I’m going to put it out there……Position Descriptions annoy me. Especially those that are steeped in confusing, complicated, long corporate language that, once finished reading, leave you still wondering what on earth the role actually involves. I think sometimes people worry that stating something plainly signifies less intelligence on the writer’s part.
One of the other things that annoys me about Position Descriptions is the lack of connection to overall business objectives, which by the way, are usually constantly changing as the organisation respond to new challenges or changes in the market.
Traditionally, the Position Description is reviewed when you sign your contract and maybe (if you’re lucky) reviewed on your first day. Thereafter, the PD is left in a person’s bottom drawer only to be pulled out if there’s a performance issue.
In between times, it’s unlikely to be referred to and almost becomes obsolete.
Previously, I’ve argued that a good PD (read: without jargon and straight-to-the-point) should become a roadmap for the employee to help navigate the direction in which they are heading and what their overall objective is. This was a better approach. But still not perfect.
Until I discovered OKRs. Objectives and Key Results, that is.
OKRs provide a framework for aligning individual activity to business objectives. The objective is qualitative and the key results are quantitative. The two questions that help frame up your OKRs are:
Objective:
What do you want to accomplish? This is the big goal you’re setting out to achieve and is your objective.
Key Results:
How are you going to achieve this? These are the key results that measure progress towards the objective.
The beauty of the OKR system is that they can be systematically applied from the top down through the organisation. For example, the objective set by the Board or Senior Leadership team might be to increase market share by 15%.
This is communicated with the business and each business unit, manager, employee adopts their own OKRs that align with the overall business strategy.
So, if you were to use the above example and apply this to a marketing department, their objective might be:
To create marketing strategy targeting competitors’ customers.
Key results might be:
- Increase leads for new-to-business customers by 10%
- Create lead nurturing campaign to ensure less than 5% drop off
- Deliver a new product campaign that increases website sales by 7%
A couple of points to make clear at this juncture. OKRs need to be reviewed regularly. Mostly likely quarterly, in line with the business management rhythm.
In addition, the individual employee must have input into their OKRs. As with anything worthwhile, people need to be ‘in on the action’ and will have more commitment to the OKRs if they feel like they had input on how they could contribute to the company’s objective.
What about KPIs, I hear you say?!? These can still be useful, provided they are updated regularly to align with the business. I have found that often KPIs are better utilised as Key Results in the OKR framework.
I definitely can’t lay claim to this simple and effective (genius) system. John Doerr, a computer programmer from the US studied the effectiveness of this method when he stumbled on it at Intel. He refined it further and it was introduced to Google in 1999. Later on Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg (two Google execs), said OKRs became the “simple tool that institutionalised the founders ‘think big’ ethos”.
The book where Doerr documents his story is Measure What Matters. I devoured it over the course of three nights – I highly recommend you pick it up.
Maybe in a perfect scenario, the OKR and PD could live together. When the quarterly review of the OKRs came around, wouldn’t it be great to check that the purpose and responsibilities of the role are still applicable. In growing and changing businesses, a lot can happen in three months!
What are your thoughts? Have you come across OKRs? What has been your experience?
