Suggestions
Daniel Montgomery
Strategic Agility and OKR Thought Leader
Daniel Montgomery is the Founder and Managing Director of Agile Strategies, a boutique OKR consultancy based in Boulder, Colorado.12 He has a diverse career background that includes strategic planning, IT project management, and leadership development.1 Montgomery has taught strategic planning and goal setting for over 20 years and has led the development of strategic plans for a wide range of clients, including Fortune 500 companies, startups, nonprofits, government agencies, and small businesses.1
Montgomery is an expert in Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and has authored the book "Start Less, Finish More: Building Strategic Agility with Objectives and Key Results".34 He founded Agile Strategies in 2013 to create a better way for organizations to collaboratively set goals and stay focused on achieving them.5 The company specializes in service industries, including healthcare, hospitality, finance, nonprofits, and government agencies.2
As an OKR coach and consultant, Montgomery helps leaders become more agile in their approach to strategy and performance management.16 He has taught and facilitated strategy development throughout North America, Southeast Asia, the United Kingdom, Europe, and the Middle East.4 Montgomery's expertise lies in helping organizations develop clear, actionable strategies, engage customers and employees in strategy and innovation, improve goal setting and performance management, and pivot quickly when needed.5
Highlights
I've always wanted to know more about the "Jobs to be Done" (JTBD) framework, and had some suspicion it might be a useful complement to OKRs. So I asked Jim Kalbach, the author of The Jobs To Be Done Playbook, for a conversation. Turns out there are some really interesting possibilities here, that make it even more fruitful to use OKRs for innovation initiatives. Plus, Jim explains his job title, Chief Evangelist at Mural.
Check it out!
https://lnkd.in/gQsJaWfv or your favorite podcast platform.
I just got off a call with several people who've used OKRs, both in big business and startups. We were there to talk about a different topic, so when they learned I was an OKR guy they spontaneously told me some VERY interesting feelings and experience they had about OKRs.
And I really value their honesty.....
- People hate writing OKRs and goals of any kind, and tend to delegate the job to others.
- Writing OKRs is typically done individually, not as a team.
- Once they've written the OKR, they've checked the box and don't think about them again.
- People LOVE using AI to write their OKRs for them, 'cause they don't want to do it in the first place.
Bottom line, for too many, writing OKRs has become a performative waste of time.
I DON'T KNOW WHY ANYBODY IS BOTHERING TO USE OKRS IF THIS IS THE WAY YOU'RE DOING IT!
Working backwards, please check out the article I wrote last fall about why using AI to write OKRs is a monumentally dumb idea. To do that completely betrays any idea of using them to create competitive differentiation and real change.
Third, OKRs work best when they motivate a team to work together to do something they haven't done before. Every case study in every OKR best seller is about teamwork. And the value of having OKRs at all is the regular conversations they encourage.
Second (remember I'm working backwards here), the value of OKRs is having regular progress conversations as a team and changing tack accordingly. If you're just going to write them and put them away, you're wasting your time.
First, if you're a leader and just delegate writing OKRs to individual others, I would argue you're not doing your job to communicate, align, test, and evolve your strategy and tactics. Just wait for the next management best seller and jump on that bandwagon.
#okrs
