It will be four years this December since I hung up my employment lanyard which held my office entry swipe card. Since then, I have been busy and active in retirement doing things I’ve done in the past to a greater extend including many new things. Stepping in as interim treasurer I’ve been learning and using the accounting system MYOB and managing payroll for a non-profit organisation. I’ve continued being on a school board which currently has two and soon with three school campuses, I’ve been leading a men’s church ministry group and continue to mentor young IT graduates.
Recently I was tidying some storage boxes which had in them memorabilia from my working days, souvenirs from my travels, old photos which never made it into albums and reference books either gifted to me or books I had bought.
I started the tidy up process in the morning with the aim of having things completed in a couple of hours. Admittedly however, I spent most of the time reflecting, as I pulled out each artifact from their storage boxes. I must say the soft instrumental music playing on my smartphone helped create the ambience which put me in that mood of reflection. I took almost the whole morning until lunch time but, in the process, I found an article I had written that I thought would be useful for this month’s FromMyDeskAtHome essay.
Prior to retiring and starting my blog site [frommydeskathome.com], I wrote a quarterly newsletter called “From the Desk of the CIO”. It was a passion of mine since 2005, with the final edition posted in the Spring of 2020, the year I retired. I have since continued this passion through my blogsite.
Here is the article published [unedited] in 2019.
[START]
I met Tony [a speaker] at a conference recently and decided to reach out to him as I sensed a shared set of management values. As I had been evaluating a new management strategy for goal setting called Objectives Key Results, my ears pricked up when one of Tony’s replies to a panel question mentioned ‘OKRs’. I left things for a few days before messaging Tony with some questions I had on OKRs. Here is the transcript of my LinkedIn conversation with Tony who is Co-Founder and CEO of a successful Australian startup company.
Steven: Hi Tony, would love to connect. I was particularly interested in the comment you made on OKRs. We are giving it a go in IT. Have you a recommended consultant/coach who could share more on OKRs with us.
Tony: Hi Steven, thanks for the add. Unfortunately, I don't know of any coaches or consultants as we just did it ourselves.
Steven: Looks like we’ve started the same way; “Suck and see”. We’ve used KPIs [Key Performance Indicators] but changing to OKRs. Setting matrices with ability to progressively measure is one challenge.
Tony: Yes, it needs to be suitable for your organization. And it also comes down to the appetite. For us success doesn't mean achieving 100% of OKRs, because then the bar has been set too low. So, from a leadership perspective, we have the expectations of 80%.
Tony: FYI, I pulled all the team OKRs into one excel sheet so that each team can now have transparency over each other teams’ main priorities and have seen already a huge improvement around moving in the same direction and collaboration. Thought I'd share. Hope you're OKR journey is going well.
Steven: Thanks for sharing Tony. I created a shared spreadsheet across my 4 teams last year. We had individual objectives which linked upwards to focused objectives which linked to the corporate operational plans. The individual objectives had activities below it. The spreadsheet worked well. I suppose with OKRs the same principles can apply re: transparency and collective purpose. Tony, I suppose at the end of the day whether we call it OKRs, focused objectives, KPIs, key results or measures, if we are making a positive contribution to growth than we are doing something right :-). Happy to share further.
Tony: Yeah, I think at the end of the day it's all about transparency and giving the employees the ability to know what's going on. Especially at ground level, they are investing their lives into this and need to feel part of it. Imagine if you were a key part of a project but then didn't get told what was going on. It would be so contradictory.
Just from this thread, you can get the sense that sharing our plans, our objectives and furthermore results can have a positive outcome for everyone in the business. A sense of collective purpose is fundamental to achieving a well broadcast goal or vision.
I believe achieving success as a leader boils down to being transparent and open with those who follow us. David Niu, author, entrepreneur and founder of TINYpulse, puts it nicely. He says, “To be a good boss, you must be transparent. There’s a correlation between worker happiness and workplace transparency. Leaders and managers who offer transparency will earn the respect and devotion of their team.”
How do we display transparency and openness? In my opinion nothing less than clear and honest communication.
A good case in point was reflected by Sally Frame Kasaks, the former CEO of the Ann Taylor clothing store which began in 1954 and expanded to over 360 stores across North America. Kasaks’ management style was to place emphasis on quality products and on more and better communication with employees at all levels. Within a year, sales rose over 30 per cent.
Transparency and openness in employee relationships are not new practices in business operations. Some business leaders have gone as far as to change internal company strategy to emphasize three things:
(1) Open doors. Where leaders become more accessible to employees.
(2) Visibility. Where leaders spend a significant percentage of time ‘just talking with people’.
(3) Sharing information through newsletters and frequent open forums with employees.
Achieving targets, call them Key Performance Indicators or Key Results, is only one dimension of the employee-employer relationship. While vision, targets and outcomes do matter, as a leader always consider the issues that are important to those who follow. Why?
Because no matter how great these goals may be, without the cooperation and commitment of employees, the organisation’s vision will never be fulfilled.
Irene Rosenfeld, former chairwoman and CEO of Mondelez International knew this when she expressed, that the most important role of a leader is to set a clear direction, be transparent about how to get there and to stay the course.
As my LinkedIn friend Tony had said, “They [employees] are investing their lives into this [project/vision] and need to feel part of it”.
Someone was quoted as saying "open the door toward transparency and openness, and people will follow you through it."
[END]
Five years since my conversation with Tony, the attempt to introduce OKR beyond the IT department never eventuated, though there was a spirited attempt to do so. In the preparation for the new business plan cycle in the beginning of 2020, which would have been an opportunity to change, the business decided to keep measuring performance using the familiar tools which the company had implemented. There was nothing wrong with that, as the basic principles for accountability of department heads and transparency across the business were still being met.
Upon reflection of the 2019 article and the three points identified to emphasize transparency and openness, I would add three more points for consideration.
(4) Feedback. Leaders must be prepared to receive feedback from those they lead without feeling defensive and or taking offence. Those who give feedback are in most cases only wishing leaders and those in management to consider alternatives from their [employees] lived experiences in the business.
(5) Continuous Improvement. A culture of continuous improvement speaks of a culture which is not satisfied with the status quo. Knowing that change is constant, and competition is real, leaders need to be nimble and agile enough to improve existing processes, technology and practices. Even if they have previously proven to be successful they can still be further improved. This is what continuous improvement is all about.
(6) Vision sharing. It is important for leaders to share their vision. Sharing the vision of the business or endeavour is what employees seek to know. Team members want to understand what their particular role is in achieving the vision or in assisting others to achieve the vision.
If a business has a culture which fosters these practices with transparency and openness, there is no challenge too great for the collective business team to overcome.
John C. Maxwell, in his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership said [my insert in italics], "As a leader, you don’t earn any points for failing in a noble cause. You don’t get credit for being “right” as you bring the organization to a halt. Your success is measured by your ability to actually take the people where they need to go. But you can do that only if the people first buy into you [and your vision] as a leader."
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