The Practical Planning Company

[Julia Kozub]

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Towards the end of each year I work with a number of companies on planning for the year ahead. This is our opportunity to establish an aligned view of WHY we do things, HOW we do things and WHAT we do. There is something special about working as part of a team that has clarity on these things and so we invest some solid time in trying to get to that point.

My preference (and I know there are many other ways to do this but this is one I have found to work) is to structure things as a cascade that clarifies what the company should be doing using Mission, Values and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). I am re-posting here an article I wrote a while back as we get to the end of this year and start planning for next year.

Second, this is a framework and not an exact set of instructions. Depending on the stage of your business and the specifics of how you run it, you will likely need to adapt this framework in different ways to meet your needs. You know your business and so are best positioned to decide which aspects of this are useful for you and how to adapt them to make sure they fit. I have tried to write up the framework such that it will be easy to understand the intention of each piece which hopefully makes it easier to adapt it for your needs.

1) The Why: This is what drives those who founded the organization to want to change the world - the origin story which explains why the company exists. The description of the negative things in the current state of the world which we believe needs to be changed. X is too difficult. Y is only available to the lucky few. Z means that lots of people are unhappy. The founders of a business typically have their own 'Why' and often team members might have different 'Why' reasons. However, they can all be united by the second part...the Just Cause or Mission.

2) The Mission: this is the Just Cause (thanks Simon Sinek - I love your articulation of this) we are aligned around. The thing we are all working on in order to achieve something great. This is typically articulated in a simple statement that outlines as clearly as possible what the organization is aiming to do.

Once articulated it is how employees, customers and partners can know if they are aligning themselves with an organization that is trying to do something they care about. This might be commitment to excellence in a particular product / service or doing some kind of social good. Some famous examples:

With the supporting guidance from a clear WHY and HOW the next step is to establish WHAT we are trying to do by defining what Long Term success looks like. I prefer to start with Long Term success versus jumping to defining short-term success in order to avoid having a well oiled machine marching confidently in the wrong direction.

If we have a clear sense of what we deem to be success in 3 or 5 years it is MUCH easier to define what success looks like in the short run i.e. what piece of the longer term plan we are going to try and do first. Here is a simple set of steps to get started with Long Term OKRs:

b. Long Term Objectives: Set 3 or 4 Objectives i.e. qualitative descriptions of things the company will be trying to achieve over the medium to long term. Make sure these are consistent with our Why and How.

Tip: I would aim to make sure you have OKRs which deliver results for all 3 key stakeholders i.e. customers, shareholders and employees. Aim for 2 (maximum 3) company operational Objectives focused on achieving results for your customers and shareholders. But don't forget to set an Objective focused on what you want your company to be like for your employees. If you want to build a world class organization it really helps to articulate an Objective and measurable Key Results which demonstrate your commitment to building an amazing place for your employees.

c. Key Results: Set your (up to 5) quantitative Key Results per Objective. These are the metrics the company will use to define what success looks like for each Objective and therefore how performance can be measured. Tip: Try and keep the number of Key Results as low as is necessary to effectively measure the Objective.

When defining these Objectives I recommend borrowing from a structure recommended by Patrick Lencioni in The Advantage, where he suggests dividing the answer to the question "What must we do now?" into a single Thematic goal (the single, contemporary and qualitative rallying cry shared by all members of the team) and some Standard Operating objectives (the ongoing priorities of the organization) which we need to drive change in. Trying to do more than one Thematic OKR can be very challenging for an organization to rally around.

NOTE: Each team Objective should map to a company level Key Result for either the Short Term or Long Term (often important since you can be on track to achieve ST OKRs while being off track for LT OKRs). The Goal is for a team to make a significant impact on the success of company Key Results so this mapping is a good way to make sure this is the case.

Irrespective of how smart the members of your Leadership Team are, the collective intelligence of the company as a whole should be significantly larger than the brain power of the few people who represent the company in the Leadership Team. When executing an OKR process you have an opportunity to harness this brain power in order to get the best possible result for your OKRs.

How? Well, different organizations achieve this involvement in different ways. However, in principle I strongly suggest you get maximum feedback at all possible stages by sharing docs for comment and having Leadership Team members bring ideas to their teams in order to cascade them across the organization for feedback.

After reading you are probably thinking that this framework is going to take serious time and effort to put in place. When taken seriously, it normally does. However, hopefully you will also find that the rest of the journey of company building is MUCH easier as a result. Once you have made this investment, it a) enables much more effective planning and alignment and b) actually saves time in the long run since you can avoid a lot of ongoing discussions about the Why, How and What, and focus on execution. Additionally, when you do need to reopen the Why, How and What you have a clear framework within which to do so.

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