OKR Review – Your Litmus Test for Measuring Achievement

Do you review your performance and projects regularly?

If not, you are missing the most important part of the process.

If you have targets for yourself, you should have a system in place to measure them.

Have you heard of the OKR system?

An unerring method to nail down your performance targets.

OKR can literally be your guiding force for consistent achievement.

What are OKR Reviews?

This is the concluding Part 3 of the series on Leadership & Productivity Practices.

Click links below for Parts 1 & 2 which are required for this Part 3 to make sense.

Systems Vs Goals – The New Achievement Paradigm

OKR – Your Guiding Force for Consistent Achievement

In this post we will be answering some basic questions like:

What are OKR Reviews?

What can I view with my OKR reviews?

How to do a OKR review?

And more.

First, let us deal with what an OKR Review is.

An OKR Reviews a powerful ritual of

measuring and
improving

on performance targets.

This is the concluding Part 3 of a 3 Part Series on Leadership and Productivity Practices for hotel middle managers (and actually everybody else!).

Let me backtrack a bit to provide you some background.

More specifically, this is about how I use Reviews for my performance targets and achievement system.

My PPP Manifesto

This manifesto guides me in everything I do both in my business enterprise as well as my personal life.

I consciously adhere to the manifesto at all times.

The PPP Manifesto is anchored by three powerful achievement mindsets:

Process
Planning
Progress

The Process role is all about steps and rituals.

One of the rituals is the OKR Review this post is about.

The Planning role is about mapping your journey and destination.

I Use OKR for my planning (more shortly)

Planning window is quarter based (more shortly).

The Progress Role is about measuring how I am doing against the plan.

In other words, identifying milestones of progress.

It is week / month based for each quarter planned.

TIP 1

Whatever approach you adopt ensure that you give it your own unique flavor.
That taps into how you think.
The way you work best.
And most of all, that harnesses your skill sets.
Your OKR system of goal setting must be yours and only yours.

My Use of OKR Reviews

I use OKR Reviews in both my business as well as personal life.

For my business, I use OKR Reviews for:

Content creation
Course creation and
Video creation

These are three areas I will use to explain how I go about my reviews.

I also use OKR reviews in my personal life for example in my following areas:

Wellness
Reading & Relaxation
Travel
Passion Pursuits like video editing, gamification of training
Building Net Worth

to name some major ones.

If you remember from Part 1 of this 3 part series, I had talked about the role of process in my PPP Manifesto.

This is where the systems approach which represents process varies from the goal approach.

Let me elaborate with examples you can use for setting up your own OKR reviews.

OKR Illustration on Content Creation

Let me illustrate how an OKR Review works.

I will first lay out the OKR itself and then the review process.

Let me use content creation in my business.

OKR - Content for Today

Notice in the above image, how "🔴 Sweep is OverDue" prompt comes up for Today in my Notion system

My objective (the “O” in OKR) is stated as:

Create and publish periodical high ranking content for my target audience.

Notice a few things about the objective:

The objective is precise
It is qualitative, as in, it talks about high ranking content but does not mention quantum of content to be created
The objective is inspirational as it mentions content to be high ranking

Given the above broad direction for content, here is how my Key Results (the “KR” in OKR) for content are laid out:

Posts should be at least 2,000 words
Publish posts weekly on Friday (like today)
Select keywords for the posts to rank on Page #1 on Google

Here a few things to notice about the Key Results:

There are 3 Key Results laid out for the content objective
They are quantitative (first two are about word count and regularity)
Key Results are measurable (unlike objectives which are qualitative)
Key Result 3 is qualitative although it is also measurable (content should rank high)

Also notice that the combination of the 3 Key Results will deliver the objective for you.

Now we dive into the process of OKR Reviews themselves.

Tip 2

Set up an OKR system that is achievable for you.
Lay out a process for OKR Reviews.
Decide on how often you will measure progress toward achievement

OKR Reviews - Quarterly Plan, Monthly Focus, Weekly Tracking

In Part 2, we saw that OKR is based on a quarterly plan window.

OKR Quarterly Plan

The beauty of a quarterly OKR plan is it allows three full months of performance.

A month is a great balance between too short and too long.

On the one hand, it allows you to plan activities within a quarter.

It on the other hand provides you with a good measure for progress (more later).

The other advantage is that three solid periods (month) can be used within a quarter for performance management.

In my content example, I lay out my content for each of the three months in a quarter.

I plan a month within a quarter based on weeks.

My plan is to publish content every Friday.

Tip 3

Spend some time thinking about your OKR plan.
Decide on your OKR Review process.
Be comfortable with what you plan.
Don’t put pressure on yourself with unrealistic plans.

My Progress in OKR Reviews

Peter Drucker the father of management once said:

If it cannot be measured, it cannot be improved.

And so, you have set up an OKR system and have done your quarterly planning.

This will be useless if you do not address the third P in the PPP Manifesto - progress.

This is easier said than done.

You will see how again the OKR system will come to your rescue.

In particular, measurement and rituals (reviews) will again be key.

How is that you ask?

All in good time.

There are two parts to the progress role in my system:

OKR Measurement
OKR Reviews

OKR Measurement

This is pretty obvious as an activity.

You compare your plan with what you achieved.

You want to know whether you accomplished what you planned.

Or if you fell short.

If so, by how much and why and so on.

Let us use the content example.

Here, monthly focus will be critical.

For example, say, your OKR objective was set for Q2 2023.

Your month focus in your review will be April.

Why you ask?

As of May 25, 2023 (today), you will measure for the last completed month - April.

So, I need to measure myself against the 3 Key Results I laid out.

Two of them are straight forward.

Did I publish content every week of April month?
Were my posts (content) in April at least 2,000 words each?

The third one about SEO Rank may need a different approach.

What I mean is that one month may not be conclusive about ranking high for post keywords.

However, nothing stops you from making that measurement for April.

Based on whether you achieved your Key Results or not, you can plan further corrective action.

Milestones play a big part in OKR Measurement.

You could literally call them the building blocks of progress.

They tell you where you are currently in the OKR journey.

While I have talked about OKR Measurement in general, the process is much more involved.

That is because measurement has its own process.

And that process is called an OKR review.

It is the most important ritual in OKR measurement.

For your guidance, a ritual is something that is repeated over time, often with the same interval.

I will now lay out what OKR reviews achieve in my OKR system.

My OKR Reviews

After OKR Measurement (in fact, during it as well!), comes the most critical part.

That is OKR Reviews.

Reviews are one of the most powerful rituals you can perform.

Remember rituals in the systems part of this post earlier?

Well, you make a habit out of measuring your progress versus your plan.

By doing the reviewing on the same day over a period.

For example, I conduct an OKR review of my progress every Saturday.

So, you could say, it is a weekly ritual.

OKR Reviews are powerful if you set up a system for it.

I will now provide you examples of how reviews work for my content example.

However, before that, let me divide my OKR Reviews into 4 key parts:

Weekly Review
Monthly Review
Quarterly Review
Annual Review

Tip 4

Be honest with your OKR Review of progress measurement.
If you did not achieve your plan this month, continue and do so in the next.
Make your OKR reviews an enjoyable activity.
Celebrate small wins based on your reviews.

OKR Periodical Review Examples

Weekly Review

The Weekly Review is one of the most critical of the 4 types.

Why so, you ask?

Because you are the most close to the week that is about to end.

My Weekly Review is on Saturdays.

OKR Weekly Reviews

You can do it on Sundays too.

In some cases, if you get busy over the weekend, you could do it on Monday morning too.

My reasoning for Saturday is as follows:

I count Mon-Fri as my work week.
I keep Sunday as the day to chill.

I do my review on Saturday, so that I can be ready for the next week.

My weekly review straddles the 3 Ps (Process, Planning & Progress).

My Weekly Review is a base level one (more later).

So what do I review weekly?

First, Friday being my weekly content publishing deadline, whether I achieved that?
- My OKR target for the quarter is to publish content every Friday 95% of the time
- The 5% takes care of some special circumstances when I missed the deadline (reduces overwhelm)
Second, I review my active projects during the week
- I review progress of projects based on their deadline dates
- I check whether milestones planned for each project were reached in the week
- I also review milestones coming up for the project
- I review tasks due ahead for the projects
Third, I review big picture OKR targets related to projects I am reviewing
- An OKR can span more than one project
Fourth, I review my Second Brain utilization in projects reviewed
- Second Brain is a system for curating ideas and bringing them into my project execution
- A 3 Part Series of Posts on Second Brain will be published in the coming month

Monthly Review

My Monthly Reviews are mid level where I touch upon 3 areas:

OKR Monthly Effectiveness Review

Overall Effectiveness for the month Vs Plan
- Highlights
- Challenges
Reflective Practice on Kaizen entries
- Reviewing Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) Entries
Discoveries in the month from reviews
- What surprising new learning did I have?

Quarterly Review

My quarterly Review is high level where I measure 3 areas:

Progress Vs Plan of Quarterly OKRs
OKRs where I am falling behind with action plan
OKRs where I am ahead with strategy to maintain or improve

Annual Review

The Annual Review is a full year look back on all 3 Ps in my PPP Manifesto.

It is forward looking and backward integrated.

Meaning it uses progress and achievement or the past year to improve for the coming year.

Annual OKR Reviews are Top level Achievement System tools.

Benefits of OKR Reviews

So, what are the benefits of the OKR reviews.

I have been doing my OKR reviews for the last 4-5 years.

Over that time I can genuinely say I have reaped the following clear benefits:

I do not get overwhelmed by the pressure of goals (destination)
I keep my focus on the process (journey) and finally
I have allowed my OKR system to dictate achievement

My OKR reviews have greatly helped me:

reach milestones,
meet deadlines and
result in consistent accomplishments.

OKR Reviews have provided me the necessary tool for ongoing motivation.

This is not only for achievement but also closely keeping an eye on the journey of progress.

How do You Review Your Performance?

How do you review your performance?

Do you agree with my reviews approach?

Is there anything I can do to improve my system?

Comment below, I am keen on knowing how you handle your performance.