OK, thought this would be 5 reasons, but we ended up adding 2 more in the end!

Find out what those other two are by listening to this episode.

Here are the "TOP 5"...

The most common failure mode is incredibly human.

Teams turn key results into a checklist:

• Launch feature

• Hire two engineers

• Run campaign

• Build dashboard

Great work "to do" but none reflect outcomes/KRs.

This is one of the biggest killers of OKR programs.

A leadership team runs OKRs successfully, then decides: “Let’s deploy OKRs everywhere....Now!”

Arguably the most common reason why OKRs projects fail.

Teams get excited after publishing OKRs (like New year's resolutions) and then just go back to work. Near the middle or end of the OKR cycle, people are like "Oh, yeah we should look at our OKRs..."

Even teams that care about OKRs often lack a structured rhythm.

Check-ins are:

• Inconsistent

• Unstructured

• Status-heavy

• Or skipped entirely

Without a set cadence, your OKRs program is close to worthless.

Ambitious teams often believe more goals mean more drive.

In reality, more goals dilute execution.

Common pattern:

• Too many objectives

• Too many key results

• Everything is a priority!

When everything matters, nothing moves. The highest-performing teams consistently do fewer things, but do them well.

For more, check us out at www.okrs.com

Thanks for listening!

Ben introduces the 9 roles you'll need to launch and sustain your OKRs program. OK, so you might not need an EXTERNAL OKRs COACH, but Ben is going to push for that and not just because that's his job! It's super-valuable to get an outside perspective from someone with deep experience both 1) launching OKRs, 2) improving OKRs, and even 3) training internal OKR coaches so you can sustain your OKRs program without external support.

Here are the 9 roles along with when you'll need to identify a person to fill each:

In addition to "external coach" as optional, some of the other roles may not be required.

For example, if you're launching top-level OKRs only, you don't need "TEAM LEAD"). If you don't have a performance management or review system in place yet, then you also don't need an "HR Lead")

For more on OKRs, check out our site: www.okrs.com

Best of luck filling those roles!

Thanks for listening!

Ben covers the 5 things you must keep in mind to succeed with OKRs. And he even gets into the 6th mantra which was added recently, after his OKRs book came out in 2022.

You'll learn how to leverage these 5 mantras to make your OKR program a success:

1.Less is more. Define a small set of OKRs.

2.Crawl-walk-run. Deploy OKRs piecemeal. Scale it then nail it. (2 cycles)

3.Outcomes, not output. Write key results that mostly reflect outcomes (results) rather than output (amount of work delivered).

4.OKRs are not everything. Write OKRs that reflect the most important areas to make measurable progress. Distinguish OKRs from tasks and health metrics.

5.The only way to learn OKRs is to do OKRs. Allocate most of an OKRs project to drafting, refining and reflecting on OKRs rather than discussing theory.

6.Embed Alignment. Listen in to learn more about Ben's latest mantra!

For more info check out www.okrs.com

Thanks for listening and see you next time!