OKR Red Flags According to OKR Industry

ThinkSmith Approach

1. KR’s Not Prioritized.

Front-line staff prioritize the gaps from two standpoints.
1) Score each gap from 1-10 as to how addressable the gap item is if the Business were motivated or capable of resolving.

2) Score each gap from 1-10 as the value if the Business did execute.

2. Unaligned or Misaligned OKRs

Employees and managers are the ones who identify the gaps holding back success, which ensures alignment.
From the very onset, employees are part of identifying “What is difficult” about operating the Business in an optimized state. This bottoms-up process generates ownership and the belief that things will improve.

3. Lack of Cross-functional Buy-in

Outcome-based challenges naturally align with cross-functional teams. Employees are tasked to Look at the Business from a leader’s Perspective, which gives them broader perspectives.

4. Conservative Key Results (Not about the number but the quality)

ThinkSmith aligns employees’ critical thinking to the direct inputs that unlock potential. This outcome-based approach becomes more relevant for employees more apt to change their behavior to meet the key results. Longer-term employees start to have more confidence in their new world of bottoms-up contribution.

5. Lack of Check-In discipline
   #1 Problem reported by clients  

ThinkSmith approach is more about aligning employees to the difficulties in the job that improve results vs. top-down goals making a ThinkSmith challenge highly relevant for employees.

6. Inadequate Resourcing To Meet Goals

ThinkSmith’s starting point focuses on improving processes, skills, or both to support corporate objectives. The goal is to optimize as best as possible given the team(s) resourcing. 

7. Lack of Innovation

By engaging one another around gaps holding the Business back, employees innovate through an award-winning 4-stage engagement process designed to focus critical thinking.

When critical thinking is harmonized through a collaborative discovery process with like-minded peers, it becomes a powerful catalyst for progress. The ThinkSmith engagement process consists of four stages, considers diverse personality types and fosters an inclusive environment where everyone feels at ease contributing. Notably, three out of the four ThinkSmith engagement steps are conducted anonymously, granting participants the freedom to express innovative ideas.

8. Unaddressed Bottlenecks

ThinkSmith’s sole purpose is to address bottlenecks or gaps through a process of engagement, creating buy-in and custom solutions to gaps.  

9. Change in Priorities

Priorities can change, but the business unit’s fundamentals don’t. ThinkSmith aligns employees to improve and execute on business gaps identified by employees for the employees.

10. Engagement

ThinkSmith is an outcome-driven engagement platform empowering employees to build self-assurance while pinpointing and resolving company challenges.

11. Lack of Discipline

ThinkSmith is about alignment with the things that improve the business unit. Over time, managers and employees realize that this system is not reliant on one person. 

12. Lack of Frequent Reviews

Employees embrace a new paradigm where they are encouraged to contribute at a higher level taking part in what’s referred to as MicroStrategy associated with execution. Employees realize that, first and foremost, ThinkSmith challenges help them do their jobs better.Top of Form

13. Fault Finding, Not Fact-finding Reviews.

In an outcome-based environment, managers and leaders focus on facilitation, allowing employees to become the primary drivers of ideas and execution. This focuses discussions around the collective approaches driven by employees, which removes fault finding.

14. Not Celebrating Successes

ThinkSmith takes advantage of peer-driven assessments where peers and leaders readily provide critical feedback.

15. Inadequate Support from the Team

Gaining 100% employee engagement or participation is ideal but unnecessary in a world where 77% of employees quit quietly or loudly. Getting early adopters engaged opens the door to improved execution and broader contributions. Engagement can be contagious, as one of our customers recently experienced. 

16. Learning “Not emphasized in OKRs”

Participants are the learners, teachers, and custom solution providers, enabling a rich learning model.

Through a proven 4-stage engagement process, employees transfer knowledge and skills to one another through anonymous exposure to colleagues’ solutions.

17. No Systematic Way to Capture Learnings.

The platform stores the high-priority business challenges and their corresponding best employee approaches and solutions. The database becomes accessible for new hire onboarding and serves as a framework for seamlessly integrating acquisitions into the company’s operations.

18. No formal ways to share lessons learned.

ThinkSmith’s archives lessons learned.

Lessons learned are captured in the customer’s database for future reference and shared with other leaders for context or support, helping to make better decisions from data void of biases.

19. No recognition for sharing learning.

ThinkSmith’s system is intrinsically designed for peer and leadership feedback, in most cases anonymously.

Through this interactive experience, participants learn from one another and enhance their teamwork skills. Learning is not limited by physical location, as participants from different areas of the organization can connect and contribute to the collaborative process.

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20. No structured process to feed learning to planning.

Highly structured employee approach tying gaps to ThinkSmith challenges which ARE the learning process.