Welcome to Thinkydoer Shorts, where we embrace anti-perfection
and dive straight into the messy middle of strategy, leadership,
and personal and career growth.
I'm your host, Sara Lobkovich, creator of No-BS Objectives and Key Results,
host of the Thinkydoers podcast,
and I'm a strategy coach, big time goal nerd, and board certified
health and wellness coach with a focus on work life well-being.
And in the next few minutes, we'll explore a current topic or insight to
spark your curiosity and provide you a pragmatic starting place to take action.
Let's dive in.
Hey friends, I thought I would experiment with a new format because we keep
getting really bogged down in edit.
So I've been completely loving our interview shows that we're putting
together and there's so much work that I haven't been doing my solo shows.
But this weekend something came up that I couldn't really wait
to put an episode together for.
So this is an experiment in doing a quick off the cuff episode on a
culturally relevant topic in I don't know, 15 or so minutes or less.
So I'm literally setting a timer so I can see it, so I don't go on too long.
On Friday night I was up late and, you know, on the phone, which is not good
for sleep hygiene, But it had been a while since I looked at calls for story
support on Quoted, which is a source that I use to find media appearances
and to look for journalists who cover topics that I am a specialist in.
And there were a couple of calls for sources on something
called October Theory.
And
when I saw TikTok October Theory goal setting, I had to know more.
so I caught up really quickly with a couple of news articles.
Of course, I got on TikTok to go straight to the source and I
completely missed the debut of this topic because I've been so head down
working on my books and everything else
that I'm a little late to the party.
at this point, there's something like 36 million posts about
October Theory on TikTok alone.
So first, what is October Theory?
October Theory is the idea that October is a great time to do your
assessment of where you are, think retrospective, and take stock and
decide what you want to set your goals around in advance of the new year.
So some influencers talk about it like it's a mini January.
Like a mini set of New Year's resolutions.
And some of the youths have this idea because we're going into
what they call cuffing season.
So people are taking stock of their relationship status and wanting
to make changes before we get into the hunker down for winter.
There's also an astrological element, Which I find fascinating
as a Libra Sun sign, but I'll leave that to the TikTok experts.
We're going to talk about goal setting.
So while I was reading up and watching some of the TikToks on the topic, I
felt like I was watching Gen Z discover quarterly planning for the first time.
Which I'm not throwing shade, I think that's really exciting.
So much of Gen Z, if my stepkids and their friends are any indication,
are so mobilized for change naturally that the thought of them starting with
quarterly goal setting personally or professionally early on just makes
me think they could take over the world even faster, in a good way.
So this is a quick two-fer short.
I'm going to be talking to my business listeners about what the youths are
getting right about October Theory.
And then I also want to introduce Gen Z to the concept of a key result, because
it's going to help you make change even faster than you're naturally wired for.
And yes, I'm talking about objectives and key results or OKRs, But these are
not your parents or grandparents OKRs.
So for my business listeners, many organizations plan on an annual
cycle starting the year in January.
A lot of my clients begin their annual planning in, November, or
sometimes even as late as December.
The other phenomenon I tend to observe in my business clients is we start out the
year really strong with our focus on OKRs.
We might do a solid Q2 reset
at the end of Q1, because we've learned a lot about how we might
improve our OKRs for the year.
And then a lot of organizations do that big mid year.
So they take stock at mid year, see what they've learned.
And see what to let go of, and then create their OKRs for Q3.
But what tends to happen with that quarterly cycle is the Q3 reset
kind of gets eaten by the strategic planning that's about to start.
So there's this overlapping of our working toward our current year, year
end goals, and planning for next year.
And that overlap can mean that the goal setting and goal pursuit toward the
end of the year can get pretty muddled.
I love the idea of this October theory, that October is a great time for a
retrospective to look back on what we've learned this year, where we are in our
current state, and then say, where do we want to be when we wake up on January 1st?
that's no different from doing an OKR reset at the end of Q3.
I just find a lot of organizations just kind of stop with their
OKR rhythm at the end of Q3.
I saw clients even in the last couple weeks, some of them, their quarterly
reviews are on my calendar, and I saw cancellations of the quarterly
review because people are so busy trying to get ready for budget
season and strategic planning.
So let's listen to the next generation on this one and
prioritize the end of Q3 reset.
Because the sand in the hourglass is really running out on 2024, and you most
likely have some really important progress to be made on your goals before year end,
even while we're planning for next year.
All right, now I want to introduce our Gen Z folks who are excited about October
theory to the concept of a key result, and key results come from a collaborative
goal setting model and practice called Objectives and Key Results or OKRs.
OKRs have been used in big companies and by startups for a long, long time.
But I can completely understand how younger people entering the workforce
or earlier in their career might encounter OKRs in the workplace and
think, Oh my gosh, this is not for me.
Like the, the way that OKRs get implemented doesn't always make
a great sales pitch for them.
The experiences people have with them aren't always strong.
So, Gen Zers, if you haven't yet encountered OKRs, let's start you
off right, and Gen Zers who have had a bad experience with OKRs in the
workplace, let's do a reboot here.
The approach to OKRs that I work with, I call the No BS OKR model.
We create goals very quickly.
Based exactly on what you're doing with October Theory, based on taking
stock of where we are and where we want to be, and then creating
objectives and key results accordingly.
Today, I'm going to focus on key results and encourage you to experiment
with creating your key results as part of your October Theory planning.
When people are setting goals, their natural tendency a lot of times is to
create goals around what they plan to do.
So if you have goals today, you might look at that list and let's inventory
how many of them are you deciding to do something or to complete an activity
or even a quantified activity to do an activity a certain number of times.
It's probably a fair number of them.
So key results are a different kind of goal.
And the structure that I use for a textbook key result is increase,
decrease, improve, reduce, some kind of directional verb.
A metric by a percentage or point change from start value to finish value.
Now, what's the difference between creating goals around
activity and creating goals around empirically measurable outcomes?
For one, you're probably signing yourself up for way too many activity
goals than you can actually achieve.
It's really common.
For two, you might complete all those activities that you planned and check
off all those boxes and still not actually achieve whatever outcome
or result you really aspire to.
OKRs define for us how we're going to actually quantify success and progress.
And it sounds counterintuitive, but setting empirically measurable key results
around what we hope to achieve in terms of progress and success can actually
be super motivating compared to just setting goals around our activities.
If we create goals around our activities, and we don't keep up with
that plan, then we feel bad about not being able to check off those boxes.
It also causes problems for our tendency toward all or nothing thinking.
So if we miss one activity, and that interrupts our habit around the
activity we're trying to complete.
Then there's a risk that you're just going to backslide and feel bad and stop
doing what you committed yourself to do.
Where when we create key results, we think about those differently.
So when we create key results, we're going to think about what would be really
incredible to achieve in terms of impacts or quantifiable outcomes of our effort.
And we're going to think about that in a stretch way because what
you're doing there is thinking about a future that doesn't exist yet.
So there's no way to accurately forecast what the result is
going to be with certainty.
We recognize we're going into the unknown.
We're trying to change something.
It's not a sure thing that you're going to achieve it, although you're going to
try your best to, but just setting that measurable goal gives you something to
work toward and then lean in to curiosity and learning about your progress.
So instead of the risk of the all or nothing bad feelings that we get when
we set just activity based goals, when we create key results, that's
what we're If we're pursuing a key result, and even if we're not making
progress, then the reaction we have isn't, there's something wrong with
me that I'm not achieving my goal.
I'm doing something wrong that I'm not achieving my goal.
Instead, when we're working with key results, We get instantly curious,
even if you're not having any progress.
The question you can ask yourself is what's going on that I'm not making
progress on this goal, get curious.
And then that gives you flexibility to adapt your activity plan.
So you can take stock, see what you might want to change in what you're
doing that will be designed To advance your achievement of your key result
with nimbleness and flexibility about the situation that you're operating in,
which frankly changes from day to day.
So those activity goals you're used to setting, you set at a certain time,
that's your best guess at what needs to be done, and then you work toward
them, but you're in a changing world and the circumstances and situation
and you yourself are changing.
it's really common for those activity based goals to get stale or to become no
longer relevant before they're achieved.
Because with key results, we're asking and answering the question,
what would be really incredible to achieve if everything goes right?
It lets you envision a future that doesn't exist yet, the
future that you want to create.
It enables you to work toward that future with clarity about
what you're trying to achieve.
And it lets you lean into curiosity, whether you are achieving
progress on your key result.
Whether you are not or whether it's not moving, no matter what's happening with
that key result, you can check in with yourself, ask the question, what's going
on that this isn't going well, or what's going on that this is going so well?
Can I leverage that to accelerate my progress or to take what I've
learned to improve my performance in some other area of my work or life?
All right, so that's it.
I'm going to wrap up for today.
If you're curious about anything you've heard here, I would love to have you
check out my upcoming book, You Are a Strategist, Using No-BS Objectives and
Key Results to get big things done.
You can join the book pre- launch list at youareastrategist.
com.
Now this book is a love letter to all of my listeners, but I would be
so excited if this becomes the book that Gen Z learns about OKRs from.
Because I can't wait to see what you do with Objectives and Key Results.
Thank you for tuning into this Thinkydoer Short today.
Remember, progress beats perfection every time, and let's practice
building in public together.
If you found value in today's episode, Share it with a fellow Thinkydoer.
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And for more resources and insights, visit saralobkovich.com.
Or if that's too hard to spell, there's a shortcut at findrc.co.
We'll have our next full length episode out in just a couple
days, continuing on the theme of mental health for Thinkydoers.
So until next time, stay curious and stay focused on what might
be incredible to achieve.