Best of 2021: The OKR Approach: Defining Objectives and Key Results

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and Soumeya Benghanem welcome Murtaza Chowdhury (Amazon Web Services) to discuss Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) - a goal-setting framework for outlining and planning product objectives up to the targeted results. OKR helps product managers plan and create frameworks which are shared within the team to set clear goals to align all efforts. 

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What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:42 Objective and Key Results (OKRs) and the need for alignment for outcomes and defining them
• 05:24 The benefits of the OKR approach
• 08:32 Have an objective that speaks for the company vision
• 11:53 Set a vision but don’t be too tactical in your approach 
• 15:25 A sense of priority among the OKRs 
• 19:22 Setting the objectives and key results
• 24:56 Everyone in the team is involved in the product team
• 26:44 OKR should be broken down into organizational level, team level, and then micro-teams level
• 28:34 Everyone working on the team has a say on the product development
• 31:04 User stories are what ties everything together
• 35:23 Solving team problems through prioritization and alignment
• 40:16 Everyone in the team is involved in creating the OKR
• 44:06 Should PMs stay in the background and let micro-teams solve the problem?
• 48:45 The 3 elements of an effective OKR
• 51:08 Set objectives that are futuristic, inspirational, and highly ambitious
• 52:47 Use OKRs with purpose