Your Goal Depends on Another Team — Now What?

​Dear Reader,​

Your Key Result says to "Improve Conversion Rate by 7%," but you only control on-site search.

You want to drive customer retention, but the marketing team is focused on new acquisition.

Most teams respond in one of two ways: they water down the goal until it fits their scope (and lose the ambition), or they keep the big goal and quietly accept they can't move it. Both lead to OKRs that exist in a parallel universe to the actual work.

These conflicts result in your Sphere of Influence not matching your ambition. Here are three options for fixing that:

#1 Re-interpret Contribution Goals into your Sphere of Influence

It's not enough to choose metrics just because you can influence them. What teams need to do is to truly understand the intention of goals that they are asked to contribute to and derive the influenceable metrics that have a visible correlation with the business goals.

Like in this example of a coffee roasting marketplace from my book Real Progress:​

Don't get lost in discussing all reasoning behind company goals. Put your detective hat on and identify the intention:

"Increase Revenue" → Either increasing revenue per customer or unlocking new paying segments

"Increase Satisfaction" → Remove the biggest obstacles of our customers succeeding.

Then, identify the overlap between what you can influence and what represents the actual strategy choice:

#2 Change your Sphere of Influence through more cross-functional Skills

One reason why you cannot influence a goal might be a missing skill set. The obvious (but often hardest) fix is to add these skills to your team. Either by hiring people, by upskilling team members, or by tapping into existing skills that are hidden beneath role restrictions.

You cannot influence the quality of acquired leads? Maybe a growth marketer should complement your team.

You run into the limitations of the architecture? Maybe an architect can be embedded into your team for the time being.

When you cannot add people or skills to your team, expand your sphere through formal coalitions with teams who have. Which brings us to...

#3 Expand your Sphere of Influence through shared Goals

Shared goals (for example, in shared OKRs). Are a powerful way to remove conflicts. Instead of getting lost in "he said, she said" scenarios when pointing fingers at missed commitments to support your OKRs, you look at it together.

That means, representatives from all involved teams draft together, meet for a check-in, and are held accountable together for the progress.

When another team owns the frontend you want to monetize through, all you can influence might be delivering the billing API call. And they might only have an Output goal of "Ship upgrade functionality." No shared incentive, no real impact.

Instead, co-create Key Results like "Visit to Checkout Conversion Rate of x%" or "Upgrade Error Rate of 0.5%." Now both teams can play their part for creating value for customers and the business - together.

Thank you for Practicing Product,

​Tim​

If you consume one thing this week, make it this...

Who is Tim Herbig?

As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions.

I focus on better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery.