Linked Better Practices over Stacked Best Practices

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​Dear Reader,​

When a leadership team wants to introduce OKRs, it can be tempting to start by turning every bullet point of your strategy into an OKR. But a long list of priorities will still compete for the same time and attention, even when it gets repackaged.

Before moving into OKR drafting, I like to work through this question that unlocks aha! moments every time:

If you could make sure that only one thing succeeds this year, alongside daily business, what would it be?

I like making that painful trade-off tangible. Imagine the year-end all-hands or a board meeting. What would you want to be able to say had changed because of the work you did?

Almost every item on a strategy page can sound important. The first answer may still need work. “Grow in a new market” leaves plenty of room for different interpretations.

For example, imagine a B2B SaaS product team with priorities around integrations, onboarding, and expansion. Their answer might be that customers in a new segment can get started without custom implementation work.

They would still need evidence that this matters to those customers and is supporting the business goal. But they now have a specific change to discuss.

• Which integrations would help?
• What needs to change in onboarding?
• What would show that customers are getting started more independently?

Several items on the original list might contribute to that same change in customer behavior. Understanding those connections helps the team decide where to concentrate its effort.

Of course, daily business continues. Customers still need support, the product needs to work, and existing commitments need attention. Narrowing your strategic priorities doesn't mean dropping the ball on business as usual or low-level customer requests.

So, before your next OKR drafting session, ask each person to write down the one change they most want to see by the end of the period. Compare the answers before discussing metrics. If leadership is imagining different versions of success, spend time on that difference.

Then, you can transition to turn these priorities into potential KRs by asking: Which metrics would tell us that this strategy choice has worked?

Thank you for Practicing Product,

​Tim​

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.