Essays & field notes.
Strategy execution, Lean OKRs, engineering culture, and how organizations actually work.
Move the Needle with AI: Lean OKRs as a Forcing Constraint
Most organisations say they're using AI - copilots, pilots, impressive demos - yet the business looks the same. The problem is rarely the model or the talent. It's intent. How Lean OKRs force AI to actually change how work gets done.
Read more →From Average to Exceptional: The Journey of One Development Team to Increase Productivity and Business Outcomes
This is the story of an average, low-performing software development team that wasn’t even aware they had fallen into the rut of the daily grind, faced a huge backlog of deliverables and hadn’t released any new software to production for more than six months. Yet with the application of behavioral s
Read more →Making OKRs Lean Again
Objectives and Key Results. A 40-year old, simple goal-setting framework, initially created by and for technology companies that needed to innovate at the speed of light. They are still wildly relevant today, some four decades later, and when used correctly, they can help you to achieve 10x growth.
Read more →Making OKRs Lean Again - Final Part
Objectives and Key Results. A 40-year old, simple goal-setting framework, initially created by and for technology companies that needed to innovate at the speed of light. They are still wildly relevant today, some four decades later, and when used correctly, they can help you to achieve 10x growth.
Read more →Making OKRs Lean Again - Part 3
Objectives and Key Results. A 40-year old, simple goal-setting framework, initially created by and for technology companies that needed to innovate at the speed of light. They are still wildly relevant today, some four decades later, and when used correctly, they can help you to achieve 10x growth.
Read more →Making OKRs Lean Again - Part 2
Objectives and Key Results. A 40-year old, simple goal-setting framework, initially created by and for technology companies that needed to innovate at the speed of light. They are still wildly relevant today, some four decades later, and when used correctly, they can help you to achieve 10x growth.
Read more →Making OKRs Lean again Part 1
Objectives and Key Results. A 40-year old, simple goal-setting framework, initially created by and for technology companies that needed to innovate at the speed of light...
Read more →The 10 most used KPIs that every CTOs in FinTech need to monitor and influence
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) often function as the main framework for the many measurables that your organisation collects or otherwise keeps track of. But which KPIs will actually help you answer the critical questions that will help your company increase revenue and reduce costs?
Read more →OKR Software is a scam!
You don’t need dedicated OKR Software, so don’t fall into this trap. Organising your goals into Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is supposed to be simple. Very simple, that’s why it works. If you make OKRs too complicated by having too many, or when you have too many layers in your organisation, yo
Read more →Mission Impossible? OKRs to the Rescue
Many organizations that make the decision to start with OKRs make the same mistake: too many OKRs at the executive level.
Read more →Barriers to growth
You want your company to grow. That desire could be driven by shareholders and investors, your own ambition or your exit strategy. So what do you do? You hire a bunch of growth hackers to get your inbound and outbound marketing up to speed, hire some killer sales reps and do some pricing tricks. Thi
Read more →Pragmatic Goals Need Innovation
In the pursuit of your mission and vision, in life as well as in business, the individuals that see the best return on their efforts are those that have laid the framework from getting from point A to point B with pragmatic goals.
Read more →OKR Check-In Learning Curve - What to Expect in the First Year (Quarterly Cadence)
You’ve recently started with OKRs, defined company-level OKRs and your teams already have linked OKRs. You are ready to start your first OKR cycle. What things can you expect when you perform your OKR check-ins? Let’s look at different stages of your OKR implementation.
Read more →What To Do When Every Priority is Critical
I often come across companies where everything is a top priority. Let’s take a look at a fictional corporation, Acme Bank, where revenue was low last quarter. Like many, their natural response is to cut expenses.
Read more →Eight tips to Improving Accountability with Weekly OKR Check-ins
You find yourself sitting at your desk, scratching your head. What is going on? You thought you were clear and fair. You repeated it so many times. How is it possible that your teams still don’t do what you expect of them?
Read more →OKR Check-ins: Making Consistent, Meaningful Progress
People hate uncertainty. Research has proven that people can experience stress and illness when dealing with ambiguity and obscurity. Our brain appreciates certainty the same as food, sex, and social connections. We humans are rather predictable creatures, ruled by genetics and time-honoured surviva
Read more →Organisational Culture Shock - Introducing OKRs
So, you have recently heard about this new management goal-setting method called OKRs and you are really eager to implement them within your organization. If Google and all of the other big tech giants are using them, then they need to be good right? So, what do you do next?
Read more →Slingshot your OKR success
Last week I was a guest in the Fit Bots webinar where I talked about "Slingshot your OKR Success".
Read more →Getting the Grade: Tracking OKR & Confidence Levels
Time Travel Travel back in time with me for a moment. It’s New Year’s Eve and you are watching the fireworks in the sky with your friends. You are holding a glass of champagne in your hand and making some promises to your friends. “This year I’ll quit smoking”, one friend says. Another promise alou
Read more →IT Spring 2019 - OKR Commitment square
Check out my talk at IT Spring 2019. In this presentation, I talk about how to use OKRs for strategy and how to use a tool called the OKR commitment square to execute your OKR check-ins.
Read more →Clarity with a single OKR
“Focus is the thing that makes the difference between excelling and flailing about in mediocrity” ~ Christina Wodtke.
Read more →How to run a successful OKR Check-In
Last week Perdoo founder Henrik-Jan van der Pol asked me to describe how teams can run a successful OKR check-in. OKR Check-ins are the key ingredient of any successful OKR implementation. But they are hard to do. You need to run them at least weekly, come well prepared and make sure your team membe
Read more →Implementing OKRs: vision of 8 OKR-experts
I was asked to contribute to the after-movie of the Amsterdam OKR forum. Check it out.
Read more →Closing the gap between strategy and agile teams – an interview with Bart den Haak
Read my interview with Workpath on this important topic.
Read more →DevOps new?
In this blog, I look at the rich history behind DevOps, which goes back over 200 years.
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