[Podcast] Implementing OKRs with  Poly Chief of Staff Barry Mendez

Barry Mendez is the Chief of Staff or the Chief Design Officer at Poly. His role within Poly is to help coach the OKR sessions. KJ and Barry discuss the current state of coaching and challenges in implementing OKRs for his staff and leadership.

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Podcast Transcript

BARRY
So my name is Barry Mendez, and I am the chief of staff or the Chief Design Officer at Poly. For those who aren't familiar, Polly is came out of a recent merger between Plantronics and Polycom. And when I say recently, I mean, like three years ago, I think it's actually before I started, I started there in November of 2020. And my job within Poly is to, is to help coach the OKR sessions. So we have a consulting and OKR consulting firm that we use to help the help desk like implement the program. And within that program, there are two sort of like distinct roles, there's the champions, and then there's the coaches, and champions are responsible for scheduling all of the OKR sessions. And then coaches will sign up, go through a training and then coach the sessions themselves. And I am actually both so I had signed up to be a champion and a coach just because of the role that I'm in that you step, it's very common for Chiefs of Staff to just kind of handle the OKR program. So anyways, but because I'm in design, we work a lot, of course with product management team, our program management team, and our engineering teams. So just kind of like by my own design, I've volunteered to coach the sessions for our products, as well as our programs. And then some of the engineering although not as much.

KJ
Awesome. Wow. So you're a coach, your champion. Beautiful, man, what?

BARRY
I'm trying, I'm trying.

KJ
But you're what's evident then is that because you've been doing it for so long, you're you're really an enthusiast of this, okay, or framework? And tell me like, where that came from? to you? Yeah, yourself? What? What was that curiosity and draw? Yeah,

BARRY
I know exactly where it comes from. So my I started my career, I kind of grew up as it were professionally as a salesperson, and a sales leader. And I got put into leadership, well, before I was ready for it. And the company that I was working for, at the time, they, you know, they did their best to like give me management training. And I paired I had a mentor that helped me quite a bit with like the sales leadership part of it. But really, that role was really to be a, almost like an expert salesperson. So my job essentially was to coach up our salespeople. And then when they would get into big deals, I would go out with them and try to close the deals. Anyways, the point of all that is that I felt so lost as a leader, and I didn't understand really like how to develop people, other than to help them close deals. So I have been kind of like looking for something within my like path that that helps with more than just like helping somebody become good at a specific skill, because that was like the management that I was taught. So anyways, I got hired on at Poly in November of 2020. And into the sales organization actually in kind of like a program management capacity. After two months being at the company, they implemented or they decided that they wanted to implement OKRs. And as soon as I took the training, I was like this is for me, I totally had made sense with my brain, the way that I feel like products should be made in the way that if I were or when I was an individual contributor, that's how I would have wanted to be held accountable for things somebody gives me sort of like the overall what they want to do. And then I get to decide how, and then be communicative and that whole process. So for me, it just really speaks to kind of like, how I want to become a leader, essentially.

KJ
Right? That's great. I love the way that you can, you still have a very close proximity to the empathy of the individual contributor, you know, that you once were, and that if you were that person, you would really want to know how your work contributes to a greater purpose. And I guess that's what that's what OKR is facilitates. So yeah, it's great that you're so hyper aware of that and empathetic to it.

BARRY
Yet to me, it's the it's all about the conversations. You know, I think even in the early parts of implementing an OKR program, people aren't, they don't necessarily understand OKRs as deeply as we do, you know, it's a lot of that is for them. It's another corporate program that they're trying to implement. And they multitask during the training. And you know, they're just not as like, bought in, which totally makes sense to anyone who's worked in a corporate environment, you get a new corporate, you know, SMART goals or whatever every year. So, the value that I think OKR is really bring, especially as a coach is if you can get people to become present in those sessions in the OKR creation sessions. And then on the weekly checkups and stuff. They're very, very powerful. So even if somebody doesn't understand the full OKR program, and the context within, you know, how it all aligns, I think like those moments that you get to have, like, really good conversations are very valuable.

KJ
Right, which actually, that's really interesting. It comes up a lot, you know, that the OKR facilitates the right conversation. And without us, we wouldn't be having that conversation. And so yeah, I think that's like, the main benefit, because you, you Google benefits vocabularies, and you get along this shit, but really, the main benefit that, hey, we've gone from not talking about things we should be talking about to talking about the right things.

BARRY
Totally. Yeah, I think like, you know, if I were to describe it, as, you know, a practitioner, I think the benefit should always be some sort of outcome, of course, right. So, theoretically, the benefit would just, I don't know what metric it would be from a corporate perspective, like, overall, but definitely, like the output that you're doing is better conversations. And I think that like, for people, especially who maybe we view ourselves more as like, Coach leadership, instead of like, you know, technical leadership. Yeah, those conversations are just so essential to the success of the team and organization.

KJ
And is that what motivates you, Barry, because the job itself is a difficult one, you have to a lot of people here are very resentful and resistant to change. So you've got to have some sort of motivation to counteract that. Is that what it is? It's like, a motivated because I want like, I can see people having better conversations, what is it that just keeps you going?

BARRY
That's yummy. You That's exactly right. I I receive a lot of like, professional satisfaction and watching people get better at their own jobs. And so we have these conversations, and I ask questions to help them kind of like, reframe how they do their work. So and, you know, moving basically, from output, I need to do this blog post to an outcome based of like, what we need is an extra, you know, I don't know, just random number of 50,000 unique views to our website every month, like getting someone to think about that piece of it is it's very to me, it's like, very rewarding. Yeah,

KJ
me too. I feel the exact same way. And it's funny, because I think there's an episode of How I Met Your Mother where like, the people come to realizations that are right in front of them, and the glass breaks. I watch it all the time when we do workshops and trainings, like people go from not listening, not understanding, and then they go wait. So you're telling me there's outputs, which are like, just activity based, that don't really have any meaning they're busy work. And you're asking me to focus on the outcomes, the things you're trying to influence with that output? Oh, I get it. And suddenly, there's this sort of epiphany of and it's that epiphany. That's really, as you say, rewarding.

BARRY
For me that I have a couple of instances that I remember specifically where somebody is trying to figure something out. And then I'll ask a question, which clearly they hadn't thought about it from that angle before. And before answering it, they'll say something to the effect of like, oh, wow, you're so smart. Like they like I'm anticipating some answer, you know, but I literally don't know the answer to whatever question it is that I'm asking. It could be something simple, like, oh, well, how is that going to affect the the engineering team's, you know, throughput or whatever. And then for them, a light bulb comes on? Because they never really thought about it from that angle. And they think that I know the answer to that question. So to me, that's like a big aha moment. Oh, that is so sad. It's so smart. And sometimes they answer the question, and sometimes they don't. But the point is, is like you get to see this aha moment of like, oh, wow, once I'm looking at my work through the lens of OKRs, it opens it up to a much bigger and more important, like, piece of my job. And to me, that's that's really awesome.

KJ
That's awesome. Yeah, that's true. That's great, man. And that's, that's where you spend all your time. Right? like that, like, yeah, is in that role of being the coach being the person to ask those questions. So you must, do you have any interesting stories for us or examples of like, anything that's happened recently in that role?

BARRY
That's a good yeah. So I was in a conversation with with some, the way that we rolled out OKRs originally was through functional teams. So if you were part of product management, we did an OKR session with all of the product managers with the director or, you know, or the leadership there. And then we did an OKR session with all the program managers and their leader. And then when we kind of got together afterwards and did a little bit of a retrospective, we started talking about like, how, how can we get more value out of this? And we decided that let's do it by product or project team. And then we're able to really like, narrow in on why are we doing this project? Or why are we building this product? What exactly what needle are we trying to move? So like? I don't know, if I'm allowed to give specifics about our products, but there was there was one in particular where, you know, it's like, what, what problem is this going to solve? And the answer is like, I don't know, it's just on the feature roadmap, right. This is like the next feature that we're implementing within this product line. What? Why is that interesting to people? I don't, I don't actually know. It's like, well, maybe we should figure out what people think is interesting. First, before we figure out what features we want to incorporate to address that pain point. And, you know, then we kind of like put the pause on that specific feature. And then Alright, let's go figure out like, Is this even the right feature to incorporate into this product?

KJ
Right, right. That's, that's, that's interesting. And I actually want to come back to that in a in a moment, to sort of the use case of OKR coaching in an in product, example or environment, before I just get down that that's a big rabbit hole that we could go into. Yeah, we get before we get there, I want to take a quick step back, because I just realized something like that. Polly have been very lucky to have someone like you be an enthusiast and agent for this change. And this okay, or framework in the company? How do you How important do you think it is for companies who are listening and perhaps adopting OKR is about to do it? How important is it for them to have someone like you like a coach,

BARRY
it's essential, I think that you need to have, the more evangelists you have within the enterprise to help drive the OKR program forward, the better. But kind of like what we were talking about at the top here is there's people who have, especially if they've worked at a company for a long time, maybe it's gone through mergers and acquisitions, and they're on their, you know, 10th or 12 version of corporate goals. So having somebody internally who really believes in that process, I think, makes such a huge difference. I mean, it's like, you can't you can't be successful. Without it, you need to have some, hopefully, the Chief of Staff to the CEO, or the CEO himself is the one that is driving the program forward. But if not, then it's got to be somebody who who's very passionate. And honestly, like from, I think from a results standpoints. I think that companies who don't do OKRs, or do them really, really poorly are gonna get left behind. Doesn't matter what industry you're in, there's somebody there's a competitor out there who's getting good at, you know, you have to call them OKRs. It could be outcome based roadmaps, or objectives or outcomes or whatever, however, it's described within that organization, but they are OKRs. If they're getting good at that, they're going to be making a lot more incremental improvements within all of their products faster than you.

KJ
Yeah. And the investment into a coach internally into a passionate evangelists, internally, who's committed who's an executive sponsor, that's gonna make the big difference in the it's an investment, right? It's like any investment, you put your money in and you get, you know, it's, it's what you do with it, it's okay or it's an investment if you invest in coaching. And then let's look talk about training as well. How that dividends, what sort of training would you recommend for the coach themselves? Because that's different than the end of Yeah. So let's talk about the training that you would recommend for both.

BARRY
So for coaching, I think you need to be very good at two pieces you need to understand OKRs in and out Do you need to undo. So and then I'll give each one and then I'll go back and talk about more what that is. But I think you need to be very good at OKR, you need to be an expert within what that is. And then you also need to be an expert at facilitate conversation. And so when I say you need to be an expert on OKRs, I think you need to have an understanding of the entire context of the business, right? So you've got your, your inputs, or your resources that one end, which is you know, your people and products, or your people and raw materials and stuff.

KJ
You raise your hand to speak,

BARRY
I went like this, and then it caught like it catches it. Yeah, that's a nifty little. Interesting. Okay, so

KJ
that means they're always watching us.

BARRY
And they noticed, if you put your hand up, and they treat it as a real raised hand,

KJ
let's just start paying, and it's like, being in your

Unknown Speaker
KJ is eating?

KJ
That's taking off all his clothes. What's he doing? Yeah,

BARRY
what's going on with that? Emoji for kgs? Taken off?

KJ
It's gonna be one after?

BARRY
Yeah, it's any. Okay, so the, if you're, in order to understand OKRs, it's important to know the entire context of the business, just a general business flow process, you know, you've got your resources, which is like your inputs, your raw materials. And then you're, what is that your activities? Let me get, let me make sure I understand. I know I'm talking about. Yeah. So you have your resources and your inputs, and then the activities, the things that you do kind of like the work that's being done programming, that kind of thing. And then after that, you have your outputs, or your deliverables or your initiatives, whatever, however you want to describe them. And then you get into the OKR section, which is the key results and outcomes, and then the objectives, and then all of that leads to an impact. And the business impact, you know, is usually something along the lines of the like, profit formula, right? It's gonna either increase revenue, decrease costs, or in a number of different ways, it's going to hit one of those buckets. So anyways, understanding what OKRs are in relationship to the whole process, you also know what they're not. So when somebody says, hey, I want to do a blog post, you know, that's like, oh, that's actually not OKR. Yeah. And then the second piece of facilitating conversations, I think it's to two pieces. Really, it's it's making sure that the conversation stays on topic. And you're driving towards some sort of resolution, you know, I like to use the purpose and process with all my meetings. So within my meeting requests, I'll just put purpose, and it's usually a decision or some sort of like, I don't know, that whatever, whatever's needed to be decided upon are completed in that that session. Yeah, exactly. And then the process is how we're going to get there. So I think that the coach needs to be good at like sticking to the making sure that they're stick to the purpose and

KJ
process. Yeah, I love them and love that purpose and process. Yeah. And then

BARRY
secondly, so the way I think about listening, and I stole this from a, there's three levels of listening, you have level one, which is like, I'm only listening to understand how it how, how it important to me, right? So you're telling me about a vacation that you went to to Mexico, and then I immediately chime in with oh, I went to Mexico when I was, you know, 25 or whatever. And I tell the story immediately about how I went to Mexico level to listening is like, oh, talk to me more about that trip, like, what did you do? It's kind of like, is diving further into what they're saying. And then level three is listening to what's not being said. So if somebody's like, oh, I went to Mexico, and it's like, I'm sensing a little bit of like, you know, hesitation there sounds like, you know, so within the context, facilitating a conversation, being able to stay fully present and being a level three leader or a level three listener is just like, such an important skill. It's very, very difficult to master right?

KJ
Yeah. Like that's great. It's It's funny, those level levels and like, level one is just an asshole. somewhat curious, but level Yeah, someone who's highly empathetic, who's actually going to try to understand the perspective of someone else as they're talking and really, yeah, listening to the words and what's not being said, as you say, so that's this great like, we're rocking through stuff. Okay, so we got what are the key things for a coach to really evangelize OKRs they've got to be subject matter experts know their stuff inside out when it comes to OKRs, and they gotta facilitate conversations by having high listening skills, you know, setting meetings because it feels very much. So all of this is, can be kind of considered abstract to someone who doesn't know it. But it really manifests itself I find in the meetings, like, you're going to actually have OKR meetings to set them to review them to reflect on whatever. And that's when, as we talked about earlier, the the right conversation, so having a coach, then you're saying the facilities, the purpose and the process is important. Okay, great. So what else? That was no question.

BARRY
Yeah, well, the second half of that. Second half of that is like, what did the individuals? Yes, yeah. So I firmly believe that the most important piece of like, the individual aspect of this is to be present in those meetings. And just like, I think that doing the training is good. And you definitely, it's really great to have like, an understanding of where everything is going. But if you don't have that in, you just show up, and you are present. And you are with a coach who is a level three listener, and walks you walk somebody through the purpose and process very clearly, I think that you don't have to have all that you can pick those things up along the way, within the conversations, because the conversations lend themselves very, he's very, like, specific to how are we going to create these OKR. So as long as somebody shows up with the mentality of like, I'm just going to be here now for the next two hours or whatever. I think that that really is the most, that's the most important, most important thing. Outside of that, you know, I'm a big, big, like, believer in kindness. And in leading, leading by behavior, I mean, those those things I feel like are kind of an all in all aspects of life. Like if you are kind to your co workers and peers, I think that's, you know, positive vibes only, I would say, it's really like the, the, you know, the best way to show up to those

KJ
human values. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny that, you know, the, because because we're trying to talk to an audience here, who's, who's perhaps thinking about doing OKRs? Or is doing and are wondering, why isn't it working? So one element is, okay, your individuals who are showing up may not be present. And you've mentioned that a few times that becoming present in those meetings, even if they don't know, the big picture is like, that's trying to aim for that, like, yeah, that the rest will follow. It sounds like, and then the other element is, well, maybe it's time to look at investing in in some training, some coaching, maybe some online certifications that Krezzo provides the alignments.

BARRY
One, flow there. Yeah, I love it. I love it.

KJ
Those are the really critical pains. Right? Is there anything else that is worthwhile? Investing in from someone who's stillness?

BARRY
That's a good question. I think, no, I think you nailed it, I think like, the the investment on the individual side, it really is, like, being open minded and present, and then committing to like, committing to, to, to understanding what it is that you're trying to accomplish. And that I think that training goes a long way in that, you know, not knowledge is kind of like the key piece of someone committing to the program is like understanding how it how it can be effective.

KJ
And as a coach, you're doing this stuff day in and day out as a coach, how do you deal with the negative Nellies resistors to

BARRY
Yeah, I love that negative malaise. I think being empathetic is the first and foremost and validating their experience because they are coming from a scenario where they've had five different corporate goals, setting processes in five years or whatever. So I think just like meeting them where they're at, and saying, Yeah, I understand, you know that this is the fifth one and I actually don't know if it's going to be different. I can't promise you that it's going to be amazing. All I can promise I can promise my behavior and my behavior is I will show up, I will I will facilitate the purpose and process and I will do my best to be a level three listener. And what I asked from you is to just be present and You know, be here and partake? And then we'll just kind of see how it goes. We'll check in and, you know, next quarter, and we'll see how we're doing.

KJ
Yeah. And how many coaches, would you recommend, you know, a company? has, you know, is it it's dependent on the imagine it's dependent on the size, you know, the volume in which people can spread themselves? But, you know, is there a rule of thumb there that you'd recommend?

BARRY
Yeah, so I kind of go by the number of sessions, a coach wants to coach. And so when I talk, when I referring to sessions, I mean, like, basically the quarterly session, those are done by coaches, and then hopefully, the weekly ones are done by the manager, the manager or leader of that team. At poly, we've allowed coaches to volunteer and participate in whatever capacity they like. So sometimes that means they just coach one team, per quarter. Some of us like I coach, you know, maybe 15, to 20 teams every quarter on there, you know, I basically spend two to four weeks doing a lot of coaching every quarter. So the number of coaches depends on how many session I think if you have a full time person who would like like a chief of staff, they can handle one entire like, fork, so they could probably do 20 sessions on their own. And then each part time person is just it's going to vary, but I think like, you know, if you've got a like, for a product team that maybe has, like, you know, I don't know, 20 teams or something you're going to be probably need at least two to two to five coaches to like, reasonably handle that. workload.

KJ
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The more the merrier. But let's talk about the product team that switched to that, you know, here, potentially even cut to next episode, I don't know, it's so much juice, Eddie, your brand, like squeezing in milk in year for this great knowledge. It's like, wow, taken like, I love this stuff. A lot already. Yeah. Like 1520 sessions of man, you're an animal, like, you've got a lot of experience under your belt doing this. So we got to, we got to get the insights out there for people. And let's talk maybe specifically because you do work a lot with products, managers, product designers, right, helping them gain alignments. And talk to me about what's it like moving into that space, as in product teams are slightly different than other teams, quite often they're cross functional. They've got a lot of different players, they've got designers, managers, you know, data scientists, I don't know. But then they're also have product development frameworks that they're used to. So talk to me about just the initial dealing with teams like that, because they're used to this certain ways of working, you know, that are different than just maybe a sales ORed with a number.

BARRY
Yeah, no, that's a good point. I love working with product teams. I've mentioned earlier that my, the first part of my career, I spent in sales. After that I spent in basically like IT project management and consulting. And now I'm working with the product teams, and you know, no shade to it, or sales organizations, but the product teams, they speak my language. And when I say that, I mean, especially the designers, because they talk about like, how does this product make you feel like when you put in a pair of Apple headphones, they feel so much different than when you put in a pair of like, what's that Skullcandy or something like that, right? It's like the, the connection that you make with your products. Sometimes we don't even realize how deep the connection is, until we can't find our cell phone. It's like, Oh, my God, I'm panicked. I don't even know when we realize like how tightly coiled I am I have to go on a work trip and I can't find my my batteries recharged, or my blog or whatever. Like, we get really attached to products and the way that designers talk about doing all of that stuff on purpose. It's like really resonates with my soul, like, Oh, my God, they're thinking about me, and they're, you know, they're solving problems that I didn't even know I have.

KJ
Right, right. Yeah, that's exactly that's, I can I can it's I've never really thought of it that way. But you're right, those designers are that they care about that end user more than anyone because they have to. They have to design it in a way that that solves their problem, as you said, Yeah. And that's very much the outlook of of an OKR. You know, it's not just for That's for the end.

BARRY
Yeah. And when I'm working with them, I don't I try not to use like. So, specifically within product design, they consider themselves to be creative, and they are creative. So they're, they're creative, and they do a lot of like, free free flow work. And they set aside creative time and stuff, I would almost say that they're allergic to framework and process, you know, like, the creative designers, they Yeah. I don't want to process I don't want to framework. So I schedule these, and I try to promise them that, like, you know, it'll be worth that two hours a quarter investment of your time. And when we get in them, it's very important to make it a conversation, as opposed to like, okay, bullet one, tell me the four things that you're working on. So working with product teams, whereas it teams are very different. They are very, like bullet points, and what's the logic from this to that? And like, you know, they want to understand, almost like, what's the algorithm of OKRs? Which you could speak to that? Because it's, you know, yeah, point, you're both on the horizon and OKR. So if you get there, yeah. But designers like to talk about, like, oh, much more free flow conversation, and I enjoy that. So with them, it's just sort of like, what are you working on? You know, what kind of momentum? Have you built on that over the last couple of months? What, what features are you implementing? Or what? What, you know, it's kind of goes back? Yeah. Well, that's the thing is this, sometimes they don't think of it as problems. So once they start talking about talking, I get them talking about the output and the activities. Yeah. And then once they start listing their activities and output, then I move into, okay, great. What problems are you solving by adding an extra button here? Or like extra lights? Or whatever? And a lot of times, they all they know that answer? Yeah. You know, you know, OKRs.

KJ
So crazy, man, because that's exactly I've written a piece about this, which we can show. But like, that's exactly what I found. What I still find is, it's actually counterintuitive to just ask someone what's the problem and work back from the impact that they're trying to achieve down to what they're doing. People are really aware of what they have to do, like they write to do lists, they know the activities that are really important. Oh, I have to do this thing next week, like, so it sounds like you do the same thing is what I do is basically get them talking, get them conversing about what are the activities I'm doing, get them thinking about why they're doing those activities, get them to bond a lot, maybe categorize the activities, and then go look, you're doing a lot of activity related to you know, the login experience or something like, then why don't we make the outcome or the key result be something related to that, so that what you're doing is actually having an impact into XYZ, and you're not doing a lot of activities just for the sake of it, you know?

BARRY
Yeah. Allows them to cut out a lot of things, you know, if they're, yeah, yeah.

KJ
It's a bit abstract, just to say, hey, like, what's the key result? That should be here?

Unknown Speaker
It's like, yeah,

KJ
man, I don't know what I can tell you what I'm supposed to deliver next week, you know, but in three months time, what what should the conversion rate be? Or the tired, you know, for someone to just make that decision right away?

BARRY
Totally. Yeah. So those conversations happen over time. You know, sometimes, like, with the first iteration of OKRs, we had a lot that we had a lot that were actual, that was output. Okay, yeah. But I just, I would just say to them, Hey, a lot of these are output oriented. And that's okay. It's our first try. We're building muscles here. We're not gonna get it. Perfect. Nice. Next time, let's let's switch one of these from an output to an outcome. Just think about that over the next three months. And the next time we meet up like, okay, great. You did this thing. What got better because of that thing that you did? Right? Are we still working on that? Let's use the thing that got better as the as the key result this time, and then the stuff that you did, that's all the initiatives are outputs.

KJ
Yeah. I like that. It's just a slow process, slow process. Patience, right. It's, as you say, building a muscle building a skill just takes takes time. What do you have you encountered any specifically, we're product teams, you know, misunderstandings between perhaps agile and OKRs or people not knowing the difference, you know, of certain tradition. Single Product processes and OKR is like, is there any sub any anything like that, or people just ready to jump into it?

BARRY
I would say the most common is like, Oh, we already we used to do smart goals is what people usually say. It's like, oh, well, we did this before, but they were called SMART goals. And then the typical, like, follow up statement is what people say is like, you know, that's what, that's what consulting firms do. They just repackage the same stuff with different names. And they just write it off as OKRs are just like, they're just smart goals with a new name, essentially, it's the most common thing that I get.

KJ
And what is the difference between SMART goals and OKRs?

BARRY
Yeah, so the way that I handle that, like objection is I typically will like, again, validate their experiences like they there is a lot of common language that you will hear a lot of like, you want things to be specific. And you know, there's a time oriented, there's a lot of that that overlaps. The biggest overall difference is that smart goals were used a lot as like performance evaluation, it's like, you know, they're supposed to be attainable and realistic. That's kind of like the intention of SMART goals. OKRs are supposed to be best possible. If everything goes your way, what could you achieve? And your performance evaluation isn't held to that. What we're looking at is trying to fill the gap between like, trying to do like, what's the best way to put this is like, SMART goals, you're just you're shooting for a number that you think is attainable. And if you hit that a lot of times, what happens is people kind of let off, let off the gas. So we want to go is we want to go beyond that production, but not have it be a negative thing if you don't hit best possible, right. So

KJ
that's the biggest difference, right? That's another scale just like writing outputs or outcomes that are outputs, knowing the difference. Another scale is to be able to recognize that we're going to set a really ambitious metric here, target and when it doesn't work out, we're not going to be you know, down about it, we're going to actually celebrate it. So it's sort of that maybe it's not a skill, it's more of a cultural move towards aspirational performance, rather than Yeah, conservative performance, I'm just gonna write the number because I know I could probably get this number easily. Exactly.

BARRY
And I catch people doing that a lot when we start to create, especially the K Rs in the beginning, where, you know, somebody will throw out a number of some sort, and say, like, I, I'm pretty sure I can achieve that. Like, that's doable for me. And then I'll ask the question of like, what if everything went your way? And all you had to do was focus on this one number, what would you what's the best possible case scenario? And then they gave me that number? And then I write that one down. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I know that it feels uncomfortable, and that's okay. And if you get 65% of the way there, we're going to celebrate that that's an achievement, you know, you're, you're going towards the best possible, and you're not going to hit them all. And that's just, that's just how it works. Yeah, I really like

KJ
that. validation that you keep doing, whenever we're chatting here is like you just validating the people's concerns that immediately just mitigates this sort of defensiveness, you know? Yeah. And especially I've done sales when you do this stuff you, someone tells you, you got to do a number that's outrageous. You're just like, you know, Jesus, I don't want to, you know, I want to do an easier number. So it can hit us, you know, recognizing that, calling it out, as we said, it's just something that you you're doing all the time, which is great. One quick question. I always ask people when this topic comes up, is you mentioned like, you know, OKRs, because of that ambitious nature, they're not tied to your performance and compensation plans. Now, that, if I'm not mistaken, means that there is a compensation plan with metrics you have to hit in order to get your comp. And then there's OKR. So now there's two conflicting, there's a conflict of nature here. What does the individual contributor do? Do they spend their time you know, chasing this OKR? Or do they spend their time focused on the comp plan that will get them the performance review that they want?

BARRY
Yeah, so I've been studying this Not at length. But this is like how, what's the right way to set up compensation plans? Yeah, I haven't found something that I really liked yet either. either. Yeah, it's, it seems very tricky. If I had a magic wand, I would just overpay everyone their base salary, and then give everyone bonuses based on company performance. And then they can choose if they want that bonus, they can choose whatever they want in their bonus between cash and company stock. So, you know, and then everyone is just on board with like the company doing well. And that money is just extra anyways. And they've got, you know, have enough money to like, buy a house and go on vacations and take care of their family stuff. Yeah. Unfortunately, the reality is, there is a little bit of a break, like, conflict between compensation metrics, and OKR metrics. And I think like, your performance evaluations probably need to take precedent, you know, it's like, you need to keep a job. And you if whatever your career aspirations are, they're going to require good performance evaluations. And then when you when you get into a position where you're allowed to influence the compensation discussion, you know, hopefully you can make change them, but I just can't if you know, that's a hard decision. And I think that the right answer there is, unfortunately, performance eval over OKRs, unfortunately, yeah.

KJ
I mean, I know how you've come to that conclusion, and I don't necessarily disagree with you. I think the thing that I do ponder quite a bit is, is it worse, to have conflictive avenues of focus, either on the OKR, the comp plan? Or is it worse to have a singular focus? No comp plan, just the OKR, amalgamated with the comp plan, but then people are going to be less aspirational with the numbers, they're going to write conservative key results, because they want. Exactly which is worse the conservativeness? Or the performance evaluation over the OKR?

BARRY
Yeah, conservativeness. I would say, I think that's a really good. Yeah. Because, yeah, I think that like, from an individual perspective, I just think you can't, you don't want to take that risk, least I wouldn't want to take a risk with my career of overachieving on OKR to the detriment of my own performance evaluation. I think there's an argument to be made that if you're making a value, if you're a value and making impact in the organization, then in the long run, that will trump any one quarter negative performance evaluation. So if you're doing OKRs, and you're killing it, that will hopefully eventually get recognized. Yeah.

KJ
Yeah, no, I get that. But it sounds so like, still nothing. Yeah, I've met a lot of No, it's not just a no answer. It's more like, it's not that it's more like, I've just met a lot of people and, and, you know, in different software companies and things, they're just I don't know what I'm trying to say, I'm trying to say, it's not just certain people, it's everyone. Humans naturally have one core, that's a hierarchy of focus. Like, he can't really focus on two things at the same time. Like, no, it's not possible. So something has to be primary and something has to be secondary. And so it's like, saying the comp plan ultimately does take precedence. It will be the core focus for people, you know, it's just, I guess, if you're, if you're, like, just ramble about this for hours, but I guess if you're aware, that of that truth, then you can begin to work with the necessary evil, which is the comp plan has to take precedence over your OKR some people in your company will not bother with the OKR because they know by hitting doing this, it's going to get them their money. Yeah, they're just there to get the money. So

BARRY
I think if you if you apply that to like a, you know, systems thinking model, what you wind up there then is somebody can hopefully can come in and say, You know what, we're not getting as much as we could be getting in much efficiency or production as we could be getting what is happening, and then you discover hopefully, that people are By focusing on their comp, more than bringing value, and then hopefully you can start to make changes to how the comp program is set up. But, yeah, so maybe the argument there is like in the long term Systems Thinking viewpoint, you'll start to see some negative impact. Once you, somebody uncovers the fact that people are more focused on they're confident they are achievements.

KJ
Yeah, you're right, you're right. And that's a short term, I won't because she'll gain and reward is, is a very short term. Focus or value to put Yeah, you know, even at the individual elbow at the company level, you know, like, if a company just values hitting 50 millionaire or and that's all they focus on nothing else, they might be able to do it at the detriment of their people and their customers, but they're Yeah, they're not going to make much of an impact, maybe culturally, or socially or otherwise, you know, it's just going to be this money making machine with no, to us, you know, really why people start companies, they don't think it's just to make money. I think that's a factor but not

BARRY
to be. And even if it is, if your role or if you're if you are solely focused on making money. Yeah. The long term play of that is still training your employees, right? Yeah. Yeah, still, you know, you can't there's Have you ever read liars poker, I think it's Michael Lewis, same person who wrote The Big Short, he talks about his experience in the 80s. And working on Wall Street, basically, and selling financial instruments. I don't even know what they were called. But anyways, he worked as part of this team that had, that was the very beginning of the mortgage, financial instrument, we put together the, you know, a bunch of mortgages and sell it as a investment. You know, it's done. Exactly, yeah. Anyway, so they were very good at that. And they were paying their people. You know, a lot of it was called $200,000, a year in the eighth, which is a lot of money. Say, there's a team of, you know, five people, so it cost the company a million dollars to basically make like, hundreds of millions of dollars, a ridiculous amount of money. Other companies were having a hard time, like getting that financial product off the ground. And so they came in and they started buying, they started offering jobs to these people who are making 200k. They're offering them, you know, 500k, so $300,000 more. And the question posed to the CEO of that company is like, are you willing to sell your entire mortgage division for $1.5? million? And they're like, No, that's ridiculous. Of course not. It's I make $100 million a year on it, like, well, that's what's happening. People are coming in, and they're buying your folks, for an extra 300 grand, and you're gonna, you're gonna lose all five, because someone's basically gonna buy them. So because they

KJ
don't recognize that the people are the ones driving the results, like 100 million because of the people who were making it for you. Yeah, yeah. It's back into the resources at the beginning of it all.

BARRY
Yeah, invest in your people. And you'll, if you're an asshole, you'll still make out better by taking care of your people.

KJ
Right, exactly. Yeah. Well, I'm interested to know then when people set their okay or is company set there, okay. Or is? Where do they put their people? Okay, or where do they put the people objective?

BARRY
Yeah, yeah. Polly lives in HR. We did have one that we have on at the CEO level? Well, we back our first iteration, we did like, five corporate objectives. And each one had like five to 7k. Ours, it was way too big. You know, we did live at the CEO level. And then when we pare that down, now, it's like within the HR level.

KJ
Right, right. That's yeah. Makes sense. Right, this is, this is great. I know, we're coming up on time. I could talk to you for hours, man, this is just fantastic. I want to make sure that we'll probably do a bit of editing bit of this bit of that, but I want to make sure we kind of close the loop nicely. Yeah, maybe make some recommendations, if you want to plug something or, you know, if you want to plug Krezzo Even, you know, we can Yeah, make that the closing remarks here. So, so let's do a bit of that, you know, maybe we just say, you know, it's been a just a pleasure chatting with you. And I think to summarize everything we've been talking about, maybe you can or leave us with, you know, your your favorite suggestion or your top tips to people who are perhaps coaches in OKRs like yourself who are champions like yourself who just are really enthusiastic but don't know how to go about it or aren't seeing the results, like give them your your last speech here to motivate them on this this gloomy day here.

BARRY
However, yeah, so I would say like, when it comes to, it's probably the same advice I would give in almost any new undertaking, is be kind to yourself, you know, it's going to be hard, it's going to be uncomfortable. And if you've done OKRs, for two years, you've done OKRs, eight times, you know, you're not, that's not even enough to become highly proficient, you're probably getting pretty good. But it's, it's a difficult transformation to make in any organization. And small effective steps is way better layer in you starting with, like, set yourself up for success. So take on whatever you, you know, or you're very sure can be successful. And that it's in, I think that even that starts with with training. And I really actually how we got connected, I really enjoy. I like Krezzo, Rose training modules, I think that they make a lot of sense, at least for how I learn. And it doesn't overcomplicate the OKR process, I think it's a very simple, like, way to understand OKRs and be effective very fast. versus some of the other organizations that come in, and then you wind up with five objectives and six key results at the corporate you know, at the CEO level, you go way too big, start small, set yourself up for success. Take on bites that you know, you can eat, you know, and that includes, yeah, build momentum. Exactly.

KJ
Awesome. Yeah. No, finish your thought there. What were you gonna say? Oh, just

BARRY
gonna say that. When you think about like, bringing your organization or your teams along with you, you know, meet them where they're at. And just when they when they tell you that they've that they view this as just another corporate program, that's probably going to fail, believe them. You know, that's just where they're at. That's okay. They might They might even be right, if you try to force it down. You know, somebody's throat, they, they'll be more resistant. So just meet them where they're at and take small steps. You know, try to speak small successful steps. Yeah.

KJ
I love that. I love that. Meet them where we're at. Yeah, it's, it's great. And be patient and be kind and you'll you'll get there eventually. Oh, yeah. Just been an absolute pleasure, man. Love to have you on again. And thank you so much for giving us this time today.

BARRY
Yeah, it's my pleasure. I love what you guys are doing. Awesome.

KJ
Thank you so much.