Feel like a cat chasing a laser pointer?

Have you ever seen a cat chase a laser pointer? Hilarious, right?

While growing up, our family had two cats and our cheapest entertainment was to take a laser pointer and engage the cats with it.

We would see our cats demonstrate sporadic behavior with a high sense of urgency and then quickly burn out.

When I go in and work with organizations as a time management speaker, I notice the connection.

• Sporadic behavior (too many objectives)
• High sense of urgency (everything is a priority)
• Quick burn out (disengaged employees)

So, what is the answer? There could be many, but here is a proven productivity strategy that I teach in my workshops:

Objective and Key Results (OKR)

The objective is the “what” and the key results are the “how.”

OKRs have been around for a while and have been adopted by some of the most successful companies, from Google to Anheuser Busch, and Disney to Samsung. They were recently made famous by venture capitalist, John Doerr’s, bestselling book, “Measure What Matters.”

Although similar to S.M.A.R.T. goals and KPIs, in my opinion, OKRs are much more effective. Their effectiveness lies in their target length, typically three months, which helps increase focus and stops procrastination. As John Doerr tells us, “Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.”

Consider this example.

Objective:

• Create a marketing system for generating continuous business
  Hang your objective on your office wall, so you can see it daily and others can see your primary goal.

Key Results:

• Establish a consistent and effect outbound email/call system for marketing that produces five leads per week
• Set up a monthly mailer that provides value and increases repeat business
• Increase organic SEO through a blog post and social media which increases traffic to the website

The Benefits:

• Focus on work and eliminate tempting projects that pop up
• Create collaboration by sharing objectives with each other
• Measure your progress against your key results

It can be a powerful tool. 23andMe share their success with OKRs in this four minute video, “Stretch for Amazing.”

In my time-management workshops, I teach OKRs combined with my strategy of ‘3 Daily Wins.’ This ensures confidence is kept high even while experiencing heavy workloads.

by Eric Papp
Keynote Speaker