I am starting 2021 with my own set of OKRs. And I can’t help to feel excited about it!
It’s not that I am setting goals to myself for the first time, of course. Especially work-related (I created a set of OKRs for myself for my working life), I have always had somehow goals I want to achieve at least in my mind. Although I never took the time to write them down somewhere or to think properly about the right formulation, I’ve always goals for my professional career present in my head, and especially in the past 2 years I have made sure to think twice every move I’ve made, considering if it brings me any closer to the path I want.
And to be honest, I consider I’ve been successful so far in my working life. Or at least I feel satisfied with my job, the company I work for, and chances of growth I’m lucky to have there. So, why OKRing myself? Why taking the time for this? Is it not already too much overkill to apply all of that OKR Theory to your own goals?
IMHO, the answer to the last question is: no, it’s not. Although I haven’t started the competition yet, just being ready at the start line makes me feel energised and confident that it will be worth it.
Of course I can’t tell now if the whole thing was an overkill, but I have a good feeling that it won’t be the case. It was a time-investment on myself, and there is no way this turns out to be not beneficial. Let me explain why I think so.
But before going into that, for the sake of fairness I want to say that one of the drivers of this action was for me also the chance to practice with a real world example all of that OKR theory I’ve been getting myself into lately. Although I had heard about OKRs in the past and the idea sounded interesting to me, I never got really into it until a big organisational change started taking place last year in the company I work for, and OKRs started being introduced as a tool to help the product teams gain a better focus, and somehow give a push to their performance. So next year there will be a big deal of work on this topic coming upon me, and I wanted to get myself prepared as good as I could.
The reasons why I am convinced that OKRing my work life for the next year is a great thing to do, are the following:
I will profit from more focus and measurements of success. I feel that using this method forces me to focus, be clear and precise about my goals. That is basically due to the combination of a general objective and a few very concrete and measurable key results. As I mentioned above, I’ve set goals for myself before but never thought I needed to work on a proper formulation, or on ways to measure my progress. And now I realise, that if I had done that, I would have probably been able to achieve much more, and have a higher motivation due to the feeling of satisfaction coming from tangible progress. Looking back to my past years, I am sure that this would have given me a great push forward.
I now have a clear and precise general vision of my working life. Or at least what I believe is my vision for now, because it might change in the future, one can never know for sure. But for now, I took the time to formulate what is it that I want of my working life, what I consider my purpose and why. And it’s amazing to derive my goals from that vision, it all feels like a puzzle of pieces coming into place. It feels very natural and a logical thing to do. And just having this already is a great win. One of the reasons I feel excited about this whole thing. Now that I’ve done it, I don’t understand why it never occurred to me before to do it. I guess things just happen when they are supposed to happen!
I will learn by doing, with the best example. This will allow me a better jump in the new challenges in the company where I will be working next. And when OKRs are widely used in the company, including HR (which I believe will happen eventually), then I will be experienced already and will be able to help others, which is something I actually enjoy doing.
Considering the particularities of this 2020, I think there couldn’t be a more motivating start in the next working year for me, as it is now. I am really looking forward to start working toward all of those goals and enjoying the rewarding feeling of success that bring the small steps.
2021, bring it on !