I’m a big fan of setting Objectives and Key results as a regular ongoing strategic activity. It’s a comprehensive way for us to articulate our goals and the measure progress towards them.
It is something that is meant to be done on a company wide level. And is one of those things that need the support of senior leadership to be really effective. They work best when they aren’t created in isolation. And cascade down through an organization, with themes articulated appropriate to the level. Some companies create them top down, some bottom up, some back and forth.
Since they were pioneered in Tech companies like Intel and Google, sometimes people think of they as being more suitable to technology teams. But that’s not the case.
Used effectively in teams like Sales and Marketing they are a great way to align expectations and show success. But sometimes these teams avoid them because they can quite frankly sometimes be hard to set. And we are often lost in a sea of tactical data coming out of execution. It’s hard to take time out of the ongoing “battle” to strategize.
For marketing in particular it can be difficult because a lot of the strategic objectives we create come to fruition by the action of someone else. A customer purchase. A sales engagement. So it gets complicated to figure out how to define an effective way to measure a key result.
In my latest blog post I discuss why this can be challenging. And some of the things we need to take into consideration to make the challenge more doable.
>>> Head over to valueSTK blog to hear more!
What do you find challenging about setting strategic objectives? What are some of the ways that you have achieved alignment with other teams in your company on shared goals.
