Feedback at Focus

You asked – we delivered. You can send feedback to your teammates and managers. The feedback feature is designed to spark creativity, put out potential fires, and help teammates show up as their best selves.

You can either give feedback to a teammate in free form or follow questions at Focus. It doesn’t matter which way do you prefer more. The most important is delivering value to people you are working together. 

How to send feedback?

Just choose a teammate in the People section. Go to feedback and then click on the Give Feedback button. 

Also, you can choose the privacy of feedback. Everyone can see public feedback. However, private feedback is hidden from everyone. Only the teammate you sent feedback and admin will be able to see it.

Also, you can ask for feedback from your teammate by clicking the Ask feedback button. In this case, Focus sends a notification to the teammate.

Other updates at Focus

Privacy at Weekly Plans and Weekly Updates

By default, all weekly update answers are public. Everyone can see it. However, if you want to make answers private when only authors and admins can read answers, then use the Privacy feature in weekly updates settings.

Go to Settings > Weekly Updates Campaign and make Private answers active clicking on the checkbox.

Same works for weekly plans.

Privacy at OKRs

More privacy.

You asked us about privacy at OKRs several times. We have it now. 

You can specify privacy when you are creating OKRs.

There are 3 levels of privacy at OKRs:

• Public. Everyone can see an OKR.
• Team. Only your team, owners of key results, and admin can see an OKR.
• Private. Only you, owners of key results, and admin can see an OKR.

Cheers!

Best,
Anton

The post Feedback and more  appeared first on Focus.

The challenge we see with current updates is the lack of connection between weekly action items and OKRs. Yeah, we have the questions about the main OKR next week. However, it doesn’t really show what you did for specific OKR last week.

So, OKR-based updates solve this problem.

IMPORTANT! OKR-based updates work only on the web platform. If you want to use the Focus bot for Slack, you should run classic weekly updates. Yeah, it’s still possible to use classic weekly updates.

How it works

To show you how OKR-based updates work, I want to mention how classic updates work.

You can see in the picture above how the classic update works. We have 3 questions, which help to align the team on a weekly basis. 

The questions:

• What did you accomplish last week?
• What is your key insight of this week?
• How was your experience at work this week?

About OKR-based approach

The OKR approach is based not only on weekly updates but on weekly plans too. 

Everything starts on a weekly plan now. 

Answering what you are going to do this week, you should choose OKRs and specify action items for each OKR.

It’s time to work now. 

At the end of the week, you run a weekly update. And you have here your weekly OKRs and action items you have mentioned on the last weekly plan.

Also, you can add something that you haven’t mentioned on the weekly plan.

You should only choose it is completed or not. If it’s not completed, the system asks you for details.

However, the main goal of the weekly update is specifying OKR you were working on last week and connecting it with action items.

It allows seeing the detailed traction on your progress. How much the OKRs were moved for the last week, what you accomplished, what wasn’t accomplished, and why.

It gives you a better understanding of what you should improve and how strong you are following your OKRs.

How to set OKR-based updates?

If you want to use OKR-based updates, drop us a message via support@usefocus.co. We will set everything up for you.

Cheers!

Best,
Anton

The post OKR-based updates appeared first on Focus.

Last two weeks, we updated a bunch of things, and it’s time to show you what you can do at Focus.

The new OKR Tree

We rebuilt the OKR tree. The tree had only 3 levels of objectives before – the company’s OKRs, teams, and individuals. However, customers asked us to add more levels because they have more complex structures. For example, company’s OKRs -> departments’ OKRs -> teams’ OKRs -> individuals’ OKRs. 

So, it’s possible to do now. No more limits at the OKR three now. To build the tree, you should specify a parent OKR in OKR settings.

Date filter in OKRs

We added date filters to objectives. It’s possible to sort OKRs based on the time range of the OKR’s due in date. It allows you to see objectives for the current quarter by default and focus on them. 

OKR notifications on Slack

We added more data in notifications in Slack. The Focus bot will send notifications when someone updates OKRs. It’s possible to see previous metrics and the progress that the team has.

You can set OKR notifications in Slack here. And this is the guide on how to install and set the Focus bot.

Updates in pricing

We updated the pricing model in September. Here are 2 changes:

1) Annual plans. There is a 20% discount for annual plans now. 
2) Free plan. The focus plan with OKRs is free for individuals now.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers!

The post The new OKR tree, date filter, and notifications at Slack appeared first on Focus.

While speaking at many management conferences, I see that a lot of people struggle with setting OKRs (objectives and key results). The most important part I want to point out is that people often make similar OKR mistakes. 

In this article, you find the top 5 mistakes that companies make when setting OKRs and the ways on how to avoid them. If you follow these steps, you will save a lot of time for yourself and for your team in OKRs implementation. And of course, you will bring out the next level of creating an environment that values and emphasizes output.

Topics covered in this article:

• What is OKR?
• What are the obstacles that come with OKR?
• Top 5 OKR mistakes

Before we begin, I want to mention the main benefits of OKRs because it allows you to understand what you should be getting out of them. And no one can tell better about it than John Doerr, who worked with “The Father of OKR”, Andrew Grove. In his book “Measure what matters”, he describes four OKR superpowers:

• Superpower #1 — Focus and Commit to Priorities: High-performance organizations hone in on work that’s important, and are equally clear on what doesn’t matter. OKRs implore leaders to make hard choices. They’re a precision communication tool for departments, teams, and individual contributors. By dispelling confusion, OKRs give us the focus needed to win.
• Superpower #2 — Align and Connect for Teamwork: With OKR transparency, everyone’s goals—from the CEO down—are openly shared. Individuals link their objectives to the company’s game plan, identify cross-dependencies, and coordinate with other teams. By connecting each contributor to the organization’s success, top-down alignment brings meaning to work. By deepening people’s sense of ownership, bottom-up OKRs foster engagement, and innovation.
• Superpower #3 — Track for Accountability: OKRs are driven by data. They are animated by periodic check-ins, objective grading, and continuous reassessment—all in a spirit of no-judgment accountability. An endangered key result triggers action to get it back on track or to revise or replace it if warranted.
• Superpower #4 — Stretch for Amazing: OKRs motivate us to excel by doing more than we’d thought possible. By testing our limits and affording the freedom to fail, they release our most creative, ambitious selves.

Sounds good? Then let’s talk about the definition of Objectives and Key Results and what OKR mistakes teams often make using them.

What is an OKR?

OKR (Objective and Key Results) is a goal-setting method used by Google, Netflix, and many others. If you want to get a key difference between KPI and OKR then think about it as the difference between Waterfall methodology and Agile. I hope it helps ?

To clarify, OKR is a framework for setting ambitious goals that help a company focus on the most important issues. There are no hard commitments and bonuses for achievements. It also doesn’t impact the performance scores. In contrast, OKRs are ambitious, almost unachievable goals that continuously sync the progress.

OKR consists of 2 pieces: 

1. An objective is an ambitious goal, which motivates and inspires the team. It shows WHAT we should achieve.
2. Key results are metrics that measure HOW we get to the objective. Are we in the timeframe? Should we increase the velocity or change the goal? Are we going in the right direction or are we losing focus?

OKR principles 

It’s important to understand not only the shape but also OKR principles:

1. Publicity and transparency – everyone can see all OKRs. 
2. Ambitious – some OKRs should be at least 3-10 times higher than usual goals to motivate people on finding new and creative solutions. 
3. OKRs don’t impact salary or bonuses – people will not set ambitious objectives if they know that they could lose their income.
4. Constant tracking – OKR syncing should be at least bi-weekly. However, running weekly updates is a much better way of tracking OKRs. It helps a team be aligned and change initiatives if it’s necessary. 
5. The fewer objectives and key results are better – it helps to focus on the top priorities and achieve the best outcome instead of trying to complete too many goals and get the worst traction. There should be no more than 5 key results for an objective. Less is more. Also, don’t create more than 5 objectives in a quarter. 
6. 50/50 or 60/40. OKR is not a top-down goal-setting system like KPI. The exec team sets 40-50% of OKRs and employees create the other goals. It’s the mix of top-down and bottom-up goals that generally settles at around half-and-half.
7. The OKR cycle is a quarter. OKRs set clear quarters, but you can change yearly OKRs if it’s necessary. Quarterly OKRs gives you a combination of agile and clarity. On one hand, you can react pretty rapidly to the market’s changes or customers’ demands. On the other hand, you have clarity of the top priorities for the next quarter. During some major forces, like the COVID-19 pandemic, some companies move to monthly cycles to change goals faster in times of ambiguity.
8. Key results are only metrics. Sometimes companies use indicators like reference points or tools for employee motivation. In OKRs, we use key results like coordinates in a GPS tracker. It’s only about the current status, not about motivation or bonuses. They help us keep the right of way, adjust the speed, and change the tactics. It’s crucial for a team because they show everyone where we are now and where we are heading. It allows a company to be a united team that can adapt to the environment and different contexts. 

We looked at what makes OKRs powerful and what to pay attention to. Now let’s move onto tackling OKR mistakes.

OKRs are hard, but making OKR mistakes are easy

Everything sounds great and makes sense, right? OKRs are great! Then why are you reading an article about avoiding OKR mistakes? When you’re first starting to implement OKRs in a company, problems usually arise. Someone doesn’t want to achieve objectives that don’t correlate to salary, others can’t make the right and ambitious objectives or set useful key results. There are many problems that a team runs into during the first OKR cycle and it is easy to run into these common OKR mistakes.

When a company thinks about using OKRs, they should know that the company’s culture will be changed – such as emotional maturity in the workplace, employee responsibility, communication with colleagues, and feedback skills.

The good news is about the timeframe. Goals can not be achieved in one night. What you can do is implement OKRs and transform your processes and skills sprint by sprint. And the most important thing to do is to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your company and to create the right OKRs strategy based on these insights. 

Instead of a heroic two weeks sprint of OKRs settings, it’s better to implement the new framework wisely with less speed, but more effective. This approach allows OKRs to live in organizations when a founder stops spending too much attention on it.

The best approach is to establish a cross-functional team that will be responsible for OKRs implementation. Usually, the consists of the board of directors and from five to ten leaders from the organization. People from this team should get training on OKRs to properly understand how they work. Afterward, the team makes a step-by-step plan on OKR implementation and starts working on it. It’s important now to avoid those OKR mistakes that hundreds of companies have made before you. Let’s check them out.

5 most common OKR mistakes

OKR mistake #1: Too ambitious or too simple OKRs

One OKR mistakes we see companies make often is where the objectives they set are either too complex or too simple. And we did the same in the first iteration of OKRs. We set the OKR ‘Triple our sales in the quarter‘. It was a pretty ambitious objective, however, we didn’t have appropriate resources at that time to fulfill this goal. At the end of the cycle, we were exhausted as we achieved an objective of less than 10%. 

At the same time, we see many cases when companies set simple OKRs like ‘’Create the new website”, which probably is not so ambitious and hard to do. 

You should try to avoid setting very simple or very hard objectives. How do you set an ambitious, but not impossible OKR? 

Answer these 2 questions:

1. Will we achieve X in 3 months in our usual mode? If we understand that it’s achievable then it’s a simple goal. If not then it looks ambitious and we ask the next question.
2. Will we achieve X in a year? If we feel that we might do it – it will be hard, but we could achieve it in a year, then it looks like a good candidate on OKRs for a quarter. If we understand that we won’t be able to achieve it in a year, then it’s most likely your setting an impossible OKRs. 

Setting the right OKRs is the skill that a team improves step by step from quarter to quarter. Your first OKRs should not be perfect, because trying to do something ideal from the first attempt can take a lot of time and it also directly affects your enthusiasm. Feel free to set good enough OKRs to start using it early and then run an analysis, which will improve your next goals. 

Bad OKR:

Objective: x10 revenue in the next quarter
Key results: 

• Increase traffic on the website from 10,000 up to 50,000
• Increase Visitor-to-Customer conversion rate from 1% to 2%
• Achieve $10,000,000 in revenue

Why is it not a good OKR? On one hand, it’s a pretty ambitious objective and should inspire team leaders. However, there are two issues in the objective. First, the objective is not necessarily a measurable goal. Numbers in the title don’t inspire people in the team because they can think that it’s just boosted indicators. Second, the objective is too ambitious and it’s unrealistic in most cases. Increase revenue up to 10 times in a quarter – do you and your team believe in it? It’s hard to do in a year for most companies. And it’s even more difficult to achieve in a quarter. If your team won’t believe it’s possible then they will delay initiatives because employees often have a lot of tasks to do.

How can we transform this OKR and make it better?

Strong OKR:

Objective: Achieve a sales record in the next quarter
Key results: 

• Increase traffic on the website from 10,000 up to 50,000
• Increase Visitor-to-Customer conversion rate from 1% to 2%
• Achieve $10,000,000 in revenue

Now, this OKR looks pretty ambitious and we aren’t using numbers in the objective, which is really good for motivation. It’s a significant, concrete, and action-oriented objective that inspires the team. 

OKR mistake #2: Too many key results or objectives

Another OKR mistake we see is creating too many key results or objectives. In this scenario, companies lose their focus using the framework that was designed to keep them focus. Less is better.

How can you determine if there are too many OKRs? John Doerr recommends using 3 to 5 key results for an objective. The less is more. We prefer using 3 key results in many cases and set 5 results only if we don’t have another way. 

Using too many key results leads to a loss of focus on the most important things because the team will be doing a lot of different stuff. That’s why it’s better to set three or four outcomes to the goal.

Also, teams have similar mistakes with objectives. Some departments have 5 or even more objectives in a quarter. It also brings your team down a level when you are doing so many different things and wasting your attention in different areas. 

How many objectives should a team have? 

Again, John Doerr recommends 5-7 objectives for a company. We suggest setting 1-3 objectives for each level of your organization. 

OKR mistake #3: Using only top-down OKRs

This mistake often is made by autocratic leaders who think that OKR is the same as KPI. They set top-down OKRs for all teams and then it doesn’t get significant outcomes because people don’t believe in these ambitious goals and don’t understand why they should achieve them if it doesn’t correlate with bonuses. As a result, leaders think that OKRs don’tt work. 

OKR is not an autocratic top-down goal methodology. It’s all about people participating in this process. Each team thinks about its OKRs. People begin to understand the company’s objectives and how they contribute to the total outcomes, what’s the value they give to the company by their day to day operations. 

It helps everyone to see the real value of his or her works. And this is the place where the magic happens. People understand the company’s goals and know how they contribute to it. They set ambitious OKRs for their teams or for themselves. It’s a game-changer for employee engagement. 

However, you will not achieve this by highly hierarchical top-down goals. These goals are not connected to people’s views and desires. They might think, “It looks that our management wants us to work hard for achieving these ambitious goals without paying bonuses for it.” Do you think that motivates people? Top-down autocratic goals don’t encourage people to do great.

That’s why it’s crucial to build a culture where top-down goals work with bottom-up objectives. C-Suites determine a company’s OKRs. It’s high-level objectives for the whole organization. At the same time, teams start a discussion about their visions. What value they will put on the table for achieving the company’s goals. In this process, department heads talk with their people to determine the best and the most ambitious goals for them. Afterward, teams present their OKRs to the C-level management and make it public after confirmation. 

You see, everyone participates in the goal-setting. It’s not just a management game. People in teams begin to take care of the objectives because they participated in its creation. If you use OKRs only top-down then change it as soon as possible and give your people the opportunities for participation in this process. 

OKR mistake #4: Don’t track progress regularly

OKR is not a silver bullet that works after they were identified. You can’t set OKRs and forget about them until the end of the cycle.  

People are used to tracking metrics and indicators in both ways – either it was requested or before bonus pay. In OKRs, you should do it regularly at least one time per two weeks. However, weekly updates work much better in most cases. In this case, OKRs fulfill their destination, which is to be the coordinates for your organization and link strategy with tactics. 

Let’s imagine that you are going on a journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles. You turn on the GPS navigator to check the status. If you know the road, then you don’t need a GPS navigator. However, it works only for well-known goals that you’ve already done before. But if you don’t know the route and you don’t look on the navigator then each turn in the road could lead you to the wrong place where you are moving further from your way each minute. 

That’s why it’s crucial to set the specific day on the week and do weekly (or bi-weekly) OKRs updates. 

It doesn’t take a lot of time to do weekly updates. It unites your team across top priorities, which is a very important benefit for everyone. 

How can you track OKRs weekly? 

• First, you should answer this simple question, “What’re your OKR achievements this week?”. If you didn’t do anything regarding OKRs, then ask yourself why not? You should analyze this issue and take action on how to improve it for next week.
• Second, see who worked on OKRs this week – what’s about your key results? Are they changed? What’s your current status now – are you on track, behind, or at risk? Write everything down that everyone understands total progress. Keep it transparent.
• Third, are there areas for improvement? What can you or your team improve on for next week? Did you achieve any planned outcomes this week? If so, you can probably set a more ambitious goal for the next week. If not, then what were the main blockers? What can you and your team improve in the next sprint?

See, magic is here. Everyone analyzes their OKRs outcomes weekly and gets insights from it. Your team starts thinking about OKRs each week, which means that you are thinking about what matters the most, constantly. It sounds simple, but it’s so powerful. 

You can track your OKRs in sheets or in special software like Focus. You need to begin building a habit of weekly retrospectives and creating a transparent culture that values and emphasizes output. Learn more about how to run short scrum meetings in the linked article.

OKR mistake #5: Using results that a team doesn’t know how to measure

Some companies create very ambitious key results like ‘Increase NPS up to 2 times.’ However, sometimes when asking them about what’s the current NPS (Net Promoter Score) you hear silence because they don’t know it. 

And how will these teams track their progress and achievements?

In the case of NPS, it’s pretty hard to measure the score in several days. You need time to implement it on websites, newsletters, and so on. Then you should receive the data from customers. It takes time. If you have an OKR with increasing NPS by 50% this quarter and you haven’t implemented an NPS system yet, then you might have some problems with it, because you’ll be spending one or two months just setting up an NPS and receiving your first batch of data. With each weekly update, you will say something like this, ‘We haven’t had data for measuring NPS yet’. That’s why it’s better to set a key result as ‘Implement an NPS system’ and track how many initiatives you will finish for this key result. For example, if implementing an NPS system consists of 30 to-dos and you close 27 that means that you complete this key result at 90%.

When setting a key result, you should think about how it’s measured. Also, remember that they are indicators. Key results should tell a team about progress, so everyone can adjust his or her goals, accordingly.

OKR checklist

Phew, those are some big OKR mistakes, right? We gathered the most popular OKR mistakes in this article. However, it’s not all the mistakes companies make during OKRs implementation. That’s why I’d like to finish the article with a check-list that helps you to improve your OKRs. If you want to know more about OKRs, you can read this article on how to set powerful OKRs.

Check that your objectives fit these criteria:

• Objectives have a quarter cycle
• The objective is WHAT we want to achieve
• The objective helps to achieve high-level goals or other teams get value by achieving that objective
• You have 2-5 objectives per team’s level 
• 50% or more objectives set bottom-up
• Goals are divided into two types: ambitious and operational

Check-list for key results:

• 50% or more key results set bottom-up
• Key results are measurable and clearly describe achievements of objectives (at least “done/not done”, but it’s better to avoid this version)
• Track progress each week (or, at least, bi-weekly)

Summary

We looked at what makes a good OKR, what challenges you can face in your organization, and what common OKR mistakes to avoid. I hope they will help you in setting the right OKRs that will bring your team to the next level. And remember that the main mission of OKRs is to unite your company while making the focus on top priorities and transparent culture. 

Finally, I believe that identifying top priorities and consistent focus on it day-to-day is the best way for building high-performing teams. That’s why we created Focus, a tool that keeps teams on top priorities every day. Start working smarter with Focus.

The post 5 OKR Mistakes and How to Avoid Them appeared first on Focus.

As an entrepreneur or a manager, do you want to build an amazing team that achieves new heights in the business? 

Well, of course, you do… And I wanted the same. The real question is – how to manage the team and increase productivity?

This is the story about problems I had managing my previous startup and why I created the OKR Pulse platform, which gives new tools to better manage the team.

Several words about me

And before starting, I’d like to say several words about my experience. My career started in the Wildberries, which is the largest eCommerce company in Eastern Europe. Then I worked in the oil industry, where I was raised to the Head of a department role. It was a great and very useful period of time when I began to manage the team. At that time, I quickly realized that there are a lot of issues and misunderstandings in team management.

One step further, I exited from the job and created my first business, which was a marketing agency. I had created an amazing team in agency business that converted in Kepler Leads, which is a conversion optimization software. 

I was a pretty experienced entrepreneur, who struggled with the common manager’s problems.

Problems I had as a manager (and I’m not alone in these struggles)

Can you guess what it is?

It was an employee burnout. The employees lost their motivation and the team had a pretty hard time and low level of energy. And it’s a really common problem for people. According to a Gallup survey, 44% of employees reported feeling burned out sometimes. 

There are several reasons why it happens. However, our main problems were the unmanageable workload and the lack of clarity. Especially, people didn’t have a clear vision of why we did what we did. We also had many third side projects because of the lack of focus. We had so many goals that people were overwhelmed. 

Ha, you needed project management software

And, you know, we used project management software to structure all processes. We ran Scrum sprints to iterate quickly and be more effective. I mean we were a really prepared team that used great software and team management framework. 

However, it didn’t help us as much as I wanted. People were losing motivation and it directly impacted the total outcomes.

Our Trello boards were full of tasks and columns. 

See, when I was trying to improve performance, we documented everything to better deliver information about what people should do and all the company’s goals. It didn’t help. 

The real problem

The real problem was the lack of focus on the strategy. You know, sometimes we love to jump into tactics. What should we do today, how can we achieve this goal, and so on. And it was each day. 

I made separate columns on Trello for vision and strategic goals, but it didn’t work well. It was my fault as I should talk about strategy more. In reality, we had strategy goals on Trello, but people didn’t see the connection between those big strategic goals and their daily routines. In a few days after the strategy session, everything returned to the usual mode when we were thinking about new tasks, daily routines, and deadlines. Tactics, tactics, tactics.

It only increased employee burnout. 

How did we survive?

There was no magic button, but in one time we decided to use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) after researching how this goal-setting system has helped tech companies from Intel to Google.

OKRs are a method of setting objectives and tracking key results. It allows you to synchronize the team and focus on the most important things. You literally become to feel like the one team because everyone understands how she or he impacts on team and company’s goals.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

Objectives

“It’s like goals served in a fractal manner”

Eric, founder of Pebble

Objectives should be ambitious and inspire the team to achieve new heights. According to Google, objectives should not be achievable 100%. An OKR that was 70% accomplished is a great indicator of an objective. 

Tips for setting objectives:

• Choose from three to five objectives
• Lead to the new achievements
• The team should understand if a result was achieved or not

Key Results

Key results make OKRs more specific. It is specific metrics, which are based on objectives.

Tips for setting key results:

• Write three key results for each objective
• Choose specific key results, which show you achieve the goal
• It should be measurable 

One OKR example from Uber:

What about us?

We survived after OKRs setup. It helped us connect strategic goals (objectives) with tasks that everyone works daily (key results). Team members began to see the outcomes of their daily job. It also focused on the most important goals that we should achieve.

It was the breath of fresh air when the team understood the outcomes of the job. As I said before, OKR was not a magic button, because it took a decent time to implement them. Also, I started to run systematically 1-on-1 meetings with team members, which definitely gave another boost in team engagement. 

There was a mix of several things that helped us to survive and grow the business. However, OKRs played a significant role for us at that time. 

Why did I create OKR software?

We ran OKRs in Google Sheets and tried several OKR platforms, but nothing matched my expectations. Each of these options has pros and cons, but I didn’t find the solution I wanted. I had 2 main criteria for OKRs software:

1. Strategy: it should be easy to set OKRs that everyone understands what’s going on in the company in several clicks (design, dashboards, etc).
2. Tactics: it should push the team not only a strategic vision but also in weekly and daily execution.

OKRs in Google Sheets became too overwhelming because of the lack of opportunities in design. At one time, it stopped being comfortable looking for people’s OKRs in a spreadsheet with too much data.

Other OKRs platforms didn’t match my expectations because of tactics criteria. An OKR software usually has weekly cycles when the team updates their OKRs one time per week. It’s fine. However, I wanted to keep the team’s focus on OKRs not only each week but also each day. I wanted to achieve the best combination of strategy and tactics.

About Focus

That’s why we created Focus, which is the first OKR Pulse platform that gives all tools for managing the team on strategic and tactics layers. 

OKR Pulse = OKR (strategy) + Pulse (daily tactics)

The main concept is setting OKRs and keeping the focus on the main goals each day. Focus keeps teams on the most important outcomes instead of the heap of messages, emails, and endless meetings – focus on what matters the most. 

How does Focus work?

Step 1: Create OKRs

It’s pretty simple to do in Focus. Just identify your objective and key results for it. Everyone will see the company or team’s OKRs. 

By the way, there is a dashboard where you can pin you North Star Metric. It makes magic real when everyone in the company sees the team or company’s main objective or key results.

Step 2: Run Weekly Updates

It’s the showtime now. Each week, your team will get a notification to complete weekly updates, which helps to focus on the most important goals. 

Also, you should update the status of the OKRs you participate in. It allows everyone to see how their work impacts on company outcomes each week.

Step 3: Run Daily Standups

Here is the daily tactics activity, which is called daily standups. It’s short updates with 3 simple questions that align the team and show everyone what’s going on in the team. 

Questions for daily standup:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What are you going to do today?
• Any blockers?

It takes only 5 minutes for team members to complete the standup. In contrast, long status report meetings that cost pretty much for the business if you calculate the time, which employees waste on it. 

Daily standups allow synchronizing the team with OKRs in daily operations. 

Conclusion

That’s it. I shared my story about why I created Focus and why I believe that it’s crucial for a company to build a healthy environment, which helps people to focus on what matters. 

OKRs system is really useful if you find out the right objectives for your organization. It aligns the team and brings team performance to the next level.

You can try Focus for using OKRs and running daily and weekly updates. This mix of strategy and tactics is a very powerful toolkit to not only set strategic objectives but also align the team each day and keeps focus on what really matters. 

The post Founder’s story: Why did I create the OKR software? appeared first on Focus.

What does an ideal team mean for you?

First, each team leader should clearly understand what the ‘ideal team’ means to him or her. How many people are in their ideal team? How do they communicate? How do people set their goals and evaluate them? How does a manager evaluate how employees are performing? How many regular meetings do they need to stay in sync? How does each employee fit with company culture and values? What’s important for the leader and what’s not so crucial? In what type of team does the manager want to work?

It’s hard to achieve and create the ideal team, but the goal of this practice is getting a vision for yourself. It helps the manager to make decisions in hard situations, when the leader will be able to compare current conditions with his or her ideal scenario. And as you know, difficult situations are not rare occurance the life of a company.

Ok, let’s think that you did it. You understand your ideal team and its criteria. Great! Now we’re going to consider best practices for improving management in the team.

1. Transparency

You know this trendy word. Transparency. It’s all about the new way of communication between the company and an employee. You know, people don’t like to be a small piece of the big bureaucratic machine. People don’t like to do a job when they don’t understand why should they do it. But a lot of companies maintain this kind of communication. 

95% of employees don’t know their company goals. 

Wait for a second, think about it. It means that only 5%, including the founders, understand what’s going on in the company and what it wants to achieve. How do you think this impacts employee engagement? Do your team members enjoy being people who don’t understand company goals?

Transparency is a way of communication with your employees when you don’t keep secrets from people about the main events in the company. It helps you to improve employee engagement and makes team members more outcomes-oriented. 

Share with them all the main goals and events in the company. Give them a total picture of how things are moving. 

What can you share with employees?

• Company’s goals
• Current status of the projects
• Issues and struggles that your company has at the moment
• Why they are doing what you ask them

This is only basic list of things that you can share with the team. Some companies go one step further and create a totally transparent culture by showing all information to employees, including profit and loss.

It’s not a necessary step. However, for reasons good, you should be transparent and deliver clearly values, goals, and causes happening in the company. 

Well, we’ve now identified one way we’re improving employees performance, nailed down how to communicate it to them, and made it super easy to get started. Now we just need to actually, you know… provide that improvement. What should you do tomorrow? 

First, you could start to do daily and weekly updates. They’re online meetings that allow your team to stay in sync each day. It helps to know what’s happening in your team, and build alignment between members with 5 minutes a day. To do daily and weekly updates, you can use Focus. 

2. Continuous performance management

Go further. The next crucial thing for building top engagement culture in the team is continuous performance management. Old school performance management is a once per year activity. It’s all about providing performance reviews once or twice a year and setting goals for the next one for each employee. It’s mechanics are useful, but it doesn’t always work well. The reason for that is New Years Syndrome. Say that you decided to go to the gym more next year, but when it happens, you start putting it off and then give up. Sounds familiar? Yeah, performance plans have the same pattern. Employees generally forget about their performance goals in their daily routine. 

Instead, aim to flexibly accommodate all the behavioural conditions and use continuous performance management. Continuous performance management (CPM) is a new approach for increasing employee engagement. The real value of CPM lies in the sustained improvement of the employees while providing them with ongoing feedback, recognition, and coaching. 

That way, you will be acting as their personal trainer – totally invested in their improvement, and working to make sure their personal goals align with company outcomes. The more you can get people to connect with CPM, the stronger their results become. 

So how do you implement CPM in your workflow and how does it work?

First, CPM consists of three main areas, like ongoing feedback, recognition, and personal meetings for coaching people. Ongoing feedback helps to keep your finger on the pulse of employees thoughts and mood. You’re able to figure out what’s going on right now with your employees and you are aware of what’s important. 

The real value of recognition lies in the sustained improvement of employees engagement. You probably aren’t saying “thank-you” nearly as much as you should be. But it really matters for people. 

And last but not least, CPM are personal meetings for coaching people. It’s called 1:1 session and, you know, it’s a crucial part of employees performance. Few managers do it in their regular workflow, but it’s vital in improving personal outcomes. The right structure of a 1:1 meeting helps to provide more personal encounters for both team management and the employee.

At Focus, we’re using our own software to do it correctly. All three parts of the CPM implemented in Focus help companies stay on the same page and build high-performing culture. 

3. Employee development

Employee development is a process when you, as a manager, help an employee to improve a person’s skills and gain new knowledge or skills. Today, employee development is an essential factor for employee retention. 

Generally, employee development consists of three main parts: 

• Plan
• Learning programs
• Feedback

i. Plan

The first step is creating a plan for personal growth. So what’re the individual goals of the employee? What’re the person interests? What does she or he want to achieve this year? What do they want to do? It’s time to be a personal trainer for your employees. You can get answers to these question in private conversations. 

Once you understand personal interests, you can go further and create an individual plan that includes goals, a realistic timeframe, and detailed roadmap of how he or she will achieve it. 

ii. Learning programs

Depending on what your employees say, you’ll find out key areas that they want to improve. Time for learning. It can be group training or personal courses, or both of it. The main point is to tailor your learning program to individual’s needs, but not on trend-led ideas.

iii. Feedback 

Building a system of regular employee feedback is a crucial piece of high-performing culture. When people perceive qualitative feedback from their manager, it’s practically impossible not to be engaged. In the exact same way, it makes sense for employees when they understand that their feedback about the job will be considered by the manager or the team. 

Ok, ok, that’s enough celebrating feedback for now. But how to implement feedback routine in the company workflow as smooth as possible? It’s the question that each manager should think about. It seems simple but don’t undervalue it. A rule like “you can tell me everything that you’re thinking about” generally doesn’t work well. Employees often have top priorities in their job that should be done. It means that an idea ‘to go and talk with the manager’ becomes top priority when something critical happens. I don’t think you want to wait that long.

In that way, you should implement the workflow feedback routines as general tasks. Another side of that, people don’t like fill reports and spend a lot of time writing it down. That’s why it should be as simple as possible. For example, we create lightweight check-ins at Focus that requires only five minutes per day. It’s several key questions about a person’s results for the last day, which an individual regularly receives in email or messenger. This approach doesn’t take a lot of time, helps to focus on the key results, and allows employees to get praise for their work. The last point is a treat for individuals because they like it when other people appreciate them. You can check here to find out more details about Focus. 

Conclusion

Team management is a challenge for managers and founders because communication with others has the potential for misunderstanding, especially when the company is growing. It impacts on team’s motivation when employees are starting to lose sight of the company’s goals and vision. Three best practices that improve performing culture:

• Transparency
• Continuous performance management 
• Employee development

Focus, is a continuous performance management platform, which helps companies build high-performing culture. We provide an easy to implement continuous feedback loop and create transparent outcome-oriented mechanics in your workflow. And best of all, it only takes 5 minutes per day for an employee to share their results and stay in sync with the team without meetings. It helps you to focus on what matters. 

How do you increase team engagement? Let us know in the comments below. 

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