Agile Chennai 18-19 July 2025 | Unpacking OKRs: A Guide to Strategic Sophistication by Avinash Rao
- 1. UnpackingOKRs:Aguidetostrategicsophistication Avinash Rao Consulting Leader for IN and ME, Greyamp Consulting Beyond the Horizon: Leadership in Disruptive Times Agility for Resilience: Adaptive Systems & Continuous Learning Culture
- 3. There is a problemwith OKRs. They are deceptively simple.
- 4. There is a problemwith OKRs. They are deceptively simple.
- 6. OKRs are supposedto: Align. Focus on Outcomes. Drive Growth. But we get “The Shrug” But my OKRs were formatted correctly! Or maybe OKRs are another fad and don’t work …
- 7. OKRs are supposedto: Align. Focus on Outcomes. Drive Growth. What gets in the way?
- 8. Alignment +Progress TheSchoolboyprobleminany (product,service, business) SupplyChain But – urgent things give us satisfaction.
- 9. Knowledge of the technique to solve
- 10. Saythe first thingthat comes to your mind … Beauty and the _____
- 11. Saythe first thingthat comes to your mind … War and _____
- 12. Saythe first thingthat comes to your mind … Cinderella ate my _____
- 13. Thinking – Fast “System 1” → but that’s for another day Fast Instinctive Emotional War and Peace
- 14. Keep inmind: rapid automatic judgments based on repeated experience using rapid pattern matching People overestimate how much they understand about the world, and underestimate the role of chance Or they estimate the role of chance, but not its probability “Apple” “Elon Musk”
- 15. WYSIATI:What YouSee IsAll There Is Known Knowns Known Unknowns Unknown Knowns Unknown Unknowns
- 16. Put ittogether: We default to action Don’t always have the tools We thinkWYSIATI (WhatWe See Is AllThere Is) So when things go wrong inQ2 …
- 20. TheShrug: Whydid this happen? Looking at the OKR Dashboard during the Q2 Review Why did this happen?
- 21. There is NOTHING I hate more thanThe Shrug “Aap samajhte Nahin ho marketing ko … “ (undertone) “Hota hai aisa … ” Now, we don’t likeThe Shrug But the same question remains:What can we do about it?
- 22. Where dowe live? Blueprints don’t work inComplex environments I suspect a lot of Leaders ”grew up” in a Complicated IT world
- 23. To make itwork Pre-Mortems Grow the focus Is it written right? → Is it Robust? Particularly at the L2 and L3 and Initiative levels Pre-mortem:What can go wrong?
- 24. To make itwork Optionality Brainstorming under pressure – not the greatest option The outputs of the Pre-mortem inform Plan Bs, Experiments and Losable Bets Pivots are possible only when PlanAs are not (financially) fully committed for theYEAR In reality … there may be no PlanA (but that’s often scary), since Experiments are also fully committed to
- 25. Lead and LEVERAGEABLE Metrics If we have the right measure, but only looks back (Lag Metric), we are too late Also if we can’t do more, it can’t be leveraged (say campaigns) Lead Metrics are reviewed on a higher frequency
- 26. SO: ForStrategic OKR sophistication Pre-Mortems (make OKRs robust, not just well formed) Plan Bs (with Losable Bets and Experiments, createOptionality) Leverageable Lead Metrics Remember: Not once a year!
- 27. BeingAgile in your commitments A subtle but important change – beingAgile in spend commitments Cheaper by the dozen, but not if you don’t use them! Control Costs v/s Invest forGrowth GCCs with the Service DeliveryCost Control orientation are struggling with this
- 28. What are your decisions optimized for? Questions?