Regret Nothing – Celebrate Progress!

If you've been following InfoSuperstar for a while you'll know that there are three major themes that I talk about.

There is always a demand for tips for how to use spreadsheets and other data and reporting tools more effectively.

But as valuable as technical skills are, a true Information Superstar is also able to think strategically, as well as being personally effective in managing their time, plans and priorities.

So, alongside a third of my InfoSuperstar content teaching technical skills, one third focuses on effective strategic planning, and the final third focuses on time management and the overall personal effectiveness skills required to be a superstar performer in a finance or leadership role.

Recognising this holistic need, I designated March “Planning and Hope month”. My final blog of the month was meant to focus on looking back at the plans that I put in place for the first quarter of 2021 and stressing the need to celebrate what has been achieved and only to reflect upon the unticked items on my ‘To Do List’ to the extent that they helped me learn how I should go about setting and achieving my goals for the next quarter.

And whilst my blog does indeed contain thoughts to help us to maintain a positive and goal-oriented mindset, If you check the date of publication you’ll note that I failed to get it out in the last week of the quarter!

But I’m not going to dwell on that failure!

Last week I came across a fabulous article that talked about a broader lifestyle choice and mindset frameworkthat summarises a lot of what I've trying to learn in the past couple of years.

Put simply, without a daily routine of habits to help us sleep well, eat well, exercise and keep our big picture objectives in view we are not set up to make the most of every day.

Our context in reading this article must be to congratulate ourselves for the times we get it right, but then not to beat ourselves up when we fail to live up to our own or indeed anyone else’s expectations.

Reflecting on all the plans you had for the most recent quarter, there will always be things that you failed to achieve, if you set your sights high enough.

But if you're able to acknowledge the achievement of results that get you closer to your most important objectives, then you're set up to have a positive spiral of thinking, which hopefully spills over into how you must your will power to sleep more eat better exercise and all the other things in life that you know you ought to do.

And that's where the OKR framework that I talked it out in my earlier blogcomes in.

By setting a short list of key results that I'm looking for each quarter I have a clear focus for what I'm intending to deliver in every three-month cycle. But moreover, the OKR framework encourages me to score the delivery of each key result - it's not just a binary pass or fail. Often, delivery is much more nuanced and accepting that I've made substantial progress is still a cause to celebrate, albeit that probably means adjusting my plan for the following quarter.

I use the OKR framework for all aspects of my professional and non-work life. I have found it vital on a daily and weekly basis to make sure that items only make it onto my ‘To Do’ List and into my calendar when they relate to a Key Result for that quarter.

Scoring can vary anywhere from 0.0 to 1.0, with broad guidance as below.

After calculating an average score against Key Results, I have a good sense of progress. Scoring a complete 1.0 is not the goal! Organisations like a Google, who use the OKR format, state that 0.7 is a good-enough outcome because it represents progress - but proves that the goal was stretching enough to not be a shoo-in to deliver.

In the interests of showing you how this works and how I reflect upon my own performance in the last quarter here is my Power BI summary scorecard against my Key Results targets for the first quarter of 2021.

The icons represent the areas of my life and I whilst I can be happy that most areas are tracking ‘green’, I did not achieve everything I set out to do.

Am I disappointed? No!

Because even though I’m still a work-in-progress I’ve learned a lot through using applying and adapting the OKR framework in the past 18 months. And broadly, the most important things I was focusing on got done.

Here are the three things I've learned about my own target setting and achievement delivery.

I tend to set too many goals and targets. Whilst I am spreading OKRs across all the areas that take up my time, the OKR framework suggests you should have three to five deliverable key results each quarter.

Within a work context that’s fine but looking at it across the whole of life it's quite reasonable to have a larger list.

For example, even if I'm able to deliver up to five Key Results at work, I might still choose to have other Key Results outside of work - assuming that work does not take up 100% of my time and energy! For me, that means I set athletic goals (as per the picture at the top of the blog!) and songwriting/guitar playing targets. For others, it might mean doing that DIY project that they have been nagged about by their partner…

I often end up with a longer list of key results than can possibly be delivered. So, I'm trying to make a shorter list every quarter… but still not getting it 100% right!

However, I’ve still found it useful to list all outcomes that I’d like to work towards. If they are not “Key”, then I categorise them as “Other”. I’ll still score them and reflect upon whether anything moved forward. I’m not primarily focusing to achieve these, but sometimes they represent commitments that I have already made but have decided to deprioritise or be flexible on timing. I can choose to promote them to a “Key” Result at a later time, or actively work to remove them from the list. But at least I’m conscious of the choices of how to allocate my time and energy.

There is still a need to make sure that I don’t forget delivering regular, ongoing work in strategically important areas. Key Results tend to relate to delivering change or growth- something that is new or improved. I find it useful to make sure that I still articulate and score important outcomes that relate to an ongoing level of “doing the day job” performance. I categorise these outcomes as “Hygiene Factors” or “HF” for short.

This definition is not part of the OKR framework but I find it useful.

For example, I have an ongoing HF score to make sure I check that I am making time for a monthly ‘date night’ with my wife. Clearly that’s tricky in lockdown! I’m not scoring my relationship, just making sure I have a check-in with myself to ensure that delivering the change demanded by Key Result goals does not undermine the basics of an important relationship.

I suspect it's useful in many organisational contexts too. For example, if we have no history of safety failure, we probably aren’t going to have safety-related Key Result improvement targets. But we don't want to forget keeping our people safe, like zero tolerance for lost-time accidents.

At the end of every quarter, I’ll have a list of Key Result and Hygiene Factors to hold myself accountable for, together with a list of scores for ‘other’/secondary objectives, which I have already given myself permission to fail to deliver.

But I’ll be very aware of where my focus has to be.

I also find it helpful to write a very brief statement about why each score is given. This is my ‘pat on the back’ for delivery, or the learning about what needs to be done in the future to deliver.

If this exercise was part of a performance appraisal system then this would be a good idea, so that the individual responsible for delivery of Key Results is able to proactively rationalise and explain the reasons to their manager. Note that this is never about blame, it's a rational assessment of the extent to which delivery did or didn't happen. The employee then owns the solution.

For me this is the crux of the creating the positive mindset that I talked about at the beginning of the blog. When I've achieved something that I set out to do, I explicitly encourage myself and pat myself on the back for doing it.

I’ve found that my failure to deliver is often down to over-committing on what could reasonably be delivered, or simply being the victim of an external circumstance. Like in 2019 when I fell off my bike, broke my back, and was out of action for several months.

When that happens I'm able to give myself a free pass to reconsider my priorities and, if necessary, set a revised Key Result target for the following quarter.

It's very rare for me to need to have a stern word with myself about my failure to deliver.

In recent times failure its almost always because I've allowed myself to be distracted by secondary goals. I'm far from perfect and I’m learning through this process that I need to say “no” more regularly to ‘good’ stuff, in order to make time to deliver the narrow range of ‘better’ Key Results.

Net, my #1 reason for not delivering my own Key Result goals is lack of energy, because I underestimated the work required to deliver them and was not prepared to push myself into burnout to deliver against an unrealistic self-expectation.

If I made some progress, then I still have some work for a future quarter, but I can be pleased at the progress that has been made. No-one died, the world is still turning, and I am three months older and wiser.

Imagine how this would work in an organisation where every employee and Department self-scores and reflects upon its achievements and then adapts what it wants to achieve for the following quarter. It works for me, even though I'm only accountable to myself… and my business coach!

Can you look back and write what achieved in the past three months? Why not take 5 minutes now to do so. Forget what didn’t happen.

Then, why not put time in your diary to set out your expectations for the next three months? Take a pen and paper into a quiet place. Write down what you’d like to be able to congratulate yourself about in three months’ time. Then pin that somewhere that you’ll see every day.

Finally, schedule a meeting with yourself at the end of the quarter – or better still schedule a meeting with a trusted friend or coach.

So you can be accountable for feeling good about what you have delivered.

If you’ve got a specific story about this why not reach out and let me know – I’d love to know if this works for you! Also, let me know if you’d like to hear more about how I created the Power BI dashboard.

Email me at andy.biggs@infosuperstar.com

Until next time,

Adios Amigos!