There are three scenarios:
- You give me nothing to do
- You give me one thing to do
- You give me more than one thing to do (most companies land here)
1. You give me nothing to do
** Good when ** I have the expertise and knowledge to come up with the right thing to do next, and leadership does not.
** Bad when ** I don’t have the data or expertise to think of the right thing to do. I spin my wheels or get frustrated and quit.
2. You give me one thing to do
** Good when ** I know why this is the one thing I need to do and how it fits in with the larger picture. I’ve had input as to what that one thing is and I agree that this is the one thing to do.
** Bad when ** I’m being told what to do and not why. I don’t understand or agree that this is the thing we should be doing but I’m asked to take orders and do it anyways. I quickly get frustrated at the lack of purpose and autonomy and quit. Many software engineers are stuck in these positions and I encourage them to automate themselves out of it asap.
3. You give me more than one thing to do (most companies land here)
** Good when ** I know exactly what the top priority is and why. In other words, I’m effectively in #2 but with additional context about what is coming next and how priority is in this snapshot in time.
** Bad when (almost everyone falls in this bucket!!) ** Priorities are sandwiched or spread out among teams going in different directions and fighting for different top priorities. The importand note is that it’s less about the actual things we’re doing and more about agreeing how and why these things are important to be doing.
Note that comapnies will often strive for few top priorities in their time period via well groomed, clear, and conscise OKRs. It doesn’t matter if you have 2 priorities or 300, it’s the same to me if I don’t have a clear understanding of what next step I’m going to take and the data and context as to why that next step priority is clear.
Ideal case
The ideal case above is one of the “good when” scenarios but which exactly depends on the situation. I’d say for most companies it’s #3, this is why it’s so important to make extremely clear what our one next thing to do is and why/how it was decided. Any single person in your organization should be able to be given a random list of OKRs and be able to pick out the one thing we should be working on above all else right now.