game do we want to play?
- What capabilities do we need?
- By answering this it can help you to focus in on what matters right now.
- How to leverage AI from other experts – consider asking each leader to summarise the organisation strategy into 100 words. From this, use an organisation approved AI chat bot to analyse the responses, saving time and exposing insights that may not have been obvious.
One final piece of advice from each expert:
- Tristan: Ensure that your strategy is well defined before doing anything else
- Daniel: Democratize the future – don’t rely on only the opinions and predictions of experts to help you define the future. Engage with the market, community and teams to help gain a broader picture.
- Francesca: Stay-tuned to what is happening in the world and be prepared to pivot. Additionally, ensure that you have a structured decision-making process embedded.
- Aaron: Use pilots with an agile approach – see his answer above.
- Thomas: Seek help from Strategy and OKR experts who have been through this before.
