Culture, governance, structure and operation in environments with OKRs

OKRs are not a method. Every organization has the opportunity to create its own way of working with its OKRs. The implementation model designed must consider four fronts: culture, governance, structure and operation. We will explore each of them and briefly review how they integrate with OKRs.

1. Culture and OKRs

Yes, culture eats strategy for breakfast. The big challenge is not defining OKRs, but their implementation, operation, and day-to-day use of OKRs. This means that your OKR work model is synchronized with the knowledge, ideas, traditions and customs of your organization/team.

This means that if your organization, for example, doesn't know much about OKRs, you should avoid looking for perfect OKRs or ones that require a lot of time to design. If you have the idea that your organizational management with KPIs is more efficient, consider pilots or experiments to observe their deployment in a controlled manner.

If you have a tradition of permanent daylight saving time on Fridays, don't schedule follow-up sessions on those days. If you have the habit of meeting on Mondays to plan the week, then it's time to adjust that session to operationally plan your OKRs. Adapting to the culture is the key and although it may seem like common sense, it often ends up being the least common of the senses.

2. Government and OKRs

OKRs are designed to be used to make decisions. Leadership emerges from action plans and the data they generate. From the first step in an organization, to its full deployment, decisions need to be made, at multiple levels, on multiple aspects.

It is common to assign a specialized team that can guide the strategic adoption of OKRs and constantly look for ways to efficiently deploy them in the company. This team usually makes important decisions from upstream to downstream. It creates the conditions to insert an OKR management model into the system, which connects both worlds and gains horizontal and vertical alignment within the teams.

Design the OKR interaction model (scaling) across the company, based on the multiple operating models they have. Progressively transfer governance from this team to the multiple teams in a progressive manner and strengthen the system to support the model. Make business decisions in the Quarterly Business Review (QBR) and redirect efforts with the management team. Teach, guide and decide on business priorities. They work on the system, not on people.

3. Structure and OKRs

Without structure, method and leadership, it is not possible to change an organizational culture. Unfortunately, OKRs in a pyramidal (traditional) structure only reinforce silos. Functional areas are mutating and we have more and more bimodal or hybrid organizations (traditional/agile); which, in their process of evolution, will soon migrate towards a completely agile model.

We either adapt or die. I am clearly not talking about using agile methodologies but about being agile (in the true sense of the word). A good adoption will lead to an imminent organizational restructuring. Organizing by value chains, for the moment, is usually a better option.

Many leaders are still afraid of changing the structure. It is not a minor effort, but the method or leadership will only generate organizational acceleration and not a true transformation. OKRs are becoming that seed, which sooner or later will impact the structure. Yes, I know. OKRs are not for everyone.

4. Operation and OKRs

The way we operate influences the way we interact with OKRs. For initiatives with variable demand but predictable operation, such as HR work, it makes sense to work with flow to work models.

In environments with variable demand and predictable and variable work fluctuations, such as support or customer service activities, having a team of specialists is the most suitable. For technological activities, comprehensive planning or continuous improvement, it makes sense to work with N2N teams (sometimes called Tribes, trains or value chains).

Operations, maintenance, performance or accounting teams take better advantage in self-organized teams. Depending on the operating model, we will interact more or less with the system. The frequency of integration, monitoring, involvement, methodological flexibility, among other aspects, will be impacted by the way we do things.

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Integrating an OKR model into an organization is a challenge in itself. We need to look at multiple angles to create an organizational framework aligned with the needs of the business.

If you want to learn more about the many ways to do this, we invite you to take part in our Lean OKR training courses, which will give you the foundation to successfully adopt OKRs at the team or value chain level.