OKRs in the Real Worldwith Neil Fasen

I’m Neil.

• Digital “Chief-of-staff”

• Responsible for prioritization & alignment both within Digital as well as across Digital and the Enterprise

• Introduced OKRs to Target’s Digital org ~4 years ago

• Led multiple iterations of OKR processes and documentation

OKRs in the Real World

I will not…• Reveal a “silver bullet” for

implementing OKRs.

• Prescribe any specific OKR templates or processes

I will…• Share my perspective on the

most important OKR principles.

• Share examples and stories of what I've seen work and fail over the past 5 years.

•Why Digital adopted OKRs

•How did we start?

•What did we learn along the way?

•Key Principles for OKRs

Why did Digital’s adopt OKRs?

• Needed a more effective way to prioritize across many teams

• Needed to improve the effectiveness cross-team alignment

• Wanted to enable product discovery and learning

• Wanted to empower teams to find the best solutions

OUTCOMES OVER OUTPUT!

Marty Cagan, Author of ”Inspired” and head of Silicon Valley Product Group

How did we start?Fundamentals and a cadence

OKR Fundamentals

Objectives• Ambitious

• Qualitative

• Time bound

• Actionable

Key Results• Measureable & quantifiable

• 2-5 per objective

• Metrics (value based)

• Difficult but not impossible

What did we learn?

OKR Cadence

NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC JAN

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Digital Planning Cadence

Q4 Previous Year

• Annual Strategic Initiatives: Big Bets & Health Metrics

• Priorities for Next Quarter: Outcomes with Measurable Results

• Quarterly Product Planning: OKRs & 30-60-90 Day Plans

What we learned about OKR cadence?

Take-aways• Alignment to existing cycles is

best

• Leaders don’t always communicate their OKRs, which makes it hard for teams to plan

• OKRs don’t always fit neatly into a quarter

What we are we trying now• Aligned to business quarters &

QPP across Target

• Planning Kick-off at the beginning of Quarterly Planning

• Sometimes objectives span multiple quarters, and that’s ok

OKR Templates

O.G. Confluence OKR Template

OKR 4 Square• Upper Left: Intention for the

week: what are the 3-4 most important things you must get done this week toward the Objective?

• Lower Left: Forecast for month: What should your team know is coming up that they can help with or prepare for?

• Upper Right: Status toward OKRs: If you set a confidence of 5 out of ten, has that moved up or down? Have a discussion about why.

• Lower Right: Health Metrics: Pick two things you want to protect as you strive toward greatness.

Q1 Product 1-PagerProduct Team: Guest Purchase Communications

Clearly communicate critical purchase-related information to guest via email and SMS.

Objective: Create confidence with clear guest communication regarding action or status on

their order.

Key Results:• Reduce Modify Order Contacts Per Order by 15% - from 0.37% to 0.31%

• Increase Pre-Ship OPU fulfillment rate* by 20% - from 30.1% to 36.12%

• Reduce Level 4 Contacts Per Order** by 5% - from 0.0213% to 0.0202%

*OPU fulfillment rate is defined as % of repromise and subscriptions lines fulfilled by OPU

**Level 4 contacts defined as backordered, OOS items, incorrect email address, information

incorrect, information unclear to guest, not received, shipping carrier email

30

• Order Mod: Cancel failure

notification

• Continued work to remove

TGS phone number from

select emails (TGS)

• Ratings & Reviews

unsubscribe - Phase 2

• Email Joy copy and artwork

• New data retention policies

for operational email

(privacy requirement)

• Shipt email support

60 90

• Order Mod: Payment

success/failure notification

• OPU Repromise window 2 →

5 days

• Registrant shipping and

delivery confirmation emails

• eGiftCard Delivery

Optimization

• Deep linking to App

• Dynamic EDDs for post-ship

emails

• Shipt email support

Risks:• Missing data from systems dependent to enable communications: GOM, Checkout, etc.

Key Dependencies: Partnership and alignment with the following teams:

• Pre-Ship and GOM Order Mod work to enable guest communications

• Partnership and approval from Creative on Email Joy work

• PUMA work for new retention policies

• Order Mod: Address

success/failure notification

• Partial Line Repromise

• LTL enhancements in existing

templates

• Storefront LTL support

• Returns Your Way Support

• Deliv POC support

• Shipt email support

Who’s on this Product Team?

Engineering:

Shani.NestigenKelly.Gilbert

Product:

Hanna Henslin

UX / Design:

Andrew.Wright1

EDABI:

Jayanti.Trivedi

Other:

What we learned about OKR templates?

Take-aways• Every team prefers their own

template

• The more complicated the form, the less likely it will be maintained

• Confluence is great for product teams but not great for all partners

What we are we trying now• Standardized 1-pagers

• Shared document that is editable by Product teams

• Stored in Digital Communication Site accessible to all HQ

Reporting OKR Progress

OKR Scoring Example

What we learned about reporting OKR progress/confidence

Take-aways• People were often confused

by confidence % vs the key results

• People rarely kept their progress scores up-to-date

• The confidence score provided little value

What we are trying• No longer mandate reporting

on confidence measures

• Exploring forums for more consistent OKR review

• Seek to better understand both progress and learning

Cascading OKRs

Enterprise Strategic Roadmap

1. Set Financial Goals 2. Establish Digital Health Metrics: measures of success for

the year

Digital Annual Planning: Nov-Dec

Quarterly Product Planning

Product OKRs & 30-60-90

Force ranked Priorities for the quarter with success metrics

Digital Strategy ~3 YearsGuiding Principles, Where Digital will play in support of Enterprise Strategic Roadmap and financials plans

Digital Quarterly Priorities

3. Identify Themes/Big Bets we will stand for in the coming year 4. Ensure teams are set up for success, staffed appropriately, etc.

Force ranked Priorities for the quarter with success metrics

Digital Quarterly Priorities

Force ranked Priorities for the quarter with success metrics

Digital Quarterly Priorities

Force ranked Priorities for the quarter with success metrics

Digital Quarterly Priorities

Quarterly Product Planning

Product OKRs & 30-60-90

Quarterly Product Planning

Product OKRs & 30-60-90

Quarterly Product Planning

Product OKRs & 30-60-90

What we learned about cascading OKRs

Take-aways• Impossible to micro-manage

connections between all key results across all levels

• If OKRs don’t resonate with certain leaders, use different terminology.

What we are trying now• Focus on increasing the

transparency of priorities at different levels

• Aspire to keep strategy strategic vs a list of mandated solutions

Alignment

AutonomyLow

Low

High

High

Micro-management culture “shut up and follow orders”

Leaders communicate both the problem to be solved as well as how to solve it

• Leaders focus on the most important problems to solve

• Teams figure out how to solve it

• Teams to whatever they want

• Leaders are helpless

ALIGNED AUTONOMY

Key OKR Principles

•Collaborative not dictated

•Outcomes not solutions

•Transparent not hidden

•Reviewed not forgotten

Key OKR Learning

•Focus on the outcome you’re trying to achieve by using OKRs

•Don’t be constrained by “the experts”

Q & A

Appendix

Digital Quarterly Prioritization & Planning Activities by Month

Month 1

• Digital Leaders discuss “bottoms up” priorities from Product Teams and reconcile with Enterprise priorities and Digital Strategies

• End of Month: Digital Leaders ratify quarterly priorities with key partners

• Digital Leaders share out of Quarterly Digital Priorities to inform Product OKRs & planning

• Product Teams Author OKRs & 30•60•90 for the coming quarter

• Product Teams align known dependencies & commitments across teams

• Product Teams share out plans at Quarterly Kickoff

• Product Teams share their POV on priorities for the coming quarter to inform Quarterly Digital Priorities

Month 2 Month 3

QUARTERLY ACTIVITIES

Product Team Quarterly Artifacts

Product 1 Pagers: OKRs & 30-60-90

Force ranked Outcomes with success metrics

Quarterly Digital Priorities

Fidelity of Prioritization & PlanningIMPACT

StrategyOUTCOMES

Objectives + Key ResultsOUTPUT

Backlogs, Sprints, Tests• High level goals that often

require longer time horizons to achieve

• Often framed as the desired result of a company’s strategic choices

• Generally measured by lagging indicators

• Directionally correlated to outcomes, but with lots of external factors at play

• Change in guest behavior we hope will drive impact and support key strategies

• Often framed up via OKRs by product teams and groups of product teams

• Signaled by leading indicators

• Should be caused by output and correlated to impact

• The solutions that teams deliver in support of outcomes

• Shows up as code in production/ things we ship

• Driven by teams with high context for guest and domain