Eggs within eggs: goal alignment

In recent posts about OKRs I promised to say something about eggs-within-eggs, I also promised to talk about the OKR 2-step. So, at the risk of creating a OKR mini-series here…

Objective egg

The objective – or outcome with my OACs renaming – is a goal, a target, something to aim for, and outcome you wish to bring about. But, as much as I’d like that outcome to be the end state in itself, more likely, it is part of a broader, longer, larger goal.

The thing about goals is they are almost always wrapped in other goals. Look at sports, like football: you score goals, scoring goals is the aim. But actually, those goals are are themselves part of a bigger goal: winning the match.

But winning the match is not the final goal either. Winning the match may help the team win the league this season. So the real aim is to win the season – or some other contest.

But even winning the season isn’t the ultimate goal. The team wants to continue winning, and to continue winning they need to make money. Even winning the season is a goal nested inside bigger eggs.

Now goals aren’t always so well aligned. The owners of the team may aim to make money, so although they want the team to win their make money goal can some times conflict with the winning games.

On the whole the individual players will have aligned incentives: win the match, be crowned the best player, bag a bonus. Possibly a player has other incentives, one recovering from an injury may have other concerns. Just possibly, a player has been offered a lot of money to throw a game, so they may be pursuing a personal goal which conflicts with the team.

Goals work best when there is alignment, small mis-alignments may not be an issue but big misalignments can be.

Misalignment probably isn’t nefarious

The same is true in our work. Taking a Machiavellian view you see lots of conspiracies for team and individuals to pursue alternative goals. However, I tend to the see goals diverging for more mundane reasons.

Goals aren’t communicated clearly: leaders say one thing but workers hear another.

Works see divergence between what stated goals and their actions.

Conflicts between different goals aren’t spotted, or nobody listens conflicts are spoken, e.g. cost effectiveness is a goal but so too is innovation.

Or simply, goals aren’t prioritised sufficiently: everything is priority #1, team A spend their time on goal Y while team B on goal Z and team C try and do a little of everything an get sidetracked somewhere else.

Try this at home

Try drawing your goals as one of my egg diagrams – like above. Start with your immediate goals, then the goal they exist within, carry on going for as many layers as you can identify.

Then check your company website: what are you stated goals? or missions? What about your values? Do they all align?

Now show this to others and see if they agree with your analysis or see things differently.

This is why I advocate a challenge-respond-discuss protocol, it is feedback. Leaders set out the bigger goals and and challenge, ask, teams to contribute. Teams respond (with OKRs) and then the two sides discuss and give feedback, they iterate towards goals which everyone agrees.

And this is where the outer eggs become more relevant: by understanding the different eggs and how they need to align all can work to build smaller goals they support bigger goals.

By not giving orders leaders test their own communication. If teams come back with goals that don’t align, or don’t seem to build towards the leaders goals the question is why?

Is there something the leader didn’t know?
Did the leader’s communication lack clarity?
Or maybe a team member had a insight the leader should know about?

If the team members misunderstood who’s problem is that? And more importantly, what can we do about it?

By letting team members decide for themselves not only do you enhance motivation and bring their knowledge into play but you get to debug your own thinking.

The thing is, you don’t get alignment by telling people. Simply adding OKRs to your way of working does not deliver alignment either.

Rather, you get alignment because this approach shows you where alignment is missing or where conflict exists. Because each goal is articulated and can be compared with others. Because these are seen by different people.

In short, you get alignment by working at it.