So I've already touched on Results KPIs and how that fits in to the OKR process. I haven't talked in-depth about the project/KR-level process KPIs. The characteristics have already been discussed as well as the quotients. But the last piece of that is the KR Process KPIs. What do I actually think are leading indicators for internal success?
Hmm, the thing is I actually think something like the milestone / task burndown chart is a lagging indicator. It only shows the results of the work. So actually then, there needs to be KPIs for each of the characteristics I mentioned before. Then as we go deeper and learn more through experience, we're able to refine those KPIs. I'm feeling like that's one metric or few metrics out there that if we track then we unlock the success of everything.
So let's go one by one. 1) Alignment. How do you quantify alignment? I think you actually measure the opposite of the characteristics. Because it's like a preventative measure compared to a symptomatic measure. It's easier to track something like misalignment with something like how many times do we have to ask a question to reach alignment? Questions like "So what's our process here?" "Is this what I'm supposed to do?" "Who do I contact about this?" "Whos' the owner of X?" Then the goal is to first raise our awareness when we ask questions like this. To first identify that this is what these questions suggest. Then when we look for them, they'll become more prevalent. Just selection / confirmation bias. So we keep track of this metric by aggregating the number of times someone heard / said / typed a question that suggested some level of misalignment.
1. Focus. How do you quantify focus? So there's a couple ways to look at this. There's interpersonal focus and intrapersonal focus. Interpersonal focus is going to be most likely in the context of a meeting. It's essentially the number of times that the item to be discussed was not being discussed. Every time we get distracted by a tangent. Interesting to find out is in the natural flow of a convo, how does the joke vs time graph look like? Like how much time passes in between jokes and humor in a meeting? Same thing for tangential topics. Those would be recorded as per my meeting template but those still are tangents in relation to the purpose of the meeting. Of course there's the point that some points brought up during those are important, but just need to be discussed in another context.
Time to resolution. That's the one.
It's actually okay to have those humorous / tangential moments if the overall time to resolution of each agenda item is reduced. So time to resolution is actually a metric of both focus and communication. Well...I think time to resolution is a communication metric because I've established previously that communication is a means to an end to resolve something (at least mostly at work). Personally, you don't have to be that stringent about it. Focus's opposite is distraction. Focus can be the intrapersonal characteristic and communication can be the interpersonal characteristic. So how do you measure distraction? the paradox here is that when you think of measuring the distraction, that itself is a distraction. To avoid people getting in their own heads about this, I think this one you measure focus as a function of time. Did you do what you said you would for as long as you said you would, without distraction? So you measure that by any amount of time that someone has to get work completed, how much of their undivided attention and energy went towards completing that task? So for allotted portions of the day (excluding meetings, breaks, and commute, etc.), we should measure our focus based off that question. This is not on the task level. Because you can be distracted and finish something in 5 minutes and be focused on something else and it takes 3 hours. It's about how well did we manage our focus. Since I covered both 2 and 3 here, I'll skip to 4.
4. Administration is answering the question "How well do we follow our OS?" If alignment is about how well do we agree upon and understand the OS, then administration is about how well we apply the OS. Something worth mentioning here is that everything isn't just about the OS. Well the counterpoint to that is if we have the best-fit OS, then the level of the business operations doesn't matter as much. Like alignment of what our Mission, Purpose Values, objectives, KRs don't matter as much if we're in alignment already about how we achieve those outcomes. So I'll continue on as scheduled. What's a metric for administration? It has to be about the application of the OS. So the opposite is misadministration. KPI could be how many times do we not follow the OS, whatever that predefined process / system is.
5. So I had organization as the next characteristic. How would I normally define organization? Or how did I when I created these? How well stuff is organized...Well so actually I think this one changes to something else. There's something at the intersection of integration, comprehensiveness and optimization / efficiency. 5) should be Comprehensiveness or Coverage. The KPI for it is answering the question "How many times do we add something to this OS?" Like a process for customer care and marketing together. Or inventory. The system may seem comprehensive but as we experience more and more, there will be more things to define, document, distribute, align on, etc.
6. Integration. This is about how integrated each subsystem or process is with every other subsystem. Is there friction between subsystems or does it actually enable easier operating? What's the KPI? "How many times is there friction between subsystems?" E.g. if having an Idea Vault creates friction or it isn't easily translated / valuable with another system, then there's an issue with the integration and something needs to be addressed. This one is a bit more challenging to describe abstractly but it definitely is a characteristic. Like how well does our Marketing OS integrate with the Operations OS. If integration is about the various systems working efficiently together, then
7. Optimization is how efficient the system is independently. "Is doing inventory our current way fully optimized?" Is the way to escalate a bug the most efficient?" So how do you measure optimization quantitatively? Let's take the planning process as an example. "How many points of friction are there in a system?'? What's the opposite of optimization? Well the reason I'm struggling here is because each system is optimized for something different. So then it starts with defining the why of the system. E.g. why do we do planning? Because it's not about doing something the quickest necessarily. Sometimes you want robustness of the system and that makes it more optimized. "What are we optimizing for?" is actually a question that should be answered through Alignment. Once that's established, then you can discern whether that system is optimized or not. I think it again comes back to "How many times does..." Well here's the thing, I'm operating under the assumption that you can have 100% optimization in a system. I think I need to change that. For this one, we should be measuring how many ideas / improvements are made to a system. That way we're always pushing for innovation and growth.
I had Morale on here next but I've found and read that's a lagging indicator. Creativity was next. I actually think creativity is also a lagging indicator / characteristic. The system will naturally enable or stifle creativity. Wisdom was the last one I'd written down. So this one's tricky because it's both a lagging indicator and a leading one I think. Lagging because it's based on the past. Leading because it's a good indication of growth. The quote that comes to mind here is "A mistake made more than once is a decision." KPI here is number of different instances that we've repeated a mistake. That's not the only way to learn (through mistakes). But how would you measure wisdom through non-mistake actions?
So here's the thing with all these KPIs. They measure the quantity of of something but not necessarily the quality. It tallies up and up; the height of something. But not really the depth of something. That's not something necessarily I need to address not but I'm aware it exists.
So to recap, the characteristics of our 2U OS are:
Alignment - Do we agree?
Focus - Do we do what we say we'll do for as long as we said we would without distraction?
Communication - How effectively do we resolve items?
Administration - How well do we apply what we agree on?
Comprehensiveness - How many gaps are there?
Integration - How well does one system interact with another?
Optimization - How efficient is each system on its own?
Wisdom - How deeply have we actually learned?
1 and 4-7 are more characteristics of the system, while 2,3, and 8 are effects of the other 5. So the 5 should be the primary 2U OS characteristics and Focus, Communication, and Wisdom are 3 of the secondary characteristics. I'll think about the other ones that I nixed later.
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