As we all focus on 2024 and the upcoming business year, I encourage you to focus on your OKRs and find the right activities for each level of your leadership team, including yourself.

In this article:

• Overview and tips for creating OKRs
• How CEOs and Small Business Leaders can focus on results in 2024
• How joining Vistage helps SMB owners develop a Leadership Team that achieves results

OKR stands for “Objectives and Key Results.” It’s a framework for SMB leaders in defining and tracking objectives and their outcomes. The methodology is often used by teams and organizations to set challenging, ambitious goals with measurable results.

A brief overview of OKRs:

1. Objectives: These are clearly defined goals. Objectives are significant, concrete, action-oriented, and (ideally) inspirational. When well-designed, they act as a guide to focus efforts and resources on what matters most.
2. Key Results: Key Results benchmark and monitor how we achieve the objective. They are specific, measurable, and verifiable. You either meet a key result or you don’t; there is no gray area or room for doubt.

The OKR system encourages organizations to set goals that are ambitious and may seem a bit out of reach. The idea is to foster stretching beyond comfort zones and to drive innovation and growth. OKRs are typically set at multiple levels of an organization, with company-wide objectives and key results flowing down to team or individual OKRs.

This approach is popular among many large, medium and small companies and has been widely adopted in various industries due to its simplicity and effectiveness in ensuring the company focuses its efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization.

Sample OKR for Sales Revenue: 

Grow more than 15% in total YoY revenue. 

Best  🏆	$12MM	20% YoY growth
Better 😎	$10MM	15% YoY growth
Good 👍	$8MM	12% YoY growth

Using this tiered approach of Good, Better, Best creates more clarity around your expectations. The more clear you make your expectations, both in words and visuals, the more opportunity your leadership team has to step up to own the results AND there’s more shared feeling of success.

There are more good examples and tips from the team at What Matters.

Communicating these OKRs also creates transparent accountability for what the leadership team owns. As they create team objectives and identify how they will measure success, it can drive greater alignment across departments. The most successful OKR models do not create siloed objectives that can conflict between department resources and dilute focus. Leadership teams collaborate to create shared OKRs and can see how they must prioritize their teams to work together.

How then, can a business leader push for results over activities?

Here’s a phrase I heard many years ago, “…when the ship misses the harbor, it’s rarely the fault of the harbor”.

How CEOs and SMB Leaders can Focus on Results in 2024

As a CEO, president or business leader, I would suggest you start out in 2024 answering the following 4 questions:

What’s your 1 “stop doing” and your 1 “start doing”?

Your plate is full, so is every SMB leader. So, before you take on anything new, you should remove lesser roles to focus on leading your company to that next level.

When your direct reports are asking you to make the decision for them, have them provide up to 3 suggestions or options and guide them to identify which one they believe is the right direction or decision.

It’s important for business leaders to stop doing other people’s work

When your direct reports are asking you to make the decision for them, have them provide up to 3 suggestions or options. Which one do they believe is the right direction or decision? You are now being the coach, mentor and leader in creating ownership within your organization.

It’s also a good practice to regularly ask yourself – whose job am I doing? – then, ask your leadership team what their perspective is for the same responsibility?

What 2 tasks will you delegate in 2024?

It starts with delegating “in the weeds” activities, so you can focus on “looking around the corner” and gain headspace for the 30,000 feet view needed as a leader.

Vistage speaker Mike Scott, https://totallyaccountable.com/ suggests never ask “Why” when something is not done. Instead ask your direct report in the following order:

• What are your next steps to get that done?
• When are you going to do that?
• Can I count on you for that?

What are your 3 ‘must win’ battles in 2024?

1. Focus on strategic, critical and time sensitive quarter-by-quarter and work backwards from completion to today. Most often these are revenue driven objectives, so if you can’t measure them, don’t own them.
2. ‘Must win’ battles can be external as well as internal. Acquisitions, new territory, new accounts, as well as process improvements, work order productivity, refreshing websites and adding new talent.

What are your 4 Most Important Performance Improvements in 2024?

Process each department, each process, looking for the black holes they prevent sustainable and scalable results. Department management and key employees should have well defined job descriptions that align with your expectations.

Think back on when you were disappointed with a department leader or
manager, were you expectations discussed in the beginning? This may be a great place to focus your leadership efforts.

Developing a Leadership Team that Achieves Results

Do you have rising stars that need additional outside development and/or want to bring outside expert content into your leadership team? Our new LDPs (Leadership Development Programs) are helping dozens of Austin companies, let us assist you, too.

Reach Out to Vistage When You Need:

• Breakthrough Growth: If your business is plateauing and you’re seeking to elevate to the next level.
• Leadership Development: Enhance your self-awareness and become a more effective leader.
• Strategic Vision: Assistance in defining your strategy, aligning your team, and optimizing team dynamics to realize your goals.
• Business Transition Support: Expertise for closely held businesses preparing for sale or multi-generational family businesses focusing on succession, governance, and wealth management.

Contact me anytime: Ed.stillman@vistagechair.com