In this episode, Peter and Dave discuss the importance of building robust systems and processes to achieve goals, drawing insights from the book "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. They explore the notion that simply setting objectives is not enough - sustained success requires developing the right habits, practices, and systems to support those objectives. The conversation touches on OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and the need to take small, incremental steps towards larger goals.
This week's takeaways:
Join the conversation and share your insights at feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com – your input could shape our next big topic. Subscribe today and learn more about agile teams.
In this episode, Peter and Dave discuss the importance of building robust systems and processes to achieve goals, drawing insights from the book "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. They explore the notion that simply setting objectives is not enough - sustained success requires developing the right habits, practices, and systems to support those objectives. The conversation touches on OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and the need to take small, incremental steps towards larger goals.
This week's takeaways:
Join the conversation and share your insights at feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com – your input could shape our next big topic. Subscribe today and learn more about agile teams.
Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and David Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello Dave, how are you doing today?
Dave:Peter, it's great to see you, great to chat with you, and I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Peter:Yeah, you came with an interesting topic today, and I hear you've been listening to one of my favorite books as well, so why don't you?
Dave:tell us about it. Yeah, so just been listening to Atomic Habits and you often use the phrase what's the phrase about? You raise to the height of your systems, not the height of your goals.
Peter:You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Dave:And that's certainly been noodling around in my brain for a few months now, because I know we've talked about this before and, as I'm reading, listening to Atomic Habits, there's a really great conversation there about the process or the system that you need in order to be able to achieve an objective.
Dave:And critically is the comment that objectives aren't the valuable piece, but the practices that you do, the process that you're using to achieve the objective is. He uses the example I think it is of a race, like a running race, where we probably all start off that running race with an objective of winning, but the person who wins that race is the one who's put the effort into the systems, the process, the practices behind the scenes.
Peter:Yes, yeah, exactly, Because it's the, as that quote says, and James Clear is the author of the book, if people aren't familiar with it, and he has a great newsletter if people want to sign up to it too.
Peter:The concept isn't missing you, but the fact that understanding and building robust systems are what will support you as you start to go through, especially when you're going through making change and we've talked about this in other ways too. When we start to bring change into organizations, if the system isn't there to support the change, then if there's any stress around the system, you'll fall back to whatever there was before, or you just fall into anarchy if there's nothing. And so this is why and what I think you were describing we were talking a bit about this before we started the call was this idea if you just set goals, if you only look at what the objective is, then that on its own isn't enough. If all you do is strive for your goal, for your objective, and you don't put in the systems to support that, then it will become potentially unsustainable, or unachievable even right.
Dave:So and it's a really sort of what's been striking me about this one is we spend a lot of time talking about any sort of, say, transformational change that we might be working on, or product that's being delivered, or whatever it might be developed, whatever that might be that we're going to start talking about. What's the objective, what's the purpose that you're building this for, or going through this process change or organizational change? We want to know how to measure it, and in the industry nowadays, that's a classic setup for OKRs, for objectives and key results, and listening to that book reminded me that the objectives and key results are the beginning of a conversation. It's a beginning of an understanding and appreciation of how we go forward. I think they came along and they have become as popular as they have done in the last few years, for the simple reason that most organizations struggle to get that purpose or objective through their organization and clearly understood.
Dave:So there's definitely value in actually articulating what those objectives are and understanding. To add on to that is we can't just blindly accept an objective.
Peter:We've got to think about how we are going to achieve that objective yeah, yeah, and I think this does come into when we think of objectives and key results, and it's the I think it was either the Google Intel one where they added, like the as measured by. So it's this idea that here's my objective as measured by these key results, and you use that to help guide. Like what am I trying to achieve? How am I intending to go about doing this? Like, what are the things I'm going to measure as progress?
Peter:Right, and so I'm looking at whether I'm going in the right direction, right, and the word you used there, which I think is critical, I mean OKRs as a framework, are something you use to create alignment across your organization to what is it we're trying to get done here. And without that alignment, then it's quite possible different parts of your organization might go off and start doing completely different things which are unaligned and may not necessarily, uh, contribute to the overall direction that the organization is trying to go in, and we see this a lot in organizations for sure, for sure, and and I I think the sort of maybe slow coming to the table on this one, but the realization that comes out of that is OKRs are very often the thing that everybody worries about, and then they kind of put them up on the wall or wherever they're going to reference them and they work hard to go and achieve the key results they've agreed to deliver in a quarter or whatever the period might be.
Dave:What I think James Clear talks about in the Atomic Habits really nicely is you don't just want that objective and some sort of measure. You want to think about what are the steps you need to take, what's the process or the plan that you have that is going to put all of the sort of leading steps in order to get your lagging indicator.
Dave:We all know this, if we sit down and we've got time, and not one meeting after another after another, that just drags ourselves through the day, but if we've got time to think about it, it's obvious. And I feel like maybe the message that I'm coming to the table with is let's take the time to make it explicit. Put an OKR with a P, a plan, a process along with it. Now you can begin to see those steps and it becomes a lot easier to understand where, how, what the progress has been?
Peter:Yeah, and I like to think about it as there's the sustainability of the outcome or the objective. Is the objective that we're aiming for something, that it's a one-off we're going to do this once, we're never going to do it again or is it something where we know that we, as a part of doing this, are we doing it in a sustainable fashion, such that we'll be able to build on that and it'll continue to serve us in the future? Because that sustainability part of it is crucial to understand what does good look like. Are we actually putting the right pieces in to build a system that will continue to sustain us into the future? Or, as I think, the example I was somewhat flippantly giving before was that if you set an objective of making more profit, you could fire all of your staff, which is great. You'll make more profit that month, but you won't make any the next because you won't have any people. So that's that.
Dave:Well, and I think that speaks to aligning the plan or the process, the steps that you go towards getting those key results and making sure they are, you know, constructive, that building something that's bigger, better, sustainable, whatever it might be, strengthening that process rather than just getting a quick win.
Peter:Yeah, don't make the objective the only thing you do. Don't solely focus on goals, and you see that in lots of places. Right, don't make the goal everything. It's got to be something that it's a good I.
Dave:I've had some great conversations this week where we've been talking about directional goals, directional information and I think that's a great way of thinking about it. These are. These are not hard and fast objectives, necessarily. They're more directional. How are we, you know?
Peter:how we think about the problem.
Dave:Where can we go with it?
Peter:yeah, good, hard and fast objectives, necessarily they're more directional. How are we thinking about the problem? Where can we go with it? Yeah good, it is interesting too, right? Because it's as with anything If you've set yourself a direction, something that you're going to go and do, if it's not a healthy direction, if it turns out to be the wrong thing, you've got to go and do. Um, if it's not a healthy direction, if it's it turns out to be the wrong thing, you've got to be able to course correct if it was, uh, this, this happened to not be a good direction to go in. So how can we learn that as quickly as possible and said actually, you know what?
Dave:maybe not yeah, so maybe, summarizing, do you want to kind of try and pull some of those together? I think it's been this really pithy part of the conversation there, but I think there's some great learnings in the conversation too.
Peter:So there's, I think some of the pieces are that. So objectives setting objectives creates alignment. Having key results, which you measure, those by which help guide what are we looking to do to achieve those objectives, helps guide that. But then ensuring that you are thinking about this in a sustainable way, what is the plan that's going to go around that? What are we doing here to ensure that we're building a system that is going to be healthy and sustain that, the providing? That's the intent, but we really hope that it is right for the um. I mean this is.
Peter:There's an, there's an interesting piece there, right where the the alignment between okrs and kpis, because it's like okrs don't replace kpis, kpi. You still need measures of how is the organization doing. You still need to understand what the performance of the organization is versus the progress you're making towards your objectives, which is what OKRs show. So the progress and performance, the two different sides of it and often thought of as the speed on it, or being the KPIs and the road signs telling you where you've got to, being the objectives and key results. So there's this these two things work hand in hand to give you that sort of guidance for the organization.
Dave:I love how your summary has now become a deeper dive into that conversation, because I think, and so when I was looking at the OKR, the conversation we were having, I kind of just settled on OKRP. So whenever I'm having those conversations now I'm going to be thinking of OKR and what's the P, what's your plan or process that goes with that to deliver it. And I think there's some really interesting deep dives to have in that one, because I've seen so many marketing and sales goals about some. You know we're going to have our sales do X or our marketing thing, you know, traffic or whatever it might be, do Y, without the deeper dive into what behaviors are we going to change? Because if it was just simply a case of doing stuff, it would happen anyway. So we must have to change something to get there. Probably.
Peter:Right. So I mean, this is a great example. My objective is that I want to make $20 million more in a new market. I set a key result that I want, by the end of the quarter, to have three new customers in that market. And I then go and look at my sales process and realize, well, actually, I have no idea how to sell into that market and the sales process I have isn't well equipped for it or the product isn't a good fit and I don't have the pieces I need to do that.
Peter:How do I look at my organization? So perhaps it's like well, really, now, if I taxidise down, I've got all of these other problems, these other objectives, these other areas that I need to go and have to solve, potentially, depending on how I'm structured, what size the organization is, how these things are being looked at, and there's an interconnection between this. For the overall objectives to be achieved, I have to be able to understand these other parts of it. Do I have the right product for the market I'm trying to enter? Do I know how to sell that into that market? Do I know what the customers in that market are looking for, which is one that I've humorously unfortunately, humorous is the wrong term, but something I have seen where it's like organizations going well, yes, we're just going to go, but they've got no real idea what that market is looking for. And so there's this. Well, let's take a step back, let's think about what is it we need to start to understand to even be able to approach?
Dave:that well, and I, I, I would say one of the kind of key indicators of just how strong people are as leaders and managers is how quickly they move to process right, rather than motivation, rather than we'd need to be working hard and those things. But really understanding. Okay, let's look at this breakdown.
Dave:Um, let's look at you know what the choke points in that process are and all of the other things that come together with that, so that it kind of um it's, it's exactly what we're sort of touching on, which is the need to understand planning, processing processes behind the scenes, rather than just arbitrarily pick an objective and have a an optimistic, can-do attitude that's going to somehow achieve that and and the other piece I think we're touching on there, which comes out of the book that you're as well, that you're talking about not just out of there, but lots of different books is around.
Peter:Uh, the concerts like Kaizen, and the, the like. What's the next smallest step on my journey? And how will I know? I'm at that state, because that's that's how you get there. It's the. We're trying to boil the ocean. So these, all these things come around. They're all interrelated. Should we try and wrap it up again? I thought I did a great job of wrapping all that. Yes, it's your turn. See if you can avoid taking us down well, let's, let's uh, touch on.
Dave:If I try and think of three things. So three things. One of them is objectives aren't sufficient, and we started off by talking about objectives. In fact, maybe you can quote that line again.
Peter:So you, you don't rise to the scale of your objective, you fall to the you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, which I I do like that quote yeah, then let's use that one as number one, right?
Dave:that's the first learning, I think and he is paraphrasing somebody else. But it's yes, it's yes, it's a good quote and a consequence of that which I was pulling in from the atomic habits is that understanding that system, understanding that about around KPIs the sort of deviation that we took off on which is KPIs sort of tell us the health of the system, how things are going, okrs tell us how we're going to get there and measure that progress towards getting towards those goals yeah, I think that's a good summary.
Peter:I uh think I would. I'd add that last piece around the uh, what's the next smallest step you're going to take towards that? That would be the, since you're talking about habits and this came out of a habit system book. So, and habits are small, yes, if you want to run a marathon, you start by tying your shoelaces, which I think is actually in that book. Cool, awesome, wonderful conversations always, dave, so I look forward to the next one. And for all our listeners, don't forget to hit subscribe and you can reach us both on well, LinkedIn, anywhere you normally find us, or send us an email at feedback@definitelymaybeagile. com. Thanks, thanks again. You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts, Peter Maddison and David Sharrock, focus on the art and science of digital agile and DevOps at scale.