Once you’ve invested the time to develop really strong, compelling OKRs, you’re going to want to achieve them💪🏼 — and to achieve them, you need to make sure people know their roles. This may seem obvious, but I’ve seen so many teams skip this, only to find themselves consumed by “other work” and then, at the end of the period, scratching their heads when asked if they achieved the outcomes that mattered most. Don’t let this be you! There are a couple of roles I’ve found critical to get the value out of OKRs:
Role 1: OKR Captain/Shepherd. At a minimum, you’ll want one named captain/shepherd for an entire OKR, which includes the objective and corresponding KRs. This person has overall accountability for the OKR. Their primary role is to ensure work is being done toward delivery of the OKR, and can–at any time– give anyone a sense of confidence (low or high), why and, if low, what’s being done/what help is needed. They keep it unblocked, by taking action themselves or by enlisting help from others.
Role 2: KR Data Owners. This might be the captain above, or it might be someone(s) else. The person in this role is responsible for measuring one or more KRs, and knows it. I’ve seen so many cases of there being no clear data owner (who is also clear on their responsibility here) and then, when it comes time to assess performance, the team shrugs and goes, “we thought someone else was measuring” or, even worse, “we aren’t sure how to measure this.” 🤦🏼♀️
Role 3 (optional): KR Captains/Shepherds. Depending on the size of your team and the scope of these OKRs, you might also consider KR-specific shepherds. In this case, there is one person accountable for the entire OKR (role #1) who has more general oversight and accountability, and the individual KR shepherds are accountable for individual KRs. They ensure that there’s a healthy backlog behind their specific KR, and that they’re unblocked.
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