Managing products of the future – Business as usual?

July 6, 2018September 10, 2018 marcabrahamLeave a comment

“Managing products of the future” came up when I was thinking of a suitable title for a piece about products that look and feel very different to most products that we see today. Products such as driverless cars and voice assistants popped into my head as examples of products that are likely to dominate our daily lives before we know it.

However, these products are here already and I’m keen to look at if and how this does affect the role and focus of product management.

Will we manage products differently when the user interface of these products changes? Do we need to think differently about our products when data becomes the main output? Will customer needs and expectations evolve? If so, how? These and other questions I will start thinking about; considering the nature of machine learning, different product scenarios and their impact on the role of the product manager.

Taken from: https://robertmerrill.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/the-future-is-already-here/

It’s easy to get swept up by the hype surrounding AI and products based on machine learning, and to start feeling pretty dystopian about the future. But how much will actually change from a product management point of view? People will continue to have specific needs and problems. As product managers, we’ll continue to look at best ways of solving these problems. Granted, the nature of people’s needs and problemx will evolve, as it has always done, but this won’t alter the problem solving and people centric nature of product management.

To illustrate this, let’s look at some AI-base products and the customer needs and problems that they’re aiming to solve: Google Photos, Sonos One and Eigen Technologies.

Google Photos

Google Photos’ strap-line is “One home for all your photos – organised and easy to find”. Over the coming months, Google Photos will roll out the following features:

Using facial recognition, Google Photos will know who’s in a picture and will offer a one-tap option to share it with the person in question – provided that this person is in your phone’s contact list, Google Photos will have learned this person’s face. If that person appears in multiple images, Google Photos will even suggest to share all of them in one go.
Automated image editing suggestions, Google Photos will suggest different corrections based on the look and quality of the image. For example, if there issues with the brightness of the image, Google Photos will automatically display a “Fix brightness” suggestion.

Taken from: https://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/google-photos-suggested-edits/

With these new features, Google Photos aim to address customer needs with regard to sharing pictures and improving image quality respectively. These needs aren’t new per se, but the ‘intelligent’ aspect of Google Photos’ approach is.

Sonos One

The Sonos One is entirely controlled by voice. The speaker works fully with Amazon Alexa, which means that if you’ve got an Amazon Alexa compatible device, you can control your Sonos sound system through Amazon Alexa. Because Alex is a native app within the Sonos platform, you don’t even need to have an external Amazon device – i.e. Echo or the Dot – installed to control your Sonos One speaker. The installation of the Alexa mobile app will be enough.

Taken from: https://uniquehunters.com/sonos-one-marries-amazons-alexa-high-end-audio-hardware-exquisite-musical-enjoyment/

The integration with the Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant is a logical next step within Sonos’ mission to “empower everyone to listen better” and makes it easier for people to control the music they listen to. Granted, the user interface of Sonos One is different to other product; it doesn’t have buttons, for example. However, it still is a product like any other in a sense that it delivers tangible value to customers by solving their music listening needs.

Eigen Technologies

“Turn your documents into data” is London and New York based Eigen Technologies’ mission statement. The company enables the mining of documents for specific data. For example, if you work for a mortgage lender and are looking to make a decision about the credit worthiness of a home, Eigen’s data extraction technology helps to quickly pull out key ‘decision inputs’ from a number of – often very lengthy – property documents.

Taken from: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2017/11/03/legal-ais-dark-horse-eigen-technologies-comes-into-the-light/

The way in which Eigen Technologies use machine learning algorithms, is ultimately to improve the speed and quality of decision making. Even though the underlying technology is based on machine learning, the outcome is very much like that of any other product: a clear user interface which shows the relevant document data that a user is interested in and needs to make decisions.

Main learning point: AI and machine learning based products will no doubt change the ways in which we interact with products and what we expect of them. However, existing examples such as Google Photos and Sonos One already show that the core of the product manager’s role will remain unchanged: building the right product for the right people and building it right!

Related links for further learning:

Michael Margolis: “user research, quick and dirty” (2)

June 27, 2018August 20, 2018 marcabrahamLeave a comment

I wrote earlier about Michael Margolis’ Startup Lab workshop, in which he teaches attendees about “User research, quick and dirty”. Michael Margolis, UX Research Partner at Google Ventures covers user research topics such as user interview types and getting to the right learnings. He also offer a number of practical tips with respect to recruiting users and how to best conduct user interviews:

Recruiting users

Margolis mentions that recruiting 5 people to get feedback from is often sufficient, especially when you’re doing usability testing. He does stress that it’s worth the effort recruiting these people selectively and carefully, as this will help generate better results and avoid wasting time. Creating a simple participant screener document or survey is a good way to recruit the ‘right’ users (see an example in Fig. 1 below).

Fig. 1 – Ethnio.io screen survey example – Taken from: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/live-intercept-remote-test/

Margolis lists a number of very helpful questions to feed into your screener document, in order to engage with the right users (and exclude those that aren’t right):

Users to include

Who do you want to want to talk to?
What exact criteria will identify the people you want to talk to?
What screening questions will you ask? (questions shouldn’t reveal “right” answers)

Users to exclude

Who do you want to want to exclude?
What exact criteria will identify the people you want to excliude?
What screening questions will you ask? (questions shouldn’t reveal “right” answers)

Conducting a user interview

Fig. 2 – Arc of a typical user interview, by Michael Margolis – Taken from: https://library.gv.com/the-gv-research-sprint-finalize-schedule-and-complete-interview-guide-day-3-b8cddb8f931d

The representation of the user interview in the form of an arc, I probably found the most helpful aspect that Margolis (see Fig. 2 above). This arc really helps in structuring an interview, identifying the appropriate sequence of activities during the interview.

Main learning point: User research doesn’t have to be complicated, super time consuming or overly expensive. A huge thanks to Michael Margolis for sharing such a wealth of very useful and practical user research insights!

Related links for further learning:

Michael Margolis: “user research, quick and dirty” (1)

June 26, 2018 marcabraham1 Comment

Why do I keep coming across businesses that struggle to engage with their (prospective) customers, to learn about their needs and behaviours? Too often for my liking, I hear comments like:

“Marc, we’re a startup, we don’t have the time and budget to do customer research!”

“I’m not allowed to talk to customers.”

“In my old place, we used to have a dedicated user research team and they’d just give me their research report on a platter, after them having spoken to users.”

It therefore felt quite timely when a colleague pointed me in the direction of Michael Margolis, UX Research Partner at Google Ventures. Back in 2013, Margolis delivered a great Startup Lab workshop in which he covered the ins and outs of “User research, quick and dirty”. The recording of the 90 minute workshop is available on YouTube and you can find Margolis’ slides here (see also Fig. 1 below).

Fig. 1 – Michael Margolis’ Startup Lab workshop: “User Research, Quick ‘n’ Dirty” – Published on 26 February 2013 on https://youtu.be/WpzmOH0hrEM

I watched Margolis’ workshop in full and these are my main takeaways:

Seeing through users’ eyes

Margolis started off his session by talking about the importance of continuously learning about users, seeing things through their eyes. In a subsequent Medium post, Margolis writes that in his experience, startups will typically use UX research to achieve one of these objectives:

Improve a process or worklflow
Better understand customer shopping habits
Evaluate concepts
Test usability
Refine a value proposition

Two types of user interviews

It’s great to hear Margolis making a distinction between two types of interviews:

Usability: A usability interview is all about learning whether users can actually use your product and achieve their goals with it. Can users do it? Can they understand it? Can they discover features?
Discovery: Discovery type user interviews tend to be more contextual, and delve more into the actual user. Who? Where? When? Why? How? All key questions to explore as part of discovery, as well as the user’s existing behaviours, goals, needs and problems.

Margolis then talks about combining the two interview types and highlight two sample questions to illustrate this combination:

“How do you do things now?”

“How do you think about these things?”

The distinction between “usability” and “discovery” isn’t just an artificial one. I love Margolis’ focus on objectives, acknowledging that objectives are likely to vary depending on the type of product, its position within the product lifecycle and the learnings that you’re looking to achieve. I’ve found – at my own peril – that it’s easy to jump straight into defining user tasks or an interview script, without thinking about your research objective and what Margolis calls “North Star questions” (see Fig. 2 below).

Fig. 2 – Michael Margolis’ 5 studies startups needs most- Taken from: https://library.gv.com/field-guide-to-ux-research-for-startups-8569114c27fb – Published on 5 May 2018

Margolis provides some very useful pointers about discovery and usability questions, which you can use to create a research plan and an interview guide:

Sample discovery questions – as suggested by Michael Margolis:

What are users’ behaviours, attitudes and expectations towards the product?
Who are the key user groups? What are their needs and behaviours?
What are the pros/cons of different designs? Why?
What are the pros/cons of competitor products?
How are people using existing/competitor products? What features are mots important and why?
What barriers hinder users from adopting <product>?

Sample usability questions – as suggested by Michael Margolis:

Can users discover feature X?
Are users able to successfully complete primary tasks? Why (not)?
Do users understand feature X? Why (not)?

In a similar vein, I believe it’s important to distinguish between problem and solution interviews. There’s a risk of your customer insights becoming muddled when you mix problem and solution interviews, especially if you alternate problem questions with solution questions.

In a problem interview, you want to find out 3 things:

Problem – What problem are you solving? For example, what are the common frustrations felt by your customers and why? How do their problems rank? Ask your customers to create a top 3 of their problems (see the problem interview script in Fig. 1 below).
Existing alternatives – What existing alternatives are out there and how does your customer perceive your competition and their differentiators? How do your customers solve their problems today?
Customer segments – Who has these problems and why? Is this a viable customer segment?

Fig. 3 – Outline of a problem interview script – Taken from: Ash Maurya – “Running Lean”

In a solution interview, you want to find out 3 things:

Early adopters – Who has this problem and why? How do we identify and engage with early adopters? (see Fig. 3 below)
Solution – How will you solve their problems? What features do you need to build as part of your solution, why?
Pricing/Revenue – What is the pricing model for your product or service? Will customers pay for it, why?

Fig. 4 – Outline of a solution interview script – Taken from: Ash Maurya – “Running Lean”

Main learning point: In his Startup Lab workshop, Michal Margolis, drops a lot of very valuable tips on how to best keep customer research quick and simple, whilst still learning the things about your customer and/or product that you’re keen to learn. So much so that Michael Margolis’ tips warrant another blog post, which I’ll share soon!

Related links for further learning:

My product management toolkit (30): giving and receiving feedback

June 24, 2018 marcabrahamLeave a comment

I’ve got many, many flaws. Taking things personally is one of them … On one hand, I’m always going to ‘expose’ myself to feedback by trying, challenging and simply ‘doing’, expecting to be challenged and to receive feedback. On the other hand, however, every time that I do receive feedback – direct or indirect – I need to make sure I pause and listen carefully, taking the feedback in fully first.

i-dont-always-take-things-personally-oh-wait-yes-i-do.jpg

For example, the other day I found myself asking “why” a lot in a discussion about a customer problem and a colleague kept saying “let’s stop overcomplicating things, let’s just keep things simple.” Guess what I felt? I took it personally and wondered why she wasn’t as keen as I was to explore the problem in a bit more detail …

It made me realise again that feedback is crucial, and particularly for us as product managers:

We’re likely to give plenty of feedback.
And we’re likely to receive a whole lot of it too.

Giving feedback

As a product manager, I often find myself giving feedback to others, either about a behaviour or something that they’ve produced – for example:

A presentation, either in the making or delivered
A product thought, idea or prototype
One of my product managers failing to collaborate effectively with their product team members
Feeding back to colleagues in the senior leadership team about their ideas or decisions

When giving feedback, I believe it’s important to:

Have a think about what you’re going to say first – Many a time I’ve made the mistake where I’d just blurt out feedback in the moment. This can be ok when interacting with certain people, especially if you’re in a trusted relationship with them. However, the risk with this ‘in the moment’ approach is that your feedback might not be well thought through or constructive … Simply writing down a few bullet points can help to think through the essence of the feedback and how to best get that across.
It’s about the person’s behaviour, not about the person – Another common pitfall can be to focus your feedback on a person instead of their behaviour. Let’s, for instance, think of a scenario where you’ve observed a colleague being late a few times. Instead of saying “Ellen, why are you always so late?”, which makes it all about Ellen as a person, you could ask: “Ellen, I’ve noticed you being late for meetings over the last two weeks, do you mind if we have a chat about why that is?”
Be specific and timely when describing the behaviour – I strongly suggest avoiding sweeping statements or being very black and white when giving feedback. For example, compare these two examples: “Paul, your product ideas haven’t been clear” versus “Paul, when you suggested ideas for a new product feature last week, I missed detail about what the feature would entail and the assumed customer value the feature would bring.” In the latter example, the feedback provided is specific and offers a good starting point for conversation. Asking for permission in the form of “May I give you feedback?” can also be a friendly way to start the conversation.
Describe the (emotional) impact the behaviour had on you – When making your feedback specific, it helps to describe the impact the person’s behaviour has had on you. I think it’s important to steer clear of statements like “Richard, your lack of decision making in the last prioritisation conversation was frustrating for lots of people in the team” – which feels very broad brush and not fair on the recipient of your feedback since he/she won’t be able to clarify with the people you claim to be speaking on behalf of. Instead, I suggest saying something along the lines of “Richard, your lack of decision making in the last prioritisation conversation made me feel directionless, as I don’t know how to best proceed from here.”
Consider the “S-B-I” framework – In essence, I strongly recommend looking at the “Situation, Behaviour, Impact” (‘S-B-I’) framework, as it offers a nice way of framing the feedback that you’re giving (see Fig. 1 below).

Fig. 1 – Situation, Behaviour, Impact framework – Taken from: https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/hr-pipeline-a-quick-win-to-improve-your-talent-development-process/

Receiving feedback

Going back to my earlier admission about take things personally, the way in which I receive feedback is critical for me. I’ve found that it can be easy to feel completely floored by the feedback received, instead of treating the feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve. Without saying that I find receiving feedback easy, I’ve learned to (pro) actively ask for feedback and guidance.

When receiving feedback, I believe it’s important to:

Listen with the intent to understand, not to respond – If you’re anything like me, i.e. not super comfortable with asking people for feedback, your initial response might well be to act defensively and respond to the criticism. In the great book “Radical Candor”, author Kim Scott urges us not to do that; don’t start criticising the criticism! Instead, she suggests saying something like “So what I hear you saying is …”
Ask for specifics – Try to understand when you displayed certain behaviours, what you could have done or said differently and why. To me, the whole point of asking for feedback is that you’ll be able to learn from the feedback received. When you receive and digest the feedback, you can decide to either to not act on it or to put your learnings into practice. Either way, it’s imperative that the feedback is specific, so that you can make a well informed decision on whether to act on it.
Express appreciation for the feedback and give yourself time to process – If you did get feedback, the next important thing is to follow up and show that you really welcomed the feedback. You don’t even need to respond straight away and mention the things that you’re going to do to implement the feedback. It’s perfectly fine to say “Thank you so much for your feedback. Let me take it away and reflect on it.” If you agree with what was said, you should make a change as soon as possible. If the necessary change will take time, do something visible to show you’re trying.

Main learning point: Giving or receiving feedback isn’t easy, and there’s no silver bullet available to make it any easier. However, tools like the “Situation, Behaviour, Impact” framework can help us to better frame the feedback that we’re giving. And when it comes to receiving feedback, I’ve found “listening” to be the most powerful tool of all.

Related links for further learning:

Product review: Rocket Mortgage’s Instant Mortgages

June 18, 2018 marcabrahamLeave a comment

Can the whole process of getting a mortgage made a lot easier!? Whether you’re looking to buy a home or refinance your current one, the mortgage process can be a real pain in the neck: slow, stressful and opaque. Given the emergence of players such as Trussle, Habito – both UK-based online mortgage brokers – and my professional interest from leading product at Settled, I’m keen to explore this further.

Let’s start with a look at Rocket Mortgage, an “instant mortgage” product by Quicken Loans.

My quick summary of Rocket Mortgage before using it: I expect a product that makes it very quick and easy for a me as a consumer to apply for a mortgage.

How does Rocket Mortgage explain itself in the first minute: “You May Be Surprised to See How Much You Can Save – Can’t Hurt to Look” and “We’ve Reinvented the Mortgage Process to Put the Power in Your Hands” are two strap-lines on Rocket Mortgage homepage that stand out to me. Both lines are ‘above the fold’ and do make me curious to learn more about what Rocket Mortgage does (differently) to established mortgage providers.

How does Rocket Mortgage work? Mortgage applicants can submit their personal and financial information online (“Share Your Info”), and they receive a mortgage quote in return. This initial quote can be reviewed and customised to meet one’s personal needs and circumstances (“Explore Your Options”).

Let’s look at the individual steps in more detail:

User answer pre-approval questions

To apply for a Rocket Mortgage loan, you’ll first need to create an account by entering your name and email address, followed by choosing a password. Once you’ve clicked the “Save & Continue” button, you’ll be presented with a number of questions about your personal situation, both from a personal and a financial point of view:

User uploads personal assets

Rocket Mortgage will connect to your bank account(s) and your asset information will then be uploaded automatically onto the platform. You can then update the information or remove assets from consideration from your mortgage application, , after the boxes have been auto-filled. With the advent of PSD2 and open banking, I expect loads of US mortgage lenders and startups to enable a similar synchronisation with a user’s personal accounts.

If you have any other financial assists, like investments in shares via platforms such as Betterment and Wealthify, you will need to enter this data manually as well as related documents. The same applies to Rocket Mortgage requiring you to enter specific info to be able to generate a personal credit report and score. In future, I expect platforms like these to seamlessly integrated with credit score companies like Experian and Equifax.

User explores options

User obtains a mortgage rate

Once you’ve locked down a mortgage rate, there’s a separate Rocket Mortgage online tool which lets you finalise the mortgage.

Who else is doing this? I had a brief look at “mello”, the digital loan platform by loanDepot, and the product and its experience feels quite similar to Rocket Mortgage. In the UK, Molo is a new player on the scene, promising to “reimagine mortgages.”

Main learning point: It’s clear for everyone to see that these players are aiming to make the experience of applying for a mortgage as intuitive, transparent and quick as possible.

Related links for further learning:

Why Square and Klarna are looking to become banks?

June 11, 2018June 12, 2018 marcabrahamLeave a comment

Just a short post this time, as I just wanted to share my excitement about the likes of Square and Klarna becoming banks (eventually). As an outsider looking in, I can see the rationale for companies like Square and Klarna, payments platforms, for becoming full blowing banking entities:

Logical extension of the payments ecosystem – Given that Square and Klarna already process payment transactions for thousands of merchants and their customers, it means that they’ve got a strong foot in the door with small businesses. It therefore makes total sense to offer new products and services to both merchants and their customers.
Data, data, data – I can imagine that with the amount of transactional data being processed, Square and Klarna no doubt have built up great customer and merchant data profiles, and are now looking to further monetise on this customer understanding. Offering lending products jumps out at me as a key reason for Square and Klarna wanting to become banks. This pattern fits well on the trend involving challenger banks like Monzo and Chime starting out with limited features, but gradually expanding into fully fledged bank accounts.
Regulatory relationships – As Square and Klarna start offering more bank-like products and services, they’ll need to put robust regulatory compliance frameworks in place. Establishing regulatory relationships by becoming a bank helps with establishing these frameworks.
Hook at point of sale – Being able to engage with both consumers and merchants at the point of sale feels like a pretty strong hook to me! Loved how backend payment platform Adyen recently got valued at $8.3 billion, and it shows you that the financial sector is way off from calming down.

Main learning point: Whilst there are concerns about small businesses being impacted negatively by the likes of Square becoming banks, I’m excited by the ongoing disruption of the financial sector. Recent applications for banking licenses by Square and Klarna are a sign that the Fintech startups and challengers are scaling. As long scaling doesn’t happen at the detriment of the customer – both consumers and merchants – this can only be a good thing!

Related links for further learning:

Book review: “Radical Focus”

June 5, 2018 marcabrahamLeave a comment

Christina Wodtke’s latest book, “Radical Focus”, is probably the most valuable ‘business’ book which I’ve read thus far this year. The full title of the book reads “Radical Focus – Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results” and Wodtke provides a great story – literally – as well as useful tips about the importance of goal setting. The book starts with a fable about a Silicon Valley startup, and offers a good narrative about how (not) to use of objectives and key results (‘OKRs’). This fable, which felt very close to the reality of being in startups – sets the scene for the practical tips that Wodtke offers with respect to using OKRs effectively, irrespective of whether you work in a startup or at Amazon.

What are some of the most common reasons why key things don’t happen? Wodtke offers a number of insights here:

No prioritisation or stack ranking of goals – Everything is deemed important and critical things don’t get done as a result.
No obsessive and comprehensive communication of the goal – Wodtke suggests that for key goals to be achieved, it’s important to reiterate the goal daily and having regular commitment meetings, where the team talks about the key goal and commit to specific activities directly related to the goal.
There’s no plan to get things done – Often, companies will have lofty goals but no plan or process to actually achieve these goals. Wodtke introduces a number of useful ceremonies which teams can use to keep goals relevant and top of mind: commitment meetings, check ins and celebrations.
No or insufficient time carved for what really matters – Love how Wodtke refers to the “Eisenhower Box” which helps identify and prioritise those things that must be done (see Fig. 1 below).
A tendency to give up instead of iterating – Business often give up at the first attempt, canning a goal if it isn’t achieved (fully) first time around. Instead, Wodtke urges, try to avoid a lack of followthrough by iterating constantly.

Fig. 1 – The Eisenhower – Taken from: https://jamesclear.com/eisenhower-box/eisenhower-box-2

As the book title clearly suggests, Wodtke advocates the use of OKRs to achieve focus and making sure that key goals are being realised:

Objectives are bold and qualitative – Set a bold, inspirational and qualitative Objective each quarter. Wodtke provides examples of both good and poor Objectives (see Fig. 2 below).
Key Results are tangible and quantitative – Each Objective will have three quantitative Results that let you know when you’ve hit your Objective (see Fig. 3 below). Wodtke stresses that Key Results are “hard goals, the kind where you only have a 50/50 shot of achieving.” These ‘stretch goals’ are hard to achieve but not impossible, and you indicate for each Key Result how confident you are of achieving it.
OKRs and health metrics – In the book, Wodtke makes a helpful distinction between OKRs and health metrics. OKRs are “the thing you want to push, the one thing you want to make better.” I’d add an emphasis on the word “one” here as I find working with a single business Objective to be most effective. In my experience, having multiple business Objectives starts muddying the water in terms of focus and prioritisation. Instead, start with setting one Objective for the company. Secondly, set OKRs for each team that ty back to the company goal. Health metrics are the key things to continue to watch, these metrics are more concerned with ‘hygiene’.
Set OKRs together, pick Key Results as a team – Identifying and agreeing on Objectives and Key Results is a collaborative process. Clearly articulating and sharing the business Objective is a critical first step. The different teams can then set those Key Results which they believe will contribute to the business Objective.
Progress monitoring – I particularly liked the 4×4 matrix that Wodtke suggests as a way of monitoring progress with respect to achieving your business and associated team OKRs (see Fig. 4 below). This matrix is a very simple but effective way of committing to (weekly) priorities and capturing progress.
Setting a rhythm of execution – Wodtke introduces a number of weekly ceremonies which you can use to keep OKRs relevant and to ensure that you keep to them (see Fig. 5 below). The risk with goal setting is that it remains a one off exercise and I believe that having weekly ‘commitment’ and ‘win’ sessions will help massively keeping OKRs front of mind.

Main learning point: In “Radical Focus”, Christina Wodtke does a great job of explaining the role and value of OKRs. Not only does she provide valuable tips on how to best define OKRs, Wodtke also offers useful methods of keeping track of progress against OKRs. If you feel that you and your business are doing too much of everything, or not achieving anything, then Radical Focus is a must read!

Fig. 2 – Examples of good and poor Objectives – Taken from: Christina Wodtke, Radical Focus, self-published, 2016, p. 110

Here are some good Objectives:

Own the direct-to-business coffee retail market in the South Bay.
Launch and awesome MVP.
Transform Palo Alto’s coupon using habits.
Close a round that lets us kill it next quarter.

and some poor Objectives:

Sales numbers up 30%.
Double users.
Raise a Series B of 5M.

Fig. 3 – Key Results – Taken from: Christina Wodtke, Radical Focus, self-published, 2016, pp. 111 – 112

Key Results can be based on anything you can measure, including:

Growth
Engagement
Revenue
Performance
Quality

For example, if your Objective is to “Launch an Awesome MVP” you could have the following Key Results:

40% of users come back 2X in one week
Recommendation score of 8
15% conversion

Fig. 4 – Example of Christina Wodtke’s 4×4 OKR matrix – Taken from: https://medium.com/@cwodtke/one-objective-to-rule-them-all-1058e973bfc5

Fig. 5 – Setting a rhythm of execution – Taken from: Christina Wodtke, Radical Focus, self-published, 2016, pp. 120 – 123

Monday Commitments

Each Monday, the team should meet to check in on progress against OKRs, and commit to the tasks that will help the company meet its Objective.

Intention for the week – What are the 3-4 most important things you must get done this week toward the Objective? Discuss if these priorities will get you closer to the OKRs.
Forecast for the month – What should your team know is coming up that they can help with or prepare for?
Status toward OKRs – If you set a confidence of five out of ten, has that moved up or down? Have a discussion about why.
Health metrics – Pick two things you want to protect as you strive toward greatness. What can you not afford to eff-up? Key relationships with customers? Code stability? Team well-being? Now mark when things start to go sideways, and discuss it.

Fig. 6 – OKR Fundamentals – Taken from: Christina Wodtke, Radical Focus, self-published, 2016, pp. 109 – 112

Your Objective is a single sentence that is:

Qualitative and Inspirational

The objective is designed to get people jumping out of bed in the morning with excitement. And while CEOs and VCs may jump out of bed in the morning with joy over a 3% gain in conversion, most mere mortals get excited by a sense of meaning and progress. Use the language of your team.

Time Bound

For example, doable in a month, a quarter. You want it to be a clear sprint toward a goal. If it takes a year, your Objective maybe a strategy or even a mission.

Actionable by the Team Independently

This is less of a problem for startups, but bigger companies often struggle because of interdependence. Your Objective has to be truly yours, and you can’t have the excuse of “Marketing didn’t market it.”

An Objective is like a mission statement, only for a shorter period of time. A great objective inspires the team, is hard (but not impossible) to do in a set time frame, and can be done by the person or people who have set it, independently.

Fig. 7 – Quick tips on OKRS use – Taken from: Christina Wodtke, Radical Focus, self-published, 2016, p. 153

Set only one OKR for the company, unless you have multiple business lines. It’s about focus.
Give yourself three months for an OKR. How bold is it if you can do it in a week?
Keep the metrics out of the Objective. The Objective is inspirational.
In the weekly check in, open with company OKR, then do groups. Don’t do every individual; that’s better in private 1:1s.
OKRs cascade; set company OKRs, then group’s/role’s, and then individual’s.
OKRs are not the only thing you do; they are the one thing you must do. Trust people to keep the ship running, and don’t jam every task into OKRs.
The Monday OKR check in is a conversation. Be sure to discuss change in confidence, health metrics and priorities.
Encourage employees to suggest company OKRs. OKRs are great bottom up, not just top down.
Make OKRs available publicly. Google has them on their intranet.
Friday celebrations is an antidote to Monday’s grim business. Keep it upbeat!

Related links for further learning:

As I learn …

This site is about everything digital, giving an update on new things as I learn

Managing products of the future – Business as usual?

Michael Margolis: “user research, quick and dirty” (2)

Michael Margolis: “user research, quick and dirty” (1)

My product management toolkit (30): giving and receiving feedback

Product review: Rocket Mortgage’s Instant Mortgages

Why Square and Klarna are looking to become banks?

Book review: “Radical Focus”